[ Page 9085 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Committee of Supply:

Vote 2: auditor-general –– 9085

On vote 3: ombudsman –– 9085

Mrs. Dailly

Mr. Barber

Vote 1: Legislation –– 9086

Committee of Supply: Ministry of Health estimates. (Hon. Mr. Nielsen)

On vote 45: minister's office (continued) –– 9086

Mr. Lockstead

Mr. Hanson

Mr. Barber

Mr. King

Mr. Cocke

On the amendment to vote 45 –– 9097

Division

On vote 46: management operations –– 9097

Ms. Brown

On vote 47: health programs –– 9097

Ms. Brown

Mr. Cocke

On vote 48: medical services commission –– 9097

Mr. Barrett

Mr. Mussallem

Dangerous Health Practices Act (Bill M201). Second reading.

Mr. Mussallem –– 9100

An Act Respecting The Televising And Other Broadcasting Of Debates And Proceedings Of The Legislative Assembly Of British Columbia (Bill M202). Second reading.

Mr. Leggatt –– 9100

Hon. Mr. Gardom

An Act To Regulate Smoking In Public Places (Bill M203). Second reading,

Mrs. Wallace –– 9101

Hon. Mr. Gardom

Employee Participation Enhancement Act (Bill M204). Second reading.

Mr. Ritchie –– 9101

Hon. MR. Gardom

The House met at 9:30 a.m.

MR. STRACHAN: Mr. Speaker, I ask leave to move that the rules be suspended and the sixth report of the Select Standing Committee on Standing Orders and Private Bills be adopted.

MR. SPEAKER: Shall leave be granted?

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: I hear some noes.

Order, please. Perhaps the House Leader (Hon. Mr. Gardom) and the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Barrett) could have their conversation in the hallway.

HON. MR. CHABOT: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, the members of Public Accounts would love to have the first member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk) appear before them to answer questions about his constituency expenses. My point of order is under standing order 8, as to the blatant disrespect shown for this parliament by the first member for Vancouver Centre. I want to know if this absolute arrogance is going to continue.

Interjections.

[Mr. Speaker rose.]

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, matters which take place in committee are not of interest to this House, save through the report of the committee chairman. Standing order 8 has been sought to be raised many times in this House. The Chair has tried to direct members by having members know that in this House absence in the chamber is not necessarily absence from the precincts. The Chair is not aware of any other absences.

[Mr. Speaker resumed his seat.]

HON. MR. CHABOT: On the point of order, has parliament given him permission to be absent from the country, let alone from this chamber?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. This is a matter for the Whips to consider.

MR. HOWARD: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: This point of order is closed, hon. member.

MR. HOWARD: This is another one.

It's regrettable that a number of people from Broadway are here who wanted to pay their respects to their dear friend Bob, who also refuses to appear before the committee.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. This is not a point of order.

Orders of the Day

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

ESTIMATES: AUDITOR GENERAL

Vote 2: auditor-general, S3,590,772 — approved.

ESTIMATES: OMBUDSMAN

On vote 3: ombudsman, $1,760,340.

MRS. DAILLY: I want to make one statement on the ombudsman's vote. We in the official opposition, those of us who sat on the original committee which appointed the ombudsman at that time, the majority of us agreed that it would be worth while if the Legislature or the government would see fit to appoint a special committee, a standing committee of this House, to deal in detail with the reports which the ombudsman presents to this House. The ombudsman. has presented a number of reports to this House since he was appointed, and in fairness to his position and to the people of B.C., for whom he has been put in that position, it is rather unfortunate that once his reports are presented to the House, that seems to be the end of it.

I do not think he is being given an opportunity to fulfil his role. I'm sure the government — and we do give them credit; they did appoint the first ombudsman — wants to see his role fulfilled to its ultimate objective, and it cannot be done unless a committee is set up by the government to deal with these reports. We have brought this to the attention of the House a number of times, and once again I say that if the government is truly serious about the role of the ombudsman in this province, they will see that a House committee is established to deal with his reports.

MR. BARBER: Mr. Chairman, there are such committees in Alberta and Ontario and they're common in Europe. They are a necessity here. The ombudsman has in fact tabled six special reports. The only device to debate any of them is the extremely limited one of debate under this estimate. It is very difficult to do that because, of course, the ombudsman is not here to answer questions on the report. The Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Williams), who has in the past answered questions on this estimate, is obviously not competent, in the absence of the ombudsman, to provide the answers that he would provide for himself. The only possible mechanism we have is a committee of the House. I strongly support the suggestion of my colleague we from Burnaby North. It's done in other Canadian jurisdictions. It's practical, it's workable, and it is otherwise something denied us on the floor of this House for obvious reasons. So denied it creates, I think, an understandable sense of frustration on the part of the ombudsman, those whom he represents and defends, and those who are interested in the course and the purpose of his work. A committee like the ones in Alberta, Ontario or many European nations where the ombudsman also functions is a practical and bipartisan way to deal with the recommendations and the challenges presented to this House when this ombudsman files his special and annual reports.

Further, Mr. Speaker. I would like to ask the Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Williams) today, as I've done for the last two years, whether or not he, on behalf of his government, is

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prepared to proclaim those currently unproclaimed sections of the Act which would allow the ombudsman to investigate among other things complaints of hospitals, municipal councils, regional governments and so on. There are a number of agencies of the Crown at local and provincial levels which at the moment are immune from comment and protected from involvement on the part of the ombudsman, because the sections of the act proclaiming that authority have so far not been proclaimed at all. The ombudsman has indicated previously to me — and I understand to the government; he said so publicly — that he is now prepared to take on the additional work that would no doubt result from proclamation of the remaining sections of the act. If he's ready, surely the people are too. If he and the people are both ready to have those additional powers proclaimed, then I hope the government is similarly ready and would be prepared to announce today their willingness to do so.

Vote 2 approved.

ESTIMATES: LEGISLATION

Vote 1: Legislation, $8,343,500 — approved.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF HEALTH

(continued)

On vote 45: minister's office, $222,410.

MR. LOCKSTEAD: Mr. Chairman, I'll be brief on this We have been discussing the spending estimates of the Minister of Health for some time, and most of the points that can be made have been made. However, there are a few local items. The general cutbacks in health care, the overall cutbacks, and the problems have been well documented in this Legislature.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: No cutbacks!

MR. LOCKSTEAD: Mr. Chairman, could you tell me why that member for South Peace River (Hon. Mr. Phillips) keeps quacking?

One statement that I want to clear up immediately, Mr. Chairman, is that the member for North Peace River (Mr. Brummet) told this House during his presentation that there had been no cutbacks whatsoever in the homemaker service. I can tell you for the record that in my riding ours were reduced from 54,828 hours under last year's budget to an actual 42,822 hours. On theSun shine Coast and in the Powell River regional area, homemaker service was cut back from 50,000 hours to 42,000 hours, so don't let anyone tell you that the homemaker service in this province was not cut back, because it was.

Interjections.

MR. LOCKSTEAD: The Minister of Highways (Hon. Mr. Fraser) says it was increased in Bella Coola. I don't have the figures for Bella Coola, but I doubt that.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Stop knocking your figures.

MR. LOCKSTEAD: The House Leader for the government says something about my figures. The figures I was quoting came directly from the government's own figures, and I presume they're accurate.

At a time when this government and these ministers are spending taxpayers' money for their own purposes — Broadway shows, fancy wines, travelling around the world — what are they doing? Listen to this. You won't believe these hospital cutbacks — I hope you're listening, Mr. Minister of Health. "Restraints put Hospital Beds in Hall." In the Powell River hospital there are beds in the hall and 16 fewer nurses — hours reduced, health care reduced. At St. Mary's Hospital there is a staff cut of 18 people — reduced care. The headlines go on and on and on. "Sechelt Hospital's Care Spartan." But I won't read all of these articles into the record.

What really concerns me about the cutbacks imposed by that government and the Ministry of Health is the information I get from people actually working with the sick in the hospitals. Some of the nurses and doctors I've talked with throughout my riding are deeply concerned about the quality of health care that patients are currently receiving because of the restraint program. I know the minister is going to get up and say Powell River General Hospital has an average of 12 empty beds or whatever per day and that the hospital is not being fully utilized. I say nonsense. If there are empty beds, it's because you're not providing the funds to employ the nurses and other technicians required to administer the type of health care that people are entitled to in this province and in that area.

I have another question I wish to pose to the minister. I received a response in writing from the minister on this. But I want to hear the minister tell me in this House that in spite of the fact that the local health unit in Sechelt, on the Sunshine Coast, the school district.... A number of citizens' groups have asked for an additional public health nurse for the Sunshine Coast area, particularly to minister to the children, to check the health of the children in the school system. The minister said no. I want the minister to get up in this House and say for the record that even though everybody on theSun shine Coast agrees that we need a minimum of an additional health nurse in that area, you're not going to provide that nurse. That's one question. Will you provide that additional nurse that everyone says is required and that we need there so badly?

As well, I would like to ask the minister about the funding arrangements for Bella Coola Hospital. I've got a considerable amount of correspondence, most of which is addressed to the minister or his deputies. This particular letter was addressed to the assistant deputy minister, Mr. Cardiff. There are several more sent to the minister. There seems to be a problem with the funding and additional costs that the hospital board is faced with in the Bella Coola area. The people in that area, I might say for the record, do appreciate the fact that we have a new hospital. It's relatively new; it's about three years old. I know the former Minister of Health, Mr. Mair, attempted to attend the official opening but couldn't get into the valley on that day, and that is appreciated. However, there are financial problems. Perhaps the minister could tell me at this time if those funding problems have been resolved.

There's one more serious item before I take my place. This is the way directors are elected to the various hospital boards. One thing that happened in the Powell River regional area is that a one-issue group.... I'm not knocking that; they have a right to join the hospital societies and boards and vote and run people for office and take part in elections. What happened in this particular case — and I'm sure you're aware

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of it, Mr. Minister — is that this one special-interest group brought children to a meeting attended by some 900 people at the local community recreation centre. These young people had no idea what they were voting for or on. They were led by their parents to the ballot box and cast their ballots. Some of them were as young as 10 years of age. Immediately after they cast their ballots, they left the hall. Quite obviously, their interest was not the health care of the province or that hospital. I am requesting at this time — as I have done to you in writing — that the minister take immediate steps to end that practice. You have to be 18 to vote in any election federally and 19 provincially — it should be 18, but you guys won't change it. Let's have some semblance of democracy in those local hospital elections.

