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CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

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

On vote 63: minister's office (continued) –– 8101

Mr. Barber Mr. Lorimer Mr. Davis Mr. Gabelmann Mr. Macdonald

THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 1982

The House met at 9:30 a.m.

MR. SPEAKER: Before we proceed, on last Friday, June 4, 1982, the hon. member for Comox (Ms. Sanford) sought to move adjournment of the House pursuant to standing order 35 to discuss a matter of urgent public importance, namely continuing levels of high unemployment within the province. The member's statement, which clearly identified the matter as being of a continuing nature, negates the essential degree of urgency required by the standing order. I would refer hon. members to my previous decisions given the same day, June 4, and again April 8 and May 7 of this session.

Orders of the Day

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

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF MUNICIPAL AFFAIRS

(continued)

On vote 63: minister's office, $205,621.

MR. BARBER: As promised yesterday, I would advise the committee by reading into the record a previously unpublished document that indicates a broken promise, a failed policy and a betrayal of a commitment made to the Islands Trust of British Columbia. On March 26, 1982, the minister wrote to the chairman of the Islands Trust as follows:

"Dear Mr. Rich:

"Thank you very much for your letter concerning the comments on the land use act made by Derek DeBiasio, my policy coordinator, at the Islands Trust council meeting of March 6, 1982. Mr. DeBiasio's statement that the Islands Trust will be considered to be a regional district for the purpose of the land use act is correct. The Islands Trust would not be empowered to prepare and adopt a regional plan; it would only have the authority to prepare and adopt settlement plans.

"I would expect that an Islands Trust staff representative would be placed on the regional resource management committee that will be preparing the provincial plan that includes the Trust area. Several changes have been made in the proposal since the release of a discussion paper in September 1980. It was decided that to be equitable, Trust elected representatives should be placed on the same footing with respect to land-use planning authority as other elected local government representatives throughout the province.

"Sincerely,
"W.N. Vander Zalm,
"Minister."

Well, on April 15, as the result of resolution at the Islands Trust, the following letter was sent in reply. I make this public today with the consent of its author. This was signed by the chairman of the Islands Trust, Mr. Rich.

"Dear Mr. Minister:

"We are in receipt of your letter of March 26 indicating that the regional planning aspects of the land use act will apply to the Islands Trust. Your statement in this regard concerns the Trust considerably: first, because the Trust had been led to believe by yourself and your officials that the Trust's functions would not be affected by the land use act; and, second, because of the potential consequences of regional planning under the land use act. It is very disturbing to find that the Trust has been misled in this matter. Whether this was by design or oversight is unimportant at this time.

"However, the facts are that you advised the Trust by letter of November 29, 1980, that the Trust would continue to exercise essentially the same planning responsibilities as it does now. This advice was confirmed in February 1981 and November 1981 at meetings between yourself and trustees and further confirmed by the statements of your deputy minister at the December 1981 meeting of the Islands Trust council. These assurances were, in turn, passed to local trustees and the general public of the Trust area at various meetings over the past year. The result has been complacency on the part of the trustees and lack of concern about legislation which, should it apply to the Trust area, may be extremely undesirable.

"As we understand it now, enactment of the land use act would provide that regional planning for the Trust area will be the responsibility of a committee of provincial government civil servants rather than the Islands Trust. This committee will prepare a regional planning statement and, within the terms of the regional planning statement, the local authority — in our case the local Trust committee — may prepare settlement plans and decide on zoning and subdivision matters. Thus, although local Trust committees retain their responsibilities under the land use act, the exercise of these responsibilities may be constrained by policies expressed in the regional planning statement.

"Since a local community plan could not be in conflict with the regional planning statement, a situation could arise where types of land use were imposed on an area by the provincial government, when otherwise the activities would be unacceptable to the residents and users of the area. For example, if a regional planning statement indicated that certain commercial activities were suitable for some part of the region, the local community plan could not prohibit the activities and, inevitably, the activities, which might well be against the wishes of the residents and elected officials. would be permitted. Similarly the provincial planning statement could effectively impose resource development, industry, energy and transportation corridors. tourism or parks, without local concurrence or even effective input.

"The Trust's objection to this process is not simply that local authority is being restricted: it is also the means by which it is being restricted. The provincial plans will be prepared by civil servants, who are not accountable to the people of the region. Public hearings and public input will not be required. Civil servants, by virtue of their position and their own accountability, are notoriously unresponsive to public concern. Thus, even though hearings may be held, their effectiveness would likely be limited.

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"As you are aware, the Islands Trust has been preparing a regional plan for the past three years. The preparation of this plan has involved extensive input from elected representatives, consultation with provincial government ministries and a number of public meetings, with more scheduled. The goal of this plan is to fulfill the object of the Islands Trust Act: 'To preserve and protect the Trust area and its unique amenities and environment for the benefit of the residents of the Trust area and of the province generally.' Under the land use act, this plan would be reduced to a policy statement, legally without status and subordinate to a provincial planning statement.

"In summary, the trust believes that the regional planning provisions of the land use act are regressive, removing power from people affected and placing it in the hands of a bureaucracy. The Trust believes that expediency is no substitute for democracy, and requests that the regional planning provisions of the land use act not apply to the Trust area, as we were previously assured.

"Thank you for your consideration.

"Sincerely,
"John Rich, chairman."

We don't propose to debate the land use act, Mr. Chairman. That would not be in order. What we do raise is the betrayal; what we do observe is the broken promise; what we do condemn is the misleading of the Islands Trust by the minister and his representatives. This misleading of a democratically elected group in the province of British Columbia is unacceptable and deceitful, and it is typical of Social Credit. It is typical because we've seen them do this time and again with other agencies and organizations in the province of British Columbia. In this case, they're doing it to the Islands Trust.

There is a double tragedy here. The first is the one I've already mentioned: this kind of policy deceit is unacceptable as a statement of provincial priority. The second tragedy is that it will continue to undermine an area of most rare and special beauty in this province. The Islands Trust was established by the first New Democrat administration. It was done so in an admittedly conservative attempt to guarantee, safeguard and protect, for generations to come, this special beauty in British Columbia. No one in their right mind wants the Gulf Islands to end up looking like the minister's former municipality. No one wants row housing, shopping marts, fancy highways and major economic development. This would be totally unacceptable in the Gulf Islands. They don't want it, and the current plan they're developing makes that clear.

The Islands Trust is a place of rare and special beauty that must be protected. The protection requires unique measures, unique strength and the consolidation of gains achieved to date. The betrayal that Mr. Rich refers to in his letter is a betrayal, fundamentally, of intelligent and thoughtful planning among the Gulf Islands. What terrifies them is, first, that they have been misled by the minister. That's bad enough. Secondly, and far worse, is that the planning to date to guarantee the integrity of the Gulf Islands has been fundamentally subverted, in their view, by the imposition, as the minister would have it, of judgments made in a bureaucrat's office in Victoria, with a bureaucrat's sense of local priority being as much as they may get out of it.

The first New Democrat administration was proud to have created the Islands Trust. We were proud to have taken that step into the future and proud to have been able to give the residents of the Gulf Islands an opportunity to preserve their unique way of life and the wonderful and particular environment they enjoy. Fifty years from now, the Gulf Islands, if preserved as they are in their current state, will prove to be one of the most stunning recreational opportunities available for the people of greater Vancouver and greater Victoria. Fifty years from now the population on the lower southern Vancouver Island will be in excess of one million persons. In greater Vancouver it will be approximately four to four-and-a-quarter million persons. If we had our wits about us, we would start turning Crown land in the Gulf Islands into a series of regional land and marine parks. Land parks and underwater parks would prove to be, 50 years from now, for the benefit of the millions who will live on the lower Island and in the lower mainland, one of the most astonishing contributions that any earlier generation could have made to their happiness. If we have the guts and if we have the vision, we will allow the Gulf Islands to be preserved in their current state so that 50 years from now the system of marine and land parks which could be created among the Gulf Islands from within our current holdings, and the way of life that can preserved and protected as it currently is, will turn out to be the most magnificent gift that one generation might make to another.

Imagine, Mr. Chairman, what it would be like 50 years from now for a family, taking advantage of what will no doubt be the marine technology of the day, to be able to move from their homes in downtown Vancouver, Surrey, Richmond or North Vancouver and spend a day at a major regional park on one of the Gulf Islands — spend a day at that park enjoying the facilities that would be provided for them and return at night by the same rapid marine transport. They would be able to walk back into time, so to speak. They would be able to walk into what it was like living in the late part of the twentieth century when they themselves lived in the middle of the twenty-first. They would be able to return to a way of life which would otherwise be lost in North America. They would be able to allow their children to see this for themselves. They would be able to remember it themselves, were they of the age to do so. They would be able to see a green and special place preserved forever. They will be able to see these green and special places preserved forever if we allow the Islands Trust to exercise its authority, to exercise the care and caution necessary to protect the islands from the kind of crazed development that we've seen ruin so many other beautiful parts of this province. That mania for development which exists in other rapidly growing areas of British Columbia surely has to be rejected among the Gulf Islands.

There are two acts of betrayal implicit in the correspondence we have now made public. The first is that the Trust feels it has been misled. That is a deceit which is not acceptable. But secondly, in the long run far more devastating and far more intolerable is the way in which the planning purposes of the Islands Trust, which include preservation of this rare chain of islands for now and well into the future, are being undermined and subverted.

I personally take a very conservative approach to development on the Gulf Islands. I would see these islands largely retained as they are now, forever. Of course, the individual facilities would be upgraded and the individual homes would continue to be improved. That much is only

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rational. But to allow major development on any of the islands for any purpose is totally unacceptable, in my view. To allow major development of any sort — especially of the sort that has so disturbed and diseased other parts of this province — would be totally unacceptable.

