[ Page 9219 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Oral Questions

Government publication on economic development. Mr. Howard –– 9219

Legal aid. Mr. Macdonald –– 9219

Increases for dentists. Mr. Cocke –– 9219

Minister of Universities' tenure. Mr. Nicolson –– 9220

Legal aid, Mr. Macdonald –– 9220

Forestry quotas on Queen Charlotte Islands. Mr. King –– 9220

Minister of Universities' tenure. Mrs. Dailly –– 9221

Constitution Amendment Act, 1982 (Bill 80). Second reading. (Hon. Mr. Chabot)

Mr. Davis –– 9221

Mrs. Wallace –– 9224

Mr. Kempf –– 9228

Mr. King –– 9229

Mrs. Jordan –– 9233

Coal Amendment Act, 1982 (Bill 78). Second reading. (Hon. Mr. Smith)

Hon. Mr. Smith –– 9238

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1982

The House met at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Mr. Speaker, later this afternoon I will be meeting with representatives of the Delta School Board, and I would ask that you all welcome the trustees: Mrs. Porter, chairman, and Mrs. Booker and Mr. Burnett.

MR. HOWARD: Mr. Speaker, in the precincts today — I'm not sure if he's in the gallery at the moment — is a former, very distinguished member of this chamber who made a tremendous contribution to the political, economic and social life of British Columbia over a number of years. I'd like the House to join me in welcoming Mr. John Squire.

MR. LEA: I'd like to ask the members of the Legislature to join me in welcoming Brian Gardner, who is in the gallery today. Until just recently, Brian was the executive assistant for the Member of Parliament for Skeena, Jim Fulton.

HON. MR. SMITH: I would like the House to welcome three charming ladies in the gallery today who are stalwart friends of mine: Ginny Marshall-Laing, Sharon Jackson and Lorraine Spence.

Oral Questions

GOVERNMENT PUBLICATION
ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

MR. HOWARD: I'd like to direct a question to the Minister of Labour, and ask if the minister can confirm that the material he and his colleague, the Minister of Industry and Small Business Development (Hon. Mr. Phillips), handed out yesterday at substantial cost to the taxpayers of British Columbia is tantamount to a carbon copy of the 1977 report of exactly the same nature, prepared by the Ministry of Economic Development.

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

MR. HOWARD: It seems that the minister has read neither of those reports then, from that answer.

Can the minister confirm that the only substantive change from the 1977 report is the addition of the Social Credit Party colours on the cover and the addition of a picture book showing Social Credit candidates?

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: I know of no Social Credit candidates which are shown in the report. That report was started by the economic development committee of cabinet some 18 months ago when it was decided that, rather than like the record of the previous government, in which some of the members on the opposite side sat.... They used to sit in Victoria and fritter away money; this committee goes to, talks to, works for and listens to the people, and acts as a result of that. That's the result of this report.

MR. HOWARD: Reports that I've heard indicated that at least the minister didn't rent a Cadillac when he was in Terrace and didn't go to some "Sugar Babies" show.

Can the minister confirm that it cost the taxpayers of British Columbia hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for him and whoever it was who went with him to Terrace to re-release this five-year-old report, solely for the purpose of advancing the interests of Social Credit?

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: Mr. Speaker, I know that member doesn't go to his constituency very often, so maybe that's reason for me to go more often.

MR. HOWARD: The dignity with which I regard this chamber forbids my asking the minister to withdraw that unbelievable, scurrilous and slimy accusation.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order....

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, I have brought to the House's attention on previous occasions that it would be appreciated if points of order could be addressed after question period, as they do eat into the time. However, on a point of order, the Minister of Labour.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: I recall this same point being raised yesterday with regard to yourself and the problem you had with your eyes. I wondered why the member for Skeena winked at me after he sat down.

LEGAL AID

MR. MACDONALD: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Premier of British Columbia in the absence of the Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Williams). The basis of legal aid has been totally changed in this province. There is now the imposition of a user fee of S30, cash on the line, before you can take advantage of it, contrary to the legislation which we provided for legal aid, thus denying poor people access to equal justice. I'm asking the Premier if he approved that imposition of a $30 cash-on-the-line fee before somebody can get legal aid.

HON. MR. BENNETT: Because this should be posed to the Attorney-General, I'll take the question on notice for him.

INCREASES FOR DENTISTS

MR. COCKE: I'll address a question to the Minister of Health. Is the Minister of Health now prepared to correct the erroneous statements made by the Premier, and admit that dentists have been granted a 12 percent increase for this year, retroactive to April 1, by the provincial government?

HON. MR. NIELSEN: I would like some details as to the question that the member for New Westminster has just asked. I'm not quite sure what you mean by dentists being granted a 12 percent increase, retroactive to a certain day. Perhaps the member might give me some information as to which dentists he speaks of; whether it's those in private fee-for-service, government dentists, or whatever. Could you fill me in, please?

[ Page 9220 ]

MR. COCKE: The minister asks the question and I'll answer by saying, all the dentists who were under the dental plan. The dental plan was suspended as of September 1, but they were paid.... There was money held back, but I understand that money has now been given to them which would provide them with a 12 percent increase in their dental scale. The first minister has been going around saying what leadership the dentists have been providing in this whole question of restraint. I'm just asking the Minister of Health whether or not they have been granted their 12 percent increase, and will we be paying that forever and ever? I'm talking about dental plans and private dentists.

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Mr. Speaker, I would have to speak with the Medical Services Plan people to see what percentage any increase this year works out to after the Dental Care Plan was suspended on September 1. There have been modifications. The College of Dental Surgeons and others have indicated by written correspondence that they are prepared to modify arrangements which had previously been made effective September 1. I'd have to get those numbers recalculated.

MR. COCKE: I'd like to ask the minister this: in view of all the promises that we're hearing at the present time from government members across the way, and in view of the fact that in 1979 one of the great promises of this government was a dental plan, can the minister confirm that the Premier was also aware that there is no longer any control over dentists' fees, and that government has now reneged on its promise for a denticare plan for this province?

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Attempting to sum up the entire question, I think the answer would be no.

MINISTER OF UNIVERSITIES' TENURE

MR. NICOLSON: Will the Minister of Universities, Science and Communications admit to the House that he has flagrantly abused his office and his authority in order to pressure the UBC board of governors to grant him a special favour: an extended leave of absence from his tenured academic position?

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

MR. NICOLSON: I would ask the minister if he fails to appreciate the conflict of interest involved when a minister who approves university budgets asks for such a special favour in such an unprecedented....

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

MR. NICOLSON: Does the minister fail to comprehend the conflict of interest when the same minister also appoints some of the members to this board?

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

MR. NICOLSON: Thousands of teachers who do not have the same Socred connections are losing their jobs. This minister is fixing his. How can he justify this double standard?

HON. MR. McGEER: There is no such double standard, Mr. Speaker.

LEGAL AID

MR. MACDONALD: I asked the Premier a moment ago about the price-tag of $30 on access to legal aid. I'm asking the Attorney-General, in view of the fact that the legislation clearly makes legal aid available to those who need it and cannot get it for financial reasons, whether he intends to amend the act of which he is so clearly in breach in imposing this user fee.

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, I understand that the question was asked earlier and the hon. Premier took it as notice on my behalf, which surely saves me from taking the same course of action. I am afraid, however, that I do not accept the premise upon which the question is based.

MR. MACDONALD: I have another question for the Attorney-General. In the case of a criminal conviction, the federal-provincial agreement on legal aid and the legislation say that if it could lead to imprisonment or loss of livelihood, legal aid shall be made available. Now the minister has changed that and said we will grant it only if there's probability of the person going to jail. As he is in breach of his legislation, does he intend to amend that legislation, or just continue in breach? Will he bring this subject to the House for debate?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is offering a legal opinion. I only to wish to assure you and the members of this House that the arrangements that have been made with the Legal Services Society with respect to the functioning of criminal legal aid have been taken on competent legal advice.

FORESTRY QUOTAS ON
QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS

MR. KING: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Forests. There's been a major reduction in the annual allowable cut on the Queen Charlotte timber supply area. Has the minister decided to impose equitable reductions in the permissible annual allowable cut on tree-farm licence holders, as well as on quota-holders in the Queen Charlottes?

HON. MR. WATERLAND: Any reductions in cut as a result of the reduced allowable cut determination for the Queen Charlotte Islands will, of course, be made in an equitable manner.

MR. KING: It's my understanding that an application for a fairly major log export has been directed to the minister's office from that timber supply area. Is it the minister's intention to ensure that no logs are exported from British Columbia when there is a shortage of logs for the continued operation of many mills in that particular area of the province?

HON. MR. WATERLAND: There is no such shortage of logs for the industry in British Columbia. The member is in error. No such application has been made to my office. Normal procedure, which I understand is being carried out, is that such requests go to the log export advisory committee. I

[ Page 9221 ]

understand that such application will be considered by that committee sometime next week.

MINISTER OF UNIVERSITIES' TENURE

MRS. DAILLY: My question is to the Minister of Universities, Science and Communications. In view of the fact that you sit in a government which is presiding over a policy that is destroying the tenure and security of hundreds of B.C. teachers, I simply want to ask the minister: have you no shame in ramming through your tenure with the board?

HON. MR. McGEER: Mr. Speaker, I'm against tenure.

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please, hon. members. Let us hear the answer.

HON. MR. McGEER: I don't believe in tenure for university professors or for school teachers.

Orders of the Day

HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Speaker, I call adjourned debate on second reading of Bill 80.

CONSTITUTION AMENDMENT ACT, 1982

(continued)

MR. BARNES: I ask leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

MR. BARNES: I'm pleased to note that Debbie, the eldest of my three daughters, is in the Speaker's gallery. I'd just like to welcome her and ask the assembly to join me in doing so.

MR. DAVIS: Mr. Speaker, back to Bill 80. Let me start out by saying that I'm not impressed by the Warren report. I wasn't very impressed with the Eckardt report. I didn't think much of the Norris report. The Angus report of the mid-1960s also left a lot to be desired. They're all without what I think is a basic principle around which they can draw their conclusions and make their recommendations. They pay some lip service to representation by population, and then repeat many of the errors of their predecessors. They tend, therefore, to repeat history and make judgments which put the government of the day in the position of being accused of gerrymandering and rigging ridings to suit the party in power.

All of these reports move, perhaps grudgingly, in the right direction. They didn't move far enough, and they didn't stress principle, as far as I'm concerned. I'm fundamentally for representation by population — rep by pop, as it was familiarly known 50 or 100 years ago. I'm for it more and more. I think we can adhere to it more closely as time goes by. I'm for it because I believe it's the individual who counts; it's the individual's vote that counts; it's the people who count; it's the people in the majority who count; and physical features like geography are less and less important as time goes by.

Why is this? It's basically because communications have been improving. Transportation and the movement of people have been facilitated by technology. Effective communications nowadays are often instantaneous. They didn't used to be. It used to take days for people to get messages through, especially to more remote areas of the country. Nowadays, by telephone, by radio and even by television, it's possible to get through immediately, to get a message across and get an answer back. We, in this Legislature, can get through to most parts of our ridings simply by dialing a telephone number. We can do it free of cost to ourselves. We can talk to the prospective voter, the constituent, at length. They can give us their views for as long as we're prepared to listen to them.

I tend to discount increasingly, as time goes by, the question of area, distance and the physical features of an admittedly difficult part of the world like British Columbia, and reach more and more to the fundamental principle of representation by population, as the one that should guide those who are making recommendations for redistribution and should guide this Legislature in passing laws to that effect. One doesn't have to look back far to see situations which were difficult. As recently as 1969, federally, one MP represented the entire Yukon and one MP in Ottawa represented the entire Northwest Territories. There were also large areas in this province that were very effectively represented by an individual MLA.

