[ Page 4831 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Oral Questions

Coca-Cola contract for B.C. Summer Games. Mrs. Wallace –– 4832

Closure of Crestwood Guest Home. Mr. Cocke –– 4832

Mr. Leggatt –– 4833

Demolition of Robson St. apartments. Mr. Lauk –– 4833

BCSTA policy resolutions. Mr. Lauk –– 4834

Presenting Petitions

Vancouver Island Haven Society of Nanaimo.

Ms. Brown –– 4834

Committee of Supply: Ministry of Municipal Affairs estimates. (Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm)

On vote 156: minister's office –– 4834

Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm

Mr. Barber

Mr. Mussallem

Mr. Cocke

Ms. Brown

MONDAY, MARCH 30, 1981

The House met at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Speaker, it's with profound sadness that we heard of the senseless, savage attack upon the President of the United States. On behalf of the government, all members of the assembly and the citizens of British Columbia, we would like to extend our sympathy, best wishes and prayers for a speedy recovery.

MR. BARRETT: On behalf of the opposition I join with the statement of the House Leader of the government and express our shock at such an inexplicable event taking place in our family of North American nations. Even though we are of a different country we share a common heritage. Our democratic political process opens occasion for dispute and discord, but there is no place for violence in that difference of opinion. We too wish Godspeed to the President and his family and wish him an early recovery. We hope that from this tragic event we can learn that with all our positive attitudes towards government there is a frailty in human nature that still needs to be conquered, and we hope we are one step closer to that.

I want to add that we in British Columbia have a particularly close relationship with the United States in north-south dialogue, and we extend to our many personal friends on the American side our expression of concern and hope for the best.

MR. SPEAKER. Hon. members, is it the wish of the House, on the basis of the two statements made, that the Speaker send an appropriate message to the White House?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: So ordered.

HON. MR. CHABOT: From my great riding of Columbia River we have in the galleries today 12 students from grade 11 of the David Thompson Secondary School in Invermere, together with their teacher, Mr. Chris Elford, and Mrs. Elford. I'd like the House to join me in welcoming them today.

MS. BROWN: There are ten members of the Vancouver Island Haven Society with us today: Annabell Cameron, Dorothy Mandy, Valerie Quan, Ruth Taylor, Margaret Tuker, Nina Westway, Jackie Mode, Lou Holland, Kim Goldberg and Marlene Slater. Would the House join me in bidding them welcome.

HON. MR. HYNDMAN: Mr. Speaker, I know that to many of us the constituency secretary is a most important person. In your gallery today is Miss Carol Tichelman, who serves the Minister of Environment (Hon. Mr. Rogers) and me in Vancouver South. Would members join me in welcoming her.

MR. MACDONALD: Mr. Speaker, rejoining the press gallery after a year in the great city of Vancouver is NI. Charles La Vertu, un petit Français et un écrivain formidable. Bienvenue.

MR. REE: Mr. Speaker, on Saturday evening last I had the occasion to represent the government at a dinner of the congress of Alpim Italian members — their first meeting here in Vancouver. The local organization was holding its tenth anniversary in the Italian Centre in Vancouver. We have in the gallery a number of members of the association from across Canada and some from the United States. I would like to mention that we have one gentleman from North Burnaby, Mr. Umberto Turrin, and his two brothers from Italy, Luigi and Lorenzo — if they would stand up. I would ask the House to welcome them.

MR. MITCHELL: Mr. Speaker, I would like you and the House to join with me in welcoming a visitor from the east, Mr. Raymond LeBlanc, from Shediac, New Brunswick. Ray was one of 21 Canadians. Including my daughter, who went to Mali as exchange students. They are back in Canada now.

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Speaker, along with my colleague from North Vancouver–Capilano I would like to extend a greeting on behalf of the Legislature to the Alpini Association. Over 100 members have visited this past weekend and will be in British Columbia for the next few days. The chairman of the congress anniversary, which they have attended in Vancouver, is Arrigo dalla Tina. He is accompanying the representative group in the Legislature. Tarcisio Fogolin, the president of the British Columbia organization, is in the gallery today as well. The national president from Italy is here, Mr. Franco Bertagnolli. They are celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Alpini Association in British Columbia. They have marked this past weekend the very first anniversary of the Alpini Association of Canada.

May I say on behalf of members of our assembly, if they will accept this attempt at Italian — I say to the second member for Vancouver East (Mr. Macdonald), who is so good at this kind of thing — members on all sides of the House join in a very warm welcome to them. Buona sera, alpini di tutto il mondo, benvenuti a British Columbia. Grazie per essere venuti. We hope you will return again. Arrivederci.

MR. MACDONALD: E sempre un piacere essere con I alpini. Vivan I alpini!

MR. SPEAKER: Hansard is going to have a ball with this.

HON. MRS. JORDAN: Mr. Speaker, I don't think I can outdo that act. However, I thought with your interest in tourism in British Columbia, you would be pleased to know that over the weekend we not only had our very charming Italian guests, but we had a number of other people — I'm not sure they spoke English, although they told me they did. They were 500 small service-station operators from Australia.

Interjection.

HON. MRS. JORDAN: Well, if you hear them talk — "You're all right, Mike" — it makes you wonder. They were here with us under the auspices of Shell Australia and are part of a program of that company to encourage their service station operators to seek perfection and major accomplishments not only in their work, but in international understand-

[ Page 4832 ]

ing. Some of them will be in the House later today — not all 500, you'll be pleased to know.

There will also be some people in the gallery later today who are part of a group of 100 tour operators and travel agents from San Francisco. They have been with us for the last week in British Columbia under the auspices of the federal government, through CGOT, and our own ministry, with our director in San Francisco, Mrs. Marjorie Greene. All are delighted with British Columbia and deeply regretful that they can't spare more time in this chamber to see democracy in action, but I would ask you to give them a very warm welcome.

MR. MUSSALLEM: I think this could well be called Dewdney constituency day in this Legislature, because today we have Mrs. Eileen Griffin and her sister, Mrs. Masie Essex, from New South Wales, Australia, who is in Canada on an extended visit. In addition to that we have 60 students of the Garibaldi Secondary School under the direction of Mr. Mike McIndoe, Mr. Ron D'Andrea, Miss Cindy King and Mr. Jim Dudley. In addition to that we have had 20 students from Ferndale School in Mission, who have now left the precincts, and their teacher, Mr. Ewert.

MR. KEMPF: In the gallery with us this afternoon are three individuals representing the Denturists Society of British Columbia: Mr. Ed Hawks, Mr. Jim Connoly and Mr. Trevor Neet. I would ask the House to make them welcome.

MR. SEGARTY: In the gallery this afternoon are two young people from Cranbrook: Mr. Bronte Stefanuk and Mr. Terry McMahon. I'd like the House to welcome them this afternoon.

MR. SPEAKER: Before we proceed, hon. members, I have a plea from Hansard, over the signature of the chief. It says that each desk has in it a little pad, and they would encourage you to use this information notice for the spelling of the names of the people you have introduced. It will help them greatly.

Oral Questions

COCA-COLA CONTRACT FOR
B.C. SUMMER GAMES

MRS. WALLACE: My question is for the Provincial Secretary. Can the minister confirm that Coca-Cola — a drink of no nutritional value — has been designated the official soft drink of the B.C. Games in exchange for $100,000 worth of advertising for the games?

HON. MR. WOLFE: I thank the member for her question. I can't confirm her figures but, yes, there is an agreement between Coca-Cola and the managing director of the games, under which they have considerable obligations to provide services, programs, etc., and under which they are the established soft drink of the games. There are many other types of drinks — milk, tea and coffee, etc. — provided to the athletes. From the point of view of the games, there is a very beneficial arrangement under which they are the supplier of all of these services: programs, schedules, etc. I can't confirm the figure of $100,000 that she mentioned. I would have to get back to the House on that matter.

MRS. WALLACE: That was a very interesting answer from the minister. Can he confirm that because of this unsavoury arrangement between Coca-Cola and B.C. Games, B.C. Fruit Growers Assoc. were denied an opportunity to sell any B.C.-produced fruit juices to spectators at the B.C. Summer Games last year?

HON. MR. WOLFE: In no way could this be classified as an unsavoury contract or arrangement, Mr. Speaker. At the time such an agreement was entered into, which I am told was 1979, other submissions were invited and were in no way competitive with that made or offered by Coca-Cola. I am not informed that this concern has been raised by the treefruit people, but I'd certainly be happy to look into it.

MRS. WALLACE: While the minister is looking into this, I wonder whether he would be good enough to check whether or not this Coca-Cola monopoly has kept competing beverages away from the games to the point that a desperate cook had to make an almost under-the-table deal in order that the athletes didn't have to drink Coca-Cola for breakfast.

HON. MR. WOLFE: I can only remind the member that this was an agreement made by the games management which was of great assistance to the games. The company is obligated to buy the back page of the program. They print some 200,000 advance schedules and something like 7,000 posters for these games, and they purchase 25 percent of the television coverage of the games. For this, they are the only soft-drink beverage currently provided to the games. It does not preclude the supply of milk, tea, coffee or those kinds of beverages to the athletes. It's my understanding that in 1980 the company spent something like $80,000 in this connection on the B.C. Games.

MRS. WALLACE: I would urge the minister to check and verify whether or not the athletes — the ones who didn't drink tea or coffee — were in fact being required to drink Coke for breakfast because there was no juice available, and whether or not that juice was brought in as a result of negotiations made by some of the food staff.

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, please come to order. We're in question period. If the hon. House Leader (Hon. Mr. Williams) would please take his chair, I would appreciate it.

CLOSURE OF CRESTWOOD GUEST HOME

MR. COCKE: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Health. I would ask the minister if section 14 of the Community Care Facility Act and regulations which were revised by order-in-council November 25, 1980, set out conditions for notice of change of operations of a facility. Can the minister advise the House as to whether the owner and operator of the Crestwood Guest Home in Maple Ridge complied with the regulations that I have just alluded to?

HON. MR. NIELSEN: I'll have to take the question as notice and get the specifics.

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MR. COCKE: I have a new question, which might help the minister. Did Crestwood give 12 months' written notice to the Provincial Adult Care Facilities Licensing Board of their intention to suspend the operation of the Crestwood Guest Home?

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Again, I will take that as notice to find out what notice was given, what the length of time was, what the requirements may be under the regulation, and also to ask officials what consequences, if any, could arise from that.

MR. COCKE: I have another question — and the minister may not have to take this as notice. Will the minister advise the House as to whether or not he approved the 27-day notice which was given to the 44 elderly patients at the Maple Ridge rest-home?

HON. MR. NIELSEN: We did not give notice to the people; the people who owned the facility gave notice. The important aspect in this is that the guests at that facility were relocated, which was the number one priority.

MR. COCKE: Did the ministry receive any representations from the MLA for Dewdney (Mr. Mussallem)?

HON. MR. NIELSEN: I don't know if anyone in the ministry received representations from the MLA. I'm not quite sure what the member means by "representations," but I can ask my officials who may have contacted them in this regard.

MR. LEGGATT: My question is directed to the Attorney-General. Given the fact that it is now general knowledge that at least two sections of the Community Care Facility Act have been violated in this particular Crestwood resthome case, would the minister advise whether he has now decided to initiate proceedings against that rest-home. as is his duty under section 15 of the Community Care Facility Act?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: I have not now decided, and I won't decide until such time as the Minister of Health returns with his answers to the questions posed to him today.

DEMOLITION OF ROBSON ST. APARTMENTS

MR. LAUK: A question to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. Tenants of 42 apartments at 1840 and 1860 Robson Street in the city of Vancouver have been advised by Campeau Corporation that their apartments will be demolished October 1 of this year. What steps has the minister decided to take to prevent the loss of these rental units?

HON. MR. HYNDMAN: Mr. Speaker, this morning I was in touch with the property managers for the building, Macaulay, Nicoils, Maitland and Co., and Mr. Steven Jung, who is the property manager responsible for that building. Perhaps I can advise the member, through you, sir, of the information I received. I gather that Macaulay, Nicolls assumed responsibility for these buildings on March 20, about the same time as the purchase from Campeau. I'm further advised by Mr. Jung that Macaulay, Nicolls manage a fairly wide portfolio of apartments in Vancouver, and it will be their policy to provide priority to these tenants in an effort to assist them in relocation. I further understand that of the 42 suites in the building 40 are presently occupied and two are unoccupied.

I also gather that tomorrow evening Vancouver city council is having a major meeting on the question of what steps, if any, will be taken in that city by Mayor Harcourt with respect to proposed demolition bylaws, but that a decision by Vancouver city council will not be made until April 7. Before I say anything further, I very much want to have the results of that meeting and the comments and recommendations of Vancouver city council.

MR. LAUK: I thank the minister for looking into this question promptly. Because of Campeau Corporation's failure to maintain the building since last November, the residents as a group have looked after the buildings themselves. What steps has the minister taken respecting the failure of this corporation to live up to its obligation under the Residential Tenancy Act to maintain these buildings?

HON. MR. HYNDMAN: Following that same policy as the Attorney-General outlined moments ago, I think it's the practice of the government that we'd like some brief opportunity to receive first-hand, from our own officials, a report on a situation before trying and convicting people. I would think it a retrograde step if, relying on one newspaper report, immediate conclusions were drawn in this case. I shall see today, Mr. Speaker. that officials of my ministry contact the Campeau people and find out their side of the story. When we have all sides of the story fairly presented, we will decide what steps to take.

MR. LAUK: Apart from any newspaper story, complaints have been made to the rentalsman with respect to those two addresses. Under the Residential Tenancy Act, the rentalsman's office is unable to deal with obligation repair cases under that act because "it is bogged down with the government's cumbersome rent review program. Has the minister decided to take specific action to hire emergency staff to deal with such complaints under that act?

HON. MR. HYNDMAN: Mr. Speaker, as part of the answer I just gave I will certainlybe asking the office of the rentalsman what steps they have taken and whether the facts are as they arc suggested by the first member for Vancouver Centre.

I should perhaps say by way of comment, with respect to the accuracy of the quotation from the unknown author just uttered, that I am advised by the rentalsman's office that as a consequence of the additional funding and further staff provided in conjunction with those amendments by this government in the last six months, for the first time in several years the office of the rentalsman has been closing more files in the last three months than it has been opening. which is a sign to me that the staff are working very hard and are doing very well with the new resources.

MR. LAUK: Perhaps we should look into the minister's claims that they have been closing more files. I would like to check with my officials and research staff to determine whether the files have been closed resolved or unresolved.

[ Page 4834 ]

MR. SPEAKER: The question, please.

MR. LAUK: In any event, the question that I had to the minister was based on information received this morning. It is that the rentalsman is still not receiving obligation repair cases. Can the minister confirm that that is the case?

HON. MR. HYNDMAN: As I said, Mr. Speaker, I shall be happy to look into that and advise the member at the first opportunity.

BCSTA POLICY RESOLUTIONS

MR. LAUK: I have a question to the Minister of Education. On March 9 of this year, the B.C. School Trustees Association made yet another request for the minister to respond in some way to their 1979 and 1980 policy resolutions. So far the minister has steadfastly failed — or refused — to do so. Has the minister now decided to respond?

HON. MR. SMITH: Mr. Speaker, I wasn't minister when the 1979 resolutions were put before that assembly and wouldn't be responding to those in any event, but the 1980 resolutions I fully intend to respond to in due course. I am preparing an educational report at present, which will respond to those and a number of others, but I do intend to respond to those.

Presenting Petitions

MS. BROWN: I ask leave to present a petition.

Leave granted,

MS. BROWN: The petition of the Vancouver Island Haven Society of Nanaimo "humbly showeth that women are being battered and killed in Nanaimo and need a safe place to go with their children. Wherefore your petitioner humbly prays that your honourable House may be pleased to support the Vancouver Island Haven Society in their request for funding for a transition house in Nanaimo." It is signed, Mr. Speaker, by 2,477 signatures.

MR. SPEAKER: The member has an attending motion? There will be a ruling before a motion would be in order.

MR. MUSSALLEM: Mr. Speaker, during the question period the name of the member for Dewdney was mentioned, and I find it difficult to remain silent when a question was asked dealing with myself. I request the opportunity to make a statement to the House.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. member, you are asking leave to make a statement?

MR. MUSSALLEM: Yes.

Leave not granted.

Interjection.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. I asked leave and I heard several noes, hon. member.

MR. LAUK: It is my understanding that the hon. member for Dewdney wishes to make a correction of something stated in the House. This is his first available opportunity, and perhaps he means that he wishes to rise under that standing order. The opposition has no objection to that.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. The member simply asked for leave to make a statement, and the Chair is duty bound by the wishes of the House.

The member for Dewdney seeks the floor?

MR. MUSSALLEM: Mr. Speaker, with the sound and the fury I could not hear what you said. Would you repeat it again, please?

MR. SPEAKER: The member for Dewdney seeks the floor on what basis?

MR. MUSSALLEM: I seek the floor on the basis that my name was mentioned and the member for Dewdney should have an opportunity to answer that name.

MR. SPEAKER: Standing orders do not provide for an opportunity for the member to simply respond in debate fashion to questions answered in question period.

MR. MUSSALLEM: Of course, and I was refused that opportunity by the House.