There is no chain of islands on this whole continent like the Gulf Islands. They cannot be found anywhere else. On the west coast of North America they are utterly unique. The closest equivalent may be the Queen Charlottes, but for obvious reasons of distance and climate, they are no practical equivalent at all, beautiful as they are. Logging interests have done their usual work on the Queen Charlottes, and we see the results. That is another controversy. But on the Gulf Islands, fortunately, we have been able to protect something so stunningly special that to undermine the planning and the human priorities of the people of those islands is to do them a profound disservice.

To reiterate, we were proud to have created the Islands Trust, and I am proud to have a colleague like Jim Lorimer who had the foresight and the political courage to create this Trust against the greedy opposition of the day, which would have seen development proceed apace, in the usual foolish way that it does, ruining all the beautiful things in this province. I am proud to be associated with Mr. Lorimer, and we are proud to continue to support the Islands Trust. In order to do so, though, we need to continue to be able to find ways to give them the special authority they need to protect this special way of life.

The letter I have just read into the record is evidence that this government simply doesn't care about the human, environmental and recreational future of the Gulf Islands. This government seems not to imagine what it could be like 50 years from now to create this system of great regional land and marine parks on and among the Gulf Islands. They seem not to imagine what a wonder could be achieved if we protect these islands now. They don't imagine it, and that is deeply regrettable. They don't imagine it because apparently they don't care to take the trouble to think in these terms. That is even worse. But the final insult is to betray the Islands Trust itself, as this government has done in the correspondence I just read into the record. That betrayal and that failure of vision is unacceptable to this opposition.

I guarantee to the residents of the Gulf Islands that when the New Democratic Party is returned to office at the next provincial election, we will restate, reinforce and re-empower the Islands Trust and the people of the islands themselves to save forever the unique and delightful way of life they have earned on the Gulf Islands of British Columbia.

MR. LORIMER: First I'd like to welcome the staff of the minister who are sitting with him. I want to express the appreciation I have for those people who worked diligently for our administration and are continuing to do so at present. They are trying to keep the minister out of trouble. They are doing their best. It is a difficult task, and I wish them well in their efforts.

One of the major problems this minister has with the municipalities is his inability to deal with them in a cooperative manner. He wants to be in conflict. I know he talks about the fact that I was booed at a UBCM convention. That is correct; I was. There were a few Social Credit aldermen, led by the table of Surrey, at that convention who did do that dastardly deed. The mayor of Surrey at that time was still looking for his roots. He had just had his picture taken with Pierre Trudeau, because he was the candidate for the Liberals at that time. I won’t mention any names. He didn't know whether he was a Conservative, Liberal or Social Credit. He did exercise his lungs at that occasion. I'd like to advise the minister that there have been far better people than Social Credit aldermen who have booed me over the years. In the following year, 1976, I was honoured by UBCM in making me a life member of that organization. That is a compliment I sincerely appreciate, which I have cherished over the years. There's no question that the administration of the New Democratic Party and the local governments in that period had a very high degree of cooperation.

My colleague from Victoria mentioned the monsters that are controlling transit in this province. It's probably a four-legged monster: the Metro Operating Company, the regional districts, the UTA and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. The purpose of having this sort of loosely knit, non-organizational approach to transit is that the chances are that nothing will happen. For seven years this has worked reasonably well. There have been some pluses. I want to compliment the minister and other groups involved for the purchase and replacement of trolleys in Vancouver. This was a good and much needed move. After I've said that, I find it very difficult to find anything else to compliment the minister on over the history of Social Credit in the field of transit since that time.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Try, Jim.

MR. LORIMER: All right, I'll try a little harder.

It appears to me that there have been improvements in Victoria in the Western Community. There have been increases in the number of vehicles, and there have been some increases in scheduling and new runs, which I should have mentioned but neglected to do so. There are two things that I think have been well done. You're going to stretch me if you ask for any more, because I can't think of any.

The Greater Vancouver Regional District took this minister seriously when they were given authority to be partners in the transit operations of the province. They went right ahead, drew plans, and did this and that. They had real planning done for a conventional transit system for that particular area. The costs were basically in. Everything was pretty well ready to go when, unfortunately, the minister took a trip to Los Angeles. He went to Bush Gardens and saw a monorail there, so he came back and said: "Look, we can put a monorail into the Greater Vancouver Regional District, and we'll resolve all these problems." They were going to have a monorail system for moving people in the greater Vancouver area. The debate on this kept on for a year, a year and a half or two years. That held up the transit program for that period of time. He was eventually convinced that that monorail system would not satisfy the needs of the Vancouver area.

The next step was a breakfast he had in Vancouver after he was treated to some tours of the Kingston plant of the Urban Development Corporation. At that time he announced they were going ahead with the ALRT, and that was some months ago. He said this would be the real answer to transit needs in the Greater Vancouver Regional District. The ALRT system may work. It may work well. I don't know whether or not it will work under operational needs, but the minister doesn't know either. No one knows, because it's never been tried. It's an untried system.

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The minister will say that if there are any overruns and so on, there are guarantees. I suggest to the minister that what is guaranteed and what is not guaranteed is debatable; any decision could be made in court as to whether or not breakdowns and so on are guarantees. In any event, even with the guarantees, if the service does break down, the transit rider is left at the bus stop. That is the problem with taking a new technology on an urban system.

Over the years a number of new systems have been tried. In Morgantown, West Virginia they had what they called the Personal Rapid Transit System, the costs of which more than tripled after it was in place so as to correct the problems of the new technology, creating a very expensive system for Morgantown. Another example is France, where a new system was tried. France is now convinced that they are going back to, and remaining with, the conventional light rail systems. In San Francisco, another example, the costs of making the BART system work more than doubled the original estimate of the system. It took years to correct the BART system. Sure enough, it's a very fine system, but it's new technology; we're going to be faced with the same problems with the ALRT system.

In San Diego, Edmonton, Calgary, conventional systems have been put in and they basically have had no problems since start-up time in making corrections, or no operational problems with reference to those systems. We're going to gamble on a system that's never been tried, one that no one except the minister wants; a system that's never been proven; a system that is more expensive than the conventional proven systems; a system that will not carry the number of passengers that will be required and that will undoubtedly cost far more than is even estimated at this particular time.

The calculations indicate that the cost of carrying a bus passenger in the Greater Vancouver Regional District is, at the present time, around $1.50. It is estimated that the ALRT, when it opens in 1986, will cost at least $10 a passenger. That will be the cost when you consider the interest rates, the carrying charge, and so on, of the ALRT debt. I suggest that the cost will be approximately $10 a ride when it opens — not the fare, but the cost to the system.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: That's your suggestion.

MR. LORIMER: That's right.

MR. KEMP: Your mathematics.

MR. LORIMER: No, not strictly mine, but I will be able to show that it is roughly the probable cost.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who worked it out?

MR. LORIMER: The member for North Peace River.

AN HON. MEMBER: Then it could be right.

MR. LORIMER: That's right. That's what I'm trying to say.

Now the guaranteed performance on start-up date is 4,000 passengers per hour. After two years this would increase to 7,500 passengers per hour; the contract calls for 7,500 per hour in the initial stages. What is required, according to the reports from the Greater Vancouver Regional District, on opening day is 11,000 passengers per hour. It will require 20,000 passengers per hour at the turn of the century. It will be a rapidly increasing situation. What this system will provide will probably be maximized by around 7,500 passengers.

My colleague has asked if I will allow him to make an introduction.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is it agreed that the member for Mackenzie can make an introduction?

Leave granted.

MR. LOCKSTEAD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I wish to thank my colleague who presently has the floor for allowing me to make this introduction. It gives me a great deal of pleasure to introduce 15 students, accompanied by their teacher, from beautiful Gibsons. I ask the House to join me in welcoming them.

MR. LORIMER: What we may have here is a system — because I don't think anything will really come of this project of this government.... What is being planned is a system which is going to be inadequate to supply the services needed today, let alone a system which has very limited abilities to expand and provide the needs of moving people in the Greater Vancouver Regional District in the years to come. It is a system that will be of very little value to the province, considering the values that could have been had if they'd used a conventional system. The cost of a conventional system as compared to this system is much cheaper, especially when you consider the risk area. The likelihood of cost overruns on new technology has to be taken into some consideration.

I suggest that what you do when you develop a system for any community is decide first of all what the needs of that community are, what services are required, and then you proceed to determine what is needed. After you've decided all these matters, you take a look at the hardware and decide what hardware is required for the servicing of this particular area. What has happened in this case is that the hardware was picked out first by the minister. Now it is up to the regional district and the other agencies to try to determine how they can fit a service into that particular hardware. The whole thing has been done backwards. It is because the minister wanted to get $60 million from the federal government to assist in construction of a transit system for British Columbia.

MR. BARBER: He wanted a monorail once.

MR. LORIMER: Yes, he wanted a monorail. I mentioned that. He couldn't get $60 million for it. In my opinion he is spending substantially more than $60 million here and will be receiving $60 million from the federal government. He dictated the hardware and left the regional district with the problem of trying to figure out how that hardware could be used to service the needs of the greater Vancouver area. I suggest that the carrying charges of the ALRT alone will probably be about $100 for every man, woman and child in the Greater Vancouver Regional District through taxation, through fares, through their gasoline tax and so on.