I'm prepared to make some allowances and bend a bit from the hard and fast principle of representation by population — precisely that and nothing but that — but I want to reiterate that travel nowadays is nothing like as inhibiting as it used to be. Communications are virtually instantaneous for all of us, and I don't think it's much more difficult for a member representing a riding in the far north to get through to a constituent than it is for me to get through to a constituent in North Vancouver–Seymour.

[Mr. Mussallem in the chair.]

I think we should pay more regard, if we're going to talk about factors other than population, to transportation arteries — access in terms of ease of transport — and not to square miles, numbers of mountain tops or real estate, in effect. With jet travel nowadays, you can go long distances in very short periods of time. With modern highways and reasonably good roads to many parts of the province it's sometimes possible to go to those areas of more distant constituencies than to some of the so-called closer-in constituencies — certainly to the latter's remote areas.

This is the fundamental reason why I am opposed to the retention, for example, of small constituencies with very small populations on the grounds that their boundaries encompass hundreds, if not thousands, of square miles. I'm opposed, to be specific, to the retention of the Atlin constituency as such. I'm opposed to the boosting of representation in North Peace simply because of the acreage involved, if that's the reason; and generally, physical features being played up and people numbers being played down in redistribution.

Who am I to talk about remote areas and their representation? Some members may ask that question. I know a fair amount about it. Twenty years ago, when I was elected, federally, to represent Coast-Capilano, it was a large and certainly difficult constituency. Coast-Capilano, in those days, reached from the eastern extremities of Burrard Inlet halfway to Prince Rupert. It also reached back into the

[ Page 9222 ]

Chilcotins in the interior. It included, in whole or in part, what are now six different provincial ridings. It included all of North Vancouver–Seymour, all of North Vancouver–Capilano, all of West Vancouver–Howe Sound, all of Mackenzie, and parts of Cariboo and Yale-Lillooet. That was a federal constituency. It was a big riding, as ridings go. I was elected at a time — and that was only 20 years ago — when we only had one air-pass a year back to our ridings, when we didn't have free telephone service available to us, when we didn't have constituency offices paid for at public expense, and when we certainly didn't have any expense account for travel within our ridings.

I wasn't unique, but I'm merely describing that federal riding at that time. Those were the circumstances, and I contend that many Canadian ridings were like that, and most of them were reasonably well represented. Many of the MPs who endeavoured to represent them in those days were re-elected. I was re-elected four times as a federal Liberal — and in that area it took some doing, so I must have done something right. I contend it wasn't because of the geographic problems of getting around to eight Indian reserves, dozens of communities large and small, pulpmill towns and so on.

I want to change my perspective a bit. Strict adherence to representation by population means moving constituency boundaries. It means moving them from time to time as population grows differentially, grows faster in one area, grows less fast in another, and in fact may decline in some places. It means shifting MLAs to places where the action is and, to some degree at least, away from the areas where the action isn't. People-flows mean constituency-flows. It means more MLAs in areas like Surrey, Richmond and Delta, relative to the total number of MLAs and relative to the city of Vancouver proper, which has had little if any population growth in the last two decades. It means more MLAs in the Kamloops and Okanagan areas, and fewer MLAs in the upper Columbia and northwestern corners of the province. These shifts have to occur if we're going strictly by population and refuse to increase the total number of MLAs in the Legislature meanwhile.

I said at the outset that I wasn't impressed by the Warren report. It made some recommendations which I think generally are in the right direction, but I was also not impressed because in my view the Warren report takes the easy way out. It adds MLAs in the population growth areas. It refuses to take MLAs away from the semi-populated or slow-growth areas, or indeed no-growth areas. Commissioner Warren dealt with the top end of the constituency population scale but ignored the bottom end. He added, but he refused to take away. More than that, he dithered around a bit in the in-between. He got square miles mixed up with people and he was accused, as commissioners before him have been accused, of playing favourites or gerrymandering on behalf of the government.

The New Democratic Party, naturally, is taking advantage of this confusion of acreage with population. It represents in some measure the slow-growth and no-growth areas. It doesn't, or hasn't in recent years, in large numbers anyway, represented growth areas, let alone fast-growing areas.

Interjection.

MR. DAVIS: There are rare exceptions, hon. member. They don't want to see two MLAs in Richmond, for example. They don't want to see two MLAs in fast-growing Delta. They don't want to see two MLAs in Okanagan South or Kamloops, or indeed in Cariboo. They don't want that kind of people-dictated adjustment to occur. They want to retain the status quo.

They certainly haven't expressed an opinion to this effect, but I think they secretly enjoy the fact that the tiny Atlin constituency has been retained, perhaps because they count on it continuing to be an NDP seat. They want more seats on Vancouver Island because they think Vancouver Island is an NDP preserve, but they don't want to see more seats elsewhere in the province, particularly in the interior and the more affluent areas in the lower mainland. They think, and I think they're defeatist in this regard, that the people there won't support them and that if the people there can elect more MLAs or are entitled to more MLAs, this is bad news as far as they are concerned.

Essentially, their attitude is small "c" conservative when it comes to redistribution — like the Tories of the early 1800s, in the United Kingdom, who fought tooth and nail to prevent the passage of the Reform Act of 1832. They're against more precise, more reasonable, more rational representation by population. Tories in those days were against manhood suffrage. Conservatives of the Tory type in the intervening years were against universal suffrage. They didn't believe in representation by population then; the NDP, on the face of it, doesn't seem to believe in representation by population now. They, if the analogy were true, prefer the rotten borough approach, where very small numbers elect disproportionate numbers in the legislatures and parliaments of this country.

The NDP often talk about people. The NDP claims to be a people-oriented party. Land doesn't matter. Real estate doesn't matter. Territory doesn't matter. People do. If they were to be consistent, they would be pressing for representation by population, and they would be looking at the Warren report in a very different way than they appear to be doing now. I have said throughout that I am all for representation by population. If I have to compromise at all, and we're in a situation where factors other than population are substantial in the formulas that have been used in the past, where representation in this House reflects geography, territory, acreage and square miles more than it should.... We have to move from that situation to a "rep by pop" situation, and I have to be realistic.

What compromises must we make now, and still be headed in the right direction? I happen to like the present federal formula. It's average population, plus or minus 25 percent. First you divide the total population — say the population of Canada or, in our case, the population of British Columbia — by the number of seats. That gives you an average population per seat. In British Columbia in 1981, Commissioner Warren tells us, the average was 48,000 people. On a strict "rep by pop" basis every provincial constituency would have a population of 48,000, no more and no less. Using the federal formula, with some latitude in it — plus or minus 25 percent — populations in individual constituencies could vary. They could vary upwards by 25 percent, from 48,000 to 60,000, at the top end of the range, or down by 25 percent to 36,000. Using the federal formula, and a range around the "rep by pop" precise norm, constituencies would range in population from 36,000 to 60,000 in population.

Undoubtedly we have to go a further step for an interim period, at least. Let's say plus or minus 50 percent. That would give us, from the 48,000 provincial norm, the precise

[ Page 9223 ]

"rep by pop" figure, up 50 percent to 72,000 and down 50 percent to 24,000. If the hon. members would look at page 35 of the Warren report, they would see a table headed: "Population of provincial electoral ridings, 1981 census figures." It lists our provincial ridings by size. Surrey is number one, with 161,000 people. Atlin is the smallest, with a little over 6,000 — a ratio of more than 25 to 1. By my standards that's a long way from rep by pop, and in my view it's already unconscionable.

If we go back to the modified federal formula, to an average population per constituency plus or minus 25 percent, or further to plus or minus 50 percent for an interim period, back to a minimum of 24,000 and a maximum of 72,000, where does this leave us? What do we see if we draw lines on that page? Where do we cut off top and bottom? Starting at the big end, population-wise, of the riding list, we see that Surrey, with a population of 161,000, merits two plus MLAs, perhaps three. On a strict 48,000 population basis it merits at least three. Rep by pop would give it more than three. The Warren report recommends three. So I'm for three MLAs for the Surrey area, on strict rep by pop, on the federal formula, or on a modified federal formula of plus or minus 50 percent. There's a recommendation in the Warren commission that I can support.

Richmond is shown as having a population of 96,000. It merits two MLAs on a strict rep by pop basis. Two precisely, Jack Webster would perhaps say. So again I'm for the Warren commission, which recommends two MLAs for Richmond.

Okanagan South has a population of 79,000. The maximum formula would be 72,000; 79,000 merits more than one MLA; a strict rep by pop would give it close to two MLAs; the federal formula certainly would give it two. So two for Okanagan South — again Commissioner Warren, on rep by pop or a modified rep by pop basis, was right.

Delta has a population of 75,000. It is somewhat smaller than Okanagan South, certainly smaller than Richmond and very definitely smaller than Surrey. Incidentally, these are all growing ridings. It's another big growth area. People are moving there by the thousands every year. So one MLA for 79,000 is wrong on all the bases I've mentioned — certainly rep by pop, modified federal formula is the other extreme. I say two MLAs, with some qualification — certainly two by the mid-1980s. The Warren commission recommends two, and two it should be.

Those are the easy ones, Mr. Speaker, and I include Kamloops on its merits. Cariboo has 62,000. On a strict representation by population basis it merits 1 1/3 MLAs, if you can conceive of that. If we use the federal formula of average constituency size, in population terms, plus or minus 25 percent, and therefore a minimum allowable size of 32,000, it's very close to qualifying as a full two riding constituency. If the formula was the modified federal formula that I've suggested, plus or minus 50 percent, it would be two MLAs plus. Therefore I think that the recommendation re Cariboo makes sense. I can therefore support the Warren commission.

North Peace River presently has a population of 31,000. On a strict rep by pop basis it's 60 percent of what it ought to be. Using the federal formula of plus or minus 25 percent it's still 6,000 short of two members. You have to go to the federal formula plus or minus 50 percent to qualify it at all for a single member. If I'm consistent and insist on representation by population, however modified — at least modified up to 50 percent — North Peace doesn't qualify for two members; it only qualifies for one.

I'm going along with the Warren commission report by adding one MLA in Surrey, an MLA in Richmond, an MLA in Okanagan South, an MLA in Kamloops, an MLA in Delta, and probably an MLA in Cariboo. That's six additional MLAs. That's on the high side — the big population side, the population growth area side. That looks after population growth that moves towards representation by population, which is, in the end, I believe, the desirable result.

I should perhaps say a word about the small-end constituencies, Atlin and Columbia River in particular. We all know that Atlin is an NDP seat. The NDP have been silent about how it should be treated. The Norris report, incidentally, melds it into a much bigger riding called Northland. In the past, they've made a few inferences about Columbia River. They're more interested in Columbia River, because presently it's represented by a Social Credit member. They think it might have been redistributed. They're silent on the Atlin issue, as I would call it.

To be thoroughly practical about it, where do we go from here? We have to move towards the growth areas in terms of giving better representation, if not perfect representation, in a rep-by-pop sense. One suggestion — and I realize it's far out in one sense, but it helps to focus the debate; at least, I hope it helps to focus the debate — is this: what would happen if we adopted the federal formula right now? Two things would happen. One is that we wouldn't need our own electoral commissioner or a series of commissions. We could rely on the federal regional commission and their tenure revisions, their centennial revisions, of the federal electoral map. The other is that we could try to fit two provincial MLAs into each single federal constituency. Surprisingly, there are 28 federal constituencies right now on a modified rep-by-pop basis. Two for one would give us 56 MLAs. We have 56 MLAs in the House right now. That's a coincidence, but moving immediately and overnight to the federal boundaries and having a two-for-one substitution of MLAs for MPs would give us the size of House, in terms of MLAs, that we have now.