Orders of the Day

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

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF
MUNICIPAL AFFAIRS

On vote 156: minister's office, $186,675.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: First, I wish to take the opportunity of extending a real vote of gratitude to the former deputy, Bill Long, who left the ministry in order to take on the post of acting chairman of the Public Service Commission late last year. I'm sure that we're well aware that Mr. Long served the ministry for several years and did so extremely well, taking various leadership roles in preparing for urban transit and other such programs. I am very grateful for all of the help which was provided me during my initial period in the ministry through the able assistance of Mr. Long.

Mr. John Taylor, formerly an assistant deputy minister, was appointed as acting deputy minister. Certainly Mr. Taylor has long experience in the municipal field and will be a help not only to all municipalities, but also to any of us in the Legislature who would seek his assistance from time to time.

Mr. Chris Woodward, also a former assistant deputy minister, was appointed as acting inspector of municipalities. The responsibilities of this position have been enlarged. The Municipal Act Review Committee's work should also lead to some legislative changes, perhaps in order to clarify and better spell out than presently the duties assigned to the inspector of municipalities.

Mr. Larry Miller, formerly an assistant general manager with the Urban Transit Authority, was named acting general

[ Page 4835 ]

manager of the Urban Transit Authority. The expansion of the bus service throughout the province and the start of the advanced light rapid transit project indicated a need for a full-time general manager. The expertise which Mr. Larry Miller can provide in this field is not only welcome but very necessary if these programs are to come to fruition as we would see them. He has already been most helpful in the capacity of assistant general manager and taken a very leading role in assuring that all communities throughout the province have an opportunity of providing a transit program to their citizens.

Mr. Chairman, I want to spend a few moments on a very important program, one which certainly our government and my ministry can be extremely proud of: the revenue-sharing program. The total value of the 1981 revenue-sharing program package is $213.8 million. That's an increase of $37.6 million or 21 percent over last year's total of $176.2 million, which in turn was a 24 percent increase over the 1979 total. Municipalities do require an increasing amount of money in order to keep up with inflationary costs in providing services to their citizens.

The revenue-sharing program, of course, is one which is tied into the various revenues that accrue to the province. These revenues are calculated on the year previous. We're very grateful for the economic prosperity of British Columbia that has been experienced by all of its citizens. Again the municipalities, through their revenue-sharing program, have been the beneficiaries of that. I say again that we're extremely proud as a government that we have a program which is a model for all of Canada in assuring that the municipalities do have a growing source of income which helps to keep the taxes down at the local level.

The lion's share of the revenue-sharing program — 76 percent or $162 million — is distributed as unconditional grants to the 140 B.C. municipalities according to a formula which takes into account municipal population, spending and tax base. The basic grant is $30,000, which goes to every municipality and consumes 2 percent of the program. For the 19 villages with a property tax collection of less than $60,000, this grant pays for many local services.

Nine percent, or $18.4 million, of the revenue-sharing pot is allocated for the water facilities assistance program which covers 75 percent of the annual debt per payment in excess of 2 1/2 mills for approved municipal and regional water systems. This program's value has increased 66 percent over last year. As the loss of the federal community services contribution program has placed in jeopardy many water projects throughout the province, the funds made available for the sewerage facilities assistance program have also increased. The same generous cost-sharing formula is used for it as for the water program. The large increase in this program value again reflects Ottawa's chopping of the community services contribution program. The housing growth grant distributes $10 million in proportion to the number of housing starts in municipalities and regional districts; $15 million is used to pay for 50 percent of approved road projects. To encourage proper long-term planning at the local government level, my ministry reimburses up to two-thirds of approved planning projects. Each of the 28 regional districts receives a $40,000 grant as well.

In 1977 revenue-sharing legislation, as I mentioned, was the most significant development in senior government financial assistance to local government in Canada. I'm very pleased that it has been an enormous help to municipalities in maintaining a more reasonable level of local taxation. It's certainly an extremely important source of revenue to all municipalities — to the smaller communities perhaps more significantly so — and it provides services to the community that wouldn't otherwise be affordable for its citizens. Because of revenue-sharing, B.C. local governments will receive a total of $254.6 million in 1981-82 — a whopping 165 percent increase over the $96.1 million given by the former government in their last budget. So that indicates the progress that has been made since 1975: we've managed to increase the revenues to local government by a whopping 165 percent. I am certain the municipalities must be aware of the efforts that have been put forth on their behalf through the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, and the response which has been so generously granted by this government in British Columbia at this time.

The community services contribution program has been in effect only two years; it was instituted by the federal government, but unfortunately they have now suddenly decided not to continue their participation in the community services contribution program beyond December 31, 1980. The community services contribution program was only introduced in 1979, as I mentioned. by the federal government as a block-funding arrangement to replace three other federal programs which were specifically designed to assist municipalities in providing essential services related to housing and protection of the environment.

They unfortunately. as they do with so many other programs, get the thine started. change it to perhaps a block funding arrangement. as was the case here, and then after only two years cancel out. The provinces agreed to this change on the basis that an initial two-year agreement would be followed by a long-term agreement to be negotiated prior to December 31, 1980. and this latter commitment was included as a clause in the agreements with each of the provinces. The program's funding was given as a 20 percent grant of total capital cost to various municipal projects. The federal funds were used to reduce the net cost of the municipal sewer and water projects eligible for provincial assistance. The provincial assistance programs provide 75 percent of project costs above 2 1/2 mills in the municipality. In other words. for every federal dollar lost or every dollar which was previously received from the federal government, the provincial government will now be obliged to again pick up directly 75 cents. and the municipalities will pick up the other 25 cents. So it's 75 cents for the lost dollar, which needs to be picked up directly by the province, and 25 cents directly by the municipalities. The federal government had made the commitment to carry on with the program, but they suddenly decided to cancel out.

In 1980 we had $25.2 million from the program. which was shared by B.C. local governments under the program, and $80 million in applications was received. So we actually inherited many of the programs which were previously cost shared by the federal government. We were unable to meet all of those indirect commitments which had been made by the federal government, because we immediately received $80 million worth of applications, but we were able to meet $25.2 million worth. The federal government did not redirect to B.C. the funds lost by axing the community services contribution program, so the money appears to be going — at least we would hope — to the repayment of Ottawa's debt.

The provincial homeowner grant was an innovative idea introduced by the former Social Credit Government in 1957.

[ Page 4836 ]

Since that time the homeowner grants have increased from $28 to a maximum of $630 per year for senior citizens, GAIN recipients and the handicapped. In this session of the Legislature the eligibility for the $200 extra grant is being expanded to include all physically disabled homeowners. That certainly is a welcome response by this government in follow-up from the various delegations that have been presented to me and others by the handicapped people of the province who previously had to be in receipt of GAIN to be eligible. We've recognized now that the handicap should be the eligibility factor. I'm pleased that the government once more took the initiative to expand the benefits to this very deserving group of citizens. We have come a long way since 1975, in the period that we've been government. In 1975 the homeowner grant program totalled $124 million; now we see a program that is $253.5 million. That's an increase of 104 percent in just over six years.

We have a very good committee actively reviewing the Municipal Act. From time to time we are asked by members of the Legislature and especially by people in municipal government why certain aspects of the act should not be reviewed more regularly. Of course, we know that every year there are changes to the act, but there has never been any complete review. I suppose the last time might have been 1914, which is a good while back, and portions of the act are not only out of date and archaic but do not have application in any way, shape or form. So the Municipal Act Review Committee is a group which has been meeting fairly regularly, and they're hoping to complete their work later this summer.

The committee comprises chairman Ted Whelen, who has been with the ministry for a good many years, a very able person who has been a tremendous assistant to all those who have served in the capacity of minister for the ministry; Mr. Stew Fleming, a very capable manager for the city of Kelowna, who gives us the necessary municipal input; Ted Pearce, the lawyer for the UBCM for the last number of years; Mr. Jeff McKelvy, the executive director of the UBCM; and Mr. Don Lidstone and Mr. Galt Wilson, lawyers specializing in municipal law.

They have been working very hard and, as I mentioned, by the fall of this year we hope to be prepared to present a discussion paper in time for the UBCM convention so there might be ample input and the municipal people will have the opportunity to make recommendations on the suggestions from the committee. Seminars will be held throughout the province, and I will receive written briefs and reports from any and all groups or individuals. The format and process will I be the same as was followed for the planning act. I feel that this gives British Columbians a chance to look at legislation before it goes into effect and becomes accepted, so that they will be afforded the opportunity to propose any changes they might wish.

The downtown revitalization program is relatively new, but we have a large number of communities very interested in the program, and a good number of communities have received the initial $5,000 grant in order to do the required studies within the communities to determine the needs and the best approach to the revitalization of the downtown cores. As was said last year when the program was introduced, and I repeat, it is the wish of government that we assist the small businesses in the downtown cores of the smaller Communities which are often being threatened by the regional shopping centres just out of the towns.

For the most part these small businesses have been a part of the downtown core in their small communities for a good many years. They are the people who stuck through thick and thin and who stayed. They are not the johnnies-come-lately, the shopping centres which so often tend to move in when they find there is a type of growth that will sustain them — and very often it sustains them at the cost of those who have been there providing a service to the people for a good many years. So the downtown revitalization program is off to a good start, it's beginning to jell well and I expect to see good things flow from it.

Mr. Peter Dueck is the coordinator of the program and has visited over 60 B.C. communities to date. The downtown cores of 42 B.C. communities have received ministerial designation for revitalization, and 22 communities have received the startup grants. Courtenay was the first community to receive approval in principle for a $215,000 loan to improve the main street of that community.

We are covering the whole of the province, and our priorities are only a matter of the community being eligible for it and in need of it, and the program assuring us of the sort of results we want for the small businessman. If the community group required to be a part of promoting and initiating the program is very active, then they tend to get first in I me. That's the case in Courtenay, as it is in White Rock, where the community has been extremely active and the council and mayor have been taking a leading role in assuring that there is a continued interest and that all the facts are known. In White Rock we are ready to provide a $78,000 allocation for the facade treatment in the Marine Drive area.

In June the ministry will be sponsoring workshops on downtown revitalization in Vernon, Creston, Campbell River and White Rock, and we expect to see a good representation of council members as well as board of trade, chamber of commerce or downtown business-group representatives who will provide us with further input and give us a progress report on various activities in the different communities.

I should mention as well that the Pacific Rim Metropolitan Conference will this year be held in Vancouver from April 5 to 10. We're very proud to be hosting this event with the regional district of greater Vancouver. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development will be taking a lead role. Their involvement with the conference stems from its recognition of the links between effective public management, the economic development of member nations and the growth of the world economy. As part of its activities in this area, the OECD's joint activity on urban management sponsored the symposium on metropolitan government organization and structure in Yugoslavia in November 1978. That symposium brought together about 80 practitioners from 13 countries to share their perspectives on this subject. The Pacific Rim Metropolitan Conference is one of several initiatives undertaken to follow up on the symposium. The B.C. government maintains links at the international level for the exchange of ideas about metropolitan areas. The discussions at the upcoming conference will follow up some of the debates of the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements held in Vancouver in 1976. Representatives from over 40 metropolitan cities in the Pacific Rini and many interested organizations will be discussing four major themes. The first will be relations between senior governments in metropolitan areas; the second, coastal and estuary management in metropolitan areas; the third, transportation, land-use planning and urban form; and the fourth, decision-making in metropolitan development,

[ Page 4837 ]

A large part of the ministry is the Urban Transit Authority, and this is one which is getting more of our attention all the time. The UTA will receive approximately $95 million from the province in this fiscal year, and under a five-year cost-sharing arrangement with local governments the province pays 75 percent of transit operating deficits in the first and second years. In the third year it's 70 percent, and from then on it's two-thirds. These agreements provide the greatest amount of provincial government financial contribution or support for public transit of any province in Canada. Our cost-sharing formula to provide local transit to communities throughout British Columbia, and the system which is being developed for greater Victoria and greater Vancouver, is the most generous of any province in Canada, and probably rates among the highest for any place in North America, and possibly the world. It's one which is recognized by people involved in other transit programs elsewhere throughout the world. We receive many inquiries. Each and every time, there is considerable astonishment on the part of those inquiring at the participation by this provincial government in that very rapidly growing program.

On December 6, 1980, I had the pleasure of announcing the provincial government's support for the construction of an advanced light rapid transit system in greater Vancouver. The cost of the project is expected to be $650 million in inflated dollars. That's certainly taking it from today through to 1986. Looking at it today, we are looking at an approximate figure of $290 million in 1979 dollars. We must inflate those, of course, because we recognize that the cost will increase between now and 1986. I was very pleased, too, that when this announcement was made, we were able to announce the commuter program at the same time. I'll just speak on that a little more in a moment.

We were able to tie it in as well with the announcement by the Ministry of Lands, Parks and Housing that we would make large tracts of Crown land available — especially in the Coquitlam, Port Moody and Surrey areas — for the development of housing. It's certainly recognized, and it's a problem that comes to us at the Ministry of Municipal Affairs as well, that with the tremendous growth in British Columbia and with the enormous influx of people....

I believe we're getting something like 1,000 people moving into the lower mainland every week right now. It's the greatest growth we've ever experienced in British Columbia, and of course these are people from other parts of Canada. Understandably, they're moving here in part because we enjoy the best of weather, but similarly too, they're much impressed by the economy, the opportunity that British Columbia offers and the fact that the government of British Columbia is not only planning and looking at today but is concerned about the future. Any and all of those people — not only in Canada but elsewhere — are viewing British Columbia as one place where they would like to bring their families to see them have job opportunities available to them, not only now but in the future, and the Opportunities to build something for themselves of which they and the family can be extremely proud. Because we are living in the best province in the whole of Canada and possibly the best part of the whole world — I would certainly say so but perhaps someone might think me to be biased — people from everywhere are moving to British Columbia. This is why I again mention the fact that we were able to coincide the announcements of providing the most innovative transit program for the whole of anywhere — it's never been equalled anywhere.

It will certainly be viewed by people from all over the world as being not only innovative but foresightful and futuristic. Because we were able to tie that program into making land available to people for housing, I think we can see a tremendous success from both of the announcements. They do tend to go together. If you do see — as we would expect — a large amount of development taking place in the northeast sector, especially in the lower mainland or in the Greater Vancouver Regional District. then transit is a very much required part of it.

It is expected that at least 60 percent of the moneys required for the project will be spent locally. As well, the Urban Transit Authority and GVRD are examining the possibility of leasing air right along the line of residential and commercial development, which once more will provide for considerable spinoff in benefits to accrue to the system and the economy of the Greater Vancouver Regional District generally. Mr. Chairman. we have some proposals which have been provided to the ministry with respect to what opportunities do exist regarding the potential for air rights, and certainly this will be considerably developed upon by the ministry.

I see that you are pointing at the lights, so I should speed it up. I only have a couple of items left to mention.

The bus system has now been expanded into a large number of communities. It was 20 at last count; it may be 21 now. It's a comprehensive program. In 1981-82, over 68.5 million kilometres of transit service, carrying in excess of 118 million passengers, will be provided in B.C. Over 1,100 vehicles are in revenue service in transit systems under the agreement signed with the UTA, and the arrival of 40 trolley buses, 29 diesels and 22 custom vehicles is expected this year, and 160 new trolleys are on order. There is a tremendous expansion in the program.

The UTA funds door-to-door service for those people unable to use conventional transit buses on the same basis as it does for conventional transit, except that these custom transit services require that only 10 percent of revenue be raised from the fares. as opposed to 35 percent for conventional transit in Vancouver and Victoria and 30 percent in other communities. The difference is made up by the special provincial grant as a supplement to the user fees. The UTA will spend almost S3 million this fiscal year for transit for the physically disabled. aside from greater Victoria and greater Vancouver. Kelowna enjoys — and on April 1, Prince George, and in May, Kamloops will enjoy — the benefits of the UTA's custom transit program. Four other B.C. communities should be receiving this service over the next year.

In 1975 only a few dedicated organizations. such as the B.C. Lions Society, provided this service. The province contributed nothing towards this type of large-scale transit service for the physically disabled, except through grants from the Ministry of Human Resources. But now these are certainly and totally under the program — at least according to its guidelines — and supported through the Urban Transit Authority.

The SeaBus will celebrate its fourth anniversary in June of this year. This vessel has a capacity of 150,000 crossings of the beautiful Vancouver harbour. We're pleased to say that it has been able to do so without one lost trip due to mechanical problems.

Mr. Chairman. I thank you very much, and I'd be very pleased to take my seat and answer any questions that might come from the members opposite.

[ Page 4838 ]

MR. BARBER: I too would like to congratulate Jim Lorimer for having had the guts, the courage, the vision, the initiative, the money and the ability to get SeaBus done. It was and is a fine thing, and on this side of the House we're terribly proud of it. I would also like to point out that it was the Social Credit Party when in opposition that opposed it, that laughed, that jeered, that hooted, that ridiculed, that acted in a typically negative, negative, negative way and said SeaBus would never work. Well, fortunately, then, as now, they were wrong. And fortunately, SeaBus has been a tremendous success — and we need two more of them.