The minister has said, in favour of this ALRT system, that it provides a better level of service at lower operating costs. That is something that no one knows. It is debatable at this point, but we don't know if it will supply any service. We

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don't know if it will work, and we don't know what the costs are going to be, because we don't know if the costs are going to be as indicated by the minister or whether cost overruns are going to come in due to the fact that the system needs a great amount of retooling and reworking after it starts operating for real in the Vancouver area. So we don't know whether that is factual or not.

His second claim is that the ALRT will likely carry 25,000 people per hour in each direction. Well, we know that's false; it won't carry that many. If it carries 7,500 an hour it will be doing about its limit. That could increase slightly, but it's nowhere in the area of 25,000 people per hour in each direction, as stated by the minister.

The third thing is that the ALRT can be elevated, so the minister said; and that statement is true. It basically has to be elevated. It has to run on its own cement track and will be elevated. This is one reason he says there are no level crossings. One of the reasons for the extra expense on the ALRT system is the fact that it is a raised system.

The next thing he has mentioned is that ALRT can be used in the Dunsmuir Tunnel, whereas the conventional system cannot. The conventional system can be used with some alterations to the tunnel; there is no real problem for the conventional system to use that particular tunnel.

The next statement he makes is that the ALRT is somehow more Canadian than the conventional system. Now the motor of this ALRT is the LIM, a German motor. The power inventor was British, the computer system is American, and UTDC has been working with American technicians in the United States on the development of the system. So the system isn't Canadian; its head office is in Ontario — it's Canadian to that extent — but the components of the system are not Canadian. I've had a variety of estimates that from 40 percent to 60 percent of the ingredients of the system will be non-Canadian.

Now conversely, the conventional system is not Canadian as far as invention is concerned, but it can be manufactured in any Canadian city by licence from any of the manufacturers and developers. So no matter what system you use, if you want to build your own vehicles, it can be done here. It can be done anywhere, so there is no problem in making the conventional system more Canadian than the ALRT.

The other point regarding the ALRT is the question of its ugliness. In my opinion, it destroys the beauty of the cities with cement columns every 30 metres or so along the streets. It will be a blight on the appearance of the city of Vancouver.

MR. KEMPF: Traffic jams.

MR. LORIMER: Well, the member for Omineca says there will be traffic jams, and I'm not arguing that point at all; I think you're probably right on that. I want to mark that down so people know that the member for Omineca was right. However, there are a number of ways of beating traffic jams. This one we're talking about at the moment is only one of them, and I say a less efficient one than other conventional, tried methods could be if put into place.

There is a big argument now over the question of whether the system should go underground at Commercial and Broadway. Well, I don't know how big an issue that is; I don't think the system will get as far as Commercial and Broadway under this administration. However, it would appear to me that in areas of this sort some accommodation should be made for the needs of the local communities. Some five years ago we had planned to go underground with the regular transit at that particular intersection. I think the needs are probably greater now than they were then. My opinion is that it should go underground, but I don't have any of the latest cost figures on that particular project. What I am saying is there should be cooperation in this area to determine whether the desires of the city of Vancouver can be met in a quiet manner without arguing about it in the press, There's no question that the only reason we're stuck with the ALRT system is the $60 million grant that could be obtained from the federal government. It's my opinion that the $60 million will be spent and there'll still be more money to be spent than would have been necessary in putting in a conventional system in the city of Vancouver.

The problem here is that it's almost getting too late to change this system. It's my hope that the minister will hold back on his efforts on transit and do nothing further at the present time, so when there's a new administration it'll not be too late to scrap the ALRT system and put in a regular system. The longer this goes ahead the more difficult it'll be to put in a proper system for transit in the Greater Vancouver Regional District.

My colleague mentioned the problems with the Islands Trust. I am concerned that the minister is not in the least bit sympathetic with the principles of the Islands Trust. He's not sympathetic with the need to allow the local people to basically administer and look after their own affairs. I would hope that the minister would take another look at the situation on the Gulf Islands. He should beef up the Islands Trust, rather than cut into the authority of the Islands Trust, and give them a little more authority. He might even consider having the Islands Trust set up as a separate district altogether, away from the Capital Regional District and the Greater Vancouver Regional District. Maybe he should take a look at that, I don't know. But I think the problems that may be there could be resolved by giving those islands more authority to look after their own affairs.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Mr. Chairman, in response to the member who has just spoken, the member for Burnaby-Willingdon, let me assure him and the House that this government has no intention of holding back on the provision of much needed transit in Greater Vancouver. To suggest we hold back and go back to where we were during the years of the NDP, when little if anything happened except more studies and travels to various countries to look at different systems, and at best the acquisition of some old buses from Saskatoon.... The fact that the NDP there was successful in selling the NDP here some vehicles they no longer had any use for will not be acceptable. We're moving ahead, we'll have light rapid transit and we'll have a commuter train. We're moving ahead like no other place in North America, and all members in the House should be proud of the tremendous progress being made by this government.

Mr. Chairman, the member began by saying that not much had happened. Well, either he's not really being honest with us, or he's just not been awake enough to see what progress is being made. We have new services in place in 12 small communities throughout the province. That's the expansion in just a couple of years. We have a custom transit service which is moving ahead at a tremendous pace. The budget this year for custom transit services, providing transportation for the handicapped, is $5 million, which is the equivalent of the whole of the budget for all transit during the last year of the NDP administration. That's for custom transit

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only. We have the ALRT system proceeding, and it's being built, incidentally, not only for Vancouver but also for Scarborough, Ontario; Detroit, Michigan; London, England; Malaysia and Toronto. These are other areas that have only in recent months decided to proceed with the same ALRT approach — a Canadian concept for which British Columbia is getting much of the credit.

We have acquired 120 new vehicles in the last year, which the hon. member must realize is more than all of the vehicles purchased during the whole of the NDP administration. We have a commuter rail scheduled for June, 1983, from Port Coquitlam into Vancouver. It's something that many governments have talked about, but it's happening. The progress that is being made in transit throughout the province, especially in greater Vancouver, is something that all of us, regardless of where we sit if we're honest in the House, should be extremely proud of and should be telling all the people about. We've had tremendous progress.

Mr. Chairman, I don't want to take away from those members who wish to make some contribution to what might be done in the ministry with respect to such programs as transit, which we're very involved with, so I'll be brief in commenting on the remarks made by the member about the ALRT system having been copied on some travel experience I had at Bush Gardens, I think he said, in Los Angeles. I don't know where Bush Gardens is. I never went to L.A. to look at any monorail system. As usual, it's a bit of information that was just picked out of the air. It's not accurate. As I said, I don't recall ever having gone to L.A. or any place in California with respect to commuter trains or monorails.

We've had tremendous progress, we'll be continuing with tremendous progress, and we do not intend to put a hold on the provision of transit in British Columbia anyway.

MR. LORIMER: I just have a few remarks to make, Mr. Chairman. He talks about the financing done by the provincial government in the 1972-75 era. Of course, transit was looked after by Hydro at that time, so you have to look at both the costs of transit from the Hydro point of view and from the provincial point of view. The minister is trying to compare apples and oranges.

The other matter is the question of the vehicles purchased by this administration. He said that 120 new vehicles have been purchased over a period of seven years. I don't know what that comes to — under 20 vehicles a year, which is a terrible disgrace. In a period of three years we increased the stock of transit vehicles from around 350 to about 750. That's an average of over 100 vehicles a year.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: That was 120 vehicles for one year. They were all new vehicles, not used.

MR. LORIMER: On two different occasions we purchased 200 new vehicles in a year. You're talking about 120. Mr. Minister, if you're trying to compare the transit period of 1972-75 to the period of 1976 to present day, the comparisons are not very favourable to the latter period. I'm surprised that you might start trying to compare figures.

The commuter system on the CPR line was being actively proceeded with in negotiations with the CPR in 1975. It would have been in operation by 1976. The cheapest form for movement of people would be that system. What do we do? Seven years down the road he's coming up and saying that we're going to have a commuter service to Haney, Mission and so on. It's seven years late. Your colleague from Dewdney (Mr. Mussallem) could have been taking that commuter service to Vancouver seven years ago if there hadn't been a change in administration.

The record in transit, unfortunately, of this administration is about on a par with that of the Social Credit administration prior to 1972. They're very similar. Nothing is going to happen in transit as far as putting a line out to Burnaby, New Westminster and so on, by this administration for a great number of years. They will be pressured into it eventually, but until that pressure becomes very strong there will be lots of talk and announcements, they'll turn sod and there will be headlines in the papers, but as for the person who wants to travel on public transit, he's going to have a long wait.

MR. DAVIS: If the member for Burnaby-Willingdon (Mr. Lorimer) has a headline, it's this: it will cost $10 for each passenger to ride on the new ALRT system.

MR. LORIMER: I said the cost per ride would be $10, not that the passenger would pay $10.

MR. DAVIS: I think the hon. member is confirming what I said: it will cost the public, if not the individual passenger, $10 for each rider on the new ALRT system. He's out by a factor of roughly 12. He's only using traffic one way, so you take the $10 and cut it in half to get two-way traffic. Secondly, he's using a carrying capacity for the system which is roughly one-third of what it actually is; so there's another divisor of three. Finally, he's talking in inflated dollars, dollars that will buy half as much five years from now. So you've got factors of 3, 2 and 2, which when multiplied make 12. Take his $10 figure and divide it by 12 and you come out around 80 cents. That's roughly where we are now. That's the kind of figuring you have to do if you take submissions of the kind he made this morning. The cost would be 80 cents per passenger half a dozen years from now, with the system running at capacity. We have to use inflated figures in terms of estimating what the budget will be to complete the system at least to New Westminster, and probably to Surrey, by that time.