Incidentally, if we could use a federal commission and federally determined boundaries to establish constituency outlines, the government of the day couldn't easily be accused of gerrymandering or rigging the electoral map of the province.

Finally, I'd like to refer you to the federal constituency map of British Columbia, which shows 28 seats. If we had two MLAs for every MP presently sitting in Ottawa, there would be 56 seats, as I've said. Let's look at the boundaries. The establishment of the boundaries is the touchy element of this exercise. In the lower mainland, the growth areas of Surrey, Richmond and Delta, provincially we have three federal ridings. Remember, that's based on 1971, not 1981. Therefore we should have six MLAs on 1971 data, and certainly six or seven on 1981 data, which is what the Warren commission recommends. That's what representation by population, somewhat modified, would give us. So I contend that we're moving in the right direction in the lower mainland.

Let's look at the Okanagan. There are two federal Okanagan seats. There are three MLAs now; four MLAs on a federal rep-by-pop basis. The Warren commission says to add one MLA: make three four. We should therefore add one MLA and make it four seats. Again, that's the recommendation of the Warren commission. It fits the federal boundaries

[ Page 9224 ]

and representation by population, with the plus or minus 25 percent modification. Kamloops: there's one MP in Kamloops now; and one MLA. There should be two MLAs; add one. Another mark in favour of the Warren commission. Cariboo: one MP in Cariboo and one MLA. There should be two MLAs. The Warren report, using the federal formula, is right again.

Where I admittedly have trouble, and where I think many of us have trouble, is with North Peace River, Atlin and Columbia River, certainly as double MLA ridings. The entire Peace River area has one MP. It therefore merits, on the federal formula basis — 1971 census, I must remind you — two MLAs, not three. It would tend to rule out a double riding in the North Peace River area. Atlin, Prince Rupert and Skeena are encompassed by a single federal riding called Skeena, with one MP and two MLAs. Provincially, Atlin disappears — or would disappear if you followed the federal formula — into a Skeena or Prince Rupert riding, or a mix of both. Certainly there would be two MLAs here from that northwestern area of the province, not three. Columbia River, similarly, but not with as much reason, disappears into perhaps Kootenay and Shuswap-Revelstoke.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

In summary, Mr. Speaker, if I use the existing federal constituency map as a basis for judging the Warren report, I have to say that it is more right than wrong — far more right than wrong. It's right in six MLA situations and wrong — and that's my assessment of it — in the northeast. It's deficient in that it doesn't deal with the really small ridings — two of them — but that's something which the NDP naturally doesn't want us to talk about. So my score is six to one in favour of a modified rep-by-pop formula. It's six to one in the right direction, and I'm therefore going to vote for it.

It's an imperfect bill. What bill is perfect, especially when it's something that comes up periodically? What's wrong with us going in decisive steps, Mr. Speaker, now towards representation by population, precisely determined? Why don't we move towards the federal formula, if not to the federal formula overnight? Why not simply aim at two MLAs for every MP? Why not rely exclusively on a federally appointed commission to do our difficult redistribution work for us? History — there's lots of it.... We have difficulty forgetting. It's hard to make difficult decisions. It's unpopular politically to take seats away from people who have been accustomed to the appearance of greater representation in this Legislature, in Parliament, in any elected body.

As I said at the beginning, distance is a problem. Its impact is declining. It's disappearing. It's certainly being reduced by time. I therefore believe, Mr. Speaker, that we in this Legislature should move decisively — and I'm itemizing these: (1) towards representation by population; (2) to allow variations constituency by constituency — predictably 25 percent; (3) wherever possible use federal and municipal boundaries as the boundaries of constituencies; (4) have two MLAs for every MP — that means 56 now and 60, or 62, based on the 1981 census; and finally (5) have the federal redistribution board set most, if not all, of our boundaries for us. Then we would have an upper limit set on the number of seats in this Legislature. It would happen automatically. Also it would end — or certainly reduce — the partisan bickering in this chamber about redistribution. It would quell, if not squelch, the cries of gerrymandering. It would give us a Constitution Act part of which at least we could be proud of.

I think if we followed those principles — if we moved towards representation by population in measured steps, if we got another level of government, the federal side or the municipalities perhaps, to do the difficult job of drawing precise boundaries — we would relieve ourselves of a problem which recurs periodically in this house and recurs mostly because people move, because some areas of the province grow faster than others, and because this is a new and changing part of the world. I believe if we move towards representation by population — if that is the star, if not the actual formula used in the immediate future — we'll all be better off.

MRS. WALLACE: I've listened with great interest to the member for North Vancouver–Seymour, as he presented what I think we will have to call the Davis commission into electoral reform. It was very interesting.

MS. BROWN: He's fairer than Warren.

MRS. WALLACE: I would certainly agree with my colleague that it was much fairer than the report that we're dealing with today under Bill 80.

He indicated in his opening remarks that the Warren report was without principle, and I can certainly agree with him on that comment. I don't agree, though, with his comment that we on this side of the House would refuse or are opposed to representation by population, or that we want to wipe out certain ridings and retain others from a political point of view. He talks about our supporting Atlin's remaining, though it would be ruled out by his formula. I don't think any party can consider Atlin as a safe seat, considering the margin we have in Atlin — one vote. That remark was really not quite in line.

I can't agree that geography or the size has no bearing. Certainly the member for North Vancouver—Seymour has had some experience in serving a major riding. But it's not just the size of the riding. If you're going to fly to a point in your riding, it necessitates having plane service and an airport. There are many populated areas in the Atlin riding where those facilities are not available. There are many areas where communications are extremely difficult and the cold climate hampers travel.

I have just those few remarks on the previous speaker's remarks.

We have heard a lot of debate on this Warren report. The problem with this report, as with the Eckardt report, is that we're starting with a premise that is long overdue — a major overhaul. The last changes were as a result of the Angus commission in 1966 — not really as a result of the Angus commission, but rather as a political decision in opposition to the Angus commission. That's where we began. When you start with something that is out of kilter and base your decisions and your mathematical formulas on something that is wrong in the first place, you're going to come up with something that is nothing but a hodge-podge and a disaster.

They say there's nothing surer than death and taxes. It seems that in British Columbia, as long as we have a Social Credit government, there's nothing surer than a gerrymandered redistribution and then an election. We saw it happen in 1966; we saw it happen in 1978-79; now we're seeing it happen in 1982-83, whenever the election is called.

[ Page 9225 ]

In the Eckardt report we saw.... Well, I want to go back a little further. I want to go back to the Angus report. The son learns well from the father. The father had the Angus report. He didn't like it, so he changed it publicly, openly, and he got a lot of flak as a result. Of course there were northern constituencies, contrary to what the last speaker said, that the then Premier decided should remain. I'm not going to argue with that; I don't know all the pros and cons. But he insisted that those northern constituencies remain to give some fair representation to people in very thinly populated areas.

The other thing he did was to impose six two-member seats in the lower mainland, rather than 12 one-member seats. Apparently the reasoning behind that was very political. Those original six seats were mainly held by cabinet ministers. The thinking was, of course, that if you just made those existing seats two-member seats, the second member could ride on the coat-tails of the cabinet minister and would be elected more easily. We heard Derril Warren say, very loud and long when he was first appointed, that he didn't believe in two-member seats; and yet he recommends — and justifies with many pages of verbiage — seven two-member seats. It's very interesting to note that every one of those seven seats is held, some of them as of fairly recent date, by a cabinet minister. The same thing that happened with the Angus report is happening with this report. The son learns well from the father.

He's learned one thing more. He makes sure what the report is going to be before it's presented to him. That's what happened in this instance. The Premier was telling us back in December 1980 exactly what was going to happen: that we were going to add a member to those particular seats and double up on the representation in some of those seats in the north. That's exactly what happened.

It's very difficult for any commissioner to prove something that's already established. Derril Warren tried very hard. He hired outside mathematicians and confused us with figures no end, but try as he might he still couldn't justify it. By his own admission he can't justify it. He says: "Well, I know the formula didn't work." He put together two absolutely opposing ideas. He said that as far as population goes we have a sliding scale, but as far as geography goes we have a blank cutoff. If you're one over it you get two, if you're one under it you get one. Put those two together, and you come up with an absolutely meaningless result. Any mathematician will tell you that. They just don't jibe. They don't go together. That's what he's done.

He talks about one and two deviations from the norm, and says: "Well, I decided that two was the proper deviation." It just happened to be 34,000, according to him. I suggest to you that it could just as well, and perhaps more properly, have been 35,000, which would have meant Cariboo, of course, that particular constituency which has 34,443 population — 443 over the norm of 34,000. That's the kind of mathematical gobbledegook that this thing is based on, and it is gobbledegook. No rhyme, no reason, no relationship, in an attempt to prove a premise that he was provided with. He's done an admirable job in attempting to prove that.

But when you try to do something like that, there are always flaws. The flaws, of course, that are very evident and have been pointed out are the situations with ridings like Columbia River and South Peace, which are just under the half when he rounds off the number. Prince Rupert is just over the half, so it merits one member — if you're going to follow the formula. But those two don't.

HON. MR. CHABOT: Where do you put Columbia River?

AN HON. MEMBER: It's your report.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please. I'll ask the Provincial Secretary to come to order and not interrupt. The member for Cowichan-Malahat has taken her place in debate, and everyone else will remain silent.

MRS. WALLACE: That member, of course, has been here longer than I have, but somehow he still thinks he can bamboozle people into giving up their place — getting up on the floor and taking his place in debate. It probably took him a long time to learn the rules. But some of us are not quite such slow learners. We're not going to back off for that kind of thing. He asks, well, what would you do with Columbia River?

HON. MR. CHABOT: Do away with it — that's what the NDP stands for.

MRS. WALLACE: What I'm suggesting is what we've said for years in this House: we need an independent tribunal — completely independent — to establish the boundaries.

HON. MR. CHABOT: Vote for the bill.

MRS. WALLACE: The Provincial Secretary says: "Vote for the bill." Who does he think he's fooling that this bill provides for an independent tribunal? It doesn't. It simply provides for an electoral commission that will be appointed by the government and be controlled by the government, just the same as this Warren commission has been, just as the Eckardt commission was before. There is no assurance.... Look at the Ombudsman Act. Look at the Auditor-General Act. That's how we get an independent tribunal, and this bill does not do that. The appointment in this bill is a political arm, nothing more, nothing less. It's a politically controlled tribunal, just as we've seen from this government in the last two times before they've gone to the polls.

The Eckardt report was certainly a great example of how to gerrymander. It's interesting to note — and it's been pointed out many times — that the two Burrard seats and Revelstoke simply disappeared. It's just as interesting to note that in those three seats the incumbent MLAs all belonged to the New Democratic Party. As a result of what the Eckardt report did in the Vancouver area.... After the 1979 election, we found that the ten Vancouver seats were divided six for the Socreds and four for the New Democrats, with more people voting New Democrat to get four members than there were voters voting Socred to get six members.

That's what a gerrymander is all about. That's how a political party uses this tool to ensure their own self-preservation, and that's what this bill is: it's a bill of self-preservation for a desperate government that has bungled the economy, wiped out jobs, wrecked the teaching and educational system, wrecked the health-care system, and left us here today, called down supposedly on a matter of urgent public importance and coming here thinking that we're going to be talking

[ Page 9226 ]

about economic measures and that finally the government is getting off its backside and going to do something about this situation.... What do we have? We're faced with the first order of business — the only order of business — which is a bill to add seven more seats to the Legislative Assembly at another million-dollar cost, and all of those seats are almost surely in areas where the predominant vote is Social Credit. If that's not a gerrymander, I don't know what is. Certainly a gerrymander took place in 1978-79 with the Eckardt report, which was every bit as bad.