We need two more of them in part as a means of staving off all those persons who hate cities and build bridges, all those persons who hate cities and build highways in them, all those persons who hate cities and smash the highways and the bridges through the established neighbourhoods of the cities. We need to find a way — and SeaBus is one of them — to prevent the destruction of cities by the building of unnecessary, unwelcome, unaffordable and inappropriate systems like highways and great bridges in Vancouver or in any other place where they clearly do enormous damage to the fundamental human foundation and the economic fabric of a great urban community. Thank God for SeaBus, because it was a means of stopping another crossing over the Burrard Inlet. Thank God for Seabus; it's been as much an economic success within its framework as any public transit is. Thank God for SeaBus; it's safe and reliable. And thank God for Jim Lorimer, who did it in the first place.

AN HON. MEMBER: Where is he?

MR. BARBER: His wife is very ill and he has gone to visit her in the hospital, as a matter of fact.

We are discussing today — at least in the opening hours and days of these estimates — the ability of the Minister of Municipal Affairs, the competence of his office and the policies of his ministry. The minister has a growing reputation in British Columbia, but unfortunately for him, in the last couple of years it has been growing in a very negative way. Increasingly the reputation of this minister is that of bullying and bungling, and in the hours and days to come we're going to be looking at the record of bungling and bullying associated with the current Minister of Municipal Affairs. We're going to look, for instance, at the remarkable achievement he obtained when he made himself the laughingstock of the UBCM by putting forward the simply goofy, simply irrational idea of tying the salaries of elected persons in local government to their population, and a few other devices that he cooked up. This was bungling and bullying both at the same moment. It was, of course, vastly laughed at by persons who know how local governments work, and it was entirely repudiated by the UBCM and virtually every one of its members. Even the minister himself, in a rare moment of candour, admitted that it was not an altogether successful initiative. But it was successful in this way, Mr. Chairman: it demonstrated once again the propensity of this minister for bungling and bullying his way through ill-conceived public policy to get himself into trouble with his own constituency — by which I mean the constituency of persons concerned about local government. So we'll be talking about that in the hours and days to come.

We'll be talking as well about why he would have appointed Peter Dueck of all people to be responsible for what he grandly calls the downtown revitalization program. Is this the same Peter Dueck who has been active with Social Credit in the Fraser Valley for the last two decades? Is this the same Peter Dueck who has acted as a fiscal agent for the Social Credit Party in the last, I think, three elections? Is it the same Peter Dueck who goes as a delegate to the regional meetings of Social Credit? Maybe we're misinformed, but I kind of doubt it, because, you know, the home addresses all check out — they're one and the same.

AN HON. MEMBER: It couldn't be.

MR. BARBER: You checked it out as well?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: He's smart.

MR. BARBER: He's smart? Well, so you say. He is a Socred, so we know.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. Hon. members, will you address the Chair, and only one member speak at a time.

MR. BARBER: Fair enough, Mr. Chairman.

I'm concerned about the implications of political patronage here, which are beginning to wend their way into the administration of local government in British Columbia. The political connections of Mr. Peter Dueck will be examined in due course in the next hours and days.

We'll also be looking at some rather unusual expenditures that we have uncovered, the chief purpose of which seems to be to promote the now-failing political ambitions of the Minister of Municipal Affairs, who, it is well known, wishes to become Premier. We'll be talking about the money he's spent; we'll be talking about the money the taxpayers spent, against their will, to promote him when he went on television a little while ago and told us what a wonderful thing the planning act was. In his TV spectacular devoted to his own career, he omitted to tell us that it was significantly repudiated by many people in local government. He neglected to mention anything whatever in the broadcast about the legitimate, reasonable and intelligent criticisms put forward by elected and appointed municipal officials across British Columbia. What he did, in fact, was attempt to pull off a snow job. I think what he did was to completely misinform the people of British Columbia about the real political agenda of this highly centralist government. During that television show — which I watched very closely, as did our research office — he omitted to mention anything at all about the tough-minded, sensible and appropriate criticisms that could be made of his centralist policy toward attempting to control everything from his desk in Victoria, rather than from the desks of many elected and responsible persons across British Columbia.

It is certainly a matter of public record, well beyond dispute, that the Social Credit coalition is the most heavy-handed, centralist government this province has ever suffered under. The planning act is one illustration of this heavy-handed, centralist, state controlling approach — which we reject, and which we rejected when we were in government. The financial administration act is another example. There are many others, including the ridiculous and insupportable way in which the Agricultural Land Commission has been politically meddled and interfered with for the sake of friends of Social Credit who are in the land development and speculation business. Those are three illustrations, but in the

[ Page 4839 ]

hours and days ahead more will come forward of the ways in which, in attempting to control things centrally in Victoria, the minister has earned the reputation for both bullying and bungling.

We're concerned as well — I repeat it this year; I've said it every year for the last six years, I guess, since I became critic for municipal affairs — that this minister and this coalition of opportunists has no notion at all of what makes a great city work. This government has no vision of how urban life can succeed. This government seems utterly preoccupied with doing favours for the boys, be it Peter Dueck, the Wengers of Windermere, Gloucester Properties in Langley, George Spetifore in Delta, or any number of the chosen who apparently make large donations to Social Credit at election time and thus mysteriously have their land removed from the ALR. They are terribly concerned and interested in their ability to do favours for their pals, but they seem to have no concern whatever to develop a competent, modern, appropriate policy for urban communities in British Columbia.

Let me offer one illustration of simply grotesque bungling on the part of the minister. I refer, of course, to the Spetifore deal. I refer to the threats of the minister to use politically — if I recall it correctly — section 942 of the Municipal Act, a section brought in by his predecessor, Mr. Curtis, opposed by us, a section which will be thrown out by us when we win the next election, a section which allows the minister, in a heavy-handed, centralist way, to overturn the intent, purposes, policies and bylaws of duly and honourably elected persons in local government.

One of the important policies regarding land use in British Columbia is the agricultural land use policy established by the first New Democratic administration. The point of that policy was threefold and simple, and it is the minister's important responsibility to understand those policy objectives and the requirements of the law, and to collaborate with his colleagues the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Hon. Mr. Hewitt) and the Minister of Lands, Parks and Housing (Hon. Mr. Chabot) to ensure that we have a comprehensive urban development policy in this province.

When the New Democrat administration stood up to the developers, speculators and real estate charlatans in this province, who seem to think it is their God-given right to make a paper profit regardless of the fact that they didn't actually work for any of it but they somehow earn a profit by the result of speculation.... It is not their right. Profits have to be earned, money has to be earned; they simply can't construe they deserve it. When we stood up and said no to the developers, the speculators and the other people who were abandoning and misusing farmland in this province, we did so first of all because we are committed to an agricultural option and its preservation in British Columbia. We did so secondly because we realize that if we abandon farmland in this province at the rate that the Socreds and their pals in real estate would have us do.... By the time we got elected in 1972, 20,000 acres of farmland a year were being lost to shopping centres, car parks and urban development, when they should have stayed farmland.

We said as well that the time would inevitably come when we could no longer afford the produce of California and Mexico. We said that the second burden of our policy was to make food available as cheaply, as efficiently and as appropriately as it could be produced in this province by the agricultural industry of British Columbia.

The third objective of our policy was within the whole framework and character of a notion we had about urban life in British Columbia. Part of that notion says that agricultural zones are appropriate instruments of public policy. We said that we reject utterly the plan that the Socreds had prior to 1972 — a plan called "neglect" — a plan called " indolence"; a plan called "lack of vision" — which would have seen the Fraser Valley from Tsawwassen to Chilliwack as one long string of K-Marts. That is what Social Credit policy was, Mr. Chairman, which is to say that they have no policy to the contrary. Under them that was what was happening 20,000 acres a year were being lost.

The Minister of Municipal Affairs of the day was as neglectful as is the current minister and was as unwilling as the current minister to recognize what the consequence is of such a foolish abandonment of public responsibility. The Wengers, with their pal, the Minister of Lands, Parks and Housing, attempted to get their land out of the agricultural land reserve in Windermere. What did the Minister of Municipal Affairs do on behalf of the urban interests, the community interests and the human interests of local government in that part of the province? Well, Mr. Chairman, he did precisely nothing. He did nothing whatever to defend the local community plan or the regional plan, both of which were under assault. He did nothing whatever to stand up and support those people who understand why we must preserve an agricultural option in British Columbia. To the contrary, he allowed his colleague the Minister of Lands, Parks and Housing to bully his way through cabinet and to have this land withdrawn from the agricultural land reserve.

The Wenger land has been discussed on a number of occasions by my colleague the second member for Victoria (Mr. Hanson). It will be discussed in the future and will be once again held up as an example of the serious and indefensible way in which Social Credit is attacking the ALR system in the province. This was an occasion when the Minister of Municipal Affairs, were he able and if he had wished, should have stood up and defended the integrity of the agricultural land reserve system in this province. He didn't. because favours to the boys have got to be done, debts have got to be paid off and the Wengers — the wife of which partnership was the constituency secretary to the same Minister of Lands, Parks and Housing — needed the land out in order to make a large and unearned profit.

That was one example of when the Minister of Municipal Affairs bungled. Instead of standing up for the integrity of the local plan, regional plan or the agricultural land reserve obligations of this province, he stepped down. turned his back, walked away and let the Minister of Lands, Parks and Housing do a totally unreasonable and improper favour for his pals, the Wengers. Fortunately that one is currently in limbo. The NDP has been fighting it, and we may just win that one.

Let me offer a second illustration of the pattern of bungling and bullying on the part of the Minister of Municipal Affairs: it is, of course, the Gloucester Properties in Langley. Who's involved here? Surprise — more Socreds! In this case a political assistant, an adventurer in elections and a personal friend of the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources (Hon. Mr. McClelland). This woman is the secretary of the corporation that administers and co-owns the Gloucester Properties land in Langley. The Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources — the Minister of Health at the time — once again saw fit to do a favour for a pal, in this case to remove 626 acres of farmland from Langley.

[ Page 4840 ]

I've been to that farmland, Mr. Chairman, and you may well have too. A number of our colleagues on the opposition side went up there one day and met with agrologists. representatives of the B.C. Federation of Agriculture and local persons who were concerned to point out the fact that these 626 acres not only were potentially good farmland, but they had in fact been operated profitably as farmland.

Here was another occasion when the minister could have stood up in favour of the integrity of the local community plan, the liveable region plan and the ALR system. What did he do? On a second occasion, this neglectful Minister of Municipal Affairs said no to competent planning and said yes to doing another favour for one of the boys — or in this case one of the girls. Sure enough, Gloucester Properties was also removed mysteriously from the ALR. Fortunately on the second occasion the NDP, the B.C. Federation of Agriculture and many persons concerned about the future of farmland and the preservation of an agricultural option succeeded. Once again, we've managed to stall it at least temporarily. It is a second case in hard and evidentiary form that the Minister of Municipal Affairs turned his back on his responsibilities and walked away from his duty to protect the viability, structure and integrity — if I may say it again — of local planning, and the local necessity to defend farmland wherever it exists, and the provincial necessity to preserve every single acre of worthwhile farmland we've got. That most certainly includes the 626 acres in Langley.

But there's a third example. This is, I suppose, the most timely and crucial. This example is in Delta.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, I'll find it very difficult to respond to the comments which have been made so far with respect to my budget, as they all tend to relate to the Ministry of Agriculture. I'm just wondering if perhaps you should make the member aware that this is Municipal Affairs, not Agriculture.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. The member will continue. As the member is well aware, we can deal in the minister's estimates only with those matters specifically encompassed by the minister himself. I would ask the member to continue, with this thought in mind.

MR. BARBER: I agree entirely, Mr. Chairman.

AN HON. MEMBER: Then do it.

MR. BARBER: I'm doing it. I'm referring to local plans, settlement plans and regional plans, all of which are his responsibility and many of which involve the ALR. Of course, there are co-responsibilities here, and the minister knows it. It serves him politically to try to avoid the heat for his neglect, to try to get out of the criticism properly due him for his incompetence. I've said before that there are three ministries involved in the correct statement of a competent land policy in British Columbia. They are the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, and the Ministry of Lands. Parks and Housing. That being the case, I'm dealing with one-third of it at the moment.

The third example that I would hold out of the wilful neglect of office on the part of this minister is his threat — an here comes the bullying part — to use the awesome, unjustified, heavy-handed state power of section 942 of the Municipal Act to require the GVRD to change their mind. We've seen that sort of thing before. There are, I suppose, in the western world certain political traditions that find such an approach consistent with who they are and what they stand for, but in B.C. we don't and we won't; we never did and we never will. Local government is at least as able as the provincial government to run its own affairs. Local government, from which the minister himself sprang and to which he will inevitably return, is itself at least as competent to decide what does and does not belong as housing — in the case of this particular GVRD issue at hand.

Once again we see the Socreds turning their backs on competent planning and the necessity to preserve agriculture, and opening the door instead to their pals — in this case Mr. Spetifore and company. Once again we see the Minister of Municipal Affairs leaping to the defence of another improper and unwarranted exclusion from the agricultural land reserve, and once again we see him flying in the face of the liveable region plan of the Greater Vancouver Regional District, which recognized a long and foresighted time ago the necessity — may I repeat — to preserve the agricultural option in British Columbia.

These three examples — the Wenger property at Windermere, the Gloucester property at Langley, the Spetifore property at Delta — are all examples of why the Minister of Municipal Affairs stands properly criticized....

Am I being interrupted again?

MR. RITCHIE: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, I think that we should again draw to the attention of the member that we are in the estimates of the Minister of Municipal Affairs and not the Minister of Agriculture and Food. I think that is the time we can debate that. That's when I would like to debate that. If this continues, I will be compelled to get into it also. But I have respect for the rules and orders of the House and I suggest that he stay within the ministry we are debating.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. I can assure all hon. members that the Chair is paying very close attention to the remarks of the first member for Victoria and finds them to be in order so far.

MR. BARBER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm glad you appreciate that I'm referring to the necessity to develop a competent land-use policy in this province. The way the government has it at the moment, it touches three ministries.

MR CHAIRMAN: Order, please. If the member is starting to suggest a need for legislation, then he does transgress.

MR. BARBER: Oh, no. I'm suggesting a policy. I understand. I took Speaker Smith's "short course" when I first got elected. I understand that rule too. Where is Mr. Smith these days, by the way? I think he got another Social Credit appointment. I think he's earning about $46,000 a year doing a job for which he's amiably unsuited — I said amiably, not eminently.

Let's come back to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and his record of bungling and bullying. We have the example of his pathetic and silly attempt to set salary levels for persons in local government on the basis of a simply specious and ridiculous formula that was utterly unrealistic, except in this aspect of realism: it was an attempt to exploit for political purposes the antagonism of six or seven people in British

[ Page 4841 ]

Columbia who hate all local persons in local office. Why do they do that? Because they hate local planning. If they had their way, there'd be no zoning at all in British Columbia; it would be free-wheeling, carte-blanche capitalism of the worst cowboy sort. But fortunately, Mr. Chairman, years ago the people won a great victory over these cowboy capitalists of real estate when we gradually introduced a system of zoning in this province. Originally, it was in the corridors of transportation in downtown communities. That's literally how it started. Then it was established on a broad basis, originally according to population as well. Then, finally, it was extended to rural communities, and in another important aspect of the New Democrat policy toward preserving the agricultural option it was extended to the agricultural land of this province.

What does the minister do about this? Nothing, except turn his back. What does he do to protect the community and regional plans at Windermere, Langley and Delta? Nothing, except allow another favour to be done for one of the Socred campaign contributors in the last several elections. Well, it's really not acceptable, because we resent, and the people of British Columbia reject, favours for the boys — in this case unwarranted exclusions from the ALR. We reject and resent it, because it's a foolish, dim-witted approach to developing an able statement of the municipal interest in British Columbia. It's simply dim-witted, Mr. Chairman; it doesn't make sense in the long run, and, as the government continues to find to its political horror, it doesn't even make sense in the short run.

In the hours and days to come we'll also be looking at waste in the minister's office. We'll be proposing a series of amendments to reduce his budget. These amendments, once again, will focus on political expenditures that are not justified except by Social Credit partisans. We'll be looking at the way in which the minister has upped his personal travel budget in order to meet more and more Socreds prior to the next leadership convention. We'll be looking at the ways in which the minister has purchased commercial television time, allegedly to sponsor a debate on the planning act — shortly to be called the Community Planning Act — but in fact for attempts to sponsor himself into the leadership of the coalition. We'll be looking at the ways in which the minister himself has fallen victim to ridiculous proposals to increase building occupancy charges — in this case by 44 percent, and computer services by 193 percent, in one fiscal year. We'll be looking and hoping for some rational explanations of these grotesque increases in the public expenditure. We'll be proposing amendments which I now give notice of, because I hope the minister will be prepared at least to consider accepting them. These amendments will save a lot of money; they will, as cost-conscious New Democrats across the province of British Columbia are aware, attempt to trim the fat and unnecessary and wasteful expenditures of a government desperate to buy itself back into political favour.

We'll also be leading a debate on the way the minister has mishandled transit in greater Vancouver, alienated the few remaining Social Credit supporters in local government in the GVRD, and attempted to foist upon them an untested, untried and unproven system, which may or may not have technological merit — a case the minister has yet to make.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Are you against transit?