The hon. member for Burnaby-Willingdon still appears to favour the German system, which has been installed in Edmonton and is now operating in Calgary; in other words, go the way the Alberta administration has gone and buy a conventional system — excellent for its type — in Europe. Have the cars and the electronics shipped in from Europe. Have the construction done, of course, in the Vancouver area; but everything else is bought not only outside of British Columbia but outside of Canada. Go conventional; don't take any chances; don't have a B.C. content in terms of manufacturing; play it safe; don't go automated. Also, if one is to follow his remarks word by word — carefully, anyway — run at street level; don't go underground to avoid level crossings; certainly don't go elevated, because that adds to the cost.

If we're to compare both the German system — conventional light rapid transit — and the ALRT system, which is under construction in greater Vancouver, at ground level they cost roughly the same amount. Elevate them both, grade-separate them — in other words, don't get them confused with the traffic, cars, trucks, trains — and they cost roughly the same. Why do they cost roughly the same? It's because the tracks are identical. The guideways, elevated or

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not, are identical. Over 50 percent — more like 60 percent — of the cost is for right-of-way; conventional or unconventional, 50 percent of the cost is the same. The cars are very little different. Substantially there's no difference in the cars or in the cost of installing the wiring. So you get down to the essential difference: that's simply the motor. In each vehicle the motor is in fact different. That's all. If you look only at motors, they're 2 percent or 3 percent of the total cost. So the difference is only 2 percent or 3 percent, if there is a difference in cost between the motor systems.

There is no substantial difference in cost between the conventional system that has been installed in Edmonton and Calgary and the unconventional system which we are buying, the Canadian system, admittedly with technology from all over the world — a technology which has been well-tried and well-developed in various spheres by others in other parts of the world — assembled in Canada, for the first time, by a Crown corporation in Ontario. It has now been under development for half a dozen years. By the time we're operating in 1986 it will have had at least ten years' testing — incidentally, up to two years of operation in the greater Toronto area and perhaps as much as a year in downtown Detroit. It will be a system that will have been well-tested and will indeed have been operational for some time before our larger 12-mile — perhaps as much as 16-mile — system will be carrying passengers in 1986.

In terms of capital costs, these lightweight systems — the system that has been installed in Edmonton and Calgary and is now being installed in Vancouver — are less than half the capital cost of the heavyweight systems such as they have in the London underground, in Toronto, in Montreal and in the BART system. These are lightweight systems and are less than half the capital cost.

One reason they have a good payout in terms of capacity is that these trains can be run more frequently than the heavyweight systems. Being automated, our system will be able to run as frequently as one train with as many as eight cars every two minutes. The Toronto underground at rush hour apparently runs every two minutes. The Toronto underground people are convinced that the only way for them to go for their extensions is to go automated and use precisely the system we are installing. That will allow them to have even shorter headways — in other words, perhaps as frequently as a minute between trains at rush hour. If that comes about, our carrying capacity will be greater than that of the present Toronto underground — the heavyweight system.

In any case, the capacity is substantial — roughly two thirds of that of a heavyweight system if the trains run on similar schedules. If they can run more frequently, the capacities are comparable with heavyweight systems which are at least twice as expensive to build and — because ours is automated — much more expensive to operate. We have chosen an interesting system. We have chosen one which is cost-effective and one which should not do any violence to our fare system in terms of what is charged on the buses and what is charged on SeaBus. It will be the same rate, and you can obtain transfers between these several modes. It will be part of a bigger system that will carry people much more rapidly, without any holdup from the surface traffic in the high-density traffic areas of the lower mainland, beginning in 1986.

The hon. member is skeptical about a start. He said there will be more sod-turnings and so on. Well, a lot of sod has been turned in the last two months since the sod-turning at the western end of Terminal Avenue. We will have just over a kilometre of line in place and operating this time next year. The guideway will be up by November for all to see down Terminal Avenue. A station will also be built. Two cars will be delivered very early next year and they will be running as a demonstration line. Anyone can ride on it during business hours. The public will be invited to comment on the seat layouts and various other features of this novel system. They will see that it is very quiet — virtually a silent system. They will see that while it does intrude visually on the surroundings, it is not nearly as offensive as many of the systems which have been elevated around the world over considerable distances. I know that many people still tend to think of the Chicago elevated or even the Seattle monorail as typical of elevated systems. I think they will be be agreeably surprised by this much lighter-weight design and particularly by the smooth ride, the lack of noise and the certainty of the operation. The two cars will be automated, as the main system will eventually be. They will come sliding into the station and take off again just as elevators do in office buildings. The experience won't be any different; it will be just as predictable and just as smooth.

The hon. member for Burnaby-Willingdon was certainly skeptical as to whether this system will reach Commercial Drive and out into Burnaby. You'll see within the next 12 months that sod is beginning to be turned in Burnaby, and there's some work in New Westminster.

There's been a lot of cooperation. There's been a lot of coming and going, many discussions with the city councils, mayors and aldermen in New Westminster, in Burnaby, in Vancouver itself. The planners in each of those municipalities are happy with the way things are going. The engineers are certainly happy. Staffs are now really enthusiastic about ALRT. There have been concerns about the exact locations of stations — indeed, the location of the centre line of the ALRT in various places. We've moved some of the stations from the sites initially indicated by the GVRD as desirable, in order to meet the planning requirements of the various municipalities. We've moved the centre line in some places. But overall, Mr. Chairman, we have not incurred any increase in costs. We have not had to increase our overall estimates of expenditure — in fact, we have some net overall savings in prospect because of these various changes.

As of this moment there's really only one stretch in the entire 12 miles of the line, from downtown Vancouver to downtown New Westminster, which is in any measure in dispute, and that's some four blocks along Commercial Drive; that's Commercial Drive south of the railway cut, the Great Northern cut. There's a healthy difference of opinion, although the majority favour an elevated line. When I say majority, I include the planners of the city of Vancouver. I include the engineering staff of the city of Vancouver. They all endorse an elevated line down an east lane, parallel to those four blocks on Commercial Drive. They are opposed to a tunnel. They don't see any point in it; they certainly don't think it's cost effective; they think it would be highly disruptive of the businesses in that area. A majority of the council favour an elevated line, so to leave the impression — and I know this is an impression still in some quarters — that the city of Vancouver is opposed to an elevated line down along that section of Commercial is wrong.

The city has had an opportunity to pay the additional costs of a tunnel, has not been able to come up with the money and has never really put this issue to council, because

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it would fail in the council chamber, let alone fail otherwise. They would have to have a plebiscite that would certainly fail. They are not going to risk that; they are not going to risk that embarrassment. They've tried to load it onto the provincial government, and the province rightly has said: "This is an extra." I was going to say it's gold-plating; it's not that — tunnelling can hardly be gold-plating. It's simply an unnecessary expenditure. It's one we can no longer make in any case, because to tunnel now would be to delay the completion of the entire system. We couldn't make the January 1, 1986, deadline. We might miss it by up to a year, and if you can imagine a system which, by then, has cost $500 million or $600 million simply sitting idle for a year at, let's say, 15 percent interest.... That's the kind of cost we would encounter now if we were to change our minds, to put up the additional money for digging that short tunnel, and have it dictate the timing of the operation of this system. So it's a $90 million nightmare in terms of interest charges alone now, let alone the additional $20 million or $30 million cost of a tunnel. It's out of the question. That kind of money would buy a couple of hundred beds at the Vancouver General forever. It would certainly, alternatively, put the system across the Fraser River well into Surrey or into the Coquitlam area.

So it's out of the question from an economic point of view. It's impossible from a timing point of view for the city of Vancouver, or a minority of the aldermen in the city of Vancouver, to continue to talk about this as if it's a possibility. It's nonsense, both from a financial point of view — certainly from a timing point of view — and from a crass political point of view, because they don't even speak for a majority of the council itself.

So we're under construction. We've got a good Canadian system with a high B.C. content. If you include the construction, all of which has to be done here anyway, the B.C. content is of the order of 75 percent. If we'd bought the German system, the B.C. content would have been more like 50 percent. Indeed, if the system really takes off — and it's already now sold to the city of Detroit — it may well sell in other parts of the world, especially if we have it on time and operating for Expo '86. We've got business not just for the motors we're building in the Toronto area and in Detroit but for other parts of the world. So perhaps we've got a substantial manufacturing export industry in the making here as well. I think it's a challenge, but the chances of real difficulties, especially by the time we bring the system into operation, are remote. It's going to be novel; it's going to be the talk of the transit world for a few years. We're the leaders for a moment in time at least. We're on the wave of the future, rather than buying offshore a system of a type which has been installed for a good part of the last hundred years.

One of the things wrong with public transportation is that it's been so old-fashioned, so conventional, so tied up with traffic problems and so capital-intensive that it has not been quite feasible to get people out of their cars and into public transit. We're going to be doing it in British Columbia. We're going to be doing it with Canadian-assembled technology, if it isn't totally Canadian technology. We're going to be doing it in a cost-efficient way, on budget and on time. I think this is an accomplishment of which we'll all be proud. Perhaps the opposition demurs or has to strike attitudes as if it's demurring now. In the end, they will be applauding the system. There's no way if, God forbid, they were ever to be the party in power in this province that they would turn the clock back.

They'd soon be boasting about it as the finest system in the world; a Canadian system; a system with a large B.C. content. We were the first, and we have the best. That's the kind of description which I'm sure increasingly they, as well as us, will be attaching to ALRT and rapid transit in the lower mainland.