I read the debate. I read Hansard last night from 1978 when the Eckardt report was introduced. The arguments are really just the same. I was reminded, of course, of what happened with my own constituency. The member for Nanaimo (Mr. Stupich) has talked about it. The Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Williams) was talking about the member for North Island (Mr. Gabelmann) who wouldn't have had a seat. The game plan was very clear on Vancouver Island. The game plan was to make a safe New Democratic Party seat on the north end, to make Nanaimo a safe New Democratic Party seat, and — they hoped — to ensure that Comox and Cowichan-Malahat would be vulnerable. That's what the major game plan was. As my colleague from Nanaimo indicated, the resulting number of voters, theoretically in the name of equalizing the voting population, in 1979 was 40,000 in Nanaimo and 25,000 in Cowichan-Malahat. I did a check on the vote tally, and if you add up Ladysmith and Cassidy polls in 1979, which were removed from my constituency — the total eligible voters there were almost 7,000; 6,994 — plus my Cowichan-Malahat voter strength of 25,032, which, had it stayed as it was, would have given us a total of 32,026 voters in Cowichan-Malahat.... If we had taken Nanaimo's 40,001 voters and subtracted that 6,994, it would have left Nanaimo with 34,007. Doesn't that seem like a fairly equitable distribution? That's what it would have been if someone hadn't got his little finger in the pie.

It's very interesting if you read the script of the Eckardt report on this particular thing. I give Eckardt credit. He talked about the Norris report in some places, and some of the decisions he made were very good. When he came to Cowichan-Malahat he made no attempt to justify what had happened. He recommended that Cowichan-Malahat boundaries remain as they are, with the exception of the deletion of Ladysmith and Cassidy, one-quarter of the constituency. He also recommended that the Nitinat Indian reserve be removed to form part of the Alberni electoral district. I suggest that the original wording, Mr. Speaker, was: "It is recommended that Cowichan-Malahat boundaries remain as they are with the exception that it is recommended that the Nitinat Indian reserve be removed to form part of the Alberni constituency." That removal of Cassidy and Ladysmith is an excerpt put in there at someone's insistence.

Does anybody remember Jack Kelly? Jack Kelly was interviewed by one of the reporters from one of our local papers in Cowichan. Do you know what Jack Kelly said? He said: "I was asked to make some political suggestions for boundary changes, and that's the suggestion I made and forwarded to the Provincial Secretary."

MR. KING: Where's Jack now?

MRS. WALLACE: Where's Jack now?

That's what makes us so suspicious of this government — those kinds of moves, Mr. Speaker. That's how desperate this government was in 1979, and that's how desperate it is now: it will take any steps for self-preservation. The only concern this government has is the concern of clinging to power — power-hungry. They have no concern for the people of this province. They have done nothing; in fact, they have aided and abetted the problems that are facing this province today. It was the Premier of the province who went to Ottawa and urged the high-interest program on the Prime Minister. That high-interest program is what's driving people out of their homes today. That's one of the major contributing factors to the inflation we're facing today.

Those are the kinds of programs, or lack of programs, that this government has been involved in. They have not cared about the people or the economy; they've cared only about their own self-preservation. That's what this bill is doing — attempting to preserve this government, to keep it in power so it can continue to loll around in luxury while the people of this province face starvation — literally, in some instances. Their rent, interest, housing, and energy costs are so high that low-income people simply do not have enough money to provide an adequate diet. That's what this government is producing as a result of its lack of initiative. The only thing it wants to talk about and the only thing it allows us to talk about in this House is a bill to perpetuate itself. That's evil, Mr. Speaker. It's immoral, and it makes me very angry. It makes me very angry for the people of British Columbia.

The member for North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Davis) ran through all the things he didn't like about this report, and then wound up agreeing that it was a good report. He talked about using the federal formula and applying it to places like Okanagan North, Surrey, Richmond, and even the Cariboo — the Cariboo almost merited two members. He didn't mention all those places in between. If he used his formula from Cariboo, there's Dewdney, Boundary- Similkameen, Nanaimo, and Saanich and the Islands, all of which would have been eligible for another member had he carried it through to its conclusion. That just shows the fallacies in this report.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

I talked a little bit about the problems of transportation in Atlin. But when Warren calculated square miles, he disregarded any areas of water surrounding those square miles. I'm thinking of Saanich and the Islands, where you travel over a great number of miles of water to service those islands. I'm thinking of the Prince Rupert constituency, where....

If all the water miles that have to be covered were taken in, it would be as large as North Peace River. I'm thinking of Mackenzie, where the transportation problem is doubly difficult because of the water areas that have to be traversed in order to move around that constituency. So taking square miles.... It's been used so ridiculously, with a flat cutoff at 34,000 square miles and with no consideration for a sliding scale there, though they use a sliding scale on the population situation. In that area alone there's another great fallacy. This report is so full of holes it's hard to find any substance in it to talk about.

Two-member ridings. I talked a bit about the political significance of two-member ridings and how the government likes to set up two-member ridings, particularly in areas where there's a cabinet minister, because that means the second member can sort of slide in on that cabinet minister's coat-tails. I suppose that it relieves the cabinet minister of

[ Page 9227 ]

some constituency duties in the event that they're both elected. But I suggest from any contact I have had with two member ridings that they don't really want to just see one of their MLAs; they want to see both of them. In effect, what it means is that two MLAs are travelling around that entire area. There's a very strong argument to be made for dividing those constituencies and making them one-member ridings so that each MLA has a smaller area to cover and is able to have a direct relationship with the constituents and to keep track of their problems specifically, rather than fanning it out with: "Well, that's not my area. I'm not dealing with WCB; you'll have to see the other MLA. I'm dealing only with ICBC." These are the kinds of ridiculous things that would happen and do happen when you have two members in a constituency. People want to see both of their MLAs if there are two of them; they don't want just one. So it doesn't cut down on the travel, it doesn't cut down on the time, and it doesn't cut down on the workload.

We're long overdue for a complete overhaul of the system, and that has to be done by a completely independent tribunal. This act does not provide for that. It has to be done long enough before an election that there is ample time to advise members of the new boundaries, to advise voters of the new boundaries, to establish voters' lists and to do all the necessary things to set up the machinery for an election, based on those new boundaries. It isn't something that you dream up in a couple of weeks and then cram through the Legislature. That's no way to do a redistribution, but that's the only kind we've seen.

As I mentioned, I was reading 1978 Hansards last night. You will recall, Mr. Speaker, that the Eckardt report was filed and within a matter of less than 24 hours — 12 hours — the bill was on the floor of the Legislature. There was one copy for the entire NDP caucus and supposedly one copy for the government, yet before I had even had an opportunity to see that report I was told by members on that side of the House that I was down the tube because my constituency had been taken away from me. I suggest that there was a great deal of knowledge among government members about what was in that report prior to it coming to the floor. I suggest that the decisions and recommendations in this report probably were known before the report was ever written. It was done for one purpose only: to perpetuate this government.

It doesn't work. It didn't work in 1979 in Comox or Cowichan. It almost didn't elect you, but it just managed to elect you by a very narrow margin of seats. As I pointed out, many of those seats were on a very strange distribution of votes. Six of the ten Socred seats in the Vancouver area represented fewer voters than the four New Democratic Party seats. I haven't had time to really review the Warren report in any depth in that manner, but I would suggest that if we go on this basis we will find very similar results when we calculate the election returns next time around.

But these things do backfire. I give the government a word of caution that maybe twice is too much. It becomes pretty obvious when in 1978 we had the kind of report that we had. There was a lot of publicity. I think people were very aware of what had happened. It was so obvious, to wipe out three New Democratic Party seats and change boundaries around that made it.... They were ridiculous changes. You think that somehow in this bill, by taking back the notorious Gracie's Finger, all your sins are going to be washed away. It's going to take more than that. People's memories are longer than that. People are more concerned about fair play and honesty than you may imagine. People don't like to be manipulated, and that's really what this bill does. It manipulates the voters of this province. That's what it's attempting to do.

I can tell you that people are beginning to feel that they've been manipulated quite enough, not just in the area of electoral reform, by a government that cannot provide jobs, that has confiscated the school tax base and put the school trustees of this province in an untenable position, that manipulates the quality of education in this province, that has undermined and destroyed health care to the point that people are waiting for months for admission to hospitals, and that has manipulated user fees, sometimes by 1,000 percent. You may recall how I bored you all last session by reading some 1,500 increases in user fees that this government introduced. People have been manipulated, they realize that they've been manipulated, and they don't like it.

Now you're trying to manipulate their voting patterns. You're trying to use your power to push this bill through this House to manipulate people's votes and constituencies for self-preservation. That's a very unprincipled principle that this bill has. It's completely unprincipled.

It seems that not just people are recognizing what's happening . Every time I pick up a paper, there's another column, editorial or article recognizing exactly what you're doing. They've been read in this House. I don't intend to read them again, but I think it's worthwhile reminding members. I have some hope that maybe somewhere over there there's some small speck of self-respect and decency that will cause them to recognize what's happening.

Interjection.

MRS. WALLACE: Well, I keep trying, member for Comox (Ms. Sanford), because I have a lot of faith in human beings. I can't see how all of them over there can have lost that decency, self-respect and honesty. "Cynical contempt" is how the Vancouver Sun views this legislation.

I have no quarrel with Derril Warren; I don't know the man. But I can't imagine how a seasoned politician, a lawyer with all the credentials to his name which the Minister of Transportation read off the other day, can be so naive. He's been used, either wittingly or unwittingly. I don't blame him particularly. I blame the government that has forced this upon him, and is trying to force it on this Legislature and down the throats of the people of British Columbia. That's who's responsible. "Cynical contempt," says the Sun. It said the Warren report was heavily criticized not only by the NDP but also by academics specializing in electoral issues, and even by Warren himself, who found some fault in the mathematical formula used to select the new MLAs. That's in an article in the Province.

If he found fault with the formula, why did he go ahead and prepare the report?

AN HON. MEMBER: That's a good question.

MRS. WALLACE: Well, I think that's a good question, all right. But I think we have answered it. It's very difficult to prepare a report justifying a foregone conclusion. It's like trying to prove that two and two make five. That's exactly what Warren has been attempting to do. There are holes everywhere. As I said before, there are so many holes there is hardly any substance. It's a gerrymander. It's a political grab.

[ Page 9228 ]

It will be a disaster for this province if this report goes through. If this government is successful in once again perpetuating itself at the polls, not only will our economic future face continuing years of depression and disaster; it will also mean that we are getting so close to a fascist regime that democracy is out the door. This is a dastardly report, a dastardly bill, and it must be defeated.

MR. KEMPF: What really amuses me about the debate we've heard from the other side of the floor is that over and over again speakers from that side have suggested that the government will be in real trouble should Bill 80 be passed. If they're of that mind, I would really suggest that they get on with it. Pass the bill. Let's go to the people, and let's get in trouble.

It gives me great pleasure to stand in my place once again in this assembly and speak on behalf of the people whom I represent.

MR. LEA: Car dealers.

MR. KEMPF: I have very few car dealers in my constituency, Mr. Member.

Mr. Speaker, I'd like to take this opportunity, since it's the first time in this session that I've been on my feet, to congratulate you in your new role as Speaker of this House. At the same time, I'd like to congratulate the member for Prince George South (Mr. Strachan) on his new responsibilities. On that note, I'd like to congratulate the two members who since we were here last have been elevated to the front benches of the government side. They find themselves in very tough jobs, and I wish them well in their tasks.