MR. BARBER: Am I against transit? Of course not. Every single speech I've given in this estimate for the last six years has been in favour of transit — and you know it — and been opposed to some major extent to those automobile dealers who would, if they could, no doubt abandon all the buses and shove everyone into Cadillacs and Chevrolets or whatever other franchise they may own. It's a matter of public record that this Social Credit coalition has terrible conflicts of interest when it comes to public transit, because half of them seem to own private car dealerships. You wonder how on earth they can plan to put themselves out of business by promoting public transit over the private automobile. It's a terrible conflict of interest. They know it, we know it and the people of British Columbia know it. So are they planning to put themselves out of business as car dealers? Well, apparently not. Because what they've done, Mr. Chairman, is give the responsibility to a minister who can't plan anything; he can't even plan how to organize the salaries of local officials, and gets laughed at when he tries in his half-hearted and half-headed way.

We're concerned about the willingness of this minister to say no to all of those short-sighted, selfish and greedy folks who favour the private automobile over public transit at every juncture and who would, if they could, have built another bridge across Burrard Inlet but fortunately were stopped by an enlightened government that said no to that and built SeaBus instead. We're concerned about the ability of a minister to say no to his colleagues in cabinet, who would, if they could, destroy the entire ALR, as they promised to do when they were in opposition, and who are now setting out quietly and secretively to do just that, and to keep those promises. Ask the Wengers in Windermere, for instance.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Tell the truth for a change.

MR. BARBER: I tell the truth all of the time; your discomfiture with it is also a matter of public record.

We're further concerned about the seeming unwillingness of this minister to grasp the necessity for vision.

I want to talk for a moment about how cities succeed and fail. I want to refer to American and Canadian precedent, because unless one can stretch the imagination beyond the credible point, it's pretty hard to find precedent in European cities that applies helpfully. Certainly there are successes in Europe that we should and could know about, successes with which the minister is personally a lot more familiar than I am — he's been there; I've not. I've done as much reading as I can and have spoken with people who've studied there, and we may well have something to learn from European example and precedent, but by and large we have to look to North America for the roots, origins and connectedness of success and failure in urban development in this continent.

For instance, we look at what happened to a city like Los Angeles when they said yes to the private automobile and no to public transit. We have to look at what happens to a city which is described as a loose confederation of shopping centres, like Los Angeles, and which has no downtown, no heart and no core, and which could therefore, in the opinions of many people, be described as a failure of a city. On the other hand, we look at cities which have made a serious commitment to transit, to neighbourhood and to the local family and economic values that help a city succeed, and we see, for instance, a community like Toronto.

[ Page 4842 ]

In the last decade Toronto, thanks to the enlightened leadership of people like David Crombie, Jane Jacobs, John Sewell and, we hope, the current council, made a serious attempt to roll back the dreadful impact of stupid proposals for freeways through the heart of the city, like the Spadina expressway; stupid proposals to raze family neighbourhoods and put up office towers with no residential component; stupid proposals to destroy the basis of the small economies of a city like Toronto, the neighbourhood shopping centres on a small scale, the neighbourhood shops and stores on a small scale and the neighbourhood gas stations; all of the other enterprises often far more free enterprising than any of the downtown and shopping centre things would ever be; all of the foolish ways in which Toronto was going until about a decade ago when they said no to that wrong-minded and wrong-headed example of progress, and instead said yes to the important values of neighbourhood, the important principles of small and human scale in proportion and the important values to be achieved by saving, restating and reanimating some of the economic and architectural successes of the previous periods of that city.

As a result of saying no to the private automobile, unwelcome development, real estate sharks and speculators, Toronto has now turned around, and Toronto has become in the minds of many people one of the most successful urban environments in all North America. It has an enormously able, successful and economically vital ethnic community and set of ethnic neighbourhoods in its downtown area. It has an enormously successful cultural life and apparatus available to its citizens. It has a tremendously successful public transit system; and I think one of the major reasons why the neighbourhoods of Toronto succeed is because public transit has succeeded. The neighbourhoods have not been smashed by ruinous freeways and expressways; they have been preserved by small and appropriate transit that allows people to move back and forth from their jobs downtown to their homes in the neighbourhoods and suburbs without the private automobile.

Toronto works and Los Angeles doesn't. One of the reasons Toronto does is because transit does. One of the reasons Los Angeles failed is because General Motors and Ford succeeded in that notorious public referendum in Los Angeles in, I think it was, 1936 when they decided to scrap the municipal railway system and instead bring in the horror show they have now. Los Angeles is described as a loose confederation of shopping centres because Los Angeles has no core, no downtown, no heart and no public transit whatever of any important kind. Toronto works because Toronto, fortunately, realized and appreciated the necessity and urgent vitality of transit in its downtown area. I call on the minister to reconsider his bullying approach with the GVRD, to be willing to resume negotiations of an adult and mature — not meddling — sort, and allow the GVRD to remain co-responsible for transit planning in its jurisdiction in British Columbia.

There are many other issues we'll be raising in the vote, but the green light's on and I wait for the minister's reply.

MR. MUSSALLEM: The honourable critic for the NDP takes the usual pot-shots at the car dealers' caucus. We get rather accustomed to this, but if he would mind his total error and lack of judgment when he suggests that it's a caucus, when there's only two of us here that can in any way relate to being a car dealer.... The Hon. Mr. Wolfe and myself are the only two, and I don't think they can relate us very well to being car dealers, because since we've been in this House we've lost all connection with the business that we are supposed to own. However, our friend is an authority on almost everything, especially on transit. You will notice that most people are great authorities on things they know very little about. It's easy to be an authority on automobiles when you don't know anything about automobiles. It's easy to be an authority on transit when you know nothing about transit. It's easy to be an authority on why some systems work and others do not if you don't know any system at all.

Let me tell the hon. member, just in passing for his consideration, why Los Angeles does not work in the broad aspect, and why Toronto does, and why San Francisco — he didn't mention that but he could have — in the broad aspect does not work. And why do other cities work — Edmonton, for example? Toronto works like the spokes of a wheel. A system will work when you can radiate from the centre outward and inward. Los Angeles had the same problem. It's at one end of a spectrum, like us, and there are no spokes to a wheel. They must radiate in and radiate out. That's why it's costly and ever more costly to have transit in this city in the lower mainland, and why it took the courage of that minister and this government to attempt to put in rapid transit — even over the objections of the people that should be supporting it. You'll notice it's going in anyway, but it's going in factually, properly and on a businesslike basis.

The member speaks highly of the SeaBus, and who am I to depreciate the SeaBus? But I hope that when the transit system works and gets into the establishment — which I know the minister will do — it will run on a reasonable cost basis and not lose $1.40 on every passenger who gets on. It's all very well to have these fancy gold-plated systems.... I'm pleased that the North Shore has that system in place, but it's a gold-plated system. It's costly and it costs the government a lot of money, but you could not run British Columbia on this level and in this way. It has to be businesslike or it will not work.

That government was wonderful at starting, doing and creating schemes that wouldn't work. We have the most beautiful ferry system in the world — the B.C. ferry system. But before that government was through, it was $154 million in debt and collapsing. Today we have the finest ferry system anywhere in the world, and it's paying its way. That's the difference. Everything we do is on the ascending scale with prosperity ahead, not descending down to the depths. That's the socialist way. Level everything out. Sink the fleet. Sink the system. Some people think — and I speak this kindly — that they just don't know what they're doing. I think they know what they're doing. I think they know that when a system collapses, you have two orders of society. You have the masters and the slaves. While we in this House would be the masters, the poor slaves would be outside. But that's not the way we work. Certainly that's the socialist system — the masters and the serfs. Call it anything you want, and it works that way. Look at Russia, Poland or anywhere you want. It's the same — the masters and the serfs. But we believe in the democratic system based on equal rights — everyone doing the best that they can for themselves.

The hon. member makes a great point of transit being of low cost to the public. I want to tell you the lowest-cost transit for the public is the automobile transit. A study made in San Francisco.... At the present time in British Columbia — and the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Curtis) looks at me

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askance — if you will work out the cost of running the buses and the transit system, it is getting approximately seven miles per gallon per person. There is no automobile that low. Do you understand what I'm talking about now? If you'll look into it, you will find I'm correct. It could be as high as eight at this time, but there is no automobile that uses that much gasoline. If you had two in a car you'd double that. They don't want to hear that, but the automobile is yet....

Mind you, the automobile has its drawbacks. It has its drawbacks because you can't be sure of the time you leave and the time you arrive. The other way is better for the public, it's better for the people and that's why this ministry is going to put in transit — not because it saves fuel. That's not what it does at all. It's not a fuel-saver but a people-saver. If you're talking about saving fuel, don't talk about that. It costs more fuel in the transit system than we're using today. I just have to tell this hon. member to be more factual, be understanding, and know what he's talking about.

MR. BARBER: Anyone listening to that speech would understand why Social Credit has such a heck of a time delivering a transit policy to the people of British Columbia. It certainly may be true that buses get fewer miles to the gallon than cars do, but if anyone thinks that's the only way to measure the actual costs of delivering transportation in British Columbia, then he should probably go back to Chevrolet school.

The costs of transit include the costs of building and maintaining the roads, the bridges, the connectors, the cost of appropriating or acquiring the land, and the social costs of moving people out of communities they did not want to move out of because the bridge went by their houses or the expressways stole their front yards. The costs include the environmental costs, which are enormous and tragic. In greater Vancouver, if I recall correctly, something like 900,000 internal-combustion engines a day chum out pollution, pollution, pollution into the environment. And one day we're going to pay the price for that, if we have not done so already. Anyone who has flown into Vancouver recently will understand the fear some of us have of allowing the private automobile to continue to dominate that city. Why? Because a disgusting brown mark of aerified sludge now runs from Chilliwack to North Vancouver. You fly into Vancouver and you see all of the horrors of urban pollution, and you understand the necessity, therefore, of public transit instead.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

The member's comments totally ignore as well the demonstrable public record which suggests that good public transit allows us to avoid, to abjure, to get around the inevitable consequences of what happens in — back to the analogy — a Los Angeles, and why a city fails. Of course, on the test of miles per gallon, the member's own Cadillac does better than a GM diesel bus. But so what? That has nothing to do with anything when it comes to planning and financing public transit. Is public transit expensive? Of course it is, and it's all the more expensive because 20 and 30 years ago the Social Credit government of the day decided instead that they would attempt to push through ridiculous schemes like the Strathcona Expressway in Vancouver. You may remember that one, Mr. Chairman. That would have smashed and ruined the heart of the traditional Chinese community of greater Vancouver, which is the second largest, after San

Francisco, on the whole of the west coast, and thereby the third largest in North America — third only to New York and San Francisco. What would have happened to Chinatown?

AN HON. MEMBER: What happened to the streetcars?

MR. BARBER: The streetcars?

AN HON. MEMBER: The old streetcars did darned well.

MR. BARBER: That's right, they were perfectly efficient and effective. Had governments of the day been enlightened enough to renew the capital investment and obtain new equipment as they should have year by year, instead of throwing out the whole system because they had allowed it to run down by virtue of their own foolish policy, we'd still have streetcars in Vancouver, and they'd still work and they'd work in groups a heck of a lot better than the private automobile ever does. Of course they worked well.

In greater Victoria we had at one time three operating rail lines on the Saanich Peninsula. They ran from the heart of Victoria out to Pat Bay, out to Sidney and out to what we now call Lochside Drive. We had three operating urban transit systems with the most modern technology of the day. But thanks to the private automobile. that was abandoned, and instead we now have a system of roads and not much public transit that works on the Saanich Peninsula. I'm sure the member for Saanich and the Islands (Hon. Mr. Curtis) would share my opinion, that he would be grateful if we had even one of those railways available today. If even one of the three were still working it would be terrific and save the people a heck of a lot of money

Is public transit expensive? I You bet it is. Is the alternative more expensive? You're darned right. The alternative is more expensive in terms of ruined neighbourhoods, unnecessary bridges, connectors, expressways, freeways, highways, and especially in terms of the environmental damage done by the internal-combustion engine. Private transit is simply no longer affordable in the extravagant and wasteful way that it's been paid for in the last 60 years in North America.

I want to talk a bit about a policy towards cities. I'll refer, in particular. to greater Vancouver. But, of course, these comments could be applied to other communities, including the one which I represent.

A competent urban policy has to take into account a number of issues. As the chairman before you observed, Mr. Chairman, these do appropriately in debate reflect on the agricultural land reserve system, because that impacts on the availability of land for non-agricultural purposes — if you're clumsy with it — and, of course, on the policy of the Minister of Lands, Parks and Housing, or the lack of policy in the case of the current minister.

What I want to talk about and identify are some six principles of a competent urban policy, which I commend to the minister's attention. They are: transit that works; housing that's affordable; cultural enterprise that gives vitality; public safety that gives reassurance, especially for senior citizens; the availability of schools and recreational facilities; and the particularly difficult question of urban density being one of the prerequisites of transit, public safety and affordable housing. It's item number six that's the most difficult of all to manage as a stated policy and as a reasonable objective. The issues of transit, housing, cultural enterprise, public safety,

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school and recreational facilities and urban density are the six issues that I'd like to discuss briefly.

I've observed before that this minister seems to have no vision whatever in the ways in which cities succeed and fail, because he never talks about them. The minister seems to have no imagination at all about the ways in which our great urban communities, particularly Vancouver, can be enhanced, revitalized, reorganized and reanimated in such a way as to guarantee them a bold and brilliant future in the lives of the people of British Columbia. He never talks about it. I have yet once to hear him make a statement at UBCM or in this House about his version, his vision or his view of the essential role of the city in the human environment.

Cities traditionally have been storehouses of civilized values, the marketplaces and the learning places, the places of public safety behind the great walls and fortresses that once created them, and the centres of military and economic power that once established them. As storehouses of civil value cities traditionally have been the places where people draw learning, where they draw new arguments and new ideas and where they draw new notions of the ways in which the world might work.

I mean no disrespect to rural or non-urban communities, because they also have great merit and great value. but their origins are different by definition. Their problems are different, and I'm not addressing them now. Their options are also different, and I'm not referring to them now. I mean no disrespect whatever to people who do not live in cities or persons who are not concerned with the problems of cities. Fair enough. There are other problems and other people. I don't by any means wish to belittle the efforts that people make so that the great rural areas of British Columbia might also succeed in a human and important way.

I want to talk about cities as a policy, as a history, as a statement of human aspiration and as a statement of human energy. For the purposes and discipline of debate, one can describe an urban policy as having at least the six components that I've outlined. Let me go back to them one by one for a minute.

First of all, a successful city must enjoy a successful transportation system. That much is obvious. A city by definition is larger than a village. It's hard to get around. You can't ordinarily walk from one end of it to the other. Public transportation of some sort has to be provided — be it the automobile, buses, underground railways, overhead trolleys or whatever form it might take, including marine transportation. For instance, in a city like Venice part of the public transportation system is on water rather than on land. In any of those environments and circumstances, transit of one sort or another has got to be provided.

However, there are ways to provide transit that do fundamental damage to the integrity of an urban community. The notorious example once more is Los Angeles. There are other examples. Until 1967 Montreal had a distinctly inferior public transit system, Many of Montreal's neighbourhoods, especially east of Montreal Main, Saint Laurent, were failing in important ways. Vancouver has failed in some important ways as well. The uncontrolled, undisciplined and unwelcomed growth of housing and economic development — literally on farmland in Vancouver's case — is further proof of what happens when you don't provide transit. If you don't provide transit in an organized and sensible way along corridors where housing belongs, where development is welcome and where farmland is not undermined, then you will inevitably have the sort of shapeless, formless but not harmless urban sprawl that greater Vancouver suffered.

It's similar to Los Angeles where General Motors and Ford conspired — I use the word purposely, Mr. Chairman; they were found guilty of conspiracy in court later in a civil suit — to mislead and misinform the people of Los Angeles. They conspired to mislead and misinform the people of Los Angeles about a referendum to get rid of a perfectly useful municipal railway system and instead bring in freeways. Ford and General Motors were found guilty of conspiracy to defraud the people of Los Angeles in a famous civil suit They did it for obvious commercial gain: they wanted to sell cars; they wanted to flog Chevys and Fords. That's fair enough, I suppose, for the people who live by those rules — that's acceptable. For people who think the only benefit is money and the only honourable course is to get more money, I guess that's all right. But there are a lot of people — I suspect the majority of people in British Columbia — who have no respect whatever for greed as a policy or for selfishness as a motive, and who don't care a darn about what happens to car dealerships. They do care a lot about what happens to whole communities, and so do we on this side of the House.

The first element of a competent urban policy has to be transit — transit that's in the right place, runs at the right time, can be paid for in the right way and serves the right purposes. What's the minister doing? Well, in a very undemocratic way, he has simply demanded that the GVRD roll over and play dead duck to his scheme to bring in a system. Today he called it "advanced light rapid transit"; on other occasions he has referred to it as "automated light rapid transit." Whatever label he currently uses, we'll call it ALRT. Later on, in the hours and days to come, we will be examining the so-called Canadian content of ALRT. In fact, we'll be examining the European and American components of this project and whether or not it is a credible claim that this is a Canadian system at all. When you examine the contracts that have been signed by UTDC in Ontario and find out who is paying money where for the component parts of the ALRT system, you begin to discover that there is, in fact, a significant non-Canadian economic package here. The minister's patriotic argument that we have to support it, whether or not it works, just because it's Canadian begins to fall apart.

AN HON. MEMBER: Resign.