HON. MR. NIELSEN: I'd like to respond to that last question first. I agree with the member that the constitution and bylaws of many of these societies vary greatly throughout the province. I think the basic model should be that if a person is eligible to vote the municipality, electoral district or regional district, then perhaps he should be eligible to vote in one of these societies. We have the problem across the province where meetings are packed by people, and there's some question as to whether they are eligible even under the constitution in some of these because of where they reside. We are going to check into that and will probably have an audit or two on some of the membership rolls to see if these people actually qualify for voting. I agree with you that a person should have certain basic requirements to be eligible to take part in that system. Most of them simply do not refer to an age and they usually say if they're a resident of the area and so on they qualify for it. There's no question that it's being misused.

Sunshine Coast public health nurse. I would have to look into the situation to see why there is an inability, if there is an ability, to fill that position at this time; I'll certainly do that. We do have a problem in filling some of these positions on the preventive side, but that is the number one priority within the ministry, so we can look at that specifically.

The homemakers. I don't know the numbers the member is tossing about. I can tell you that the homemakers' budget from 1981-82 to 1982-83 is up from $57 million to $65 million. Hours are not aways going to increase in a certain area, depending on the demand. It may be modified within any geographic area in the province. The budget is certainly up considerably.

The Powell River Hospital. I don't know what the member was suggesting when he said there were probably empty beds because there was no funding for them; that's incorrect. The Powell River Hospital at last word had 14 empty beds out of 76 operating; those 76 beds are fully funded. If they have 14 empty beds there could be many reasons for that.

MR. LOCKSTEAD: "Restraints Put Hospital Beds in Hall."

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Well, they shouldn't put them in the hall if they have 14 empty beds in the hospital.

MR. LOCKSTEAD: They wouldn't put them in the hall if they weren't empty.

HON. MR. NIELSEN: I wouldn't quite agree with you that they wouldn't put them in the hall if they were empty, because we've had situations in hospitals in the province where people have been put in the hall for no reason. There have been questions asked as to why, and we're getting answers.

We'll look at your hospital as we're looking at all the hospitals in the province. All hospitals in the province will be reviewed in a certain priority, along with the teams from the ministry, as the Premier announced the other day. We'll be reviewing every hospital in the province. Every hospital will receive consideration. Many of them will be required to answer a few questions as well. I think we can resolve many of their problems while protecting the integrity of the fiscal side of managing hospitals. Powell River will not be in any different position. I'll be very pleased to look at Powell River Hospital and get some answers to some of the questions you asked.

MR. HANSON: The state of health care in any community in the province is important. It's particularly important in an urban setting such as Victoria, because one of the two major hospitals here functions as a major referral hospital for all of Vancouver Island; also, we have an extremely large population of senior citizens who draw heavily on the health-care system. Those two aspects make it particularly important that the quality of health care in Victoria is maintained at a high level. However, the facts speak for themselves. In May 1981 the waiting-list to get into the Royal Jubilee was 1,003 people; a year later, in May 1982, it was 1,600; at the present time it is 1,826. The list at the Jubilee is growing at the rate of 100 per month. It's not enough for the minister to stand up and blow hot air across the floor of this chamber and claim that health care is in a good state in this province. It certainly isn't. Those lists of people waiting to get into these hospitals are not just numbers, as you know, Mr. Chairman. Those numbers personify despair, pain, family dislocation, loss of employment....

Interjection.

MR. HANSON: There are 1,826 people in my riding who are waiting to get into the Royal Jubilee Hospital, and the member for North Peace River (Mr. Brummet) says "ghoul." I will stand here and be a ghoul.... If that is ghoulish, then I'll stand in my place and raise this issue until there is some remedy put to it.

The situation in Victoria General is not much different. The waiting-list there is 1,337 as of the end of June. On the urgent waiting-list for Victoria General at the end of the last quarter in June, there were 92 urgent surgeries waiting; at Royal Jubilee Hospital there were 540 urgent surgeries waiting, and the list goes on.

Just the other day I called the Victoria General to find out how many cancellations. There are two or three or four urgent cancellations weekly. These are people who have made arrangements to have family members cared for, etc. It's cancelled, and the delay goes on.

Elective surgery, the ones that are not life or death but may involve a lack of opportunity to go back to work....

It could be cartilage, hernia, cataracts; it could be minor surgery of some sort — something that is aggravated as the delay goes on and on, and finally those people are perhaps put onto an urgent list. And the minister has the gall to stand in this House and try to head off criticism with hot air, with volume, with broadcaster's tenor in his voice. The facts speak

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for themselves that the waiting-lists are getting longer; 100 per month at the Jubilee on average.

One of the reasons they're getting longer — my colleague from Victoria and I have raised this on numerous occasions — is that there are a number of people in these hospitals who have nowhere else to go. They need extended-care facilities and there aren't enough available. The ultimate absurdity is that government cut back on the funding for extended-care hospitals: Gorge Road Hospital and the Juan de Fuca Hospitals. So more people have to occupy the scarce acute-care beds because the government, at the same time, cut off the funding for facilities that are appropriate to their needs.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

Gorge Road Hospital, for example, as a result of $700,000 cut in its budget, laid off 15 people and closed 50 beds on June 15. That has a massive backup effect into the acute-care facilities, expensive acute-care facilities that cost roughly $200 a day or more for a person to occupy a bed. It is much cheaper to occupy an extended-care bed. At Juan de Fuca Hospitals, on June 4, some 91 casual and part-time staff were laid off, and 40 on June 25, for a total of 131 health-care workers. That's 131 health-care workers laid off in the Juan de Fuca Hospitals system, extended-care hospitals. The net result was a closure of 50 to 75 beds. The backup effect into Victoria General and Jubilee Hospital is obvious. Also, there were increases in rates.

But here's a government that stands in its place and tells the people of the province that health care is in good hands, while the waiting-lists are growing at 100 a month, extended-care facilities budgets are cut back, beds are closed, and people who need extended care occupy acute-care beds. That's the program of Social Credit in health.

MR. BRUMMET: All you do is use it as a political weapon.

MR. HANSON: The poor member for North Peace River (Mr. Brummet). He's drifting.

A very important facility in Victoria was the family and children's unit at the Eric Martin Pavilion, affiliated with the Royal Jubilee. This was a centre to look after psychiatric needs of children. Due to budget cutbacks it's now operating five days a week, with six adolescents per day. Formerly, it operated seven days a week, with ten adolescents per day. This particular facility serves all of Vancouver Island. This is a fantastic disservice to the children of Vancouver Island. Now the unit is going to be closed for a month. There was no closing last year at all. The Eric Martin family and children's unit is closed, while children and their families all over the island cry out for assistance.

That unit handles children when there is no place to go, when families try to deal with the complexities of their particular problems and can't handle them. That particular unit is the only one designed for that purpose, and the funding is being cut back.

The minister stands in his place and accuses the opposition of irresponsible attacks, while the waiting-lists grow at 100 a month. The urgent lists grow, the extended-care hospitals are cut back and the family and children's unit is cut back, and we have nothing to complain about. It is absolutely ridiculous. I look at the remarks I made a year ago in this debate. They are the same, except that the numbers have increased in magnitude. Every year the health-care delivery system of this province is getting worse under Social Credit. There's no doubt about it.

There were cutbacks in funding that even involved the hospice program. Recently, adjustments have been made, and I gather the hospice program, that very valuable and important program, is back on track. Can you imagine budget cuts of such a magnitude that the hospital, attempting to arrange its priorities and deal with the delivery of care in the community, was forced to cut back in this area? It has been restored, thank goodness.

We hear hot air from backbenchers on the government side. They've decided to try to come on the offensive, but the facts speak for themselves. They're in an indefensible position. They've ranked their priorities in terms of capital sinkholes on megaprojects, on rewarding their friends and on living in the most extravagant possible manner as cabinet ministers, worldwide. As they have trekked across the world over the last three years and as their vouchers have come to public light, it is clear that the priorities of the government were to look after their own needs and to ignore the top priority, which is the health-care system in British Columbia.

I stand here in my place on this budget estimate because the health-care system is a vital part of my community. It's a vital part of the economy of the community; it provides a vital function for people all over the Island. The Royal Jubilee Hospital, as I mentioned earlier, is a major referral hospital, so if cuts are made on the Jubilee, it affects people in Campbell River, Woss Camp, Port Hardy and people all over Vancouver Island.

I'm sure the minister is going to stand in his place and blow more hot air across this floor. But I'd like him to know, on behalf of my constituents and my colleague, the first member for Victoria (Mr. Barber), that we will continue to stand in this House and fight for quality health care. It is the most important aspect of the local provincial public spending.

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Mr. Chairman, I can assure the second member for Victoria that there will be much more efficient use of our hospital resources in the province relatively soon. The questions which have been before us for a number of months during this fiscal year are reaching a number of resolutions. Hospitals have themselves done a great deal to examine the efficiency of their operations to determine why they have a limited capacity to perform certain elective surgery processes, and they have identified many of the bottlenecks in the system. We have been assured by a number of hospitals and by many of the physicians that they too will bring forth ideas and suggestions on how to reduce the turn-around time for waiting lists, as well as the volume. Many of them have come forward with what appear to be sensible and appropriate ideas and concepts. A number of hospitals have made significant suggestions on how they may offer better service to their community, be it by the use of day surgery in some instances, or modifications within a hospital to provide for more surgical procedures. We'll be making very good use of their information.

One of the problems with respect to waiting lists is that no one ever seems to have the waiting list as such. The ministry certainly doesn't have it; the hospitals say they don't have it; the doctors say they don't have it. So it seems to be a compilation, and numbers come about. There are a lot of problems with elective surgery; but I can assure you that

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every effort is being in the ministry to reduce the waiting lists for elective surgery in all areas of the province....

MR. HANSON: What about the 540 urgent ones?

HON. MR. NIELSEN: There is a problem in the whole system with respect to elective surgery lists, and there has been one for years. And as the population increases, of course the percentage increases, along with every other index. There is a problem, and procedures will have to be modified if we're going to seriously attempt to reduce those waiting lists. Certain procedures must be modified. Some hospitals have done it, and have done quite a job in reducing the waiting lists for elective surgery. Even the term "elective surgery" can really mean whatever you want it to mean. It could be any type of ailment, and all surgery is important.

More extended-care beds will come on stream in a very short period of time. More efficient use of our acute-care facilities will occur in the province and will occur very rapidly. Some of the major hospitals in the province and very senior people in the medical profession have indicated a tremendous willingness to assist in modifying some of these chronic problems in the system, and they will be remedied. I won't get into the specifies, because that's a matter of continuing discussions with the people involved in what they refer to as the health industry.