Bill 80, Mr. Speaker, is a bill following a report which recommends seven additional seats, seven new members of this assembly. I have mixed emotions about a move of this kind and probably, from what I have heard from both sides of this floor, feelings that are rather different from most. First — and I've said this before in this Legislature and in public — I don't really believe that any new members need be added to this Legislature. There would be no need if the present 57 members were — and I mean all of us, Mr. Member for Esquimalt–Port Renfrew (Mr. Mitchell) — to do the job for which we were sent here; by that I mean to do our job both in and out of this Legislature, keeping in mind the primary reason for which we were sent here in the first place, and that is to serve our constituents in the best manner possible — to serve those constituents, the people who sent us here, and only the people who sent us here. I might add, Mr. Speaker, through you to the hon. members — and it would appear by the attendance on both sides of this floor that there's an awful lot of interest among all 57 of us in the addition of new members to this chamber — to represent only those people who sent us here, for they are the only people who not only sent us here but who can take us out of this place.

Secondly, we would not need extra members in this Legislature if those already here were given the wherewithal to do the job for which they were chosen. It's always a sore spot with me when I'm working my heart out at this job, attempting to do the best job that I know how for those who I believe have a right to expect that kind of job from me, to find that either there aren't enough hours in a day, or days in a week, or I don't have the ability for monetary reasons to do the job which I think is necessary to meet the commitments and to solve the problems of those who sent us here. That's a shame; in my mind that is a serious shame. But as long as there are those who feel that all politicians are lazy and not worthy even of that which they are getting now, even of that which they are given for their labours at this time, that kind of situation will exist. Adding even two dozen new members to this assembly will not change those two very real problems.

I said that I had mixed emotions about this bill and the question of adding additional members to this chamber, and I do. I've outlined one concern. I'd like to talk about the other.

If you take the report on which this bill is based and note the areas in which all seven of the new members are to be added — you can find that on page 34 of the report; Surrey, Richmond, Okanagan South, Kamloops, Delta, Cariboo and North Peace River — you will note that they are all either suburban or rural ridings, and if there is anything that this assembly needs it's more rural representation, more representation from the growth areas of this province.

I disagree with my seatmate, the member for North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Davis), when he talks about representation by population. I think that was good 100 years ago, but I think we've outgrown that kind of thinking. I've sat in this place for going on seven years now, in a House where all city constituencies are either small in size or have two members, or both. I've sat in this House and listened to debate, debate which has emanated from both sides of this assembly — debate from urban members who quite clearly have no idea whatsoever about the problems or the needs of the rural two-thirds of British Columbia.

I commend the Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Williams), an urban member of this House, for the remarks that he made this morning. Those remarks are right on when it comes to rural representation in this Legislature. I've seen legislation passed in the nearly seven years that I have been on this floor, and legislation drafted, using the ideals and the philosophies of the population areas of this province — Vancouver Island, the lower mainland, and particularly the cities of Victoria and Vancouver; legislation and policy made in this place on this island in the lower part of this province, in the lower not even one-third of this province, for all British Columbia; legislation and policy that would never fit in the remainder of British Columbia. It would never meet the needs of rural British Columbians.

Interjection.

MR. KEMPF: It was no different, Mr. Member for Esquimalt–Port Renfrew (Mr. Mitchell), when the previous government was in power. I would suggest it will be a long time before it will ever be any different. The only way it will be any different is that if more rural members are sent to this place so that we can once and for all straighten out an inequity which has existed in this province since the outset of this assembly, an inequity which we have had to put up with because of a preponderance of votes here in the lower mainland and on Vancouver Island. This is a situation that we should never have been asked to put up with.

Yes, I have mixed emotions, Mr. Member. If there's anything we need in this Legislature, it's more rural votes, more representation from the hinterland of this province where all of the wealth comes from to build everything that those masses of people in urban British Columbia think that they must have. They think it's their God-given right to have all of the transportation systems, the subsidized ferries, the superhighways, the expensive bridges, the expensive rapid-

[ Page 9229 ]

transit systems, the hospital facilities, the recreational facilities — the lot. And if they don't get them, what do you see? Demonstrations by placard-carrying rent-a-crowds to make a big splash in the local media to ensure that the inequity is perpetuated. You see disruption of services while we in the outback, where all the dollars come from in the first place, to provide the facilities that they're demonstrating to get, brave the elements, do without, are thrown a few crumbs that we're expected to be satisfied with — because of the numbers games, the rural versus urban seat situation, the member situation in this Legislature.

We're forced to accept it. Yes, I have mixed emotions about this bill before us. We need more seats. We need more members from the interior. We in rural British Columbia need a stronger voice in this chamber. When I see members added to South Okanagan, Kamloops, Cariboo, North Peace, I say great. It's about time. It's over time, as a matter of fact. Yes, even in Surrey, Richmond and Delta, where at least there are some people whose vision hasn't been blurred by the bright city lights. I say bravo.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

All the claptrap about democracy, or the lack of it in this bill, is merely a political smokescreen — I hear the tittering of the member for Comox over there — set up by the NDP opposite in an attempt to cover up their ineptness as an opposition in this province. As a party, and when they were government, they never had time for rural British Columbia, and they still don't. Never have they paid any attention to the problems that we face in rural British Columbia, except where they could garner votes: votes by shovelling it out the back of the truck. Did they ever understand or attempt to do something about the problems of rural British Columbia? To the contrary. Their policies, particularly that of land ownership, hurt rural British Columbians, hurt those wishing to own a piece of this province. Unfortunately, many of those policies and much of that legislation are still in place in this province. They didn't care.

They have never cared about rural British Columbia, just as they don't care about the Warren report and the extra representation that it gives to rural British Columbians. They ran from the Warren report. It's right here in the report, in the words of Mr. Warren himself: "I am also now informed that, after my sending the letters to each opposition member of the Legislative Assembly, the caucus of the New Democratic Party has decided not to respond to my letter." They come into this House with the hypocritical debate that has been carried on for the last four days, and when asked for input into the Warren report they ran from it. They had no input at all. So I must deduce that they have no right to any input in this report. They ran from this report, just as they ran from this chamber — you weren't here, Mr. Member, but I was — like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand, during the debate on the act to provide assistance to the independent schools of this province. They ran from this report the same as they ran from that debate. They don't deserve to take part in the debate on this bill. They ran from the report. They wanted nothing to do with it. They had no input.

MR. MITCHELL: It was already written before you started.

MR. KEMPF: If you thought that to be so, then why didn't you have some input? Why didn't you submit your thoughts and suggestions to Mr. Warren? I'm going to ask that question, and I'd like you to get up and answer it: if you wanted your thoughts and hopes to be in this report, and consequently in this bill we're debating now, why did your caucus unanimously decide not to have any input into the report.

MR. MITCHELL: Because you'd already written it.

MR. KEMPF: Okay, all the more reason. Say that out in the hall. The door is open. Say it out there.

I support this bill. I said I have mixed emotions, and I do, but I support this bill because it gives the rural people of this province a stronger voice in this assembly, which is surely needed. It's been needed for many years. This doesn't go far enough, but it's a start in having some representation from the areas of this province that supply the wealth for all the services that all of the people enjoy.

There's some talk about the cost of adding seven new members to this chamber. On page 18 of the report it states that the province has a budget of over $7 billion. Certainly, I would think the budget of this province next year would be that: "The cost of their commended seven additional members of the Legislative Assembly would be approximately $640,501), or less than one one-thousandth of 1 percent of the total budget" for a fiscal year. That's one one-thousandth of 1 percent of a $7 billion budget. It's the best buy that taxpayers of the province of British Columbia could ever have. If you read this year's budget, I think you'll know beyond a doubt that it's the best buy that the taxpayers of this province could ever get.

In fact, the entire Legislature, in my mind, is the best buy the taxpayers of this province could ever get. The entire cost in this fiscal year of the present 57 members of this Legislature, all found — salaries, expenses, travelling costs and everything — is four one-hundredths of one percent of the total provincial budget. Considering many other expenditures made by government on behalf of the taxpayers, I think that's a good deal for the taxpayers of the province of British Columbia. Adding seven new members at the present rate of remuneration will be absolutely negligible.

Mr. Speaker, I'll vote for Bill 80, for the reasons I've outlined. I look forward to much stronger representation in this House from the rural areas of this province. I look forward to more representation on this side of the House, and I will urge the Premier, with or without Bill 80, that he drop the writ. Let's get on with it. Let's get to the people and find out who really will run this province.

MR. KING: I don't know why it works this way, Mr. Speaker, but for some strange reason there is the coincidence that I always seem to follow the entertaining member for Omineca. I always enjoy his speeches. He comes out with some interesting remarks. For instance, perhaps he'd like to expand on his latest cliché and explain how an ostrich runs when it has its head in the sand. That's completely in keeping with his last and now famous one, Mr. Speaker, where he claimed that the wolves were running "rampart" all over the north of British Columbia. I think since the departure of Ed Smith and the need to establish a new dictionary of Smithsonian quotes, we have admirable fulfilment by the member for Omineca. I enjoy it very much. He is very entertaining.

[ Page 9230 ]

I got a kick out of the member for Omineca. He kept saying he had great mixed emotions about this bill — tremendous mixed emotions — but in the final analysis I knew that he would have no trouble at all voting for it, because mixed emotions are all right provided you have the flexible principles to go with them. I knew that member would come into line on the government's side.

Mr. Speaker, I'm not a cynical person. I think that I'm fairly naive. I also come from a rural riding in the interior, a very large riding that is very difficult to service. I'm going to talk about that a little bit later. But in answer to some of our esteemed friends on the other side who have asked the question: why did the the New Democratic Party not respond to the hon. Derril Warren's invitation to make a submission? Mr. Speaker, one of the things....

Mr. Speaker, would you bring Fred Flintstone to order over there. Now that he's been elevated to the cabinet benches, a little more decorum would become him.

I'd certainly have been more interested in making representation to Mr. Warren had I had some confidence that the commission was established under normal ground rules. But the first problem that started to trouble me was when Mr. Warren himself, in a television interview shortly after being appointed, let the world and the province know that the first overture he had received to do this job of electoral boundary reform for the government was an approach not from the government but from a Social Credit Party functionary, the late Mr. Hugh Harris. I and my colleagues, and I think fair-minded British Columbians, editorial writers and newspaper reporters included, stopped and asked the question after scratching their heads for a moment: why would someone who was being asked to do such a sensitive job as redistributing electoral boundaries be approached by a party functionary rather than by the government, that ostensibly was to appoint him and pay him out of public funds? I think that was the tip-off. We knew at that time that the terms of reference and the political approach that was made to Mr. Warren left very little opportunity for any rational, fair and judicial investigation of electoral representation in this province. On that basis, we were cynical enough — and I plead guilty — to say: "Look, it's a stacked deck. Don't waste your time going there and dignifying something that has already been established. I have heard no one from the Social Credit side of the House explain why the initial overture was made by a political functionary rather than a minister of the Crown or the Premier himself.

I would think, given that kind of circumstance, that were the shoe on the other foot the Social Credit Party would be saying: "It's a fix and it smacks of partisan politics and we will have naught to do with it." Of course they would. I'm not really so angry about it all. I am more sad than angry. I regret very much that this kind of move by a political party — any political party — simply adds to the cynicism and the distrust of politicians and the whole process by the body politic out there in the community. What we have is a political party that happens to be in government at the moment willing to bend the rules and willing to part from tradition of parliamentary nicety in an effort to ensure their own return to office.