MR. LORIMER: I'll only need one minute, Mr. Chairman. I don't really want to elaborate on an answer to the hon. member for North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Davis), except to say that he is employed by the government to sell this particular system. He has to be very keen on this particular system. I'm sure that deep down in his heart he'd rather see another system here than what he has to try to sell.

He mentioned a number of things that I had said which I didn't really say. He said that I was opposed to any elevation of transit. Of course I'm not. With a conventional system, you can elevate wherever you want. If you want to elevate over or under a street, whatever you want to do, you can do it with a conventional system. They do that in all the cities in Europe.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Name one.

MR. LORIMER: Frankfurt has them all over the place, under and over. You were there. You saw them and rode them. There's no question about the capability of this to occur if you so desire. You can do it initially or later on if the need arises.

The level crossing deal is normally controlled by lights which are tied in with the other street lights. It's a question of a stoplight as far as the street traffic is concerned for a matter of 25 or 30 seconds. It's nothing like a normal traffic light. The driving public are used to this sort of thing, so I don't think it's a big deal at all. What we've had here in transit is three years of plenty from 1972-75, and now we're faced with seven years of famine. That sums up the transit history over the last ten years.

MR. GABELMANN: It's been an interesting and important discussion, Mr. Chairman, but I'm going to shift gears, if I may, from what is probably the single biggest issue in the estimates debate for the minister. I want to talk about some issues that are pretty significant to people in my constituency. They're small in this context, but just as important to the individuals concerned. I have six specific issues.

The first of those is that I want to say thank you to the minister for something. We in Campbell River, as in a number of other communities in this province, have a public bus system now that, quite frankly, works very well. In that community we were very fortunate in that we had an immense amount of snow the first week it went into service, and people had to use it, and because they had to use it that first week they got used to it. It has a very high ridership — among the highest, I think, in the province — and it is fulfilling a need that is quite evident. I think it's a good service, and I think that should be said. I have a lot of critical things to say about the government on many occasions, but I think when something good happens, it's important to acknowledge that.

[Mr. Richmond in the chair.]

So while we have a good system in the community in terms of public transit, the rest of North Island is concerned about what might happen to the other very good public bus

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service, the PCL. The minister was at a meeting in Campbell River, and he knows that the service provided by the public bus company — our company, his, of all of us in British Columbia — is widely used and accepted and absolutely essential to the lives of people who live in isolated communities, particularly in the northern parts of Vancouver Island. I think it's probably true throughout the Island, but people who live in communities like Port McNeill or Woss rely absolutely on that public bus service. I know the minister knows what my feeling is, and that is that the existing service must be maintained. It must not be sold off to Greyhound or to any other private operator, because, quite frankly, they would not continue the same level of service. Just as public transit is essential in the city of Vancouver — in the metropolitan region of the lower mainland — it is essential in the more isolated areas of our province. I just urge the minister to make sure that he does not proceed with any plans he might have had to sell off that existing bus service.

The third thing I want to say is that there is a problem in local government in terms of a sense of local decision-making within regional districts when it comes to islands that are part of electoral areas, and I want to talk just very briefly about this. The regional districts are established in a way that in some cases they have an entire island — for example, Quadra Island — as one electoral area; in other cases they have a group of islands which are in one electoral area. In either case, voters on those islands are able to elect a representative to go to the regional board to make decisions for that island. There is an intense feeling on the part of residents of those islands that their desires and their wishes are not listened to as a result, really, of there not being an effective ward system.

Interjection.

MR. GABELMANN: No, there is no comparison at all between local government on Cortes Island and the ward system in Kitsilano; they are as different as apples and oranges. And for the minister to try to say that what I'm saying is a justification for his particular point of view in the city of Vancouver is totally wrong in fact. I think it's grasping at straws, because he has very little else to grasp at in terms of trying to support his ludicrous position on the Vancouver ward-system proposal. What I want to try to talk about, Mr. Chairman, is that what happens for people on these islands is not true in the rest of a regional district in which you have electoral areas. I happen to live in one electoral area in the regional district of Comox-Strathcona, and I do not have a sense of frustration that is akin at all to the sense of frustration I would have if I lived on one of the islands that is in another electoral district. The idea of electoral districts within regional districts is sound and appropriate, but some mechanisms need to be found to make sure that the wishes of islands residents — and I'm thinking particularly of the two regional districts in my riding, Comox-Strathcona and Mount Waddington.... There must be some way of providing more local government to those islands within the regional district, because islanders are a unique kind of people. They often move to those places because they want a different kind of lifestyle. They have chosen to do that. They put up with a great number of inconveniences in terms of public services, health care, education, transportation and a whole variety of things, and they're prepared to put up with those kinds of inadequacies in service.

But what they want in exchange, which I think is a fair request, is more control over decisions that affect development. growth and general public policy on those particular islands. The way in which the regional districts now operate does not leave the people on those islands with that sense of confidence. That's not the case, however, in the other wards — the minister wants me to use that word — that exist in the regional districts. There is not that sense of lack of power that the islanders feel. The electoral district of Quinsam is not much different from the electoral district of Oyster River in Comox-Strathcona, in the sense that it's part of one continuum. It's all part of the suburbs, if you will, of Campbell River and is therefore not at all similar or akin to another electoral district that includes one island.

In all of the thinking and monkeying around that the minister is doing with local government, I hope that, instead of moving in the direction of more control in Victoria, he will in fact move in the direction of more control at the local ward level, the local electoral district level, particularly where those local electoral districts have a unique kind of boundary, a boundary of water, which means they are an island. Some very serious concern and consideration needs to be given to that.

The fourth point I want to raise this morning relates to the community of Nimpkish. This is a difficult one to deal with because it's not simple; it's a very complicated question. We have here, in every sense of the word, a community, one that has existed for decades in the Nimpkish Valley, alongside Nimpkish Lake. It has existed as a logging camp but also as a community, and it's been a combination of both. Two thirds of the community sits on Crown land that has been alienated by being placed within a TFL; one-third is owned privately by the company involved, Canadian Forest Products. The company has decided to close the camp, and therefore the community, although not immediately. They're doing it on a phasing-out basis. They're not telling anybody yet that they have to leave, but as they leave the houses are torn down. At a time when we have a great housing crisis, when costs are out of line and we're alienating forest land in other communities in North Island in order to put people into new homes; I find it strange that at the same time we're burning and tearing down existing houses, particularly when there's a strong desire on the part of the residents to maintain that community, to maintain their homes and their lifestyle. It may be — and I acknowledge this — that it's uneconomic to maintain that community, but I haven't yet seen enough evidence to prove that to me. There are costs to the company that are out of line; if the current method of providing power, for example, was continued in that community, it would be too costly. However, I think there is enough evidence to suggest some doubt about whether or not the community can be economically viable initially as an improvement district under the Municipal Affairs ministry. It would be a simple process. It does not require the consent of the company, in the sense that much of the community exists on public land even though it's in the TFL. There's some suggestion that if the company doesn't want to sell its land to the improvement district the project can't go ahead; but that's not so, because two-thirds of the land involved is public land.

I'm not saying that any one of us could say categorically that the community must be maintained. I don't want to recommend to people that they maintain the community if their individual costs are such that they can't survive, or if the costs to the regional district are such that it's out of line. I

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wouldn't ever recommend that. But I don't know that we've got enough information to suggest that the community should be closed down, and until that definitive and definite information is received and discussed with the local residents, I don't think CanFor should be allowed to continue tearing down existing homes in that community. Some decision will have to be made very quickly, and it will have to be made with the full involvement and consent of the people who live there. They are reasonable people and will not want to pay outlandish costs for services if in fact that would be the result of establishing a community and improvement district there.

I urge the minister to proceed with haste in this issue, but also with full consultation with the local community group.

The fifth issue relates to the question of industrial taxpayers of a large size. I'm thinking particularly of Utah Mines outside of Port Hardy, who are included in the District of Port Hardy for tax purposes. It was a funny boundary, designed to make sure that their taxes would go into the district in which most of the workers would be living. We have a unique situation there in that a community which lies halfway between Port Hardy and the mine is not a beneficiary of the taxes from the mine, yet many people who work in the mine live in that community — the community of Coal Harbour. They get no tax benefit and are in the middle of a very expensive sewer and water project, as the minister knows. I won't describe it any other way at the moment, but it is a pretty complicated, costly and unfortunate situation. One thing that might assist that community would be if they too could share in some part of the tax revenue from that particular mine. I say that because I think that would be a fair distribution. Some small portion of the revenue from the mine would be a fair recognition that Coal Harbour serves as a community which services that mine as well.

The final point I want to make is a rather technical one, I guess. I don't understand why it is that when an alderman is elected to council and then perhaps sits on the regional district.... If that person is a staff person and receives a salary, he or she is allowed to continue to earn their salary. But if that person is a worker on wages, they cannot be reimbursed for lost time. That seems to me to be a very unfair situation. I am thinking particularly of one case in Port Alice where a man who works in the pulpmill there sits on the council of Port Alice and is often a delegate to the regional district. He cannot claim wages for his lost time, yet other people who work for the company but receive salary are not docked their salary in the way the guy working for wages is docked, in effect. I think that is a very serious impediment in the system. In effect it denies working people the same opportunity to sit on council or on the regional board. I think that is something that should be dealt with by the minister. It is quite obviously an unfair situation.