On Eric Martin Institute, the member says it has been modified from ten beds to eight, seven days to five. The program was to have been cancelled outright; that was an early consideration. There was some intervention, and it was modified to work as a six-bed child-and-family program on a five-day-per-week basis. The program was open seven days a week, and we were told by the hospital that the majority of children returned to their homes on the weekends on temporary passes. Under the new program the children will, as before, receive the care and treatment, but for five days a week. The program will not be available on weekends and statutory holidays. As is reported to us by the hospitals, the children go home on those days.

As the member would know, there is a team of operational auditors in the Royal Jubilee Hospital at this time. We expect their report in a reasonable period of time. All aspects of that institution, including the EMI, will be under consideration, and perhaps some modifications will be made. I can say to the member that I place a very high priority on the Eric Martin Institute program, as he brought forward this morning. That has not been forgotten. When that review-report is in from the Royal Jubilee Hospital, a great deal of attention will be paid to that program.

MR. BARBER: I recall that three years ago the then Minister of Health, Mr. McClelland, introduced a 5 percent budget restraint program for hospitals. The program failed and had to be abandoned. Three years ago, Social Credit attempted to impose an artificial, arbitrary and absolutely impractical ceiling on hospitals. Five percent was the ceiling, chaos was the result; 5 percent was the program, tragedy was the result; 5 percent was the objective, failure was the consequence. The government had to abandon it. Within four months they had done so, and within a couple of months after that — if I have it correct — the minister lost his portfolio and was transferred because he had become a political liability to the government. The 5 percent program that the then Minister of Health, Mr. McClelland, tried to impose on hospitals was such a disaster that the hospitals rose up in open revolt, in a clear demonstration of public anger, and the government had to give it up altogether. That was good, because the problem was the hospitals couldn't guarantee that they would only have 5 percent more broken legs, skin cancers or pregnancies come to them the next year. They couldn't guarantee that and neither could the government. It was impractical, artificial and unworkable.

There's nothing wrong with requiring a hospital to operate more efficiently. We require that, the government requires that, the medical profession requires that and so do the people. It is admirable, worthwhile, purposeful and valid to find ways to attain greater efficiencies in the hospital system. Waste, fat, ill-spent time and ill-spent money are unforgivable. People don't have time to waste in hospitals. People who waste time as professionals in hospitals end up hurting the patients they should be serving more efficiently. We totally support any effort to make hospitals more efficient. Any effort at all that provides better and more efficient care and, because of the efficiencies, greater care to greater numbers is welcome and applauded.

The problem is in the way this government has tried to obtain those things. It's something like the butcher of Harley Street in nineteenth century London. They've gone after the hospitals with a sledgehammer, a cleaver and a blunt axe, and they've said: "By virtue of arbitrarily reducing the amount of moneys that you have otherwise budgeted for, by telling you that we will not pick up deficits and by allowing you to shut beds and lay off staff, we will thereby" — the government rationalizes — "require greater efficiencies." There's a certain crudeness in that approach which offends a lot of people who have a different view of public administration and a more sensitive view of the human consequences of that kind of public administration policy. There are other ways to do it.

I happen to be a member of something called the Institute of Public Administration of Canada, and I have been for some years. I read their journals, have attended their meetings when I could, and I've studied some of those things. I think it's important that legislators know about some of the new forms of public administration that can guarantee and obtain high efficiencies in the public service. there are other places in Canada and, in fact, in the western world where they have attempted to impose similarly crude and arbitrary programs on hospitals and other agencies, the school system among them. In virtually all of those cases, the attempt to do so has resulted in the chaos there that we've seen here.

There are three reasons for that. First of all, each hospital operates in a distinctly different way and serves distinctly different interests in radically different communities. The needs of the people of Victoria are clearly not the same as those of the people of Prince George. We have a far older and less transient population here, less involved with heavy industry and with all of the problems of industrial accident and disease. Obviously, the expectations, the programs and the relative possibility of efficiencies are different in Victoria than in Prince George. The population is different. The working people who work in the mills and the logging camps and the pulp operations in Prince George are not found in Victoria. We don't have those industries here. To attempt to impose the same rule and try to find the same common denominator of efficiency at a hospital in Victoria and one in Prince George is obviously not realistic. The human demographics are so completely different that it just doesn't make sense to approach the hospitals in the same way. It obviously

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doesn't make sense, in a human or in a public policy manner, to pretend that you can build the same number of extended-care hospitals in Victoria as you need in Prince George. No one would propose it — even this government hasn't proposed it. They recognize in terms of that program that the human and health needs of, say, Victoria, which is clearly a non-industrial community, and those of Prince George, which is a heavily industrial community, are very different. When it comes to the extended-care program, they have been — and governments in the past have been, with my colleague for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) supremely among them — able to distinguish and differentiate, able to offer programs that vary, and able to offer funding that's apt for the occasion. In extended-care hospitals we don't see them doing more in Prince George than they should, and with any luck we won't see them doing less in Victoria than they could.

It's in the acute-care system that the system breaks down. We never have enough extended-care beds. People like Scott Wallace have made that argument more effectively than any of us ever have. It's in the acute-care system that the government is apparently prepared, in an extremely crude and arbitrary way, to impose budget restraints, and thereby hope through fear and intimidation — the effects of power — to obtain greater efficiencies. To repeat, Mr. Chairman, we as New Democrats want hospitals to run more efficiently. We absolutely do. We want to do more, if necessary with less in tough times. We want to do more with what we've got in good times. We want to serve more people, serve them more humanely and serve them as professionally as the best people we can find are able to do.

The government says that its intention is to obtain greater efficiencies. The problem is that they are obtaining lesser efficiencies by and large. When physicians are required to put their patients in the corridors of the Royal Jubilee, as reported in the Times-Colonist this morning, efficiency is diminished. Staff time, which is already difficult enough to manage, is made all the more unmanageable when the staff have to deal with patients in the wards and patients in the corridors. Obviously the efficiency of the staff of the Jubilee is diminished when you put people in the corridors because you've cut beds through budget restraint.

I've a girl friend who gave birth on Monday to a daughter, and I spent a lot of time with her in the Richmond Pavilion at Royal Jubilee. I talked with her, because she was there for four days. I talked with her friends who were there, and with the nurses and the doctors, about what it's like to work in a hospital like the Jubilee and what it's like to work in a pavilion like the Richmond, where they have virtually closed down one entire floor. I asked the nurses whether or not they feel they're able to work more efficiently as a result of budget restraint. Their reply was: "No, we cannot." Their reasons were twofold.

First of all, morale has been badly damaged. No one works efficiently in a situation where morale is low, be it the RCMP or be it a public hospital. Every competent administrator knows that if morale is low people work with less efficiency. They care less about their work, they show up more tardily and they work less passionately — be it the RCMP or a public hospital, the principle remains the same. Morale is a fundamental factor in the question of efficiency. The second reason the nurses to whom I spoke gave me, when I was up visiting my friend Leslie, was that because the patient load has remained roughly the same per ward that remains open, and because the nursing staff have diminished in numbers, they're required to work harder and faster. In the morning, at the beginning of their shift when they still have energy and ambition, they can in fact run a little harder, move a little faster and deal with patients a little more rapidly. But come the end of the shift, because they've had to deal with more people in the same amount of time, proportionate to the number of nurses who used to be there previously, their efficiency has declined altogether. They're wiped out. They're tired. They're sufficiently exhausted that in the last part of their shift they can no longer operate at the optimum efficiency.

There's a difference in public policy between the kinds of optimum and maximum efficiencies that can be obtained. Maximum efficiencies can always be obtained in a command structure where people work without human feeling or without human sensibility. You can obtain maximum efficiency when you don't have any people at all. If you simply, as Japan does, build automobiles by robots, of course, the efficiency can then be maximized absolutely. Most people realize that a hospital isn't a car factory, that other factors are at stake and other consequences prevail. What we look for in hospitals is optimum efficiency, the best that you can expect human beings to provide in the eight hours they're on the job. Optimum efficiency takes into account the factors of morale and emergency, and the factors of dealing with the constant problems of people who are very ill and sometimes dying.

The Richmond Pavilion, which is the maternity ward of the Jubilee, is a pretty happy place to work. Most of the nurses like being there. To the contrary, the areas of the Royal Jubilee where, for instance, very young children are dying of leukemia is a very difficult place to work. In fact, the staff turnover in those areas is very high, and it's obvious why. We surely do not expect the same efficiencies of care in a maternity pavilion as we would expect in a children's ward where those kids are dying of cancer. The human circumstances are different. If this government wants efficiencies, they have to be incredibly careful, when they're dealing with the human lives at stake, that they don't attempt to apply a standard in one ward that simply cannot be applied in another. You can operate a long-term care ward at a Jubilee, so to speak, with more efficiency and fewer staff, because by and large the people there are in stable medical conditions. How can you operate a cardiac unit, for instance, on the same basis? You can't. The rules are different. The human and medical circumstances are different.

What this government has done is arbitrarily dictate to hospitals that they may only obtain a certain percentage of budget this year, the consequence of which is cutbacks. The most practical way for hospitals to deal with the sudden bad news.... Remember how little warning they had of this.

It's not as if they were told that for a year in advance they could plan and thereby reduce the consequence and problem of cutbacks. They weren't given a year's warning. Some of them weren't even given three months' warning. They were given less than that. If you don't give them enough time and money, what are they supposed to do?

The minister, in defence of his policy, has said that there are some hospital boards that have deliberately shut down wards in order to create political situations that make it difficult for the government. In fact, at one point I actually heard the minister say that the Royal Jubilee had done just that. The government will have a very difficult job defending that position in regard to the Jubilee, for instance. Who is the chairperson of the board of directors of the Royal Jubilee

[ Page 9091 ]

Hospital? She is Dr. Frances Gooday. She has a doctorate in medieval German literature from Yale. She is a stockbroker. She is a very bright woman. She's the chairman of the board that, in response to the minister's order to cut, ended up presiding over cuts in the family and children's unit, the hospice and generally across the board. Dr. Frances Gooday, the chairman of the board of the Royal Jubilee Hospital, just happens to be the immediate past president of the Victoria Social Credit constituency association.

HON. MR. NIELSEN: So what?

MR. BARBER: So what? The so what is this what.

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Are you questioning her integrity, or what?

MR. BARBER: No, I'm questioning your ability to make a plausible charge that some hospitals have deliberately used the excuse of budget cuts to create a political situation embarrassing to Social Credit. If anyone was going to do that, the last person to do it would be Dr. Frances Gooday, because she's a Socred, the past president of the riding. Even she is clearly a sympathizer of this government. That's fine. She doesn't lie or fib about it. She's always been open about it. Even Dr. Gooday, clearly a friend of the government, past president of the Victoria Socreds, as the chairman of the board of directors of Royal Jubilee was forced to preside over all the closures that have been so ably demonstrated by my colleague from Victoria, Mr. Hanson. Dr. Gooday is not a New Democrat. She is not trying to exploit this situation for the political gain of the Leader of the Opposition. For anyone to claim that is to claim nonsense.