The electorate is not that dumb that they cannot inherently sense the inequity and the unfairness of this kind of manipulation. You're not dealing with an unsophisticated bunch of idiots in the province of British Columbia. The education level of our people is sufficiently high and they are sufficiently sophisticated to understand this process down here — much more so than many politicians believe. The sad thing is that they are being played for fools in this kind of bill that's before the House now. I trust the electorate and I think, quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, that if the government proceeds with this bill and passes it and calls an election, the electorate of British Columbia will resoundingly throw them out of office on their ear. It's too inherently unfair, it's crass, and it's a lot of other adverbs and adjectives that I could apply to it.

As I say, I'm not that angry about it; I'm more sad than anything. I'm sad to see a person with the intelligence of the Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Williams), a guy with a pretty high intellectual ability, stand up and labour and disgrace himself trying to render this most illogical and unfair philosophy contained in this bill into some logical and reasoned justification for passing it. That's sad. When he was a Liberal, the Attorney-General had a very high reputation in this province. He was seen as a guy with some integrity and certainly a lot of brain power. It's a sad and rather demeaning spectacle to see one who stood for principle and integrity in this House for many years being able to bend and accommodate the kind of unjustifiable hypocrisy that's contained in this bill. That's a sad lament. It's the destruction of a man's integrity, in my view. I regret that. If the government is so terrified of facing the electorate under the existing electoral boundaries that they have to stack the deck and give themselves a built-in advantage, I suppose that's a reflection upon their own self-confidence, or lack thereof. I suppose that's what it is. I can understand that, but the painful thing is to see otherwise intelligent people stand in this Legislature and attempt to justify it.

What have we got here anyway? We've got an interesting equation. We have two ministers of the Crown come out with public statements criticizing the Warren report. We have the new Minister of Education, and we have the very minister who has custody of this bill, the Provincial Secretary, condemning and criticizing the bill.

The hon. member for North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Davis) gave a long and, in his mind, reasoned dissertation this afternoon about why the voting pattern should be strictly based on representation by population. That is completely at variance with the bill before us. It's completely at variance with the presentation by the last speaker, the member for Omineca (Mr. Kempf). And lo and behold, another gentleman from the Social Credit benches also happened to get involved in the dispute. You might recognize him. He has a letter in the Vancouver Sun today; his name is Bruce Strachan, MLA, Prince George South. Do you know that gentleman, Mr. Speaker? Well, he says: "Resource areas deserve a stronger Victoria voice."

What we have here is a shambles. We have the member for North Vancouver–Seymour saying it's got to be strictly representation by population; we've got the member for Omineca getting up and saying the rural areas haven't got enough representation; we've got the Provincial Secretary criticizing the report, saying it's inequitable, and that he doesn't understand the arithmetical formula that was applied in arriving at the conclusion. We have the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm) saying that he does not support it. We have a government that's in a shambles: they can't agree one with the other on what should take place. And we have someone occupying the Speaker's chair at this very moment who disagrees with many of his colleagues on what the formula should be for representation in the province of British Columbia.

[ Page 9231 ]

This government is in a shambles. I know they're a coalition, embodying Socreds, Tories and Liberals, but for a few years they came together in some kind of cohesive coalition where at least publicly they could agree. What we have now is a coalition that's falling apart. They're publicly disagreeing with each other on legislation that is before the House for debate. It was one thing for the Minister of Education to publicly call his colleagues gutless over a debate a few months ago, but the thing is carrying on and is going to enormous proportions. I think the sooner the Premier makes that trip to Government House and asks for a writ to dissolve the Legislature and for a mandate from the people of British Columbia, the sooner we can get on with some economic planning and the sooner we can get rid of the indecisive and embarrassing fumbling by this government and give the people of the province the leadership they deserve. That's what should happen, Mr. Speaker.

We've heard some interesting dissertations. The Attorney-General said: well, those city slickers on the NDP side who represent greater Vancouver are against representation in the rural areas. Well, let's look at it. I represent the riding of Shuswap-Revelstoke, which stretches from the summit of Rogers Pass to the outskirts of Kamloops west. It goes south to Swan Lake junction, on the outskirts of Vernon, north of Revelstoke to Mica Creek and south halfway to Nakusp, taking in Trout Lake and the mining communities in that area. It stretches all around Shuswap Lake, which has 1,100 miles of shoreline, with development all around it, much of which cannot be reached except by boat. I can't even fly into my riding. In terms of travel, my riding is in a much worse position than the riding of North Peace River.

The closest spot in my riding that I can fly to on a return flight from Victoria is Kelowna, after which I have a two and-a-half-hour drive to reach my riding. MLAs, city and otherwise, are paid car mileage for constituency travel. Every time I go home for a weekend I must rent a car at Kelowna and keep it for the weekend for my return trip to Kelowna during the session. Each time I do that it costs me $25 to $30, because the car mileage does not pay for the rental of the car. Yes, I have a car — only one; I can only afford one, and it's down here. I drive down, because I have a lot of material to carry: complaints from my constituents about the injustices being visited on them by fat Social Credit ministers. I have files on files on files to carry to Victoria to try to sort out. The other thing about it is that a rural member has more varied duties than a city member. You virtually have to be everything from a marriage counsellor to a legal advisor. I meet with varying degrees of success, Mr. Speaker, but the point is that argument the member for North Vancouver–Seymour was making is fine when applied to the city of Vancouver: representation by population — one person, one vote — sounds great. When was the last time he had to represent one of his constituents who has no access to any government apparatus — not for miles — to obtain an access road so that he can service his home in an isolated area? How can you make that representation, I ask, unless you travel out there and study the physical geographic difficulties — the topography of the ground? You can't represent anyone unless you study the problem and understand it yourself.

Drainage problems. I have a whole village — the village of Sicamous — that has had flooded basements all summer because the Highways Ministry has not provided adequate and deep enough culverts to drain off that area into the lake. How can one represent that kind of problem unless one is familiar with the terrain and goes out and studies it, and can make arguments to the bureaucrats that manipulate those Social Credit ministers? It can't be done. When was the last time the member for North Vancouver–Seymour had an agricultural problem or a mining problem? When was the last time he had to fight to keep a school open in a small rural area to prevent children from having to bus 45 miles to gain an education? That doesn't happen in North Vancouver–Seymour. What I'm saying, Mr. Speaker, is that I believe in the principle of representation by population, but not as an absolute principle. It has to be tempered by some regard for geography. It has to be tempered by some regard for transportation options within that territory being served.

One of the things that makes me smile, Mr. Speaker, is that this government talks about fair representation and the price of democracy, but they all run around condemning the federal government on the basis that there is regional disparity throughout Canada; that in effect Quebec and Ontario, with the preponderance of population, manipulate and override the interests of the rest of the nation, and there's some validity there. But the very same thing is happening in the province of British Columbia. The preponderance of the population is in the lower mainland and on Vancouver Island. That's where the voting power is. Unless you apply some yardstick that tempers population with geography, with resource wealth, with transportation opportunity, what you are doing is building into British Columbia the same regional disparity, the same propensity for resentment, and this stupid concept of the Western Canada Concept, who want to separate. You're building that very thing into our own province that you run around condemning on a national scale. That is stupid.

Mr. Speaker, of course there's a need for the preponderance of population to have fair representation. The trouble with this report is that my riding has far more problems in terms of travel and servicing than does Columbia River, the Provincial Secretary's riding, who has custody of the bill. I have twice the population that he has. I have twice the registered voters that he has.

MR. LAUK: and twice the brains.

MR. KING: Certainly I hope I have the ability to represent the people more effectively.

MRS. JORDAN: We shan't debate that.

MR. KING: My aconite friend from Okanagan North says: "We shan't debate that." I don't want you, Mr. Speaker, to think that the term aconite is out of order. It's totally parliamentary. It means flower of the petunia variety, with a poisonous root. I know that member is departing soon, and I wish her well in her private life, and I know that she'll find some useful purpose. I'm sure she'll take root in the private life area of Vernon.

Mr. Speaker, what I am saying here is that there's great disparity in this report. The government knows it, and they're trying to render nonsense into logic when they stand up in this House and debase their own intelligence by trying to defend it. Every newspaper, every hotliner — who are certainly not NDP; they have no bias in our favour; Jack Webster, Doug Collins, Pat Burns are on the right side, not our side — have identified this bill and this philosophy on which it is based in the most poisonous terms, the most venomous terms I have

[ Page 9232 ]

ever heard. Rafe Mair, who sat in this House as a cabinet minister with the Social Credit government, identified it as patronage-ridden and an attempt to steal office. Your own colleague who is now a hotliner in Vancouver, the Vancouver Sun editorials, the Vancouver Province editorials: every democratic commentator in the province of British Columbia has identified this as a pretty thinly veiled attempt to ensure that you're elected once again — not out of concern for fair voter representation, but out of concern for your own political hides. That's what it is all about.

It's hypocritical too. Here we have a government running all over the province saying, "Hey, we're in terrible shape. We're facing a billion dollar deficit in the spring unless there are major cutbacks in services." Quite frankly, the public and the opposition accepts that we're in a tough time. World conditions have conspired to make it very tough for this government, and were we in office it would be tough for us now too. We argue that your priorities are awry, that you care not, or little, for the human values in life when you are prepared to cut back on hospital beds and erode the quality of education, while you build covered football stadiums in Vancouver because that's where the votes are. We say that's a distortion. We say that defies logic. We say that's the wrong priority. Nevertheless, we acknowledge that you have financial problems. How then, if you have these problems and must cut deeply into the education system, must wound, perhaps mortally, the health system in the province of British Columbia, can you justify the expense of another seven seats at this time?

It's politically motivated. You know you have to go to the polls soon. You know you cannot hang on in office and face the people with a new budget in March. You know you can't do that because one of two things will happen: either you will face the first major deficit in the history of this province; or, to prevent it you will have to cut so deeply into social services once again that the existing problems in health and education will look like a Sunday school picnic. That's the reality for this government. They've introduced this bill to try to pad their advantage on the electoral side so that they can go to the polls this fall, promising all kinds of new things they'll never have to deliver on, and con the people into voting them back with a majority. Then they'll receive the bad news after they get the new mandate. That's traditional Social Credit tactics.

I'm betting that the electors in the province of British Columbia have some line of moral decency that they will not allow any political party to stray beneath, to slither beneath. Whether it be the NDP, the Socreds, the Tories or the Liberals, people are not so partisan in this province that they are going to stick blindly to any party when they see that party attacking the very integrity of the electoral process in the province. They are not going to stick blindly to some rightwing philosophy when they sense inherently that the policies they are pursuing are indecent. That's what is happening in British Columbia right now. You should pay heed to the editorials, to what the people are saying. Read the letters to the editor in the Sun today. They are from average voters out there. They are not going to let you get away with it.

The irony is that I think a number of people on that side realize it. That's why the member for North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Davis) tried to couch his support in some criticism. He tried to wiggle around a bit and set himself a little aside. "It's tainted, it's a little bit dirty and I don't want to rub up against it, but I really have to vote for it in the final analysis," because that's where his political interest is.

The member for Omineca (Mr. Kempf) got up and attacked the city voters. It was a bit of a diversion. Then he announced that "as much as I'm a maverick, I want to distance myself from this sleaze a little bit," but in the final analysis that big, tough maverick from the north just cowered right in there behind the rest of them, tucked his tail between his legs, tucked his principle in his watch pocket, and is going to stand and vote with the government. So much for that big, tough maverick from the north.

The guy in charge of this bill, the Provincial Secretary.... I have never seen this happen before. Never in my life have I seen a bill introduced in this House where the minister in charge of the introduction and the debate and the defence of that bill criticized the bill, indicated his lacklustre support for it — indeed, indicated that he didn't support at all some of the provisions of it. I don't think that's ever happened before. What's happened is that they're all a little afraid. They know they're going to stick together and pass it, because that's the nature of political survival for a coalition, but they're all trying to distance themselves a little bit from the stench of having done so. It's sad to see.