MR. BARBER: The minister should resign, that's right. For a city to work, transit must work. For a minister to allow a city to work, he has to give that city some power, autonomy, authority and independence. What has the minister done? He has removed autonomy, diminished authority and independence, and decided that he's going to bully his way through, no matter what. At the moment he's ordering the GVRD to accept a system which, it would appear, they — significantly — do not want. The minister can't have it both ways. He can't play the heavy-handed state centralist ordering the GVRD to adopt a system that he alone seems to want, then turn around and talk about respect for the integrity of local government — because, you see, he's disabusing anyone of that notion by his own example and behaviour. If the minister had authentic respect for local government he wouldn't be bullying the GVRD. If he had real respect for local government he wouldn't be threatening to use his authority in the Municipal Act to order them to change their minds on the Spetifore property. If he had real respect for

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local persons in local office he would be negotiating in an adult and mature way, but he's not. He's not negotiating anything. He's arguing, bullying, demanding, forcing and pushing. He's also coming up against resistance; he's also meeting objectors.

It's not surprising that some of the people who object are members of the New Democratic Party. We take that much for granted in B.C. Members of the New Democratic Party who also hold local office can, I suppose, for partisan reasons be expected to object from time to time to this minister's policies. That's how it works. Certainly the Socreds opposed our policies when we were in office and they were in local government. The only difference — if I may say so — is that New Democrats tend to be a lot more up-front about their political affiliations. Everyone knows the mayor of Vancouver is a New Democrat. He's made no bones about it. He's run for us twice and done very well. He has made no attempt whatever to deceive people about his personal political options.

However, there are some people in local government who are Social Crediters but would have us believe they're not, really. They try to maintain the fiction that somehow they can separate themselves from their provincial party memberships. But finally — in the last couple of years, at least — finally this old fiction is being broken down. Finally people are coming to recognize that Social Credit has always used local government as their farm team, and the guys who make it in the farm team get promoted to provincial office — there was even a day when they thought of federal office, but that's long ago.

I think you yourself, Mr. Chairman, have had some involvement in local government in Prince George — and no doubt very commendable involvement, because they elected you locally and provincially. Good for you; you earned it. I'm sure you yourself wouldn't have deceived people about your Social Credit affiliations.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, you can make comments about any member in this House as long as they're parliamentary, but I must ask you to refrain from making comments about the Chair.

MR. BARBER: I thought they were parliamentary and I intended them to be flattering. However, if they're objectionable I withdraw them.

Nonetheless, it is a matter of public record that many persons have been secret Socreds all along, but have posed as something else while in local office. Fortunately, though. that facade, charade and joke has been exploded in the last few years.

So I get back to the central point. There are New Democrats in local government in greater Vancouver, and I suppose you can criticize their motives when they criticize the minister. Fair enough. But the unique thing about this minister's incompetence is not that he has alienated New Democrats; that is to be expected. The unique thing is that he alienates Socreds; that's interesting. The unique thing is that he embarrasses Socreds in local government. That's fine, we enjoy watching that, and we wonder how many more Socreds there are left to alienate on the GVRD, whom you in effect threatened with political expropriation ever the Spetifore property, and who you are currently accomplishing political expropriation with in regard to transit.

The minister can't have it both ways. If he would simply stand up and admit that his policies are centralist, bullying and an attempt to ram his private notion of transit down the throats of properly elected persons in Vancouver, fair enough. But the minister gets on television — I watched him on channel 8 — and poses as a democrat. He poses as someone who respects local opinion. What a joke this is. He's no democrat at all. If he were he wouldn't be ordering the GVRD to accept his transit system or to do anything of the sort. He would negotiate as a democrat, a co-equal and a person who respected the worthwhile and honourable opinions of persons in local government. But he does nothing of the sort. Rather he turns himself into a person with a reputation for bullying and bungling his way through local government.

We need a transit policy that works, transit technology that works, a transit finance formula that can be afforded and a transit decision-making system that's streamlined. That brings me to another issue within the first of these six.

MR. LEA: He thinks democracy is watered-down communism.

MR. BARBER: My colleague from Prince Rupert says the Minister of Municipal Affairs suspects democracy to be a sort of watered-down communism. Well, we all know about the state planning of the Minister of Forests (Hon. Mr. Waterland) and his five-year plans. However, we're now learning about the Minister of Municipal Affairs, and we learn that he doesn't care at all for local opinion, because he's prepared to overrule it in the field of transit.

I want to hold out the possibility that the Urban Transit Authority has got to be reorganized. The complicated, clumsy, elaborate and almost Byzantine structure of the UTA seems to be breaking dm.N n. Again, you needn't refer to New Democrats in local government for that. You can refer to well-known Socreds and their opinions, because they too, as members of the board of the UTA, have recently and publicly been suggesting that it may well be that the Urban Transport Authority Act needs a rewrite. The seeming inability of the UTA to make decisions. to collaborate with the Metropolitan Transit Operating Company, to collaborate with persons in the GVRD or the CRD who are concerned about transit and, most of all, to find a Nvay to avoid the bullying of the minister is such that they are no", provoked to going public with their criticism that the Urban Transit Authority Act is simply too Clumsy and needs to be redrawn.

I recall that when the now Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Curtis) brought it in lie argued that he thou ht this was a means of connecting with all people on all levels and drawing together a package that would work to everyone's benefit. I commend that ideal: it's a worthwhile objective. But we now have a few years . experience with it. and it just doesn't seem to be working that way. Instead, what initially might have been a welcome means of accountability being provided in a structural sense through the UTA, the MTOC and regional governments with their transit committees seems not to be succeeding. Rather. what we have is a simply unworkable, bureaucratic system of obstacles, delays and imprecision in the execution of public policy that we just have to reconsider.

In regard to transit I would ask the minister, first of all, to stop bullying the GVRD. Secondly. let him prove that the new technology lie wishes to foist on the GVRD actually might work and, if so, demonstrate with what precedent,

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documentation, experience and example he can that we should believe him; because frankly at the moment we don't. Thirdly, we call on the minister to prove that there is in fact majority Canadian content of the whole physical proposal called ALRT. At the moment we have some evidence to the contrary. Fourthly, we call on him to reconsider the basic administrative and political structure of the UTA and its related organizations. It would appear it's simply become a bit too clumsy and can't do the job.

I know what the minister will reply. He'll say: "That's why I stood up and told them to select ALRT." He'll stand up and say: "You're right. In order to cut through all the red tape, bureaucracy, headaches and hassles, I've got to give some direction." The problem for the minister if he makes that kind of reply is that the reply is bogus, because it was his government that invented the UTA, and his government that can amend the legislation. It's his government that created the problem and his government that can resolve it. You don't resolve the problem by throwing out the legitimate opinion of persons in local government and bullying and blustering your way through; you solve the problem by changing the structure. Don't tell us the reason you're being a bully with the GVRD in trying to deliver transit on time is that they can't make up their minds, when you know full well the reason for much of the confusion lies in your own law, which you passed through this House four years ago. You can't have it both ways. They're operating under your law. You gave them the authority. Either you take it back through a statute here, or you leave it with them and allow them to do the job. The fact that the job they wish to do is not the job you want them to do is a second and secondary matter.

The second aspect of a competent urban policy lies in the field of housing. We currently have a Minister of Lands, Parks and Housing who is the most do-nothing minister of housing this province has ever seen, and we've only had three since the department was created by the New Democratic Party in 1973.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, perhaps at this point I should point out to the committee that while we're in Committee of Supply, firstly we cannot discuss matters involving legislation or matters that require legislation, and secondly, we should constrain our remarks to the minister's vote that is before the committee, which is the Minister of Municipal Affairs. I am sure the hon. member can relate all of his remarks to vote 156, the estimates of the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

MR. BARBER: I can and I will relate my remarks as you suggest, Mr. Chairman.

When we talk about a housing policy, we are once again discussing three ministries at once; therefore you may if you wish consider these remarks as one-third of the whole issue related to the office of the Minister of Municipal Affairs. The three ministries are those of Agriculture and the Land Commission, Lands, Parks and Housing and Municipal Affairs. He cannot, however, shirk his whole duty and pretend that it's the other two guys who are responsible, because he too sets the ground rules. He cooked up what he calls a "planning act," which is — if I may say it again — one of the most centralist and heavy-handed proposals that any jurisdiction has ever brought forward in this country. The planning act is an obvious attempt on his part to....

MR. BRUMMET: What's wrong with all the people out there?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. Will the member for North Peace River please come to order.

Once again, I will remind the first member for Victoria that the necessity for legislation and matters involving legislation cannot be discussed in the Committee of Supply. The administrative actions of the minister or the department are open to debate.

MR. BARBER: That's right. I'm discussing the administrative actions taken by the minister when he went around the province telling people that they should support his Planning Act. I'm not discussing the act, but I'm discussing his actions.

MR. CHAIRMAN: That would involve legislation, hon. member.

MR. BARBER: That's right, but in any case, there's no legislation here so the rule of anticipation is not offended either. We have no bill on the table right now.

The minister's heavy-handed approach is further exemplified by the statements he made, coincidental to the release of the planning act. What the minister indicated there is that he was prepared once more to play favourites, and once more the losers were people in local government. Once more the losers were people in the neighbourhoods. Once more the losers were people who were interested in longrange planning and in what makes cities work. Cities do not work because you sell out your policies to real estate speculators. Cities do not work because you abandon neighbourhoods to the developers. Cities do not work because you offer bribes through tax incentives to people in the real estate industry. That doesn't make cities work at all. Cities work for a lot of other reasons — quite distinct and quite different in an important way. A housing policy is one of the six fundamental aspects of an urban policy that we're addressing in this Legislature. A housing policy surely has to have as one of its basic requirements this simple notion — housing has to be affordable. Now I realize that the minister does not have direct authority over mortgage rates. That's fair enough, although certainly there are initiatives that could be taken by this government, including proclaiming a bill which they themselves voted for, called the B.C. Savings and Trust Act, which was put forward by our government in 1975. They voted for it, but now they've refused to proclaim it. That would have brought down the interest rates in a spectacular way.

Leaving that aside for a moment, we know that the minister also has responsibility for housing by virtue of the Municipal Act, which he himself is responsible for. I'd like to know why the minister, quite regardless of the planning act, has not seen fit to exercise some kind of leadership by considering those sections of the planning act — hear me out, Mr. Chairman; I'm wording this very carefully so as not to offend the rules — which allow, or do not allow, municipalities to engage in what the minister himself has referred to in another context as "vertical zoning." Why, for instance, could we not consider a policy that Toronto has right now? Toronto introduced — I gather something like two and a half years ago — a policy it argues, and is granted its authority under the Ontario Planning Act to do.... It says if you

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wish to build — I'm working from memory; I'll get my notes for tomorrow — an office tower over 12 storeys within a given perimeter, you are required to apportion a given percentage of the total space for housing.

What Toronto has said is this: "If you as developers wish to build anywhere downtown, we want you to know that it's our policy to reintroduce residential components to the whole of downtown. Therefore we will require of you that you must mix your development. We will no longer allow your corner of the street to become unsafe after 5 o'clock because no one lives in your building. But rather, we will acknowledge that one of the successes of urban planning in other communities, spectacularly in...." The safest parts of New York city are those which by day have any number of office workers running in and out, and by night have people living above the offices looking down on the streets and keeping them safe because they watch their own front yards. They phone the police and they catch muggers and they do all the other things that people in New York do sometimes to defend their turf. One of the unsafest parts of Manhattan is Wall Street. After 5:30 in the afternoon you'd have to be nuts to go into Wall Street, because no one lives there, Mr. Chairman. Whereas in Toronto, if you go now to Dundas and Bay, if you go to those areas of downtown Toronto where they have required a mix of commercial and residential in one building, you discover that the city streets there are perfectly safe, because people live there and they play there and they work there, and because they are there the streets are safe.

One of the aspects of leadership that I call upon the minister to enunciate is: whatever changes may be made — they might even be legislative, but I'm not recommending that — allow municipalities to exercise this option freely and beneficially, because at the moment that isn't happening. At the moment there is no such leadership; at the moment municipalities are not following those kinds of examples. That's a very disappointing thing and it's one of the further aspects of criticism we have of the minister.

The green light is back on, so I will take my place for a minute.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Once again, I'll remind all hon. members in the committee that the essence of committee debate is to, in fact, discuss whether or not the vote, which is a money vote, should be approved. That is all the committee is allowed to discuss. The necessity for legislation or matters involving legislation is not open to debate in Committee of Supply. So if we could confine our remarks to the administrative actions of the department, then the committee would be in order.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, I don't want to detract from the remarks of the member and the consistency of his remarks, nor their direction and thrust to any great extent. In the committee, of course, an intervening speaker provides him an opportunity to continue.

I would just like to serve the minister with notice about some discussion that I'd like to have with him two or three or four days from now with respect to some of the situations that are occurring in the Royal City. Thanks to him and his government and some of their policies, that city has been ill served. We will be discussing it to some extent later on.

MR. BARBER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you Dennis.

Housing has got to be affordable. The mortgages have got to be something that people can pay, and it's got to be located in the right place. In Vancouver and Victoria housing should increasingly be located downtown. I call on the minister, for instance, to formally endorse the city plan of the city of Victoria called Harris Green. The proposal which the city has made.... The minister shakes his head. Have you read it? Do you know it? How can you shake your head if you haven't read it? Except if you like to hear the rattle when you do so.

The Harris Green proposal is a fine idea put forward by the council of my city, which argues that in the district bounded roughly by Chambers and Douglas at the east and west respectively, and by Pandora and View at the north and south respectively, there is an opportunity to reintroduce very high-density urban residential life. What they've tried to describe and what they've tried to put forward is a proposal which needs provincial help. This is a proposal that needs provincial help because they don't have the money to obtain the land, they don't have the wherewithal to make the land available for developers public or private or both. The city of Victoria needs help to make the Harris Green proposal a reality, and it's a good proposal.

Downtowns are safe when they are populated. I'll get to the issue of public safety in a minute, but I want to point out that obvious fact of life: downtowns are safe when people are around living on top of the stores, living in the highrises, looking down at the streets, protecting their own front yards and looking after their neighbours' kids. That's when downtowns are safe. Downtowns are unsafe when everyone abandons them at 5 o'clock in the afternoon and goes home to the suburbs. That's when you'd be out of your mind to walk along Wall Street in New York city.

What the minister has to do, if he has any vision of cities at all and how they work, is encourage municipalities directly and indirectly by tax money, by statute, by example, by argument, by persuasion, to reintroduce human living downtown. That has to be done in Vancouver and that has to be done in Victoria, and increasingly it will have to be done in Nanaimo, Prince George and Kamloops. But it certainly has to be done in the two largest cities of British Columbia.

The Harris Green proposal — which I commend to the minister's attention and which I expect his ministry has copies of — is something that the city needs help with. They don't have the capital to assemble the land and they never will. Victoria doesn't have that kind of tax base; there's no industrial base at all in this city. Victoria needs help to assemble the land. Victoria needs help to cooperate with private and public enterprise, with co-ops and with developers who know what they are doing and do it well, to put together a scheme that's really extremely important to the future of this community, which is the capital city. Victoria needs help for that.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, we've listened for a good while all about the agricultural land reserve. That certainly is for the Ministry of Agriculture. Now the member is on the Ministry of Housing. I'm just wondering if we could get to Municipal Affairs and if the member could reserve his other remarks for the appropriate ministries.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The point is well taken, hon. member. The committee is advised that we are on vote 156 of the

[ Page 4848 ]

Ministry of Municipal Affairs. If all members of the committee could confine their remarks to the administrative actions of that ministry, then the committee could proceed.

MR. BARBER: I don't think the minister's point was well taken at all. I think the reason it was not well taken is that he chooses to avoid his responsibilities. His responsibilities currently include making grants available through another vote and for the purpose of housing starts — for instance, the Revenue Sharing Fund, the act. The responsibility includes housing. For the minister to mislead this committee into thinking he has nothing to do with housing is to do a wrong thing. He pays money for housing starts, and he can't turn around and tell us he has no responsibility for housing policy.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, I'll have to ask you to withdraw the phrase, "the minister misleads the committee." Will the member please withdraw it?

MR. BARBER: All right. The minister failed to mislead the committee, because I'm not misled. The minister has responsibility for housing in this province.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Has the member withdrawn?

MR. BARBER: Yes. I am not misled by the minister's comments. I know that he has responsibility for housing. I know that his ministry makes grants for housing. I know that he writes bylaws that allow municipalities to plan for housing. I know that he could be a leader in the field if he wished; but he won't, because he's neglectful and slightly lazy. The reputation is getting out, the word's getting out. And he prefers to allow the old patterns of unearned profit, windfall profits and inflationary profits to try and govern the provision of housing.

I've identified housing as one of the six elements of a competent urban policy, for which this minister is principally responsible. In certain aspects of them he is co-responsible. But I will show you in estimates, if need be, the extent to which this minister is financially liable for the provision of housing. And I was not misled by his comments.

I call upon him to exercise leadership and to make moneys available to the city of Victoria, to plan for in greater detail, to assemble in greater complexity and to make available in every way needed the lands described by them in their Harris Green proposal. It's a good proposal. It has received, I believe, the unanimous vote of city council. I don't think there was a single dissenting opinion among the eight aldermen and the mayor. As well, I think it's something that should be undertaken by this minister.