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Who claimed that?

MR. BARBER: You did. I heard you referring to the Jubilee in the very first week of those budget cuts.

HON. MR. NIELSEN: I said that Dr. Gooday is attempting to get support for your leader?

MR. BARBER: You didn't name Gooday. You said the Jubilee. I heard you on the radio. You said the Jubilee within the first few days of the cuts as the Jubilee had to deal with them. You may take it back or correct it. You may, in fact, not have been aware that the chairman of the board is the past president of the Victoria Socreds. But the point remains that to accuse hospitals, any of them and in fact specifically the Jubilee, of being led by people who are trying to manipulate the situation for political gain is absolutely crazy, unprovable and pretty irresponsible.

Dr. Gooday, who happens to be a Socred and most certainly is an intelligent and competent chairman of that board, had no choice but to excise from the operations of the hospital 149 beds and several hundred full- and part-time staff. If that's what the president of the Victoria Socreds was forced to do, then you cannot, I think, argue that she did it because she's politically opposed to the government of the day. She did it because she had to. That's the problem, in part, with the policy this government has enunciated. It doesn't recognize the human consequences of these cuts. It tries to blame the messenger, when it should be analyzing the message, and in fact it has even slandered, generally, members of their own party who happen to serve, in this case quite ably, on the board of directors of a well-known public hospital. Jubilee, by the way, is the second-largest hospital in British Columbia. It's a very important health enterprise.

When the former Minister of Health, Mr. McClelland, imposed the 5 percent program, and it blew up, he lost his portfolio. The current government, through the current minister, is attempting to impose an even more drastic set of guidelines on hospitals. The first thing we've lost are hospital employees. That, of course, has added to unemployment. In this time of recession, that's hardly a benefit.

Interjection.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. The member for North Peace River (Mr. Brummet) will come to order.

MR. BARBER: What's wrong with Tony? It's our job as elected persons, legislators, politicians — just like you — to raise the arguments as best we can in favour of the policies in which we believe.

There are a couple of programs which, fortunately, have been retained because of public outcry and public pressure, but not in their entirety. I want to refer to a couple of them. The family and children's unit at the Eric Martin Pavilion.... It's not been the "Institute" for some years; it's called the "Pavilion" now. The Eric Martin Pavilion provides an excellent service for disturbed kids and their sometimes equally disturbed families. Most disturbed kids come from disturbed families. The chicken-and-egg here means the family comes first. Because Human Resources has been unable to deal with the problems of disturbed families, the Eric Martin Pavilion has ended up dealing with the problems of disturbed kids. The minister sneers and laughs silently.

HON. MR. NIELSEN: You're hardly a doctor, Charlie.

MR. BARBER: I worked with disturbed kids for five years in a project in Victoria, which is more than you've ever done.

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Oh, wonderful! Oh, really.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'll ask the Minister of Health to come to order.

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Do you want me to talk for a few minutes now, or are you going to talk forever?

MR. BARBER: When you care to take your place after I've finished.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'll ask the Minister of Health to come to order. Will the first member for Victoria please address the Chair.

MR. BARBER: If you were a Minister of Health who cared about public health, you wouldn't be doing to the hospitals what you've been doing to them for the last three months. It's pretty simple to me.

HON. MR. NIELSEN: I'd like to meet you on a desert island sometime.

[ Page 9092 ]

MR. BARBER: Well, good enough. You could talk me to death.

The problems of disturbed kids being dealt with at the Eric Martin Pavilion are problems that Human Resources has not been able to deal with, because they've had difficulty maintaining services in their field, they are problems that the criminal justice system should not be asked to deal with, and are problems that the community has to find a way to deal with in some general regard. If the minister actually cared about those kids, he would never have tolerated the situation where the family and children's unit at the Eric Martin Pavilion was shut down. But apparently the kind of blunt-axe approach that this government takes to health care is such that even the Socred chairman of the board of the Royal Jubilee was forced to recommend the shutting down of the family and children's unit. Fortunately the hospital, the professionals and the general community have reacted in a sufficiently angry way that the total shutdown has been averted and only a partial shutdown is the result. I think that's really regrettable — shutting down for all of August, as if somehow kids become less disturbed for the month of August. Shutting down for all of August isn't good enough. Those kids are entitled, just as any other kids are, to the best treatment that we can find for them.

There's another program that was to be shut down altogether, but fortunately, again, a partial reprieve has been put in the works. That's the hospice program. The hospice program is the direct result of the work of a woman who came to Victoria in 1975, Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. I spent a day with her, and I was really impressed by what she had to say. She has since said some rather peculiar things about spiritualism and the afterlife. I guess some people have lost a bit of confidence in what she's up to these days. But the general principle she was addressing in 1975, when she came to Victoria, directly resulted in the creation of the first-ever hospice here at the Royal Jubilee.

The hospice is a program that deals in a palliative way with dying people. There are members of this Legislature who know something about that. Most of us care a lot that people who are dying in public institutions be allowed to do so as gracefully and humanely as possible. Public institutions where the bells are ringing and the announcements are going out over the PA and nurses are running up and down the corridor and people are awakened at six in the morning are not good places to die. People who are confronted with terminal illness no doubt would prefer to be allowed to die in a more quiet and gentle way, in a more quiet and more gentle place. That's what a hospice does. That's what the hospice at the Royal Jubilee has tried to do. It's a very important program. It doesn't cure anyone. It doesn't help anyone get better. No one pretends that it does. It's not an acute-care program. But it is a program of particular value to dying people and their families who don't wish to die of see the people they love die in the chaos and noise of a bustling, difficult, big urban acute-care hospital. That's what a hospice does: it puts them aside in a special place for a special time.

It's a very important program. It was going to be shut down altogether. Fortunately there's a partial reprieve. But a partial reprieve isn't as good as the whole reprieve that should have been permitted. Especially in Victoria, with a disproportionately large population of elderly, this program, regrettably, might be more greatly needed than in other communities, where acute care leads to recovery; in Victoria, disproportionately, it leads to dying, because acute care deals with problems of the elderly, and for obvious reasons a lot of them don't make it. A hospice is really important. I haven't yet heard a statement from this government that they think it's important.

I would ask the minister if he would tell us whether or not he believes that program is important and whether or not he's prepared to guarantee continued funding at the required levels, so that the hospices in Victoria and in other areas of the province where they may be required could be allowed to start and to be maintained without interruption. Again, no one should pretend that hospices cure people; they don't. Of course they don't. But they do allow people to die in a more respectful and loving situation. For people who are suffering from terminal illness and are unable to die at home and have to die in a public institution, surely a hospice is a more humane way to have that happen. I know a lot of the people who put together the hospice in Victoria. That hospice resulted from the Victoria Association for the Care of the Dying, and they've dealt with it in a very sensitive and religious way, without in any way being parochial about the word religious. I think they're to be commended for their voluntary efforts, for the fantastic amount of voluntary time that they've spent on this program and for the way that they've shared their vision of human or religious obligation to their fellow man. I think that's really important, and I would ask the minister if he would be prepared to indicate that he supports the principle of the hospice program and is prepared to continue to support them at the financial levels required in order to obtain the services for the dying who have to go there.

[Mr. Richmond in the chair.]

Hospitals have suffered budget cuts in terms of the money they believed they were entitled to, the money they say they need and the programs that used to exist and now don't. The government says there's been a percentage increase in dollars. That's true. We say there's been a percentage decrease in service. That's also true. The government says that there's more money this year, and that's a fact. The opposition says that there's less service this year, and that's another fact. It's in the argument between those two positions that, in a large measure, the next election is going to be fought. It's in the difficulty of reconciling those two equally true observations that the next election will be fought on the part of those who care about the health enterprise in British Columbia.

What have been the budget cuts imposed on B.C. Place this year? What budget cuts have been imposed on ALRT this year? What budget cuts have Transpo-Expo '86 suffered this year? What budget cuts has the stadium in Vancouver been the victim of this year? What budget cuts has northeast coal had to face this year? The answer in each case is none, zero and nothing. Every one of the megaprojects is going ahead on budget, the subject of no cuts and no restraint. B.C. Place is not being held back by budget restraint. Northeast coal is not being reduced by budget cuts. Transpo-Expo '86 is not being restrained because of budget limitations, and neither is ALRT. This government believes that those projects should go ahead unimpaired by budget restraint. This government also believes budget restraint should be applied to hospitals. As far as we're concerned, that's the wrong priority. As far as we're concerned, Transpo-Expo '86 is of a lesser priority than is, for instance, Vancouver General Hospital.

[ Page 9093 ]

It's a tough year; restraint is important. The New Democrats proposed last year $82 million worth of restraint in government travel, propaganda, office furniture and so on. The Socreds voted against every nickel of it. So far this year we've proposed $76 million worth of restraint and so far the Socreds have voted against every nickel of that. The New Democrats also believe in cutting back the frills, but for us the frills are not hospitals. For us the frills are ministerial travel, Doug Heal's propaganda machine, long-distance phone calls, office furniture and all that stuff. We also believe in restraint, but we think it should be applied differently, and it is on that basis that the next election will also be fought. We think it should be applied to the fat and the puffery of the government of British Columbia first; secondly, it should be applied to projects like Transpo-Expo which are not as urgent; and thirdly, it could apply to other programs in government that are even less urgent. But it must not be applied to hospitals. That's our view, pure and simple.

Efficiencies, yes, obtained in a sensitive, competent and strategic way; not with a blunt meat-axe, but with precise analysis of precise problems in precise locales. The minister says he's sending out efficiency teams now to do that, and that's a good thing, but it's a little late and it's an obvious reaction to political protest. He didn't announce that at the beginning of the program; he announced it three months later. He announced the meat-axe first; now he's announcing the efficiency teams. He's doing so in reaction to political protest, not as the result of public policy that he had considered long ago. He announced efficiency teams last; he announced the budget restraints first. We have yet to hear any announcements of any budget restraints for B.C. Place, Transpo, ALRT, the stadium or northeast coal — no restraint there; instead there's restraint on the hospitals. It's the wrong value, the wrong priority, the wrong choice, and as New Democrats we oppose it.