I'm not really angry at you. Individually you're a nice bunch, but you really look awful on this thing. You're all jockeying around. I bet you that when you go back to your homes, much less your ridings, you're going to have a look at yourselves, and you're going to be a bit embarrassed. You're going to blush when you look at yourselves in the mirror, because it wasn't necessary to do this now for any other purpose than the panic you have about having to face the electorate on even terms with the 1979 election and to ask for a mandate from the people strictly on the merits of the policies that you have administered for the past four years, rather than on the basis of some new political stacked deck that you try to inject into the equation.

They argue that it is not a lot of money. Well, $640,000 may not be a lot of money to you guys, but it's an awful lot to me and my constituents. I just had a senior citizens' group in Revelstoke turned down for a $50,000 grant for their drop-in centre. They've already raised $65,000 themselves, and the city has guaranteed them an equal amount. The lotteries branch turned them down because Revelstoke had a new municipal complex partially funded by the government two years ago. Through my representation to the lotteries branch and the minister, they've reviewed it and they've agreed. But I just draw your attention to the fact that $50,000 means a tremendous amount to senior citizens' groups throughout this province; $50,000 means an awful lot to unemployed workers who are facing a mortgage payment that they can't meet.

I have a man right now in Revelstoke who has had his eviction notice. He owns a home worth only $40,000. It's hardly a palace. I've made a representation, and at least had a deferral agreed to by the mortgage company until I can try and find a way that he can maintain his home until he gets his job back. That $640,000 may not be a lot to you, but it would mean a lot to that guy and hundreds more like him throughout the province. You've lost touch with the people who've elected you. You've lost touch with reality in terms of what the economy is like out there. You're fiddling around with your own political futures and betting that the voters of British Columbia will buy it. You're making a terrible mistake because I think you're going down the tube and you're going down hard.

It's sad for me to see, particularly, members on that side of the House like the Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Williams),

[ Page 9233 ]

some of the ones that had better reputations a few years ago, some of the ones who obviously intellectually know better.... It's sad for me to see them do the kind of thing they're doing to themselves. It's very demeaning, and it certainly leaves an awful taste in the mouths of many people throughout the province who have had some respect for them out of their contribution to public life over the years. What you're doing is trying to defend an equation that inherently is seen and sensed to be unfair and inequitable. It's an attempt to cheat your way back into government. I'm sure that not only will the voters give you a resounding message whenever the Premier develops the temerity to test the people for a mandate, but in the process a lot of members of that government are going to be tarnished with a reputation that doesn't deserve the kind of odor associated with it. I regret that very much. I think it's unfortunate.

I think the Premier should drop the bill and have the gumption to go to the population on the basis of the 1979 ground rules, on his own record of administration — or maladministration, depending on the point of view. With one exception, I think he should scrap the report; he should agree to the formula suggested by my colleague, the member for Cowichan-Malahat (Mrs. Wallace). Set up a truly independent commission agreed to by all parties in the House, similar to the criteria for the ombudsman and auditor-general. Let that independent commission go to work now and come in with recommendations for fair, rational and equitable ground rules surrounding all of the electoral issues in the province of British Columbia for after the next election. It would be done in advance, it would be above reproach in terms of anyone trying to gain quick political advantage, and I think it would put politics on some kind of respectable plane in the province of British Columbia, where it hasn't been for a while.

Young people right now in the schools and ranks of the unemployed are cynical enough. They wonder what we do down here, and I don't blame them. When you look at the shambles the economy is in, the bankruptcies, the lineups of unemployed, the people who are losing their homes and all of their savings, my God, they have to ask the question: are we receiving value from the institution called parliament, either in Victoria or in Ottawa? It's fine for the member for Omineca (Mr. Kempf) to say: "Oh, we're getting great value in the Legislature." The value is not really in the cost of what it takes to run this institution. The real measure is in the policies and in the quality of life that flows from the policies developed in this institution. I would venture the guess that never in the history of this province, certainly not in recent times, has the stock and confidence of the population in the relevance of the provincial parliament been at a lower ebb. I suggest that's the case, and I think the government, as well as all politicians, should look seriously at that.

I've only got a couple of minutes left, and I want to say this just before I sit down: I could recount chapter and verse about what's happened to my area of the province. All through the fifties, the riding I now represent was the riding of Revelstoke. It went west to Sicamous, and was cut off halfway through the little village of Sicamous. It had about 6,000 voters at that time. It was represented by a Socred all through the fifties. It was big enough then. But early in the sixties, when it changed over to NDP, it was no longer big enough, so it was wiped out and married to the Kaslo-Slocan riding. The Kaslo-Slocan riding continued to be held by the NDP, so that riding was abolished in 1979 and Revelstoke was tacked on to the large Shuswap riding.

It's an aberration as it is. It's an aberration that was developed through political motivation, and businessmen and nonpartisan voters in that riding, and certainly working people and community groups, recognize it as a political aberration developed under the Eckhardt report. They perceive the new report and bill that's before us now as another political aberration, one introduced just prior to a new election, its sole purpose being the interests of the partisan political future of the Social Credit Party. You can't keep doing that to people and expect the political life of the province to stay healthy, and you certainly cannot take that kind of approach in terms of any democratic principle whatsoever. The people see it for what it is: a rather sordid and sad attempt to use the power that the people granted you to extend your flagging political life, and I'm really sad about it.

MRS. JORDAN: Mr. Speaker. I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your election or elevation to high office, which is another step in your career, and I think a great benefit to this House. As well, I ask you to convey, on my behalf and that of the constituents of North Okanagan, best wishes to the member for Delta (Hon. Mr. Davidson), who will be assuming the role of Speaker. It's a good feeling, as I leave this Legislature, to see the changes that are being made and to see you yourself being part of that change. I wish you well, and I know the people of North Okanagan wish you well.

I don't really intend to dwell on very much of what the member for Shuswap-Revelstoke (Mr. King) said. I confess my disappointment at his personal comment in this particular instance towards the member for North Okanagan. It's characteristic, unfortunately, not only of himself but of that side of the House. There is, I think, a gentleman's rule to try to restrict criticism to policies and actions rather than individuals. In the last few days we've seen a sustained, unwarranted, indefensible attack on the author of this report, Derril Warren. For all the so-called good humour that that member tries to bring forth from time to time, he is very much part of it, and no one is free from that sort of vicious and uncalled-for comment. At the time I was quite prepared, and I still am, to agree that Shuswap-Revelstoke is a very difficult constituency. There are some other difficult constituencies in this province.

On the other hand, I think that member, in outlining his difficulties, didn't quite make clear that while Shuswap Lake does have a very extensive shoreline, a good deal of that shoreline is occupied by forestry and park reserve. It is not occupied by people. Another major portion of that shoreline is occupied by summer residents from other provinces and other parts of British Columbia. On the whole, that constituency is well pocketed in terms of its population development. There are major areas between Revelstoke and Galena Bay right down to Nakusp in which there is no population at all. There is a small population on Trout Lake, in the other side, as the member described, but when one compares it to some of the changes in the Warren commission report, I'm sure one would be able to understand why Mr. Warren, when he felt somewhat constrained in terms of the number of seats to include in the House, chose not to adjust that particular constituency.

The constituency of North Okanagan is a very difficult constituency. While its square mileage is not significant in terms of the North Peace River, the shape of it is very difficult and it's an extension of about 130 miles from one end to the

[ Page 9234 ]

other of totally populated area, with the exception of Monashee Mountain, which leaves people very isolated in the other area. The west side of Okanagan Lake, which is the other part of the horseshoe, which is approximately 45 miles, is heavily populated. That population is not just ribbon population. It's a very penetrating population, so one can utilize a lot of time and energy in just getting around to meet the needs of those people in those areas.

I could suggest to the member for Shuswap-Revelstoke that if he chose another form of transportation than his motorized golf cart, he might be able to get around his constituency faster. When he referred to the Eckardt report and was so unkind about Judge Eckardt personally, I would just say that part of the constituency that I inherited was once served by that member. I was agreeing when he said he was perhaps not the best MLA; that's the feeling of the people in that area that I inherited. They liked him, but he was not known for his work for the people. He was not known for the regularity of his appearances in the area. Members of his party, and there are many in that area, have been quite frank in saying that they have never, since they moved to North Okanagan, had such consideration and such a number of personal appearances not only of their MLA but of other members of government and such attention to their individual problems. For the first time they have become part of the many programs in this province such as lotteries and the recreational facilities fund that they were not privileged to do before because they were not kept informed by their MLA. So I don't think that that member did anything for his credibility or increased his honour as a member by his comment, which, of course, is then carried much further in his attacks on other people who are often not able to defend themselves in this House.

I think it is important to bear in mind three points at this time — and while the Legislature has heard it many times, I would like to be sure that those who read Hansard are well aware of the issue in this debate. First, it is a three-pronged discussion. The Warren report itself is the first prong. That document is paid for by taxpayers. It was established under the Inquiry Act. It was commissioned to look into electoral representation in the province of British Columbia. It is a report by the commissioner, Mr. Derril T. Warren, barrister and solicitor — I won't go into his credentials, as they are already in Hansard — and commission administrator Helen J. McNiven, along with some staff hired as specialists in various fields, including Trevor A. Braem, B.Sc. (Hon.) M.Sc. a master mathematician, who lent a great deal of his time and energy to try to assist in the evolution of a formula — though not perfect — that can be the foundation for future use. What the public must know is that in the very vicious attack on Mr. Warren and on this report in this House at this time, all these people come under attack and they are not able to defend themselves.

The report was quite properly submitted to the government and to this Legislature. It was designed after considerable public input. It makes three specific recommendations. I would like to read into the record some of the comments in the Warren report, so when the public are reading Hansard they will understand what Mr. Warren's thinking was. Telling how he started it, he says:

"While there are certain statements in the order of wide and far-reaching importance and jurisdiction" — in terms of the whole electoral reform system — "I determined the following matters to be of primary importance in my inquiry.

"Firstly, the population growth as shown by the 1981 Canada Census of our province, divided into each existing British Columbia electoral district; secondly, the tempering consideration of geography and history; and thirdly, the exclusion from my inquiry of the far-ranging topics covered by the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform, 1978."

Then he goes on to list what he refrained from — and I won't repeat them.

He outlines the guidelines he followed in resolving his duties. His first was "to hold public hearings in key centres of the province in order to sense community as well as provincial attitudes about the present electoral representation: its benefits, its deficiencies." This he did. The information he secured under this term of reference is in fact a basis for his report. Second, he decided "to travel through certain electoral districts and obtain a better understanding of the effects on a community or communities of the addition of a member of the Legislative Assembly or of a change in boundary locations." This he did. Third, "to gain relevant information and data from other jurisdictions which could be usefully compared with the situation in British Columbia as it is and might be." This he did, and it too forms a basis for his report and recommendations. Four, "to retain a mathematical or statistical expert who would review the population and geography of each electoral district, determine whether there is a consistent and logical electoral distribution within the province, and formulate objective mathematical recommendations for my consideration." This he did. While he says quite clearly in his report that his conclusions on the basis of that formula are not totally carried out, he gives sound reasons for the deviation at this time. But he admits, and I think it is generally accepted, that this can form a foundation for the future. Then he says: "to present my report to Your Honour in September 1982, with minimal expense to the taxpayers of British Columbia." Mr. Speaker, that indeed is what was done.