In Vancouver the provision of housing includes, of course, a debate over the allocation of Crown lands, over the allocation of private lands, over zoning prerogatives available and, as well, over the farmland problems that this government has because they keep toadying to their friends who own farmland and want to take it out of the ALR.

There is an enormous new area available for housing in greater Vancouver. It is not in the ALR; it is within easy commuting distance of downtown. It is considerably held by the Crown. It's called Indian Arm. Indian Arm is a new district which could and should be made available through the GVRD, and through both public and private enterprise, for housing purposes. Indian Arm is a spectacularly beautiful area of greater Vancouver. It's an area that we think, and that I strongly urge the minister, should be considered one of the areas in which he could be co-responsible for the provision of new housing. How does he do this? Clearly by negotiating with the GVRD. How does he do that? By examining the proposals for the Indian Arm district within the livable region plan and proposals that have come forward since. How does he look at Indian Arm? By looking, for instance, at the other major regional district in the Fraser Valley, which may have an interest in transportation corridors and energy corridors from its end of the valley. The two regional districts, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and persons concerned with it could and should take a look at Indian Arm as a site for major new housing development in greater Vancouver. The minister will say: "Well, it's very hilly, you know. It's on slopes. You can't build on hills and slopes." Well, that's just not true. There are any number of areas, including all through Europe, where in order to save farmland they have learned the technologies of building on slopes and applied them.

There's an architect in Victoria and Nanaimo — David Spearing — who, I think, made a proposal two years ago for a major development on the side of a hill just outside Chilliwack. I recall that the then Minister of Municipal Affairs, Mr. Curtis, in a welcome and advised way, I think, said that he thought this was an exciting new proposal. This particular architect, a brilliant and innovative guy who has a good reputation in this field, has demonstrated the ways in which, in Scandinavian countries in particular, and also in Switzerland, they have learned and applied in an affordable and appropriate way the technologies of slope construction and semi-vertical construction, and have made it, in fact, an extremely workable alternative to abandoning farmland to developers and speculators. If the government is interested in providing new housing and the minister is interested in taking new initiatives in that field for which he is co-responsible, then I urge him to look at Indian Arm. I urge him to examine — together with his colleagues — the necessity of providing marine and road transportation in and out of there; of making available the Crown land; of creating the new zoning and the new planning options that would be necessary to bring it to reality; and, of necessity, eventually incorporating new municipalities under letters patent to get on with the job, of organizing it.

It is not necessary to abandon another acre of farmland in the GVRD to provide housing. Crown land is available that is not ALR and private land is available that is not ALR. Initiatives are available to reinstate housing above the commercial centres of downtown Vancouver, and that too does not trespass on the ALR. Indian Arm is available, and that does not involve relinquishing our commitment to the ALR. All of these options are available; many of them are within the direct purview of the ministry. Each of them is, I think, worth some study.

Housing that can be afforded by people who need it is the second principal element of a competent urban policy. The third I will mention only briefly, because it is not within the purview of the minister — save that he should be aware of it. It's in the field of cultural enterprise. That's the way in which he as a member of cabinet has to recognize that cities work when they are culturally alive. Cities work when they are a home to the great libraries, the great theatres, the great centres of art and learning. Cities work when those facilities and when that conviction in public policy can be found. The third area....

[ Page 4849 ]

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Get on to the estimates.

MR. BARBER: I'm on your estimates, if you had any imagination. Your estimates are not just spending taxpayers' money; they are also good policy. You can't measure that in cold, black and white dollars.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. Hon. member. I believe we are discussing a vote which has not yet been brought forward. If we could return to vote 156, the Chair would certainly appreciate it.

MR. BARBER: The fundamental administrative duty of the minister, in my judgment, which may be somewhat more broad-minded than the minister would wish, is urban policy. That's it. That is the profound, bedrock, subterranean purpose. That is the engine of his duty to the people. A policy that knows what it's doing speaks to all of these issues. A minister who doesn't know what he's doing refuses to speak to any of them, and that's the current behaviour we're witnessing. The minister's first requirement is a realistic and appropriate urban policy. As I said, it has six features, and they are: transit, housing, cultural enterprise, public safety, schools and recreation and urban density. I mentioned the cultural enterprise only in passing so that the minister is aware that we know something about it, even if he won't discuss it.

The fourth issue is that of public safety, and once again the minister is co-responsible. Why? Because he has to deal, together with the Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Williams), with the problems of policing in this province and with the problems of municipalities in B.C. that have to face what they think are burdensome and unfair costs and charges imposed upon them for RCMP services when they don't have their own.

In the hours and days to come we'll be discussing the failure of the Attorney-General to resolve this dispute, which has preoccupied UBCM for at least four years. But that's another estimate.

I wish to talk here instead about the minister's responsibilities for shaping, enunciating and executing a public policy that also recognizes the importance of public safety. Cities don't work if people feel unsafe on the sidewalks; cities don't work if people feel that they have to go out under armed guard; cities don't work in an enjoyable or pleasurable way if you have to put four deadbolts on your apartment door because you're afraid some jerk is going to kick it in. How do you make cities work? How do you make them succeed? By making them lively and vital, by lighting the streets and doing all of the other things that are necessary.

Public safety is a concomitant of a successful urban policy. If the minister is prepared to allow municipalities to continue to suffer under the burden of an unfair cost agreement for the provision of policing — that being one aspect of public safety; fire, of course, is another — then those municipalities will continue to be unable to provide within their own ambit those prerequisites of good urban life that make living in a city an exciting and wonderful adventure. One of those prerequisites is public safety.

As the minister may be aware, I've been to New York City a number of times. I love the place; it’s a wonderful town. It's absolutely great, but I certainly wouldn't imagine walking by myself above I 10th Street on the east side. It's just not very safe. I also wouldn't imagine walking on Wall Street after 5 o'clock — and I mentioned that before too. I would like the minister to learn the lessons of what goes wrong in a city like New York, which is for all important purposes the capital of the western world, and where they've made mistakes in public policy. Among those mistakes has been the failure to reanimate, through urban living, the downtown life in Manhattan, parts of the South Bronx, Brooklyn, parts of Long Island and the rest of it.

There's a fifth issue which I want to hit upon briefly: the question of schools and recreational facilities. The minister is responsible and directly involved through municipalities, under the Municipal Act and with his colleagues in cabinet, for the financing of public education in B.C. The minister will leap to his defence and say: "No, I don't have anything to do with it." It's just not true. Municipalities are required to collect the taxes on behalf of school boards. Municipalities often find it embarrassing to do that if they don't feel they are understood by the people to be only tax collectors and not tax designators.

The minister stands up and tells us that revenue-sharing is a great success. No doubt it is. It was started by the NDP He stands up and says that revenue-sharing is a worthwhile thing. No doubt it is. It was commenced by the NDP. The minister stands up and boasts about revenue-sharing and says that it's one of the remedies available to local government that is strained and burdened by taxes. No doubt that's the case. That's why the NDP started it. The minister will be reminded that it began during the first New Democratic administration with the revenues from natural gas which were — until they were mishandled by Social Credit — a major source of income for this province. The natural gas revenue-sharing was the first, but not the last, most welcome statement on the part of the province that they were prepared to share some of the revenue bounty that B.C. earns by virtue of the fact that it's lucky enough to be located in this part of the planet.

However, the minister has a burden. The homeowner grant, administered directly by municipalities for which he's responsible, is allegedly one of the means of protecting the homeowner, the individual property owner in B.C. It's quite clear that the homeowner grant has not kept pace by any means with the cost of public education in B.C. Why is that? Because the government has broken another campaign promise for which the minister is directly responsible. That promise was to continue to remove the burden on the local homeowner for school tax. The minister is personally and directly responsible for that broken promise and for the fact that the provincial share in financing public education has actually declined in the almost six years that the coalition has been in office.

What does that do to municipal governments? It makes it difficult for them to plan for the services — not of a public educational sort, but of all the other sorts — that are needed by the people of the community when they know that their own taxpayers are being overburdened by the school tax. How does it literally work? A municipality knows that the whole of its community is able to pay X dollars for all of the services that the people may want, be they services in the form of fire protection, police, sewers, sidewalks, parks, recreation, schools, opera house, freeway, SeaBus or whatever — or transit now; they have to pay for transit now.

What happens to the ability of a municipality to provide municipal services for its people when they know they also have to pick up school taxes off property? What happens to a municipality is that the recreational, the residential, the

[ Page 4850 ]

cultural, the housing, the public safety, the library hard now the transit policies have to take second place. Municipalities have no choice but to pick up the school tax. They have no choice but to administer a provincial policy in regard to the relative proportions of tax paid municipally and provincially for public schools. So the minister may say: "It's not my fault the school taxes are so high. Go talk to the member for Oak Bay (Hon. Mr. Smith); he's responsible. It's not my fault the coalition broke its promise to lower school taxes off property. Go talk to the Premier."

The point is that it is the minister's fault in this regard: the longer he allows and requires the province to charge more and more to property for schools, the less and less municipalities can get from property to pay for the other things that municipalities have to pay for.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, it's an extremely round-about argument. You are discussing a vote that is in the administrative departments of the minister whose estimates are not yet before us. I'm sure the hon. member, the first member for Victoria, is aware of that and is aware what can be discussed under vote 156, the estimates of the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

MR. BARBER: Excuse me for a moment: I'm consulting with my adviser. The minister does the same when he talks to his people before answering questions. I'm doing the same.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The Committee of Supply allows for reciprocal debate. A member has only a time limit. If he wishes to relinquish his seat and let another member speak, that is fine. Does the member wish to continue?

MR. BARBER: I am continuing. I'm on my feet.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Does the member wish to continue?

MR. BARBER: I am continuing, Mr. Chairman. I'm on my feet and I've not relinquished my place.

MS. BROWN: It's harassment.

MR. BARBER: That's right. There's a bit of a double standard here. We are all equals as members of this Legislature. We understand why the minister may wish to take a moment or two — apparently silent — to consult with his advisers. The opposition requires and demands the same ability because we have the same right as legislators. If I want to ask the former Minister of Education about the relative share and the burden on municipalities and it takes a moment to do so, I expect to be given the same rights that the Minister of Municipal Affairs has when he consults with his advisers.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Your point is well taken, hon. member. I was only pointing out to the committee that, in fact, the number of times a member may speak in committee is unlimited. That was my only point. The hon. member continues on vote 156.

MR. BARBER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Let's imagine just for a moment that municipalities are faced with a total tax available income of $100 and they have to divide it up to pay for police, fires, sidewalks, sewers, recreational programs and all the other things, including transit, for which they're responsible. When they know that the whole community can afford to pay $100 in taxes they have to apportion the various shares as realistically as they can. When the New Democrats were in, 46 percent was paid by the province for the school tax. They are now below 35 percent. It has tumbled from 46 under the Barrett administration to under 35 — this year I gather it will be 32, in fact — under the Bennett administration. What that means is the more the province requires the homeowner to pay for the school tax the less the municipality can get from the homeowner for other municipal purposes. That's the problem, burden and dilemma.

When the province was paying $46 under the NDP, the local taxpayers were only paying $54. Fair enough. That doesn't sound too bad to me. The ideal target — the recommendation of the McMath commission, as the Chairman knows — was 75-25.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, once again, we are discussing a vote which has not been brought forward. We are on the Ministry of Municipal Affairs vote, and I would ask the member to equate that. It has to be strictly relevant, and we cannot discuss another vote at this point.

MR. BARBER: Except by allusion, as previous Chairs have frequently ruled.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would the member please relate and be strictly relevant, as our standing order 61(2) indicates that all debate in Committee of Supply is strictly relevant.

MR. BARBER: In being strictly relevant, I am referring to the problem municipalities have when they're expected to draw from the same taxpayer too much money for one purpose — hypothetically called education — and thereby have too little for other purposes — called public safety, recreation, transit and everything else. No revenue-sharing program in the world, no matter how commendable, will ever be up to the job if the municipalities get from revenue-sharing what they lose to the Minister of Education, because, you see, there's no net gain or benefit. The financing of a municipality does not improve overall, because ultimately the same taxpayers are paying for both.

The little old lady who lives in the house on Niagara Street in James Bay pays school taxes and municipal taxes — she pays them all to the same place. When the municipal taxes are improved because of revenue-sharing and the school taxes are burdened because of a province gradually neglecting and ruling out its responsibilities to co-sponsor education, what finally happens to the lady on Niagara Street in James Bay is no net benefit. I suppose she can take some comfort in the fact that her house will be worth more because of inflation. And she can take some comfort in the fact that the NDP introduced a policy that after the age of 65 you can, in effect, withhold your property taxes and have them settled upon the settlement of your estate. It's a nice, decent policy which this government has continued. It's a simple thing but for several hundred seniors in B.C. It has been a nice little program.

The issue I've been referring to is the ability of cities to finance themselves. What happens to cities when they have to take too much for education and therefore have too little for all of the other things they have to do? What happens is that the public services fall apart — the roads are not mended;

[ Page 4851 ]

the sewers are not repaired; the now construction is not undertaken; and the money that the city of Victoria needs, for instance for Harris Green, is not available. When you take too much for education you leave too little for other purposes. That is, in fact, a responsibility of the Minister of Municipal Affairs. The homeowner can only pay so much; you can't fleece him forever. There's a limit and when you go beyond that limit you drive them bankrupt — as the city of New York, one of the classical examples, very nearly discovered.

The sixth issue I want to refer to is the whole delicate and problematic issue of urban density. How do you attract and encourage it? How do you recognize that density is what makes cities succeed, makes them safe and provides a sufficient financial base so as to allow you to pay for transit and housing — if you want to offer social housing — and pays for bridges and parks, and feed the penguins in Stanley Park, if you like? It's only when there's sufficient density that you can do any of those things.

How do you make density a welcome thing? Well, in part, I suppose, you learn the lessons of what went wrong at the West End in Vancouver where they introduced density of an extraordinary sort. Per square mile, West Vancouver is more dense than any other community in Canada. At the same time, you don't plan for — as Vancouver failed to plan for — the necessary extra public amenities to make living in such a honeycomb of an environment attractive and worthwhile. One of the problems of urban density in an area like the West End has been — at least until the last 18 months — the uncommonly high turnover brought about by the transient nature of persons who live in the apartment buildings there. It's a terrible problem for community organizers who try to get anything going, be it a library, a centre for seniors or a place for kids to go after school. It's very difficult for them to organize anything, as the people in the West End community centre have discovered, when the population changes every 18 months. It's one of the issues — one of the dilemmas — but it's also one of the inevitable consequences of a necessary public choice: urban density.

I mentioned before that it is an appropriate thing to consider making available the benefits of "vertical zoning" so that you have people who live above a dry-cleaning shop, and above them you may have a rec-centre, and above that you may have a church. And that's all in one building. Why not? Why shouldn't all of those things be allowed to take place in one spot? Why should we restrict downtown zoning any longer to exclusive functions? Why, for instance, should we not allow downtown zoning to have a special province and a special authority? I'm not talking about building steel mills at Georgia and Granville. Some functions would obviously still be excluded. You don't have a garbage dump at — I suppose you do — I was going to say Hastings and Main. You don't have a garbage dump at Yates and Douglas. Instead, what the minister could do through a model municipal act, which we've been calling upon the government to do for the last five years....

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, again we are discussing a necessity for legislation which is contrary to the rules of the Committee of Supply. I'm sure the member is aware of that.

MR. BARBER: Only in passing I was suggesting he could do it through a model municipal act or by having another TV show, or whatever he wants to do to promote himself and anything else.

AN HON. MEMBER: Take your hands out of your pockets.

MR. BARBER: No. Take your hands out of the people's pockets.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. The first member for Victoria continues uninterrupted.

MR. BARBER: I hope.

How then do we combine the necessity of rewarding, obtaining and enhancing urban density with the necessity of making that density liveable? Well, once again there is a precedent. I've referred on previous occasions to a couple of books. There are lots of them but these are among the best written. One of them is called Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. It was written by Robert A. Caro over a period of seven years, concluding in 1975 when it was published by Alfred Knopf. It cost $19 and it won the Pulitzer prize for biography. It was the story of Robert Moses, who was the public works king of New York City, and who drove New York bankrupt. Once again, the lessons of financial ruin, bad planning and dangerous public enterprise are, we hope, not lost on this minister. Anytime he contemplates an idiotic proposal for another freeway; anytime he proposes another ridiculous and inexcusable exclusion from the ALR — in New York's case, that meant abandoning parks; the human shape of it was the same issue — anytime the minister stands up and says we have to smash another highway through another neighbourhood, either across Burrard or any other, including Annacis, in greater Vancouver, we hope that he understands what happened to other cities where they decided to do the same reckless thing.

AN HON. MEMBER: Are you against Annacis?

MR. BARBER: Against its current location, you bet. It's foolishness. We're against stupid planning, against selfishness as a hallmark of public policy and against your incompetence. That's what we're down on. What we're up on are good planning, saving farmland, making neighbourhoods safe and making downtowns live. We're also up on making them affordable, if possible.

What I hope the minister will do — and I will refer to it in a minute during the next course of my address — is understand what Caro's book is all about: what Robert Moses did; what happened to New York and what happens to all of the New Yorks around North America, including Vancouver, when the wrong policy choices are made and disaster ensues; when urban density is achieved at the cost of urban safety, when urban density is achieved at the cost of urban bankruptcy, when sometimes you achieve on the one hand all of the prerequisites of urban density to make cities work and on the other hand you ruin your own policy by bringing in throughways and expressways, and public and private development that is simply not appropriate, cannot be afforded and in fact. In New York's case, can barely be recovered from. These issues are important and I'll return to them in a moment.