MR. KING: I thought the minister was anxious to get to his feet, Mr. Chairman. I raised a number of matters last Friday with the minister and he responded briefly, basically saying that he had conducted a survey of occupancy rates at various hospitals throughout the province, and those occupancy rates revealed less than capacity occupancy of existing hospital beds despite the cutbacks. I sat on a hospital board for some considerable number of years myself as the vice-chairman of the board at Revelstoke, and I know that occupancy rates at a particular point in the year are not necessarily a valid measure of utilization of that hospital. I want to make the point to the minister that in terms of health-care beds it may be the apex of efficiency to have them fully occupied for the year, but you can't really plan health care on that basis. There are other areas where lack of full utilization is a costly and fairly inefficient kind of syndrome that governments have to come to grips with over the years. What about classrooms in schools?

HON. MR. NIELSEN: A good example. An absolute waste.

MR. KING: I don't know what the minister means by that, but there certainly is waste when expensive school buildings are closed down for two and three months a year. Nevertheless, you don't approach the educational system on the basis that you're going to cut funding because we haven't devised a way to utilize those capital facilities for the total year. So it is, in my view, with health-care beds; just because the occupancy may not be 100 percent all year is....

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Schools aren't staffed when they're closed.

MR. KING: That's true; nevertheless, there is a cost factor there. The same is true of fire departments. They're very expensive facilities to build and to man; in terms of utilization, if you apply the standard efficiency test, it might be fairly low But it's recognized that this is such an important underlying service that we don't measure its efficiency in those terms. We measure its efficiency by the ability to respond to the community's needs in any predictable maximum situation, and that may not occur more than once or twice a year. But as with firefighters, who need to respond when there is an emergency, so it is with hospitals. They have to be able to respond to a predictable maximum situation in the community, and that may not happen, in July and August, when the minister is measuring the occupancy rates of the hospitals.

The minister gets very exercised about this subject.

HON. MR. NIELSEN: You'd better believe it. There is a lot of waste of money.

MR. KING: He seems to feel there is a bunch of enemies out there simply trying to politicize this issue so as to get at the government. I would rather see this dealt with quite aside from any political import. I'm equally convinced that the hospital administrators, the boards, the doctors and nurses, are not interested in politicizing health-care issues. They're professionals. Quite frankly, I'm taking my advice from those people who are professionals in the field and who are much closer to it than the minister or I. I believe that their concerns and their reactions are genuine and sincere, motivated by their dedication to health care and a genuine concern and belief that the system is in danger because of the arbitrary budget restrictions placed on them by this government.

I want to read to the minister a letter I received, which is addressed to me, from the board chairman of the Shuswap Lake General Hospital, and I want my colleague, the former Minister of Health, to listen to this in terms of what this hospital has tried to do to develop the efficiencies the minister has demanded by arbitrary budget restraint:

"The board of trustees of the Shuswap Lake General Hospital has resolved to reduce 1982-83 expenditures to live within the estimated $400,000 shortfall caused by the April 7, 1982 announced budget allocation. The board resolved that the reduced expenditures be implemented by the laying off of staff, the closure of beds and the taking of other efficiencies, with every effort being made to minimize the effect on the community served by the Shuswap Lake General Hospital and on the hospital and medical staff.

"The reduction will be accommodated by the closing of ten beds, the laying off of 13 positions, seven of which relate directly to the bed closures, the increase of non-emergent outpatient fees from $10 to $20, and by the following efficiencies: (1) non-union management staff have volunteered a 4.3 percent rollback of the 1982 cost-of-living salary increases granted them in January 1982; (2) encouraging staff

[ Page 9094 ]

to take voluntary, unpaid leave of absence; (3) promoting staff and medical staff awareness of costs of supplies, emergency callbacks and patterns of workload; (4) elimination of mandatory contribution to municipal superannuation by part-time staff; (5) reduction of costs through further group or bulk purchasing; (6) reduction of grounds maintenance and restricted use of the McGuire Lake fountain; (7) reduced level of housekeeping standards; (8) conversion of cafeteria to a lunch room. Staff are being encouraged to propose all other efficiencies possible.

"The board strongly opposes the drastic cutbacks in funding to this hospital and, together with the medical staff, are greatly concerned for the resulting danger created by this forced reduction of services. The board of trustees has pleaded for assistance from the community in determining how the shortfall in budget can be covered. The medical staff has suggested that it will be essential to the continued safe operation that the public make only essential demands on services of the hospital. They have cautioned that the combination of increased demand for service and cutback of services will cause pressures that seriously impair their ability and the hospital's ability to respond safely.

"The board urgently requests the review of the budget allocations, as only half of the $400,000 shortfall can be met through the efficiencies identified above. Your timely consideration of this urgent request will be most appreciated.

"Marguerite Sivertz, Board Chairman."

This is an extremely serious matter. Here we have the chairman of the board and the medical staff saying that despite all of those extreme efficiencies and cutbacks — and I don't know what more the minister could suggest or ask be cut back in terms of gaining efficiencies — they are not able to meet more than half of the budgetary shortfall. There is expressed, in that letter, grave concern for the danger to the public flowing from reduced service in that hospital. I don't know how any Minister of Health can ignore that kind of caution and cry for help. And it is not only the hospital in my riding; this is common throughout the province. My colleagues have outlined similar circumstances in many hospitals. Last Friday I read similar letters from the medical staff in Salmon Arm.

I don't know what else to say to the minister. If this government is so insensitive to the life-support services that our citizens in British Columbia have a right to rely on, then I guess so be it. We have done our best on this side to persuade and try to convince the government that it's being far too rigid. My colleague the first member for Victoria (Mr. Barber) said it very well. Hospital staff, the boards and we on this side of the House recognize the need to be careful, to effect efficiencies; but the arbitrariness of this government's cutback in funding — a reduction in anticipated funding I guess would be the more appropriate way to describe it — has created major problems for the hospitals throughout this province.

As an interior member I resent it when I see an apparently inexhaustible supply of capital directed to constructing football stadiums, showpieces of political import for this government, when the basic health system is in jeopardy. That angers me, Mr Chairman. I don't blame it all on the minister; he's not totally responsible. He is being allowed his allocations through Treasury Board. The Premier is the first minister of this province, and he in effect sets the priorities of this government. If the Minister of Health is being starved for funding, while at one and the same time we see coal developments in northeastern British Columbia, football stadiums and trade and convention centres going ahead with the taxpayers' funding, with apparently no restraint and no efficiencies whatsoever, we have to ask what kind of distorted priorities this government has.

I want to raise one other point briefly, and I hope the minister will respond in a way that indicates he is concerned about these underlying problems and is willing to at least concede that these concerns are born out of genuine apprehension, rather than any desire on the part of the professionals in the health field to attack the government politically. That's not the objective.

Mr. Chairman, the other point I want to raise before I sit down is a bit of concern regarding the student nursing program in Vancouver General Hospital and St. Paul's Hospital. I don't know whether the minister is aware of this or not, be there's been a change in the provisions in the benefits customarily provided student nurses going through that program. There's a directive issued on May 28, 1982. "The provision of student benefits has been under review for some time. The following changes have merely been precipitated at this time as a result of budget restrictions." I want to draw the two points to the minister's attention. "For currently enrolled students, effective August 17, 1982, stipend and room will be provided as at present. The provision of free meals will be discontinued. Meal service in the hospital cafeterias will be available, and students are encouraged to purchase meals there."

MS. BROWN: How much is the stipend?

MR. KING: The stipend is $60 a month. For students going through that training program in the hospitals and providing a degree of service to the patients, they receive the impressive reward of $60 a month, and now as an efficiency this government that likes to build covered football stadiums is saying: "Sorry, girls, you have to buy your own meals." Is that reasonable?

The other thing that's interesting in the Vancouver General School of Nursing.... I will read an excerpt from information regarding the nursing program and provide these copies to the minister so he'll have them. I'll table copies, Mr. Chairman. This is part of the condition.

"Graduates of the three-year program are eligible to apply for registration and may be eligible for further educational programs. Financial support for the hospital, including the school, is obtained essentially through the British Columbia hospital programs, department of Health. Students provide patient care in designated areas in lieu of charges re room and board."

In other words, Mr. Chairman, these students who are going through nursing, and in effect taking their practicum to become registered nurses, are obliged to do work in that hospital — patient care — to justify and to earn the room and board to which they were previously entitled. Now the board has been cut off. They have to pay for the meals themselves. But they are actually doing work to earn the cost of their rooms. Mr. Chairman, I think that's Scrooge-like — awfully mean and tight of the government. Surely we don't have to gouge

[ Page 9095 ]

these poor kids going through nursing, who are having a difficult time as it is trying to make ends meet, by imposing these restrictions.

I just want to draw to the minister's attention that the employment standards legislation — which his colleague the Minister of Labour (Hon. Mr. Heinrich) introduced, I think, just a year ago — says what form of payment one can make in this province. "An employer shall pay all wages (a) in lawful currency of Canada, (b) by cheque, bill of exchange or order to pay, payable on demand, drawn on a savings institution, or (c) if authorized by the employee in writing, by deposit to...." the appropriate credit agency.

In other words, employers are not entitled to pay in kind or in trade in this province. The government won't let private employers pay a salary owed for work done through the award of board and room or anything else. How is it that the government sets one standard for the private sector and vet adopts another one themselves, totally in conflict with the rules they set for the private sector? There's a question in my mind as to whether or not the practice outlined at Vancouver General and St. Paul's is in conflict with the Employment Standards Act of the province of British Columbia. I wish the minister would look at that, because I think it's tight-fisted, mean and totally unnecessary for the amounts involved in that kind of efficiency.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Very quickly, Mr. Chairman, with respect to the last Vancouver General Hospital situation, regarding remuneration for the work done by some of the nurses, I can only presume it's consistent with the laws of the province or I wouldn't believe Vancouver General Hospital would be engaging in such a practice. I wouldn't have any hesitation in contacting the administrator and getting the details.

Vancouver General Hospital is one of the last of the hospital-based schools of nursing in the province. All other schools are operated by the college system. That was the wisdom of someone at some time; they felt that was an improvement. Historically, VGH has paid a stipend and provided room and board to its students. They decided a while back that that program would no longer continue. Students enrolled in the program will continue to receive the stipend and also free room but will lose their meals privileges, as the member said. Of course, students who attend the college-based nursing programs do not receive a stipend and are responsible for their costs. It's consistent with what is commonly occurring throughout the province. Times have changed, and Vancouver General Hospital felt it was time to make that change. I might mention that we really have had. I think, only one complaint.

The Shuswap Lake General Hospital. I think the correspondence the member read is an example of a very responsible board communicating information. The indications as to how they're approaching their problems will, of course, lead to a response from the ministry. From what the member said, their review and report would indicate a very responsible attitude toward trying to resolve the problem. I certainly am not in any dispute with what the board has forwarded to us. That will be one of the hospitals which will receive the review by one of the review teams very quickly.