MR. MACDONALD: I trust and expect that the minister will answer the remarks of the member for North Island in due course. Do you want to answer now and then I'll resume?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: We recognize there is a problem with respect to regional districts, particularly the electoral areas. Certainly there is a common complaint from all areas of the province. People very often find that they really don't have a say in the decisions made about them or for them at the regional district level in that the only person they can really get at if they don't like the decisions is the electoral area director. It could be that he was in the minority or that he was on their side but the power of the board decided otherwise. We need to look at the whole of the regional district concept, the representation in the regional district and how people vote on planning matters or other such things affecting the lives of people. We are doing this through the Municipal Act Review Committee. The UBCM, as you are aware, is very involved. They are consulting with regional districts and municipalities in all parts of British Columbia as well. So it is being addressed. Hopefully there will be something made public in September that will give residents everywhere an opportunity to become involved in the discussion.

The matter of Nimpkish is a difficult one. Only a few days ago we had a meeting here in Victoria with the electoral area director for the Nimpkish area, the chairman and other members of the Mount Waddington regional board and representatives — Mr. Gail and Mr. Bentley — of Canadian Forest Products. It was thoroughly discussed. As the member stated, it is a very difficult problem. CanFor has pretty well determined that they would like to see the development take place at Woss at opposed to Nimpkish. They are naturally worried about the tremendous ongoing expense in running the community of Nimpkish. They are allowing people to gradually find alternate accommodation. They are not pushing anyone. They have assured us that they will continue on that course. However, there comes a point, I am sure, when the remaining numbers will be such that it is terribly uneconomic, at which time I don't know exactly what they might do. It is reasonable to assume that it wouldn't last forever, so it is a problem.

We have also, in discussing it with the regional district, assured them that we would see a plan developed for the Nimpkish Valley to determine where the growth is, how the growth will go in the future, and hopefully to address the question of people being able to purchase their own lot. Everyone is now living on leased or rented lots. It's not a good situation for people who love the Nimpkish Valley and who probably want to live the rest of their lives there, but who want something they can call their own. That needs to be addressed. It will be addressed. We are holding discussions with the regional district on it now.

Coal Harbour. We've had real difficulty with the sewer problem there. It's unfortunate that the sewer and water programs developed as they did — especially the water program, of course, because they can't find the most appropriate and best source without spending huge gobs of money. I realize that the area of Coal Harbour provides accommodation for a lot of people who work at the mine, just as Port Hardy does. But as I see it, the only way that could ever really be resolved would be for Coal Harbour to incorporate and work out some agreement between Port Hardy and the mine for tax sharing, such as was done in the Elk Valley or, alternatively, for Coal Harbour to join Port Hardy in a district municipality and thereby obtain their sharing. All of these are sort of wishful thinking, I guess, but they are really the only solutions, as I see it, and that isn't much help.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

MR. MACDONALD: Mr. Chairman, I'm coming back to the minister in relation to transit, ALRT, vertical air rights, the Olma brothers.... Now you stop clapping. The moment I said Olma brothers, the minister stopped clapping. I think he knows what I'm talking about.

[ Page 8111 ]

I don't think your security is good on the ALRT system. I think you're allowing the usual thing that accompanies some public projects under Social Credit in this province to happen, which means ripoffs by private developers. I think the minister is naive about it. I want to give one example of what I'm talking about in some detail, and hope that the thing isn't happening on this kind of a scale throughout the rest of the alignment for the ALRT. The area I'm referring to.... I wonder if the minister can guess what it is. I think he can.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Which one?

MR. MACDONALD: Terminal and Main in Vancouver; ALRT station; big planned development.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Beautiful.

MR. MACDONALD: Yes, the development may be good. You go to Montreal and you see that over their metro stations they have hotels — sometimes commercial, sometimes residential and sometimes recreational development. It's good. It's hard, maybe, on the outlying areas, which lose some of their commercial business to these developing new centres, but the touch of the magic wand which makes station sites on rapid transit lucrative real estate is from the public. They create tremendous real estate value. The minister is creating those real estate values, and not recovering for the public what he should. Those air rights should remain in the public domain.

Let me tell you about Main and Terminal. It was in December 1980 that the provincial government announced that they were in favour of the Ontario system and that the UTA would be going ahead with light rapid transit. At that point, as if they were good socialists, the Premier and the hon. minister opposite publicly announced that ALRT might help pay for itself through the sale of air rights along the route, leasing transit station space. I don't agree with that statement, but it's better than nothing. I think the public should retain equity in the air rights and lease them out for development so the flippers and speculators and — as inevitably happens in these cases — friends of the Social Credit government don't reap the benefit that should go to the public.

Anyway, they were thinking about the problem. They estimated that approximately one million square metres — not square feet — of commercial development could occur within the ALRT station areas under the present plans. That's not unlikely, because anybody who's travelled throughout the rest of the world — Frankfurt, Montreal, Toronto — knows what can happen in these lucrative real estate areas.

On January 21, 1981, the GVRD report was released, which argued for the revenue from the sale of air rights to come back into the transit system; other statements were made to the same effect, but nothing too much was happening. Then the pace of events quickened mysteriously. On April 25, 1981, the federal government promised $60 million towards the construction of ALRT, as I call it — I'm the only one who does. Ten days later, on May 5, 1981, businessman Don Docksteader purchased 3.7 acres of land on the northwest corner of the Main and Terminal intersection for $3 million from Ocean Construction Supplies Ltd. I've got the legal description here, but I won't give it to the House. The assessment at the time that Docksteader paid $3 million was $2.1 million, so he was paying $900,000 over the supposed market price. But he was not to suffer by reason of his purchase, because on May 14.... It's funny how a property that laid dormant all these years, with Ocean Cement using it as a construction site, suddenly becomes very attractive. It's hot stuff on the real estate market.

MR. SKELLY: Another miracle.

MR. MACDONALD: Not of the loaves and fishes, but a miracle of the Olma brothers, who, incidentally — and I put it on the record: they were the ones who, on May 14, took it off the hands of Docksteader within nine days for $4,165,000; they put a mortgage of $4.1 million on it right away.... No, the reported sale was $4.9 million, and they mortgaged it right away. I've noticed that the banks are very generous to flippers and speculators in real estate, far more so sometimes than they are to good, thriving industrial businesses throughout the province of British Columbia. After nine days Docksteader walks off with $1.9 million in his pocket. That was a result of taking advantage of public rights. Why did the Olma brothers, Bob and Jerry, pay such an incredible price increase for the land at the northwest comer of Main and Terminal? Why would they shell out $4.9 million? Was there a leak, Mr. Minister, in your security? Were they roadrunners who somehow knew where the new transit station was to be? Did they have second sight? Did they know that it wasn't going to be placed in the logical position on the east side of Main, where the CNR station is and where there's a lot of public land — which could have been the ALRT alignment? It's very strange. The Olma brothers know this government as they know the lines on their hands. They were the ones who got the neighbourhood pub in north Kennedy, after beating out an earlier applicant who didn't know they had applied, and who threw in a political appeal to the minister at the time. the now Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. Nielsen). They are the ones who got, from B.C. Hydro, land by their shopping centre under the transmission lines in North Delta for $67,000. Hydro was bilked. It gave them immense leverage in terms of additional parking and in the development they could make of their shopping centre.

The Olmas have been assisted, particularly in the neighbourhood pub application, by the member for Delta (Mr. Davidson). They are fund-raisers for the Social Credit Party. They are strong supporters. They take out ads in the White Rock News and things of that kind to extol what they say are virtues of the Social Credit Party. What virtues they espy in that group escapes me. But that's who they are. They come in, flippers and speculators that they are, and pay $4.9 million for this site, and before long they have an agreement from the minister — it doesn't take too long. That was May 15. Nine days after the Docksteader purchase, the Olma brothers formed their company, O&K Tract Development Ltd: directors Gerald Olma, Robert Olma and four other names representing the K in the company, just businessmen. I do not recognize them either as friends or enemies so I'm not going to bother putting their names on the record. The next development was May 29 when the Premier and Bill Davis signed the ALRT agreement. The alignments were then coming to the public notice because there was mention at that time of a route along Main Street — not necessarily the northwest comer but a route along Main Street.

On June 2, 1981 the hon. member for North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Davis), who had nothing to do with the sale

[ Page 8112 ]

and purchase of this, came into the picture, but the deed had largely been done. He is an expediter of the ALRT project.

In September 1981 the UTA began negotiating with O&K for the use of their land. The hon. member for North Vancouver–Seymour knows about this. I am not criticizing that hon. member. If this is to be the station....

AN HON. MEMBER: What was the date?

MR. MACDONALD: The negotiations began in September 1981. The hon. member is helping UTA and putting a lot of effort in there without remuneration, as far as I can see, and that is praiseworthy. If the boys already have the station site then the horse has escaped from the barn by that time. It is very hard to recover much, particularly when they are as influential as these particular developers are.

We pass on to January 25, 1982, when the minister announced that the UTA had made an agreement with the boys — O&K — to build the Main Street transit station on their land. Those developers had faith — because they had paid $4.9 million for the site and given Docksteader a profit of $1.9 million — that the provincial government would come along with its magic wand to endow their property as a transit station. Their faith was rewarded.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Why didn't you buy it?

MR. MACDONALD: Why didn't I buy it? If I did I'd do it in Ontario or Tanzania or somewhere. I don't think MLAs should be involved in public business that's close to government in the province of B.C. Some of them are. The member for Delta (Hon. Mr. Davidson) is the worst example.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please.

MR. MACDONALD: I am saying that, and I'll back it up if necessary. It shouldn't happen, and it is happening.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I will ask the member to make reference to the administrative actions of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs.

MR. MACDONALD: All right, I'll come back.