[ Page 4852 ]

MR. COCKE: The minister seems reluctant to make any kind of statement in reply to some very deep philosophical suggestions being made by the member for Victoria (Mr. Barber). The minister may not understand that a great proportion of the direction of this province happens at the local level. The member has been talking about urban problems. I wonder if the minister understands that unless we do take some kind of advice like this we're going to be in the same kind of situation they're in in many of the major urban centres in the United States. I think it's important that the minister at least acknowledge the member for Victoria's statement.

MR. BARBER: There's a bit of a paradox. Every time the opposition stands up and attacks the government for being bunglers — and heaven knows there's enough evidence of that — they accuse us of being partisan. When we stand up and make positive proposals and debate on a philosophical and policy basis, they accuse us of being irrelevant. Either way it's clear they're not prepared to listen to the 46 percent of the electorate of British Columbia that sent the official opposition here in the first place, and which next time will send the same official opposition to become a majority government.

The government can't have it both ways, although they try desperately enough. They can't criticize us for criticizing them and then ignore us when we discuss policy, which is what I've been doing for the last couple of hours now and will continue to do for some hours yet. I will not be intimidated by the minister or his yawns.

I'm discussing policy in what I think may be a fairly informed way, in what I hope refers to precedent and example elsewhere and in what I hope will be taken by the government, for what it's worth, as a series of perfectly practical policy alternatives. I will repeat them. A competent urban policy has six elements. I made a series of proposals for the execution of some of those.

The first element is transit. I tell the minister that he should consider restructuring the UTA — its own members are unhappy. I urge the minister to stop bullying the GVRD and to negotiate instead. I ask the minister to provide documentation that proves the ALRT system is in fact a Canadian technology, because we have some evidence it's not, that in fact it's a Canadian amalgam of American and European technology we've put together in Ontario. I ask the minister to consider the possibility that if ALRT is not a tested and proven system in any regard at all, it might be just a bit too risky for us here in British Columbia. I ask the minister to consider the possibility that transit is a more important option than the private automobile. I ask him to consider the probability that in the name of successful transit he's got to say no to the private automobile and its proponents. He's got to say no to the people who smash neighbourhoods down in the name of freeways, no to the people who would waste money on unnecessary extra crossings across any river at all, and instead say yes to transit. Those are several positive proposals and recommendations I offer to the minister in the first of the six fields — transit — of a competent urban policy.

The second is in the field of housing. Once again the minister could take initiatives if he cared to. He could do them absolutely independently and also with some of his colleagues in a few cases. I call on the minister to stop the attacks of his government on the ALR, to stop whittling away the ALR and to reinstate the importance of the agricultural land reserve system in this province. I ask him to examine Indian Arm as a site for — one might conservatively guess — a quarter of a million new homes in the next 30 years. I ask him to examine the possibility that Indian Arm, properly administered, planned for and financed, could be one of the most spectacularly valuable new centres of residential growth and urban development in British Columbia. I observe that it is not in the ALR. I observe that there are technologies available to provide the transport and housing in that particular terrain and that it's been done with great success in Norway, Sweden, Finland, the northern parts of Germany and Switzerland. I observe to him that the technology appears to be appropriate, and I point out that his own colleague, the former Minister of Municipal Affairs, appeared at one time — and may still be, I hope — considerably enthused about the proposals of architect David Spearing of Nanaimo and Victoria, who was looking at just such a plan outside Chilliwack. These are positive proposals and recommendations that I make on behalf of the official opposition.

I urge the minister as well to consider endorsing by way of cash the proposal of the city of Victoria — Harris Green — to reintroduce downtown living in the capital city.

I ask the minister to consider some device or other for allowing vertical zoning, for allowing a mix of commercial, residential, cultural, religious, ethnic and all sorts of other activities in one building at one site, and to consider the possibility that we would be well advised to open up downtown to a far greater range of zoning options than currently exists. Why is it necessary, for instance, to have but only half a dozen different commercial zones available in downtown Vancouver or downtown Victoria? Why do we have to do that? Why can't we combine those zoning options on one site? Why, for instance, do we still have a policy that says that you can zone up — no one ever complains, especially the developers — but any time the municipality zones downward, who are the first to complain? The developers who think that their paper profits are going out the window.

It's a double standard that's not a reasonable thing. If developers are entitled to make more money because we upzone their land, then I think the municipality is entitled to get a good share of that unearned profit. I call on the minister to entitle municipalities to tax the unearned and the windfall profits of persons whose land is zoned upwards. I call as well on the municipalities to be given the authority, in a kind of ethical sense, to zone downwards if they wish. The minister may say that if you zone down, then you have to return some of the land's value to the people who supposedly lost paper profits. In fact, you don't have to do that.

It would appear by the land cycles in North America that no one is ever — unless they grossly misuse their land, as Mr. Spetifore appears to have done — in the position of losing money on any land purchase. It hardly ever happens. You might lose paper profits that you didn't earn or work for or toil for or deserve. For instance, if you thought you could build a highrise, and the city says, "Sorry, you can only build a duplex," then I suppose, if you're a person who believes in that kind of ethic, you have a right to complain. But most people don't believe in that ethic. If you're entitled to make money when you're zoned upwards, the municipality is entitled to tax that unearned profit. I think they're entitled to tax it quite heavily. If they're not going to tax it, then no one should be entitled to be taken seriously when they complain that being down-zoned is a financial loss that they cannot afford. They can't have it both ways. If they're entitled to

[ Page 4853 ]

unearned profit by upzoning, then they're not entitled to complain when the land is down-zoned. The municipality has eminent domain — the pre-eminent right to do just that and no one should complain about it.

The third recommendation that we make to the minister is to at least acknowledge the necessity of providing, supporting and enhancing cultural enterprise in a competent urban policy.

The fourth is the question of public safety. The municipalities have got to be able to afford RCMP services. If they can't do it directly, the province has got to help them out. The Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Williams) has got to get off his desk and resolve that dispute which has been going on for years and which has yet to be resolved, much to the increasing duress of local government. The Minister of Municipal Affairs should take an interest in it too.

The minister should also recognize — if I may say it for the fourth time this afternoon, but not the last time in this debate — that urban streets are safe when you have urban living. Downtown streets are safe when people live downtown. They are not safe when they are not patrolled by human beings. A few of the human beings are going to be in uniform from time to time; the great majority are not. They don't need a uniform. They have the uniform of a citizen. By their numbers, their interest and their concern for the community, they'll keep the streets safe. You can't have a policeman on every corner in any case. Who would want to live in such a police state? It would be awful. Streets can be safe when the communities are committed to a policy of public safety. The way they exercise and execute that policy is when they live downtown.

Let me offer another illustration by way of an important piece of literature on the subject. It's called The Death and Life of Great American Cities. It was written by Jane Jacobs. In that book, and in another of hers called The Economy of Cities, Jacobs observed and argued that in communities like Toronto, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles you can observe the patterns of crime rates. You can observe where the safe neighbourhoods are and where the unsafe ones are. What she did and what the minister should do is draw some conclusions about the patterns. The first conclusion she drew was that the safe neighbourhoods were the neighbourhoods where people lived after 5 o'clock. The unsafe ones were neighbourhoods where people only worked from 9 to 5 and abandoned them afterwards.

[Mr. Davidson in the chair.]

The second conclusion she drew was that neighbourhoods are safe where small enterprise succeeds and goes on preferably around the clock. The neighbourhoods are safe when they're full of little stores, little shopping centres and little aspects of commercial enterprise that go around the clock. The neighbourhoods that are not safe are neighbourhoods that have big warehouses or factories, long wall after long wall of corrugated iron, big plant gates and nothing else.

If you want to go to an unsafe neighbourhood you go to Hamtramck, Detroit, where Chrysler has had a plant. Sure enough, 20,000 people live there by day and 2,000 live there by night, and Hamtramck is a totally unsafe neighbourhood. It's unsafe, because the community is out of balance; it's unsafe because there is no sense of proportion. Now you have to have, I suppose, the automobile assembly plants, but ideally they can be located in such a way that persons are not required to risk their lives by walking in those neighbourhoods after hours. There are communities in Europe where they do that perfectly well. The three Volvo plants in Sweden are located in such a fashion that people live around them, and those neighbourhoods are safe after hours. In Detroit, where they planned badly, the neighbourhoods are totally unsafe.

I call on the minister. when he contemplates approving and supporting new industrial enterprise in any part of the province, to recognize the dilemma that's been faced by other urban communities in North America, when they put too much of it at too great a density in one spot, and when they omitted the human complexion and the human complexity that makes or does not make neighbourhoods safe. Again, Jacobs' masterpiece work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, refers to that in an extraordinarily learned, acute and able way. If the minister hasn't read the book he should. If he'd like to read the book, I'll loan him my own copy. I've got a bunch of them; I loan them out all the time and I'd be happy to send him one — it's an important work.

The fifth element of a competent urban policy that I recommend in a positive way to the minister is to find some way to allow municipalities to take a larger share of a finite tax for municipal purposes and to help school boards to get a bigger share of their taxes from the province, which should be paying the shot. As long as municipalities have to collect school taxes which they do not set and are therefore stuck with the leavings, then municipal services will continue to decline. Revenue-sharing has not helped them keep pace with that. The increase in the relative burden of the school tax, as compared with the relative value of the revenue sharing program, clearly demonstrates that municipalities overall are on the losing end. I call on the minister to be prepared to allow cities to be refinanced. I call on the minister to grant a new deal for financing of municipalities that does not see them have to put off, delay and undercut necessary municipal expenditures because the province is too darned cheap to pick up a fair share of the education expenditures.

The final policy that I call on the minister to take a look at is the issue and the question of urban density and the ways in which urban density provides and pays for — and must do so — urban services, the ways in which urban density alone can justify public transit of the sort that's being contemplated in greater Vancouver, and the ways in which urban density makes cities the lively, exciting and invigorating places that they can be and should be,

These are six areas of public policy, six areas of concern to municipalities across the province and six areas, we think, of a worthwhile philosophy that has to be adopted by this

Legislative Assembly toward urban areas in British Columbia. I'm kind of tired of the minister standing up, as did his predecessor, rattling off lists of public expenditures and doing no more. We need a philosophically grounded body of policy toward urban enterprise and urban communities in this province. We need it, because it's required intellectually in order to think straight. We need it, because it's required financially in order to pay for the : se things. We need it, because it's required imaginatively, in order to plan for our communities 20, 30 and 50 years from now. These policies are important, because municipalities have to know what they can count on and have to be able to predict in order to plan correctly their own future and their own options.

[ Page 4854 ]

These policies are important, as well, because developers who are honourable and honest in the game — developers who build good stuff where it's welcome and appropriate — have also got a right to know what the rules are; they have a right to know what the policy is; they've got a right to know what the basic philosophical approach of the province is. When developers don't know that, they get spooked; when they don't know that, they can't plan and invest properly. The minister may be surprised to know that I have a number of friends in Victoria who are developers. They are people who talk to me about the problems that they have doing stuff that municipalities want them to do. They are not developers who try, through loopholes, to build things that are not welcome. They are honourable, up-front, honest, perfectly decent and welcome business persons in communities across the province. And they tell me that one of the problems they have in dealing with this provincial administration is that they have no idea what its philosophy is; they have no idea what its point of view is; they have no idea what the minister's point of view is at all, because he never discusses these things.

He does offer a planning act, and that certainly tells them something about the minister's centralist attitudes and how he wants to make a lot of decisions behind his own desk in Victoria. They do read the newspapers, and they're certainly well aware of how the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources (Hon. Mr. McClelland), the Minister of Forests (Hon. Mr. Waterland) and the Minister of Transportation and Highways (Hon. Mr. Fraser) have attacked the planning act in cabinet, so that whatever does come down is going to come down much watered and neutered. That's probably a good thing.

They do read the newspapers, and they do understand what the fate was of a couple of rather strange initiatives that the minister took in regard to doing what he thought would be a popular thing with local government. That was just his cuckoo notion of tying salaries to growth or population, or that weird formula he put forward that everyone laughed at, and it's been completely abandoned. That's no substitute for a philosophy, a point of view or an intellectual analysis of the problems that face cities. That's no substitute at all for a statement of what's worthwhile in urban policy.

We've offered our statement. We've done it several times before in different ways with different emphases. We've done it again this afternoon, and we'll do it again tomorrow. And we'll keep doing it until we have some kind of reply from the minister of a philosophical, intellectual or imaginative sort of what vision of urban communities and the urban future the coalition has. I promise that until we get a reply that makes sense — a reply that is not just rhetoric but also reason — we'll keep asking the same questions and making the same speeches. We'll do so because we believe it's necessary and good and reasonable that this Legislature do so.

If the minister would care to reply this time, we'd glad to hear what he might have to say — philosophically — about a policy for the urban future of the province of British Columbia.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM I'm somewhat disappointed, to say the least. I've had staff here all afternoon, and I've been listening to all of the debate, but all we've heard so far is a great deal of rhetoric about the agricultural land reserve, housing in Victoria, cultural development — all of which is with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, the Ministry of Lands, Parks and Housing or the Provincial

Secretary's office. The member who has just finished speaking has a particular philosophical view with respect to urban development, but I don't really feel that I need to comment on his philosophical views regarding urban development.

I asked the member if he had any questions to ask with respect to conflicts of interest, which was the major topic of debate for the whole of last year. I was hoping he might raise that point again, and I asked him earlier if he would. He hasn't done so yet, even though it ranked top rating during the last time we debated these estimates. So until we get to things like that, which are more directly in relation to my ministry, I'll not have anything to comment on.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, I don't know what we're going to have to do to get some response from the Minister of Municipal Affairs. We were certainly hoping that in his opening remarks.... Well, we've put the question to you. It was put very ably by my colleague from Victoria. We need to know what the minister's vision is in terms of the communities in which we have to live, because it's very clear that his policies are destroying those communities. Certainly they are destroying the community of Burnaby-Edmonds. I want to say one or two words about Burnaby, and maybe he'll respond to that specific.

The first thing I want to touch on is what's happening in terms of public transportation in Burnaby. We have seen a deterioration of the public transportation system. As the community grows — and it is still a growing community — and as more and more people move into the area, we try to encourage them to use the public transit system more. What we're finding is that the system is getting worse as the people need it more. As we're encouraging people to get out of their cars and use the public transit system, we're finding that the system is not improving. It is certainly not able to meet that particular need. So by forcing people to use the automobile more than they would like to, we are finding that this is certainly a threat to the community of Burnaby. It is eroding the community of Burnaby, because the minister's colleague, the Minister of Transportation and Highways, and other ministers are talking about developing more and more highways and making wider and wider throughways running through that particular community.

We have the misfortune, in terms of our location in Burnaby, that to get anywhere you have to get through Burnaby. If you're going to Surrey, Coquitlam or Vancouver — it doesn't matter where you're going — you have to go through Burnaby. Now, if we had a decent public transportation system there until light rapid transit comes on stream — because I know the minister has made a commitment to light rapid transit.... The minister has made a commitment? Nod, Mr. Minister. The minister has not made a commitment to light rapid transit. It doesn't make any sense then to ask that the public transportation system be improved until light rapid transit comes onstream, because the minister has not made a commitment to light rapid transit.

Simply by responding to my colleague, the first member for Victoria (Mr. Barber), when he asks of the minister, "What is your vision of the city and the community?" the rest of us would have some kind of indication as to whether this assault on our municipalities is temporary or permanent. Are we going to see Burnaby destroyed as a result of the automobile taking over? Is all of Burnaby going to look like Kingsway after a while? Is that what's going to happen? Is it going to look like Hastings after a while, or does the minister

[ Page 4855 ]

have some kind of vision of Burnaby as a community in which people live and not just as a thoroughfare or throughway for the automobile? That's the first point I wanted to raise very briefly. Is the minister going to respond to that? Fine. I'll deal with the other after.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I'm very proud of what has happened in the development of a transit program for the lower mainland especially. I know that perhaps the member for Burnaby-Edmonds (Ms. Brown) isn't aware of what other developments have taken place throughout the rest of the province, and that's fine. I can appreciate that perhaps her concerns are more with Burnaby-Edmonds, and that's understandable as she is the MLA for the area.

She ought also to be aware, however, that the mayor of Burnaby is a member of the Urban Transit Authority and Alderman Emmott is the chairman of the Greater Vancouver Regional District. Both people take leading roles in the development of the community and the development of transit services for the region generally, and they're both very supportive of the program we've embarked on. Granted there's still a lot to be done, and certainly the development of light rapid transit is a very important part in the overall plans for the greater Vancouver region.

It's only a little more than five years ago that we took over from what was then another approach to transit in British Columbia. I should remind the member that when her group, the former NDP government, was in charge of government and were planning their approach to the transit problems in the region.... I can recall coming here as the mayor of Surrey and meeting with the then Minister of Municipal Affairs. The proposal at that time was that there would be no further crossings anywhere in the region, and furthermore that Scott Road would be developed with two lanes only but with no bus bays — similarly so on Canada Way and the Grandview Highway through Burnaby. The philosophy was that if you stop the buses right in the middle of the road and allow all the cars to pile up behind, then sooner or later people will get out of the car and into the bus. If you do that enough times all you'll have on the Pattullo and Port Mann bridges is buses and no more cars.