In a very general sense, the priorities of the government certainly rank health as number one, as is shown by the position it holds in the budgetary process. The priorities in the Ministry of Health itself will provide the essential services, for want of a better term, as a number one priority. We have been going through a review process with hospitals for a number of months. Some hospitals have shown us, in no uncertain terms, that they indeed need special consideration for certain reasons. Sometimes it's geographic, other times it's the specialty of the hospital and innumerable problems. Within the global budget of the Ministry of Health, if modifications are necessary to see that these essential programs are enriched somehow, the modifications will occur.

I think the hospitals in the province today, including Shuswap Lake General, will probably find it less difficult than they had earlier believed to achieve that budget goal. The ministry will certainly assist them. I think I'll just say once again that that letter, as read by the member, indicates to me a board and administration taking its job very seriously. I commend them for that, and I'll be in discussion with them.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, it's been an enjoyable four or five days. We've gleaned all sorts of information, mainly the information that we saw in the headlines in the paper the other day about all these beds being empty. I've talked to a number of people around the province who are well versed in health care. As a matter of fact, one person said to me: "That was a dirty trick" — meaning to call hospitals in the middle of summer, on a weekend, and when the ins are out and the outs aren't in yet. It also doesn't take into consideration the number of bassinets that may be empty and the maternity wards that may not be full by virtue of the fact that they just haven't had the business. But at the same time, they have to be kept for that purpose.

The minister told us a few minutes ago that there are no waiting lists. Let me give him a bit of a summary: 15 hospitals announced to us — maybe they're not talking to the minister anymore; if I were a hospital I wouldn't talk to him either — that they have a total waiting list of 14,549 patients. Not long ago I told you that there were 12,000 people waiting; now there are 15,000. I can give you some examples: Burnaby General, 737: St. Mary's in New Westminster, 833; Royal Columbian, 500; Victoria General, 900 in-patients and 600 to 700 for day care; Peace Arch, 170; Penticton General, 460; and so on. It's interesting to me that the Premier's own hospital, Kelowna General, has 1,240 in an area like that.

The fact of the matter and the reason these beds are vacant is that hospital after hospital tell us that they've had to close down operating rooms. An orthopedic surgeon was just quoted yesterday as having said: "What's the point of putting a patient into a bed if I can't give him or her an operation?" Look at what we find when we look at the whole question of operating rooms. We find that hospitals such as Vancouver General have closed down six operating rooms. We find smaller hospitals closing down one and medium-sized hospitals closing down two or three. When the minister suddenly comes up and says: "My goodness, look at all these empty beds...." I defy the minister, under the present circumstances, to take that same kind of survey this fall. He'll find some very different situations.

I would like to go over a few hospitals that we've contacted. At the Peace Arch hospital there is 92 percent occupancy, eight vacant beds and specialized areas such as "obstetrics, which cannot be used by other patients." Holy doodle! In the Lion's Gate there is 70 to 80 percent occupancy; however. an operating room is closed and there are

[ Page 9096 ]

unoccupied beds in specialized units like maternity and psychiatry. At Prince George, two to six beds aren't occupied each day — maternity, etc., and two operating rooms are closed because of budget restraints. St. Paul's has a 92.4 percent occupancy rate, two operating rooms are closed for the summer. At the Kelowna General, there are very few unoccupied beds except in maternity and pediatric, and the elective surgery waiting list is the longest ever — 1,240. Six hours a day have been cut back in operating room use. At the Royal Inland in Kamloops, there are a few unoccupied beds in psychiatry, pediatrics and maternity.

Isn't this consistent? Isn't this the kind of consistency that one would expect to find to show that when the minister made that announcement that there were.... Well, the first announcement was that there were 600 vacant beds; he made that in the House. The second announcement was 1,000, and then I read in the banner headlines in the paper that there were 1,200 beds vacant. This is pretty tricky stuff, but as far as I'm concerned, we're playing fast and loose with the health system in our province, and it's not good enough.

At the Surrey Memorial, the occupancy rate is running high. There are 1,640 on the elective surgery waiting list. The minister told us he can't find waiting lists. I don't know; we can. Maybe the competence of the opposition is required in that ministry. The Childrens' Hospital has an occupancy rate of 95 to 100 percent; one operating room not open, and fall will be a crucial time, they tell us. At Nanaimo General, there are 1,500 on the elective surgery waiting list; one operating room is closed because of budget restraints, Incidentally, while I'm speaking about the Nanaimo General, the member for Nanaimo (Mr. Stupich) is away on government business, and I would ask a question on his behalf. What are you going to be doing with the live-in in the children's ward in the Nanaimo General.

Interjection.

MR. COCKE: I am told he was asked, and he didn't answer.

Next, Langley Memorial: 92 percent occupancy. Victoria General: 97 to 98 percent occupancy, medical and surgery. Royal Jubilee: 89 long-term care patients, two beds unoccupied — only two in the Jubilee, that huge place! — and 1,826 on the waiting list, of which 540 are urgent. Vancouver General: 90.5 percent occupancy, 6.5 operating rooms presently not being used because cut back. Richmond General: 86 percent occupancy. The unoccupied beds are where? They're in maternity, pediatrics and, on the weekend, in surgery. Predictable. Burnaby General: 90 percent occupancy. Royal Columbian: the number of unoccupied beds changes very quickly, but two operating rooms are closed; there is some reduction in some of the other operating rooms too. St. Mary's in New Westminster: occupancy is high; one operating room is closed for summer, and a normal cutback in operations from 39 or 40 per day to 20 — half.

I talked to one or two of the persons involved. Someone in the administration area told me that patients fearful of losing their jobs if they take time off for elective surgery have left hospital beds empty and operating rooms idle. That wasn't said to me directly, but the person who said it was Gordon Frith at the Nanaimo General.

There are other situations that I would like to put forward but I don't want to take up too much time in committee because we have already discussed the whole question. Incidentally, it wasn't the Minister of Health who announced that teams were going to go around and see that hospitals are looked at; it was the Premier. What did he say? "To ensure this intention is translated into reality, the Minister of Health will send a team to each hospital to smooth out by fall the rough edges exposed in the past few months." He says there are rough edges; we've been saying that for four days. Yes, there are rough edges. I'm not sure where you're going to find all these teams. Right now we're paying an arm and a leg for consultants, as I pointed out before. Good luck to you, but for crying out loud, get the health system back on its feet.

I want to quote the minister again on the whole question of occupancy: "Our occupancy rate varies from month to month, from hospital to hospital, so we have to look at it on an annualized basis." What did the minister do? He didn't look at it on an annualized basis; he went ahead and got a headline out of 1,200 unoccupied beds. No annualized basis about it. It was a nice, selective report.

As I said, hospitals can't operate at 100 percent capacity all the time; that would not be good management of the facility. So there are going to be available beds. They must be available for emergencies and other reasons, and for compatibility of patients' needs. I hope the minister doesn't go running around with those kinds of headline-grabbers, because it will only create consternation in the health community. It's not going to be good for the health community, the patient or anybody else.

I'd like to bring one other thing to the minister's attention. There's been a great deal of talk about the whole question of alcohol and its effect on the health system. We are now spending less on alcohol and drugs than one can imagine. It's so difficult. That tricky little Minister of Finance of ours brought in estimates this year in which one cannot dig out the facts. He promised us there would be printouts and we'd be able to get to the facts. The printouts are just as confusing. As a matter of fact, they're beyond confusing; an expert cannot get at the facts. For instance, as I told you, emergency care is buried under community services. We don't know whether it's $50 million, $45 million or $12 million. But we do have a breakdown of sorts on the whole question of alcohol and drugs. I find that the grants are going to be $7.6 million. I also find that the amount to run the Alcohol and Drug Commission is down from $5 million to $2,785,000. So if you add those together, Mr. Chairman, you are coming up with around $11 million to $12 million. If the minister has got more money out there for alcohol and drugs.... After all, the province makes $365 million — a million dollars a day — from the sale of booze, and all we can afford to do is spend a few paltry dollars on one of the greatest causes of health-care problems in the province. I believe I've heard the minister admit or say that a high percentage of the people utilizing our health facilities are people who have been involved for some time in the overuse of alcohol.

Mr. Chairman, we have shortages in the health-care system. The minister led off his debate by suggesting that prevention should be a major part of our health-delivery system. Well, where have we got shortages? We've got shortages in nine public health districts. We've got shortages of public health nurses in seven districts, speech therapists in seven districts, nutrition aides in six districts, mental nurses in seven districts, audiologists in four, community physiotherapists in seven, home-care nurses in six, and dental staff in two districts. Mr. Chairman, we have two health educators left in

[ Page 9097 ]

the province. We used to have five when the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources (Hon. Mr. McClelland) was in that portfolio, but now we're down to two. and it's been going down for the last few years. There are no sponsored speech and hearing clinics in Vancouver, Richmond or North Vancouver, and the city of Vancouver had to give up their dental program, which was a great preventive and therapeutic program.

No cutbacks, Mr. Chairman? Let me tell you where the cutbacks are. In the new Children's hospital, brand-new beds and cribs are not being used, with children waiting for surgery. There is a delay in opening the adolescent unit for disturbed teens at the Children's Hospital. We've got psychiatric day units closed at Vernon. the Royal Columbian and Lion's Gate Hospitals; we've got the Eric Martin Pavilion child and family unit, where the program is reduced and will be closed for the month of August. Burnaby General has lost an out-patient back clinic and an ostomy therapist. We've got 12 operating rooms closed in acute-care hospitals: Nanaimo General, Vancouver, Shaughnessy, Children's, Prince George and Lion's Gate. We've got a growing list of British Columbians awaiting elective surgery — something in the order of 14,000. We've got over 2,000 hospital jobs removed. We've got nurses laid off in the province, which has traditionally imported nurses, and long-term care patients still inappropriately located in acute-care hospitals.

It's a disaster. The minister says that health care is a high priority. Well, I suggest that from what we see before us it does not appear that the minister is placing a high priority on the provision of health care — or certainly his government is not. So, Mr. Chairman, we're not going to raise the normal reduction. We're going to make sure that the minister keeps every possible cent he can in his portfolio in order to provide for the needs of his ministry. I do, however, find in the minister's office that office expense has gone up 10.8 percent — $1,400. Just to give the minister an opportunity to be consistent with the whole question of restraint, I'm going to give him an opportunity to vote against the increase of $1,400 in office expenses, So, Mr. Chairman, I would therefore move that vote 45 be reduced by $1,400.

[ML Davidson in the chair.]

Amendment negatived on the following division:

YEAS — 21

NAYS — 28

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

Vote 45 approved.