What was the agreement that was signed? The UTA got the station for a dollar. The station is to be part of a 650,000 square-foot hotel, retail and commercial complex. The UTA — in return for making the station a part of the O&K development and assigning their rights around the station to O&K — would receive two dollars for every square foot of private commercial development on the O&K lands. The UTA estimates this would bring $1.3 million back to them. Let's all clap about that. Docksteader, whoever he is, got $1.9 million — more than the almost three million people of the province of British Columbia — and the minister claps. He thinks that's great: $1.3 million coming back to three million people and Docksteader already, in an early flipping thing, gets $1.9 million. How much are the Olma brothers going to make? You are now in partnership with them.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Who cares?

MR. MACDONALD: The money comes out of the public pocket and you've given away a franchise of rights. "Who cares," says the minister. What's a million?

I'll tell you who cares. One guy who cares is George Puil, an alderman with Social Credit proclivities on the city council of the city of Vancouver, who termed the deal "rotten and unethical." He certainly cares more than the minister.

Now we go on, Mr. Chairman, to the point that we now have..... Oh, my gosh, I'm too loud for the learned Speaker. He can always retreat to his sanctum sanctorum. I'm guilty of waking some people up, Mr. Chairman. I shouldn't do that. It's kind of early in the morning.

The provincial government are now in a form of partnership with the Olma brothers and their O&K company. The reason they're in partnership is that the larger the commercial development at that station site, the more UTA gets back at $2 a square foot, which is a very small portion of the commercial value of this development. Now you're in partnership. The hon. member for North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Davis) recognized that, because he's quoted as saying that he wanted the UTA not only to be happy but to have a stake in getting more square footage. The UTA gets crumbs and the developers get croissants. Later he said: "We're for them getting more square footage. We've got a financial interest in getting more square footage."

Okay, from the public point of view, we're getting something back, but we are now in partnership to see that the O&K company gets maximum development on that site. I suppose the whole thing could be run off the rails by the Vancouver city council, but I don't believe they can stop the minister. I know the approval of the plan still has to go before the Vancouver city council. The Olma brothers, who paid that money, obviously don't think council's going to or can stop them. The minister doesn't think they can be stopped. The member for North Vancouver–Seymour doesn't think they can be stopped, and says that this deal is a trend-setter and is going to set a precedent for other station developments along the route. Well, heaven help the public of this province if this is a trend-setter.

Mr. Minister, what you Social Crediters do not understand is that when a real estate speculator or flipper like Docksteader or the Olma brothers make profit out of a public development, the public finally pays. They might pay it by going into one of the hotel rooms 50 years from now; they might pay it in the price of the goods in a sort of inflationary way, but there is no money that comes from outside. When these people rip off, the public pays. I can't get that through the heads of Social Crediters.

MS. SANFORD: They don't understand.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I understand socialism.

MR. MACDONALD: You understand, eh? Because Social Credit seems to believe that you print money or it comes from somewhere, and if you let these friends or these people like the Olma brothers get these public franchises and get rich on them, it's not hurting any other people. Of course it's hurting other people.

You could have paid for this whole ALRT line, Mr. Minister, if you had kept the air rights and the commercial development rights, which are created by the public, in the public domain and leased out. We are talking about millions of dollars here. There is the necessity to protect neighbourhoods like Commercial Drive and further south. The money is important so that that ALRT or whatever system is put in will respect residential and commercial areas. So why not

[ Page 8113 ]

take advantage of what could be done with proper planning in the interests of the people of the province?

So I say, Mr. Chairman, that the minister has been very negligent in allowing this kind of thing to happen. I say there is something wrong with his security, because it seems perfectly obvious, to anyone looking at the facts, that these people knew where the station was going to be before the public knew. I'm not saying the minister personally has anything to do with that, but obviously they knew; you don't shell out money suddenly for a station site unless you know something. Speculation in this area is something that costs the public very dearly indeed.

Perhaps the minister will be kind enough to answer me and tell us how great that $1.3 million is that the UTA will get back. Perhaps he'll say this is a trend-setter for the rest of the stations. I sure as heck hope it is not; I haven't investigated any other potential station sites. But there has been a leak, Mr. Minister, and you ought to tighten up your security and investigate this thing. You still have time to put the station on the other side of Main Street, which is federal public land. I don't think that would hold up the ALRT. Dealing with the federal government? I'd rather deal with the federal government than with the Olma brothers — to the Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Williams) who is signing his mail and smiling with difficulty for this time of the morning. I leave it at that. It is an example that shouldn't be allowed to repeat itself. It seems to me that it is favouritism, once again, to friends of the government.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Just in brief response, the impression being created by the hon. member is that somehow there is some ripoff, some mysterious wrongdoing.

MS. SANFORD: There certainly is.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I suppose those assumptions, as expressed in the House, are intended to create an impression. We are not unaccustomed to that in the House, as the hon. member who just spoke is well aware. The same thing was done to Mr. Vogel. These sorts of things do happen.

MR. MACDONALD: I'm not an impressionist painter. I give detail.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: You label people, you create impressions, you make them out to be crooks. Possibly that is a style with the socialists. I am beginning to believe it is very much a style with the socialists. It could well be that one of the parties made a good deal on the purchase or it may be too that the other party paid far too much. If that party paid far too much and they're into a mortgage company or the bank at 18 or 20 percent, possibly today they are wishing they hadn't purchased it. Who knows? I can't say, but the second member for Vancouver East makes no reference to that. He only makes out that there is a ripoff. The land was designated as a station location when I was still a member of the Greater Vancouver Regional District, seven or eight years ago. It was designated as a station location in all of its studies. Anyone here, anyone anywhere, looking at those studies could have seen that it intended to be a station location. One of those studies that designate it as a station location, the hon. member for Burnaby-Willingdon (Mr. Lorimer) will agree, was done during the time the NDP was government. Anyone could have seen it in that study, picked up on it or made some moves to acquire the land.

It's been in the GVRD studies and it's been a station location for, I think, seven years. The ownership of the site was investigated, and the opportunity to purchase was seriously considered, both by the city of Vancouver and the UTA. But the cost was considered prohibitive.

MR. MACDONALD: How much?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I don't know what the cost was, but the city of Vancouver decided it was too expensive to purchase.

What do you do? Are the socialists suggesting that you just take it away from people? If somebody owns it or has owned it, and they want a particular price, and it's too much, you have a choice not to purchase. Is the member for Comox (Ms. Sanford) suggesting that government — whatever the government — should simply move in and take it from people? I think that's their suggestion.

MR. MACDONALD: You have expropriation powers, of course.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: So you agree you would take the property from the people.

The property is still zoned for industrial purposes. The land required for the station was sold to the UTA for $1. No mention has been made of that by the second member for Vancouver East.

MR. MACDONALD: Not the land.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: He's now shaking his head. He says: "No, no, it's not true." It is true.

MR. MACDONALD: I didn't say that.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: The land was sold to the UTA for $1. Furthermore, they will pay $2 per square foot for every square foot of development that takes place on that land.

So you see, when the whole story is told, it's considerably different from the little bits and pieces and the impression the opposition tries to leave that somehow, any time and every time somebody makes a profit.... Perhaps it isn't that somebody bought cheap or sold for too much or somebody paid too much. It is a ripoff. I am very happy, and I wish there were a whole lot of people making profits in British Columbia and Canada today, because somebody's got to pay the taxes. Frankly, the more people make a profit the more taxes will be available to whatever government wherever. I realize that perhaps this was a sale which was unusual in that it was made very shortly after the first purchase. I realize that it would appear there was a considerable profit made. I don't know all the details. All I know is that the land that was purchased and sold had been designated as a station site for possibly as long as seven years.

When I said, "Why didn't you buy it?" across the floor here I was perhaps being somewhat facetious, but what I meant to say was that it was really available for anyone to purchase who wanted to gamble those sorts of dollars. Somehow I would suspect — maybe with the economic circumstance being what it is in the country today — that the

[ Page 8114 ]

purchaser could very well be glad to sell it for what it paid for it so many months ago. This could well be, I don't know. They made a deal. Grown people in a free country made a decision, and that is their decision to make. Why should government step in and say, "You can't do this," or "You can't do that," and "It is thus because we say so because we're the government"? Hopefully that is still foreign to us in British Columbia and Canada, and hopefully that will remain foreign to British Columbia and Canada because we will hopefully continue to be a free country.

MR. MACDONALD: The land couldn't have been designated for an ALRT station before December 1980, because there was no announcement from the government that there was to be rapid transit; a lot of speeches and promises.

Surely under that minister, the public could have done as well as Docksteader acquiring that land. You say that at the time Docksteader got it, it was going to be a station. Why wouldn't you pay what he paid? That would have been a heck of a good deal for the people of the province of British Columbia.

Interjection.

MR. MACDONALD: What did Docksteader pay? He paid $3 million. I think that's overpriced. I think he was expecting that he would be able to turn the thing over very quickly. Usually when you sell again in nine days, the guys you're selling to are part of the purchase that you made.

I mentioned the expropriation powers. You have them. You've sought to expand them. You've made speeches to that effect. It's a commercial area. You're not taking somebody's home. You're protecting the public and future generations by bringing into the public domain the land that makes it possible for the public to have the benefit of the air rights. There's nothing wrong with that. Apart from all the business I mentioned earlier, the minister was very careless in not acquiring that land and other station sites for the public. You could make a heck of a dent toward the payment for the ALRT if the public had those rights, and not some private developer who slipped in there.

The minister also said that they sold the land for $1. I don't think they sold the land to UTA for $1. They sold UTA the rights to use it as a station, the right-of-way, not as a freehold. I'm just correcting the minister on a minor point.