We had to change from that philosophy to where we are today, which I think we can show has been a tremendously progressive approach. We certainly do provide a reasonably good level of transit service in greater Vancouver. Naturally it's being improved upon all the time, and there's much more to be done. But already, as I mentioned in my introductory remarks, we have much new equipment coming onstream and there's more new equipment ordered. We're developing one of the finest transit services anywhere in North America, but it's not going to happen overnight. Do remember, bon. member for Burnaby-Edmonds, that we've done this in only about five or six years? Recall where we were at in 1975. You must remember that all we had then was an approach of: stop the buses in the middle of the street and people will get out and take the bus; they'll no longer take their par. That's the sort of thing that was happening. That was the archaic approach to transit at that time. We've moved ahead to where we are today. Granted, we have a long way to go.

MS. BROWN: I'm now actually sorry that the minister decided to respond. What we've been treated to, of course, is part of his fantasy life, really. What he just said has no resemblance whatsoever to the reality of the public transportation system, neither under the NDP government nor under his. I'm sure the Minister of Energy (Hon. Mr. McClelland). who sits in the corner and growls — all we ever get is a growl from that minister — will agree when he listens to my response to the minister. First of all, I know that Mayor Mercer is on the Urban Transit Authority, and I know that Alan Emmott is the chairperson.

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: Well, he's a person to me, whatever he may be to you. He's always been a person to me — a member of the human race.

I know they're not happy with the minister. I know that they are very unhappy with the pace at which the development is taking place. The public transportation system in Burnaby is deteriorating. I'm not impressed by the minister's comments about all the beautiful new buses he's ordered. It's taken five years. In the meantime, we're having older and older and more decrepit transpiration in Burnaby. People who would rather use a transportation system are finding that it's not possible as a direct result of not sufficient public transport and also of poor scheduling, because the buses are always breaking down. As the community is growing — despite the policies of that government the community is growing — the public transportation system is just not meeting its needs. It's not good enough for the minister to say: "We've only had five years." In five years all of the good work that was done in terms of increasing by a third the number of buses on the system has been eroded. It's now beginning to fall apart. and the members of the Burnaby community are finding that the public transportation system is still not meeting their need.

The minister thinks that the solution to this — and I'm sure you support this. Mr. Chairman — is the Annacis crossing. That is not the solution. You asked earlier whether my colleague from Victoria supported the Annacis crossing. Well, I'll tell you as the representative for Burnaby-Edmonds that the people of Burnaby-Edmonds have made it absolutely clear to the minister on more than one occasion. over and over again, that the development of the Annacis crossing is a threat to the communities that make up the constituency. We do not support the development of the Annacis crossing. East Burnaby is going to be destroyed as a community by the traffic that will be using that crossing. If the minister has any doubts at all about my stand on that issue, I want to make it absolutely clear that I do not see the solution to the transportation problem in Burnaby as being the Annacis crossing. We do not support that crossing; it is going to destroy the East Burnaby area of the municipality. The people of that area have said it to the Minister of Highways (Hon. Mr. Fraser) and to you, and I'm saying it to you again. So please do not offer that as the alternative to decrepit buses and an inadequate public transportation system.

I have some other things to say, Mr. Chairman, but maybe he wants to talk about transportation some more.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I take exception to some of the remarks just made by the member, because we've not bought any decrepit buses. We learned our lesson from a purchase made in Saskatoon during 1973-74 by the former NDP government, where they were sold a whole lot of old relies — wrecks — which were only good for parts and which to this day are parked someplace, of no value or use to

[ Page 4856 ]

British Columbians. We are also stuck with an old train — it's old now; I guess it was new when it came in — bought by the NDP government, which didn't fit the tracks in British Columbia. It has since been parked in a shed. We tried to sell it, because it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the best offer we could get was $25,000 from a junk dealer. We decided it was perhaps better to keep it for a museum piece or a souvenir to remind us of what not to do, because the NDP did it back in 1973-74. I take exception to the member's suggesting that we are buying decrepit buses. All the equipment we have purchased has been new equipment. We have not bought any wrecks from the NDP government in Saskatoon.

MS. BROWN: I just want to correct a couple of misstatements on the part of the minister. I did not accuse the minister of purchasing decrepit buses. I said the buses presently in service are decrepit. Now they are decrepit because they have been there so long, as you're going to get decrepit if you hang around too long yourself. We all get decrepit after a while, not just the buses. But if the minister would like to try.... It's a very decrepit policy, and certainly one which destroyed a good system which the member for Burnaby-Willingdon (Mr. Lorimer) put into place when he was the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

I would like to challenge the present Minister of Municipal Affairs — if the member for Central Fraser Valley (Mr. Ritchie) would stop giving him jokes just long enough for him to listen to my challenge — to travel by bus from Edmonds and Kingsway to, say, the university, and see what it would be like if you were a student trying to get from Stride Avenue, if you lived in the Stride Avenue area, out to UBC by public transit for an 8:30 class in the morning. See how long it would take you, and how much time you would have to allow yourself. Try and see what it would be like in terms of matching up the schedules for transferring from one bus to another. I think that would be an interesting exercise for the minister to attempt, to see whether it would be possible for him to do it or not.

I just want to mention one other thing — he didn't respond to Annacis, which is fine, because we'll debate it in more detail with the Minister of Highways — and that's the taxation burden on the municipality of Burnaby. Now my colleague the first member for Victoria (Mr. Barber) dealt in great detail with the taxation burden on all of the municipalities of British Columbia. I would like to zero in specifically — as I know my other colleagues from Burnaby are going to be doing — on the impact of the taxation burden on the municipality of Burnaby — the shifting of the tax onto the homeowner, the abrogating of their taxation responsibilities by the provincial government, shifting more and more of that onto the municipalities.

I want to say, Mr. Chairman, that I am totally opposed to that, and I think that unless the minister is prepared to do something about relieving the municipality of Burnaby of the onerous taxation which has been shifted onto it by this government, he really deserves to be defeated in the next election and not be given the responsibility for municipalities in the future.

MR. COCKE: Sometimes I wonder how the Minister of Municipal Affairs in this province can erect the arguments he does, other than possibly from the most vivid imagination one has ever encountered. Many of us are old enough and have lived in the urban area of Vancouver and its environs long enough to remember what has happened to our whole transportation situation. I can remember when one could ride on reasonably good urban and suburban transit all the way from the centre of Vancouver right out to Chilliwack, on an electrical railroad. However, over the years thoughtless, short-sighted planners managed to give the priority to the car and have placed us in a situation where there is chaos on the roads and congestion beyond belief. We had a short term where we had some light. That's the period that this minister stands up in the House and criticizes.

Living as I do in New Westminster, I watch that whole transportation situation around there, having knowledge of what happened in Coquitlam when they had a private entrepreneur trying to provide the transportation for that area in half a dozen buses. Talk about decrepit; those were decrepit buses, I'll tell you. The thought of any kind of planning just wasn't there. Suddenly the then Minister of Municipal Affairs, whom this minister criticizes, brought in a system of transportation for that whole area to the extent that one would feel a very great sense of pride when one went by the Lougheed Mall, for example, and saw bus after loaded bus that had never been seen there before, loading and unloading. That member, who was then the mayor of Surrey, which was one of the worst-served municipalities in the whole country as far as transportation was concerned, saw a real change in the Surrey–White Rock area, where the minister brought in not only increased service but also new lines of service. In appreciation he gets up now and suggests that nothing was happening and that we were buying some decrepit buses. He knows full well, Mr. Chairman, that it was very difficult in those days to get the buses fixed that we had. A lot of very inexpensive parts were bought by just doing that.

He also knows that his government, over the last few years, has been bringing a great deal of criticism to other forms of transit service that were experimented with and that are going to be used in the future in Vancouver. You know the one that has been sitting in the Dominion Bridge lot that is not owned by Hydro; I'll guarantee, colleagues, that will be used. Don't tell us about the size of the wheels and the fact that it won't go on the tracks. It can be adjusted.

I see a situation that was going strong. Since 1976, when everything came to a stop, we're now making some faltering steps forward, hoping that the GVRD and other regional districts will make massive contributions and that the government can come off as light as possible. It's going to need a lot more help from this government to get our transit going properly.

I hope that the minister hasn't made too big a mistake on the light rapid transit that he's opted for. Certainly it's great to see that it's being made in Canada. But it's untried. We're going to be where the experiment happens. I was listening to an account of it the other day, and somebody down in Michigan or somewhere in the United States is looking at this option.

MR. BARBER: They were looking at it in Los Angeles, but they gave it up.

MR. COCKE: Yes, I know Los Angeles gave it up, but they are looking at it somewhere else,

One of the problems they see with. It is that under its present experimental situation if anything goes wrong there's

[ Page 4857 ]

a bunch of PhDs and engineers and so on to put things right and get things going again and there's no stress or strain on the service. But when it comes into Vancouver, New Westminster, Surrey, etc., that's when the strain hits. This is fairly light equipment and I just hope the minister hasn't made a mistake, because if he has he's made a massive mistake. The unfortunate part of it is that he's not going to be around to answer for that mistake. He'll be long gone from government by that time — as he deserves to be because the bungling and bullying of this government has probably been best seen in this minister and his ministry. The arrogant and flippant remarks to the member for Burnaby-Edmonds (Ms. Brown) are just a taste of what happens regularly in that situation.

He also supports the Annacis crossing, which I guess is a bit of a bail-out to his colleague from Delta (Mr. Davidson). I once heard a description of that member's lot: that he can get anything he wants except a seat on the treasury bench. He sure got that bridge — at least they say it's going there — but from both sides there is tremendous criticism. My colleague from Burnaby-Edmonds says it's going to affect Burnaby. It's going to affect New Westminster a lot sooner than Burnaby. To run major traffic arteries in our town for the third time.... We're thrice cursed. First and foremost we have the Pattullo Bridge and its traffic running right through the heart of our town. Fair enough; it has to go somewhere.

Then much of the traffic going to Port Mann and to Highway 401 goes through our town. Believe me, if there's any backup on that bridge then we get it all. Living where I do near Queen's Park, I have seen the town so plugged up that the only possible way you can get home is to walk from my office over on 12th Street to my home near 1st Street and 5th Avenue, by virtue of the fact that every major east-west street is plugged up, and as a result most of the north-south streets, which don't do me any good, are also badly plugged up, and all of the side streets in Queen's Park — traffic darting in and out. Then what do they say? The third crossing in our area has to come into the west end of our city. I can just see the congestion on Marine Drive and 20th Street and all that area., tunnelling up to 10th Avenue.

Mr. Chairman, the question that you're going to ask me is that this minister isn't responsible. I suggest to you that this minister has made his case clear. As a minister of the Crown he supports that crossing. As a member of the Legislature and of this committee, I have to make my position very clear to a Minister of Municipal Affairs, who uses his office to tout that bridge. It's part of the blunder and the arrogant pushing that's going on: take it or leave it.

Not long ago I attended a meeting in the west part of our city. I saw people who had never been politicized in their entire lives becoming highly politicized. Do you know why? For the first time they understood the ramifications of this bridge. Up until then they'd been reading in the paper that people across the river were going to have to be afforded another way in and out. But it wasn’t until the announcement that they were going to four-lane 20th Street right through a residential area, split the west end of our city, take many lots — potentially 55; it may be more — and certainly not enhance the value of anything in the west end of New Westminster, that they became highly politicized and very much opposed to this suggestion.

Then I go to the other side of the water to Delta. In Delta I have met with a number of people in the Sunbury area who are violently opposed to what they consider to be a very poor choice of location from their end. Most of them are opposed to the crossing; some aren't.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. member can appreciate the Chair's reluctance to intervene at this particular point, in light of the delicate subject that's being covered. However, I must advise the member that there will be adequate opportunity to thoroughly discuss the matter that the member is now canvassing, possibly more appropriately and following the member's line of argument, in the Ministry of Highways' estimates, as opposed to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. I'm sure the member would help the Chair in this matter as much as possible.

MR. COCKE: I totally agree with that, Mr. Chairman. The only problem is that this government — the ministers — tend to be in no way impressed with the estimates of a colleague. They tend to not listen when one of their colleagues is discussing a particular question. I felt that it was important that I try to save the minister from this tremendous blunder. If I fail, well, then I fail. As I suggested, it's very important he understands that he can advise his colleague that maybe he made a mistake in pushing this in the first place. I do hope that this government takes a new look at where they're going and gets far more emphasis on transit than they have to date. The increases that we saw have been decreases since in terms of the priority for transit. The increases that we saw from 1972 to 1975 just were not reflected in the government that took over.

Mr. Chairman, I have one other problem that I'd like to discuss with the minister. This again is an area where I think that this government has made a ridiculous mistake in the city of New Westminster — a very important hub area in the lower mainland; an area that needed revitalization very badly; an area that the greater Vancouver liveable region plan recognized as being a priority area. When the decision was made to move a transit terminal into that area — accompanied by ICBC headquarters, a courthouse and a B.C. building — that would have been the catalyst for future development downtown, All of these things to begin with were cancelled, and then. of course, we got a courthouse and now we've got Douglas College moving downtown. But what did we get in return?

We have another minister alone with his ministry setting up the First Capital City program. I worry about that program. I have been very silent on it, hoping that things would go relatively well and that we'd be getting some development. Do you know what's happened, Mr. Chairman? Instead of the city fathers in New Westminster making zoning decisions — and I'm sure that the minister is interested in this — we see the First Capital City now running a good portion of our city and not giving us very much in return.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

Interjection.

MR. COCKE: I'm sure complaining about what I see today. I suggest, Mr. Chairman, that the member for Dewdney (Mr. Mussallem). as usual, doesn't know what he's talking about. But that's not something new; he and I have had many a confrontation here.

I saw, for example, some land switches. We saw some uptown land that had originally been planned for Douglas College fall into the hands of The First Capital City Development Co, through some land swaps, and then 16 acres sold to Bosa Bros. contractors and developers. Bosa had said they

[ Page 4858 ]

would put some townhouses on the 16 acres. There was a little altercation there, and people were not particularly happy with this particular development. Be that as it may, in the few months that Bosa held that property they made some $5 million. They did virtually nothing except pick up the property, hang on to it for a while, put a bulldozer in there and turn a few sods, and then they sold it to another developer for a $5 million increase.

This is the kind of development we see going on in New Westminster. We see delightful plans for what's going to be down the street some day. The Fraser River's going to be all lined with marvellous condominium development just like you might find on False Creek. I don't know who's going to do the zoning. The Minister of Municipal Affairs has, I'm sure, vested the zoning in this centralized government here. That's the way I see it.

MR. MUSSALLEM: Are you complaining about it?

MR. COCKE: Yes, I'm complaining about it. I've never seen such a centralist, Stalinist group in my entire life. Bully the whole country. I warn any municipality to watch their zoning and to watch the planning act that this minister is likely to come in with if he gets an opportunity. Watch him, because what I have seen just as a tidbit looks to me like it's just going to be part of the old centralization of power here in Victoria: Victoria knows all, sees all and is all. I can remember that minister being part of a group that charged us with being centralist. He came in and the first thing he did was destroy the resource boards, which were a decentralizing force. Centralize education; centralize health; centralize power into the pocket of the Minister of Municipal Affairs. It's a dismal, bullying, vulgar government.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member....

MR. COCKE: Is that not parliamentary? It's not really harsh enough.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I think it should be pointed out that courtesy in debate and a good tone of language in general are always good features of parliamentary style.

MR. COCKE: I actually used a euphemism, but if it's offensive to the Chairman or anybody over there I shall gladly withdraw it.

We're all waiting for the other shoe to drop in Westminster. We're all actually waiting for something to happen. We would love to see it happen if it's going to be for the good of our town.

MR. BARBER: For the good of the Bosa brothers.

MR. COCKE: They've already got theirs.

The minister is anxious to get on his feet and reply. If he wants to, I'd be only too happy. I'm not trying to filibuster his estimates or anybody else's.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Very briefly, Mr. Chairman, I can't comment on the Bosa brothers' dealings. I know that everywhere people do make profits on the purchase of lands. It happens. I'm looking at one here: the Nanaimo Commonwealth Holding Society acquired three lots on Wesley Street in downtown Nanaimo for a very cheap price; it's now valued at $413,000. That's only a part of a large list. These things do happen. I can't help that. I don't know why that should be raised right now.

I'm disappointed that the member for New Westminster really didn't have anything positive to say, because if there's one place in all of British Columbia that has certainly benefited tremendously from the actions of this government it is New Westminster. When the member was the representative during the NDP government, all that happened was that they acquired some land, much of which we ended up paying for after they had initiated the acquisition. Now things are happening. New Westminster is moving. I drive through along Royal Avenue and you see it happening. There's a great deal of development.

He also mentioned the Annacis crossing. I don't want to get into that except to remind the member that not only did Surrey council and Delta council support this, but so did New Westminster council and Burnaby council. So the councils are supportive of that proposal.

The House resumed; Mr. Davidson in the chair.

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

Hon. Mr. Curtis tabled answers to questions 14 and 15 on the order paper.

Hon. Mr. Williams moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 5:53 p.m.