On vote 46: management operations, $191,683,054.

MS. BROWN: I have two very quick questions for the Minister of Health.

Planned Parenthood has made application for $160,000 to operate 17 clinics, and have not to date heard whether they are going to receive their grant or not. I wonder whether the minister could respond to that, since they're asking for an additional $11,000 to open clinics in North Delta, Sidney and one in the Okanagan.

Secondly, in response to my comments on amniocentesis. the minister had said that any patient who needed a test would have it, regardless of whether they were 38 or not. Apparently Dr. Dorothy Shaw, the geneticist at Grace Hospital, says that this is not the way it presently operates. The bill is split. The chromosome part of it is paid for by the hospital, but the rest of the test is billed directly to the patient. I wonder if the minister would double-check on that.

HON. MR. NIELSEN: On the last question, yes, I certainly will,

Apparently the Planned Parenthood Association grant which has been approved is $115,000. I can only presume that the balance is still under review or has not been made available.

Vote 46 approved.

On vote 47: health programs, $1,559,450,117.

MS. BROWN: Again, very briefly to the minister, specifically about the Premier's comments that a team would be going out to all the hospitals to smooth out the rough edges, I'm wondering, when the team goes to Burnaby General, if it would take into account statements made by the chairman of the board of trustees to the minister in a letter dated May 11, pointing out that Burnaby General, which has always honoured zero-based budgeting and kept within its budget, is being penalized by the new funding decisions made by the ministry. As well, a letter dated May 18 from Dr. Peter Rees, president of the Burnaby medical association, to the minister also pointed out to the minister that the quality of care that Burnaby General has always been able to give is in jeopardy as a result of the new funding restraint policies of the ministry. Would the team specifically look into that?

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Yes.

MR. COCKE: Remember Pat Woolard. Pat Woolard's little son Jamie finally got into Children's Hospital. However, she did just a little bit of a petition, I would like one of the Pages to take this over to the minister. She got 400 names in just a couple of days.

Vote 47 approved.

On vote 48: medical services commission, $485,230,668.

MR. BARRETT: Under this particular vote, I have a few comments to make. I've been a member of this chamber since before we had socialized medicine in this province, when the

[ Page 9098 ]

concept used to be attacked as a dangerous socialist idea that would destroy the doctor-patient relationship. I've seen a whole generation of philosophy change in that 22-year period. When I first ran for office on a program of socialized medicine, we were attacked as being dangerous socialists for advocating that the public had any place at all in the delivery of a health-care system on a prepaid insurance basis. I'm happy to note that within those 22 years every politician, regardless of what stripe — all the right-wingers included who voted against socialized medicine — now are committed to the continuation of that concept under the word now known as medicare.

I hope it doesn't take the right-wing governments another generation to learn that socialized medicare should be geared towards preventive medicine as well as towards acute care.

I rise under this vote to raise the point, because this government's commitment to socialized medicine was stated in the Ministry of Health objectives published in 1979. This government, committed to socialized medicine with this philosophy, stated during those long-range objectives as follows. I don't accuse the minister of being a socialist; I don't want to run down the good image of those socialists who pioneered socialized medicine that this government now supports as closet socialists.

Interjection.

MR. BARRETT: Social reform in a pig's eye. The only reason you went for socialized medicine is you figured you'd better go for it or you'd lose an election. I don't blame you for that. That's practical politics.

AN HON. MEMBER: Order! We don't talk politics in here.

MR. BARRETT: The minister says not to talk politics in here. I would be the last to bring up politics in this hallowed chamber.

Speaking in a nonpartisan manner, socialized medicine has been accepted as a right, not a privilege. That minister doesn't seem to understand that. The short-term objectives stated by this government in 1979 were: "Maintain a close working relationship with other sections of the Health ministry, particularly long-term care and the Medical Services Commission." In 1979 — not done. "(2) Maintain an effective liaison with hospitals and regional hospital districts regarding future hospital services, program development and funding formulas with particular emphasis on the GVRHD and CRHD." Instead of their stated goals, they have become arbitrary with retroactive edicts. "(3) Promote a close working relationship with representative associations such as B.C. Health Association, College of Physicians and Surgeons, and the B.C. Medical Association." In 1979 they said that. It was not done. As a matter of fact, in this particular regard, they have deliberately sought a confrontation with the doctors of the province of British Columbia, as evidenced by their public campaign against those doctors during the negotiations last year — seeking publicly to use the health care delivery system for political purposes in a dispute with the medical profession.

Mr. Chairman, instead of these principles that the government said it was committed to, the health cutbacks now threaten 1,000 nurses. The nurses themselves want to participate in formulating a better health-care delivery system. But the government has ignored nurses, doctors and anyone else in an arbitrary fashion that is closely associated with dictatorships. I'm not going to call them dictatorial socialists. I'm just going call them dictorial political opportunists who are in danger of destroying a basic social program that everyone in this province now has assumed is a right, not a privilege. The basic debate over whether or not we should have socialized medicine has been left in North America to the United States to deal with. We've won that fight here.

MR. MUSSALLEM: You did not.

MR. BARRETT: We've won that fight here, and it was led by the CCF in 1944 in Saskatchewan.

In 1960 when I ran in the Dewdney constituency, that that member so honorably represents, the Social Credit candidate was a cabinet minister of this government, and he stood on the platform against me and he said: "If you vote for the socialists, they're going to bring in socialized medicine." I said: "Absolutely right." He said: "Vote Social Credit and we will never have socialized medicine."

Interjection.

MR. BARRETT: Who fired me? Do we want that whole thing all over again?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. Hon. members, we're on vote 48 and we must be strictly relevant. I think some of the remarks of the Leader of the Opposition would have been better canvassed in the ministerial vote. I must now ask him to return to vote 48 specifically.

MR. BARRETT: Mr. Chairman, I'm glad that you brought me to order. I'm inclined to go into political history on this subject. It is a fact, an unnoticed fact, that it was the CCF — the predecessor of the New Democratic Party — that pioneered the first socialist medical care plan in Canada. It was in the province of Saskatchewan. We forced every other political party to adopt our line. We do not take memberships from them. We do not want your money. We don't think we're going to get your vote, and we don't mind you stealing our ideas. What we're against is that once you steal our ideas an attempt is made to destroy them. That's what this debate is all about. No citizen, young or old, should be threatened in any way by a careless government that's taking away a competent, thoughtful, progressive socialized medical care scheme.

I just want to, under this vote, remind the minister that the Kamloops Medical Society, on May 7 of this year, wrote: "The Kamloops Medical Society strongly condemns the government decision to underfund the Royal Inland Hospital budget, resulting in the closure of beds, and feel...."

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. Hon. member, there was ample opportunity for the member to canvass those points, and the Chair is not going to permit a recanvass of a debate that has already been passed. I must now ask the member to either return to vote 48, or let us proceed with....

MR. BARRETT: What is the title of vote 48?

[ Page 9099 ]

MR. CHAIRMAN: Vote 48 is the Medical Services Commission. It's not a historical review of the Medical Services Commission.

MR. BARRETT: The Medical Services Commission is aware of this letter to the minister from the Kamloops Medical Society, represented by a Social Credit MLA, who has not stood up and said one word in this debate over the hospital services in his riding. The Penticton Medical Society has written the minister and said the same thing. The member for Penticton did get up and participate. It might have been better if he'd said nothing. Vernon, another Social Credit constituency, has informed the Medical Services Commission, through the minister, of their concerns of the cutbacks. Dr. McMurtry, one of the doctors on the hospital board, has resigned from the board because of it. I haven't heard the member for Okanagan North (Hon. Mrs. Jordan) get up and defend that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. Hon. member....

Interjections.

MR. CHAIRMAN: No, hon. members. This clearly falls within a vote that has already been canvassed. I don't have to read the vote description which is before all of us. Clearly the Leader of the Opposition is taking advantage of a situation which specifically is not permitted in this debate. There was ample opportunity to cover that, hon. member. I ask for the member's cooperation in helping to run an orderly committee.

MR. BARRETT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be very brief .I've just consulted with my two colleagues, and they've told me that I'm not taking advantage of this vote.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, they're wrong, hon. member.

MR. BARRETT: It's two to one, Mr. Chairman. I believe in a democratic vote.

I'll be brief and get onto the next one. The point I'm making is that the Medical Services Commission has failed to receive the support of these specific members in this House under this vote in protecting socialized medicine in this province. I have here a whole list of doctors who have also made the same appeal, but I'm going to take cognizance of the admonition of the Chair, because I respect the Chair and the rules of this House.

I want to conclude under this particular section, not only in chastising, with love and humour, my Social Credit friends over there who will only have this chamber as a memory after the next election. Part of the reason they will have this chamber only as a memory is because of their deliberate attempt to destroy socialized medicine in the province of British Columbia.

In conclusion, I want to point out that the leader of their party has not said one word in this debate, nor has he participated by his presence when medicare is threatened in British Columbia, and I find that distasteful.

MR. MUSSALLEM: I want to say very briefly, in hearing the remarks of the Leader of the Opposition, that if they were even half true I would not have risen. He wants to leave in this House the impression that....

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order. please. The member withdraws the remark of half true?

MR. MUSSALLEM: Fine. I'll withdraw it. If the truth hurts, I will withdraw the half-truth.

The fact is, it was a Social Credit government that instituted the medical system in British Columbia totally. When it was in a state of complete upheaval from a previous government,, they took it over and established the medical system that exists today, and every improvement and step forward since that day, every facet — home care, extended care, intermediate care, intensive care, ambulance service, all of it — is by this government. Not one thing was done by the socialists. I want to make it clear that if they take that as their stand, it can be treated as something strange to the facts and foreign to the truth. What they are saying today was summed up by the June 1982 editorial in the medical journal of the BCMA, and mark these words. The Leader of the Opposition is doing the same thing today. Complaining about the poor attendance at the convention, the editorial said: "If we could only have a speaker, any speaker, who would not make a medical political speech, we might get some interest in this convention." That's what it said, and that is the trouble. This opposition has not stood up and told us that it's a great medical system. They would rather tell us it is not.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I must advise the member for Dewdney, as I did the Leader of the Opposition, that we are currently under vote 48, and remarks must be strictly relevant to that section.

MR. MUSSALLEM: I do not know what makes the hon. member so nervous. But when you're needling him with the facts.... One thing they can't stand is the facts in the light of day. It was this Social Credit government that created the medical system as it stands, improvement as it stands. Anything that's been taken away from it was done by this opposition. They have tried to deteriorate and damage the system at every opportunity, especially the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke). He tried to transform this House....