The basic point is that once again the speculators take advantage of the government. You don't move in first. You say that you know where the station is going to be. For heaven's sake, why didn't you move in and protect the public? Why are they faster on the draw than you? Why are they allowed to be faster than you in getting hold of these valuable rights? I think they could only have done that and spent that kind of money if they had had second sight.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I suppose that you could argue that whenever the government proposes anything, be it a road, a public building or whatever has some impact in the community, somehow the government should acquire all the land on either side or all around. If that's the sort of thing you want to do, I suppose it's a matter of how far you proceed with that. You could end up with the state owning all the land or at least all the land that has any worth.

If that's your philosophy, then I can appreciate that sort of argument. Let me say, however, that it probably has been tried in a lot of eastern European countries, but it hasn't worked in those countries either. Not only has it been tried in a lot of eastern European countries where it hasn't worked, it was tried by the NDP when they purchased the land in North Vancouver with taxpayers' dollars for $20 million, and then found immediately after they had purchased it that another government had some other ideas about the land and said much of it must be park. I was on the regional district at the time, and I recall the debate that took place between the then Minister of Municipal Affairs, the member for Burnaby-Willingdon (Mr. Lorimer), the city of North Vancouver and the regional district. That city said it wanted much of that for park purposes. The $20 million NDP purchase turned out to be a $12 million loss for the taxpayers of British Columbia, because it had to be disposed of at $8 million.

Mr. Member, even though the socialist philosophies and theories may sound good, in practice they don't always work. They didn't work in Poland; they didn't work in Hungary; they didn't work in Czechoslovakia; they didn't work in Romania; they haven't worked in Russia; they haven't worked in China; and they didn't work in British Columbia for the short while that the socialists had some control here. Socialist philosophy may sound reasonably okay in theory, and unfortunately, time and time again a lot of people everywhere in the world are duped by this socialist philosophy. It isn't going to work. It's proven that it hasn't worked, it didn't work in eastern Europe, and it didn't work in British Columbia. It won't work and I hope it may never be tried again.

MR. MACDONALD: I don't know why this minister is not the Premier. He's a demagogue who makes some of the others look very amateurish. Talking about eastern Europe! Come on, Mr. Minister. We're not talking about that. Let's talk about somewhere closer to home. What about Holland or Germany? Here is an example of what I'm talking about in a free democratic society that doesn't give things away to political favourites but protects the people. You go down one of the autobahns in Germany and you come to a rest-stop. The rest-stop is owned by the highways system, and then on that they allow private enterprise to flourish. There are concessions for restaurants, hotels, bowling and so forth.

AN HON. MEMBER: Bowling?

MR. MACDONALD: Whatever it is. Never mind the Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mr. Wolfe) and his big gamblers and all that.

The result is that the highways system gets a good lease and a lot of small businessmen make a good living in a private enterprise way with their leases on that kind of public land.

You don't know what I'm talking about. You talk about Hungary and Russia and all that, but all the while you keep giving it away. Every time you give away something like a public right, who is it you give it away to? Somebody who has contributed to your own campaign funds. You sit there and say you don't know it, eh? You know the Olma brothers as well as you know me, and you know they are big Socreds. You can't be so naive as to not know what was happening at that station.

Interjection.

MR. MACDONALD: Let me hear what the former Attorney-General is saying.

[ Page 8115 ]

Interjection.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. I will ask the hon. government House Leader (Hon. Mr. Gardom) to come to order.

MR. MACDONALD: I think he should withdraw that. You say what you like about me so long as you don't tell the truth.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I would remind all members of the committee that imputation of dishonourable motive is unparliamentary and would have to be censured by the Chair.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I don't know the Olma brothers that well. That is true. I have seen them and I understand they are very successful business people. Frankly, I would suspect that most successful people could be supportive of Social Credit. I don't fault them for that. If, because some people have succeeded in business, they are therefore supportive of the free enterprise system which has made it possible for them to be successful in business, I don't fault them for that. I have been reasonably successful in business myself, and maybe that's one of the reasons I sit here day after day being denied the sunshine outside. It is because I am scared of socialism — and that's fine.

MR. LORIMER: It's been said many times that this minister tells the truth half of the time.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Did you make any reference to another hon. member? I'm very serious when I ask this.

MR. LORIMER: Yes, I said that the minister told the truth half of the time.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I will have to ask you to withdraw that, please, if it's an imputation of dishonourable motive. The Chair doesn't wish to engage in semantics; I would just ask you to withdraw it, if you had any suggestion of imputing dishonourable motive to another member.

MR. LORIMER: I would certainly withdraw the statement that he tells the truth half of the time.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would you care to state it as an unqualified withdrawal.

MR. LORIMER: Certainly I will.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much.

MR. LORIMER: I want to make two corrections to the minister's statements, first on the marine park in North Vancouver. The property acquired by the province in North Vancouver was purchased for a number of reasons. It was announced at the time that there would be a marine park for the benefit of those people on the North Shore; it was also to be the station for the SeaBus area, and a number of other things. This land was purchased for a comprehensive development in arrangement with the city of North Vancouver. What happened to the land after the election of 1975 I will take no responsibility for; that is strictly within the jurisdiction of the present administration. Whether they gave the land away, wasted it, or whatever they did, it's up to them to answer for it, not our administration.

Another thing the minister said was that everybody knew where the stations were going to be on the line through Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster, because the GVRD had prepared the plans. The GVRD were not involved in transit during that period of 1972-75, except in an advisory position. At that time we had a Bureau of Transit Services, which looked after transit planning for the province of British Columbia. We didn't have a four-headed monster to look after transit. The Bureau of Transit Services had made no decision, and I as minister had made no decision on where any of the stations were going to be, because we were going to pick up the land for the stations for the benefit of the people of British Columbia. We weren't going to give it away to our friends. We were going to pick it up in the name of the province of British Columbia — for the development and profits to be made from properties close to stations. So on both counts the minister was somewhat careless with the truth in his statements.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'm sorry, the hon. member can advise the House that someone has been incorrect, but any imputation of a dishonourable motive.... Would the member please withdraw the last statement.

MR. LORIMER: I can see nothing wrong with being careless with the truth, except when it's habit-forming.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The Chair finds that unparliamentary.

MR. LORIMER: If the Chairman finds it unparliamentary, I will be happy to withdraw.

MR. DAVIS: In building the ALRT system, certain lands have to be assembled. We're fortunate in that most of the right-of-way is already owned by the Crown, through B.C. Hydro, and that other parts of the right-of-way are owned by the Crown, through B.C. Place, or have been acquired from the railway companies — for example, the Dunsmuir Tunnel under downtown Vancouver. But there are land problems where the centre line is being changed, and more particularly where stations are being located. The stations are being located in close consultation with the municipalities concerned — initially Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster. In the last analysis, they really decide where the station is — 100 yards this way, even a half mile that way. At the specific request of Burnaby we've located two stations at different locations than those originally indicated in consensus studies that were done by the GVRD, by the UTA or jointly.

The debate is focused on a particular station location on the so-called O&K Tract property. That's a good part of a block in front of the CNR station on Terminal Avenue. Everyone in the real estate business who has paid any attention whatsoever to rapid transit has known that the rapid transit line would run along Terminal Avenue. They knew also that it had to turn at a right angle from Terminal Avenue and run along Columbia Street; those are the two streets that side on this particular property. If you're cutting a corner at all, going from Terminal to Columbia or from Columbia to Terminal, you go across this particular property. In other words, anyone who thought rapid transit was going to go ahead knew that

[ Page 8116 ]

this was a property with some value. Anyway, it did change hands several times.

I would like to point out that if anyone made a killing — anyone at all — it's Don Docksteader, not the Olma brothers. They're, so to speak, holding the can now; they've got the property.

The value of that property rests entirely, I would say, with the zoning which the city of Vancouver may or may not confer on the property. It is zoned industrial, and as long as it is zoned industrial they can't go up more than two storeys on that property. We are going to cut across that property now because we've been able to negotiate a right-of-way across it for $1. In the negotiation it was agreed that if they got a development going there, they would pay us $2 for every square foot they were allowed to develop. So the ALRT system — public transportation on the lower mainland — benefits in two ways. One is that it gets a right-of-way for $1 across a property so it can cut a corner rather than a sharp right angle. Secondly, to the extent that this property redevelops, three will be a contribution to the rapid transit system.

Alternatively, it is possible that the station could have been out on the street, either on Terminal Avenue or on Columbia. The consensus was that the station would be either across the road from this property on Columbia or across the road on Terminal facing this property. It was a matter of yards. It was known for years to be a matter of yards as to where that station would be located. Whether the station is more valuable on the property, on the sidewalk or halfway across the street is debatable. But for reasons really known only to the Olma brothers, they entered into an agreement with the ALRT engineers to give us a right-of-way across the property.

I have never met the Olma brothers. I wouldn't know them if I met them. I perhaps have met Don Docksteader. I don't know Don Docksteader. I don't pretend to know what the background was in any personal or financial sense. But we didn't buy that property.

We may have to buy other properties. We may have to buy properties at other station locations. It looks like we'll have to buy a large amount of property around Commercial Drive to locate what may be the second busiest station on the system. In the first instance we asked the municipality to buy the property. The city of Vancouver has not shown any inclination so far to use its heritage fund to buy any of these properties. If we have to buy property, we'll sell it off again after we've put in the station and the infrastructure. That is the sequence.

As far as this particular property is concerned — the so-called Olma brothers property, the O&K Tract property — they will only make money if they get zoning. If they get a development which the city allows, and the city controls, they get a development which is beneficial to them.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

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

Hon. Mr. Gardom moved adjournment of the House.

The House adjourned at 12:04 p.m.