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. hon. member. Again, I must now advise the member that he is straying far from vote 48 presently before us. I'm sure the member, in concluding his remarks....

MR. MUSSALLEM: As I said, Mr. Chairman, I'm going to be very brief. I conclude my remarks by simply saying that the Medical Services Commission would be astounded and would fall off their chairs if they could hear what happened in this House from that opposition today.

Vote 48 approved.

Schedule E: $5,857,579 cash basis and $9,840,194 accrual basis — approved.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

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

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

[ Page 9100 ]

HON. MR. GARDOM: I call Bill M201.

MR. KING: On a point of order, during committee I made reference to a document, and I ask leave to table the document.

Leave granted.

DANGEROUS HEALTH PRACTICES ACT.

MR. MUSSALLEM: Mr. Speaker, in introducing today a bill entitled Dangerous Health Practices Act....

MR. COCKE: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, this private member's bill will call on the government to fund it, and I suggest that it's out of order.

MR. SPEAKER: There is an amendment on the order paper for this bill, and the Chair is seeking to determine whether or not the amendment....

MR. COCKE: I withdraw my objections.

MR. SPEAKER: So ordered.

MR. MUSSALLEM: In introducing today a bill entitled Dangerous Health Practices Act, which reflects the government's commitment to its responsibility to safeguard public health.... As the Minister of Health stated during his estimates, the government is interested and is particularly considering health and sickness prevention. But my bill runs exactly along these lines. Dangerous health practices such as irresponsible diets, exercise regimes, and remedies for mental and physical ailments are sometimes promoted in this province. The public must be protected against such activities. In our legal framework health professionals, and any individuals, are usually reticent in making their views known and commenting on any of these practices, because in the present climate there is always the possibility of being sued. This proposed act would ensure that information and professional opinions on dangerous health practices would be disseminated to the people of our province through this House and through the appointment by the minister of a committee, consisting mostly of members of his staff. Any public members that would be appointed would be operating on a voluntary, free-of-charge basis.

They could make statements and observations completely without fear of being sued, and give their best opinions to the public. People could phone and inquire about health practices. The minister would be free to give opinions. Anyone would be free to give opinions without danger of court action. The bill merely assists and directs that we should be moving in the interest of the prevention of sickness, into the field of preventive medicine. That is the thrust of the bill, that's the course this bill takes, so that people will be free to inquire and no one will be afraid of being sued thereby. I move second reading of my bill.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has made some very interesting points. We'd like to take them under consideration. I move adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of the House.

Motion approved.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Second reading of Bill M202, Mr. Speaker.

AN ACT RESPECTING THE
TELEVISING AND OTHER BROADCASTING
OF DEBATES AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE
LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

MR. LEGGATT: The title of the bill explains pretty well what the bill is about. I do want to point out that in Canada there are only two legislatures left which do riot broadcast the proceedings of their Legislatures by radio. Those two are B.C. and Newfoundland.

Interjection.

MR. LEGGATT: We'll deal with that if you want to deal with that.

The second point I want to raise is that as far as television is concerned, all the legislatures of Canada are televised, with the exception of British Columbia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and P.E.I. The major legislatures, where the major population centres are, have been televised for a very long time. There is no reason whatsoever that the proceedings of this House shouldn't be televised.

HON. MR. FRASER: Why did you stop us from televising the budget?

MR. LEGGATT: They should not be televised selectively for the government's advantage. The Minister of Highways interjects: "Why didn't you want the budget televised?" That's the kind of narrow, selective television that the public doesn't want. They want to hear what goes on in this chamber, not just what the government wants them to hear going on in this chamber. That kind of censorship is what this bill tries to avoid. It tries to allow the public to make a judgment on what they see. It also allows those who live in the remote parts of this province to see what happens in the Legislature. Everything is far too centralized down here in this province. We'd like Quesnel to see the minister in operation once in a while; have them see him sleep at his desk once in a while. It's great stuff. It is important that we bring television to the people of British Columbia, particularly to those areas that haven't got a chance to come down and watch what happens here.

The second reason is that I think our own performance would be immensely improved in the House if we had the proceedings televised. It's not just a case of putting on a tie and wearing a different kind of attitude and getting a haircut — which I got today. It means that there is a change that comes over a Legislature when it's televised, and it's a change for the better. I can only tell you, having been in several legislatures and having been in Ottawa for some time, that I think it would be a good thing.

I know the minister's going to rise and ask that this debate be adjourned. I'd like to make a request of the government House Leader that we pass this bill through all stages right now. It's a very simple bill. It doesn't incur any expense to the public purse, and the broadcasting would be done by the media under the direction of the Speaker and his committee. It's a very simple bill. This is what they do in Alberta, and they do it very successfully. There's no reason why we can't have these proceedings televised. I haven't heard anyone

[ Page 9101 ]

argue against it. I've tried to canvass everybody in the place. they say, "Yes, it's a great idea," yet it never happens.

HON. MR. FRASER: The reporters are against it. We wouldn't need reporters anymore.

MR. LEGGATT: I think the public should be allowed to compare what a reporter says with what they see in the Legislature, and have another source of information. It would be very good, Alex.

In any event, Mr. Speaker, I didn't plan on taking a long time. The bill speaks for itself. It does provide that there be no financial contributions. The media themselves would be very happy — I've consulted with them — to be invited to bring television to these proceedings under the direction of you, Mr. Speaker. Therefore I move second reading of the bill.

HON. MR. GARDOM: This member, as has the other member, has indeed raised some very interesting points. He also raised some interesting issues. It's obviously a matter that would require more precise, in-depth consideration and deliberation. Some of the issues, from a technical perspective, which he very clearly pointed out, and I agree with him.... It would have to be a completely objective approach taken to television, which of course does create some difficulties.

AN HON. MEMBER: For the government.

HON. MR. GARDOM: No. I'd say, my dear friend, it would create difficulties for all sides of the House.

There are, furthermore, a number of legal issues that have not yet been effectively determined in the country; that's the question of the extension or nonextension of privilege to, say, the attendants, the crews, the Clerks and other officials in this process of dissemination of broadcasting, and whether that privilege would be either absolute or qualified. Further, we have heard, unfortunately, in this session a number of items which would clearly be a slander if they were said outside this House. Whether those types of things should be more widely, vividly or sensationally disseminated.... We can well recall the regrettable statement, on reflection, of the member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk), whose irresponsible statement created a serious run on a bank in our country. Think how much worse that might have been from the perspective of hearing that kind of information thrust right into one's living room.

Mr. Speaker, I move adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of the House.

Motion approved.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Second reading of Bill M203, Mr. Speaker.

AN ACT TO REGULATE
SMOKING IN PUBLIC PLACES

MRS. WALLACE: I won't go into any detail on this bill because I'm sure all members are very familiar with it. I have introduced it in the Legislature every year since I've been here. This is the first time I've had an opportunity to speak on it, but I'm sure you have all read it. I have spoken on it on other occasions; I spoke on it during the estimates of the Minister of Health.

I think no one questions at this time whether or not smoking is harmful. Recently there has been a great deal of evidence to indicate that smoking is harmful for nonsmokers if they have to breathe the air. As recently as July 26 of this year, the Times-Colonist carried a medical study which indicated that smoking killed 28,700 Canadians last year, five times more than were killed in traffic. It said the inhalation by nonsmokers of tobacco-polluted air was equivalent to smoking ten cigarettes a day. So there is no question about the harm. The only concern seems to be whether or not the act would be accepted.

I would like to read into the record some of the letters I have received in support of this particular bill. One is from Dr. Arnott, director of West Kootenay Health District, giving his support to Bill M205 — two years ago it was M205. A more recent letter, April 1981, is from the Canadian Cancer Society: "It is encouraging to know we have your support in this worthwhile endeavour." An editorial on the bill from the Parksville Progress: "Go To It, Barbara Wallace!" Airspace in Victoria: "We're writing you on behalf of the executive of Airspace in connection with your proposed bill to restrict smoking in public places." Here in Victoria that group is trying to get city council to bring in similar legislation.

I suggest, Mr. Speaker. that the time is now, the need is now, and I move second reading.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member has made some very valid points, and I have to say that from the point of view of a fair degree of conflict of interest, for both myself and the hon. member for Mackenzie (Mr. Lockstead). We will give serious consideration to the proposal you have made, but for the time being, Madam Member, I would on my behalf — indeed, on behalf of the hon. member for Mackenzie as well, I'm sure — move adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of the House.

Motion approved.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Speaker, second reading of Bill M204.

EMPLOYEE PARTICIPATION ENHANCEMENT ACT

MR. RITCHIE: Mr. Speaker, this is a very timely bill in view of the desperate need for increased productivity in our province, and indeed our country. This bill does not force anyone to do anything. It states as policy that greater employee participation in company profits and decision-making is a desirable goal. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution we have concentrated on improving the physical means of production and, to some extent, the physical conditions in the workplace. Sadly, as a result we have downplayed or completely forgotten about the invisible aspect of the human resource. We have designed factories and mills for maximum mechanical efficiency, while neglecting to take full advantage of human efficiency. We've got space-age machines in our factories and offices, but we go to the bargaining table with attitudes and prejudices that are as obsolete as the Model-T Ford. I believe it's time for labour and management to come out of the Dirty Thirties and into the eighties.

Men and women want more from a job than a pay packet and pension plan; they want a sense of satisfaction. They want jobs that offer a challenge. They want jobs they can recognize as a means towards reaching a better future for themselves and their families. Creating a work environment

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that promotes job satisfaction and worker participation is not a problem for owners and managers; it's an opportunity to benefit from the increased efficiency and productivity of a happier workforce. Government's economic role should be to create a climate that supports development and the production of wealth. In the field of worker participation, I believe, we have a prime example of an opportunity for government to fulfil that role. We hear of growing concern about our pension plans: will they be able to meet all the demands of today's workers when they reach retirement age? I say: what better pension plan than a share of the company you've helped build?

In view of the impact of inflation and the shift to an older population needing pensions, new productivity is absolutely fundamental to a continuing sound and secure economic future for Canadians. Employee participation is not just an opportunity for the private sector and our government. Employee participation could increase efficiency. Employee participation works; I've seen it at work. It does produce happy endings. It encourages pride in ownership and pride in workmanship. It leads to financial security for the retired worker. It increases profits and productivity, while making industries more flexible, more capable of rapid response to market changes and more competitive in the global economy.

I move that the bill be now read a second time.

HON. MR. GARDOM: We'd like to thank the hon. member for his thoughtful comments. They will be taken under consideration.

I move adjournment of the debate until the next sitting of the House.

Motion approved.

Hon. Mr. Gardom moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 12:09 p.m.