The second prong of this current debate is Bill 80, which is the vehicle for putting the report before the House for debate, to have open discussion by opposition and government members, and, hopefully, for a constructive and rational analysis. Bill 80 also allows the government to put in place, without any alterations — that's very significant — on the government's part, Mr. Warren's recommendations. Those recommendations, of course, are to increase the membership in this House, to establish a permanent independent commission, and to adjust boundaries in Vancouver–Little Mountain. The government itself is complying with the report and is bringing it forth in the second prong for public debate.

The last part, of course, is the opposition. The opposition is the third player, who, in many people's opinion — and certainly by the appearance that we can gather from Hansard — is trying to turn the Warren report into a political document; not through reasoned or substantial argument, but on the basis of emotion, fear and a vested interest in relation to their own constituencies. I have found it amazing sitting here in this debate to hear how little reference is made to the rest of the province by those members, and how much of the debate of the NDP members has been concentrated on their own constituencies — in many of which, if there's inadequacy in the service they're receiving it is perhaps the result of those

[ Page 9235 ]

members rather than, in fact, the representation of the people on the basis of population, geography and the basic economic and social needs of that constituency. It is the opposition, if gerrymandering is to be brought forth as a consideration, that is trying to gerrymander this report. I hope that in assessing Bill 80 and the movements of the government the public will remember those three players.

Bill 80 does not comment on the Warren report. It merely says to the public and this House that whether or not we agree with the report, we are following the recommendations of this impartial report by an extremely well-qualified commissioner. We could not, nor could anyone who might be Social Credit or opposition, on the basis of Mr. Warren's political record ever consider him a supporter of this government. In fact, the record speaks for itself most clearly, for Mr. Warren opposed not only this party in the election field, but he actually challenged the current Premier in his own constituency. One would hardly be justified, when considering Mr. Warren, not only in acknowledging his talents, but never suggesting that he would be, in fact, biased towards this government. His own reputation is too important to him, and his political record would not do it.

What does concern people, I think, and what comes to mind is the selective attitude of the NDP in terms of commissions. Why Justice Norris — indeed a fine gentleman — a Tory, but still a commissioner, who.... On Wednesday, July 23, 1975, headlines said: "Tory Norris Vows He'll Be Impartial." Why would Justice Norris, indeed a Conservative and a man of great repute in our province — if older, and a Tory — be selectively appealed to by the NDP, as opposed to Mr. Warren, with his credentials and party affiliations? Why, if the NDP selected Justice Norris with such confidence — and I'm sure they did — would they then refuse to accept his report? If there is to be criticism of electoral review reports and what has happened to them, the first that should be laid before the public is the fact that the very costly Norris report was, in fact, received by the government, the content was known by the government of the day — the NDP — and was put in a drawer and never brought in. The review of the Norris report will show that that report also would have favoured, if you want to put it that way, the election of free enterprise candidates as opposed to socialist candidates.

It's interesting to note, in listening to the debate of the members of the opposition, that they don't seem to be aware of the fact that quite traditionally the free enterprise vote in British Columbia has been identified with the growth constituencies and growth parts of the province, and that it has not been supportive of the NDP.

It's interesting, in comparing the NDP comments regarding Justice Norris's report and Mr. Warren's report, that they themselves forced Mr. Warren to speak out when in fact, by nature of his responsibilities, by nature of his attitudes towards his responsibilities and by nature of what the public expects of a commissioner, he's not really allowed to speak out. This he did in the Province, Wednesday, September 15, and I'd like to quote for the record. This is a gentleman who really cannot defend himself, a gentleman who is being savagely torn to pieces. His reputation has been attacked on the floor of this Legislature with accusations by the NDP that they consistently refuse to make outside the House, hiding behind the immunity that this House offers. I quote:

"Derril Warren says critics of his controversial electoral reform report are engaging in vindictive, unfounded and personal attacks. Speaking publicly for the first time in defence of his report, Warren says he wants to set the record straight, because the report is being misquoted and maligned. 'Here I am gagged by tradition and I hear all this. Yes, it does make me upset.'"

Mr. Speaker, it seems to fall short of the attention of the NDP that this constant barrage of vicious and personal attacks that they have engaged in over the last few years, and that at this time they are engaging in not only with Mr. Warren but with those that served with him, does in fact have serious consequences for individuals whose reputations should in no way be put under such unfounded attack. They are responsible for rumours and constant repetition of false rumours which are very damaging to individuals who cannot defend themselves, who do not have the political and legal immunity that those members enjoy in this House. The paper goes on to say:

"The report has sparked a furious protest from the NDP since six or seven new members would be placed in ridings currently held by the Socreds. According to Provincial Secretary Jim Chabot, the Social Credit government can get these changes in place in time for the next election.

"The NDP calls the bill the ultimate in gerrymandering, but Warren retorts that if the new members had been added to the electoral map when the NDP was in power, from 1972 to 1975, the NDP might not have complained since at that time it held four of the seven seats in question."

Mr. Speaker, the NDP has a very selective understanding of the whole movement of the voting opinion in this province.

I was quite shocked to hear the member from Nanaimo (Mr. Stupich) culling through the history of electoral reform reports in British Columbia since 1936, including the NDP-commissioned Norris report, and then suggesting that only the Norris report was free of gerrymandering. Yet that party did not bring in the Norris report. Quite obviously they were afraid of it. In 1934 and in 1938 there was a report done by a committee of the House. The NDP are saying that that was gerrymandered. In 1955 one seat, Peace River, was added by the Legislature, and they say that was gerrymandering. They say the Angus commission in 1965 was gerrymandering. They say the Norris commission in 1975 wasn't. That was their report, but did they bring it in? No. They mentioned the Eckardt report and the Warren report.

Mr. Speaker, what the public are asking and what many people are asking is: what will satisfy the NDP? Do they believe that they are the only people who can bring into legislation any form of fair and equitable representation, that only they are capable of designing the progressive steps that need to be designed? If you examine their debate, that is exactly what they are saying. They want selective use of reports. I wonder if the members opposite have taken the time and trouble to even consider the facts about electoral reform in British Columbia. Do they realize that the average Social Credit MLA represents nearly 7,000 more citizens than the average NDP member? On average, each Social Credit MLA has 51,191 constituents, while the average opposition MLA has 42,522. I would add that a majority of their MLAs represent the metropolitan areas, the smallest geographic regions.

Analysis will show that the NDP has now, and has had for some time, a built-in political advantage of approximately 15 percent. The situation as it has existed, and the current

[ Page 9236 ]

situation, fail to adequately represent the growth areas of the province, which of course are Social Credit. No wonder they're fighting the reform. No wonder they're fighting Mr. Warren's bill. Further analysis would suggest that if we were to add another six seats, after Delta, to this Legislature, just on the basis of population, five out of six would be Social Credit, and that would include the Cariboo. In other words, taking the analysis further, if 13 seats were added to the Legislature in British Columbia on the present population only, eleven and a half of them would be Social Credit.

What the public must understand, and what the NDP do not wish to admit, is that in British Columbia most voters are free-enterprisers. The majority of the voters enjoy and support the type of government they've had in the main, and they have rejected — not only throughout the province in their traditional voting patterns, but at the time the NDP and the socialists became government — their philosophy, style, habits and manner of conducting business, and there's good reason for that.

I wonder what the debate would have been today if the NDP had hired Derril Warren. I wonder what would have happened to the Warren commission report. Would it have been put in the drawer, just as the Norris commission report was? If there is to be an election in the next while and if the NDP were in, would they have moved up the date of the election so as to put the Warren commission report in the drawer, just as they did the Norris commission report, because it did not appear to favour them on the basis of figures? Surely everybody realizes that there is nothing so lacking, as a reflection of people's attitudes and people's actions, as figures.

If there is an election, as there will be in the next year and a half, and if the NDP lose that election on the basis of the debate of Bill 80 and their attempts to politically gerrymander the Warren commission report and the attitude they're reflecting, it won't be the Warren commission report that defeated them, it will be their own attitude: first in terms of what they are trying to deny many citizens of this province in terms of fair representation; and secondly by the fact that they believe their own arguments. They sound like a defeated party before they even go to the election, and they are a defeated party. They are a defeated, worn-out crew, bankrupt of ideas, bankrupt of moral responsibility, and bankrupt of any sense of fair play in terms of people outside this Legislature who cannot defend themselves against personal attacks, reputation attacks from which they are kept immune by the sanctity of this Legislature. If you want to talk about the judgment of the public of British Columbia, just do as most of us do: travel around this province and learn from those travels. You're not deceiving the public — not at all. And they will express themselves.

In terms of the first part of Bill 80, which increases the representation in this Legislature — or recommends increasing it — I would have to suggest that many people were surprised and confused by the reaction of the NDP's election campaign chairman, Yvonne Cocke, to the Warren report recommendations. She was quoted as saying it is shocking to suggest giving the Cariboo riding two seats, when there are about eight other single ridings in the province with more people. She went on to suggest that adding a second member to North Peace River would be blatant gerrymandering. Mrs. Cocke may be forgiven for her lack of knowledge of the province, because she hasn't travelled it. But surely some members of the opposition must recognize and be able to advise her and their own colleagues on the differences in this province in terms of the recommended increases in the Cariboo and the Peace River, and the representation enjoyed, for example, by the NDP in Vancouver East or Coquitlam. The lack of knowledge of British Columbia is shocking and, I believe, displays blatant insensitivity concerning the needs of northern British Columbia in particular.

The NDP should try spending time in the north. They should try working in some of their own constituencies. A quick glance at page 35 of the Warren report indicates that there are only four single-member ridings with populations greater than that of the Cariboo. The largest of these four, Boundary-Similkameen, is an area of 5,114 square miles, compared to 34,443 square miles for the Cariboo constituency, which in fact is substantially larger than the Republic of Ireland, which has a total legislature to itself. Anyone who has worked in or travelled through the Cariboo constituency couldn't, in any sense of fairness and concern for those people and the pockets of people, deny them this opportunity. The geographic contrast is even greater in the case of North Peace River, which is a sprawling 62,119 square miles. It might interest the members to know that it is larger than many nations in the world. It will certainly increase the knowledge of British Columbians to know that it is larger than such nations as Greece, Hungary, Portugal, Czechoslovakia and Cuba. Closer to home, North Peace River is larger than 30 of the United States, including such fairly large ones as Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and New York — all of which have total governing bodies, with multiple representation.

Mr. Member from Shuswap-Revelstoke, you may not have got your own way on this report. If you hadn't left the Legislature, you would have heard me acknowledge that you do have difficulties, through you, Mr. Speaker, in your constituency.

AN HON. MEMBER: More than you think.

MRS. JORDAN: Perhaps more than you think.

What I'm suggesting, Mr. Speaker, is that the report in itself, as the commissioner says, is not perfect, but it is a start. Surely all of us have the responsibility to see that where we can make progress to bring about fair and more equitable representation, we do so. I could perhaps make the same complaint about North Okanagan, but that's not the issue of the day.

North Peace River, with 93 percent of the land area of the State of Washington, has a very strong case for added representation. With the NDP crying political foul ball with the Warren report, it is shocking that they don't recognize the needs of those people and this fact because of their own personal interest. Every constituency over 70,000 population which was underrepresented was recommended for upward adjustment by Mr. Warren. It's interesting to note that if he had recommended even greater adjustment on a strict population basis, the next six seats in line — and I hope the opposition will listen to this — included five Social Credit and only one NDP. I pointed out a few minutes ago what the traditional voting patterns are in this province. The simple fact is that the rapidly growing parts of our province, with few exceptions, do choose Social Credit MLAs to represent them because they're positive, they have a platform, they have a leader and they don't spend their time trying to adjust the report to suit themselves. They are acknowledging there can

[ Page 9237 ]

be improvements, but they are following through with the commitment to play it before the people, not by selective legislation such as the NDP had. At the same time, this resource region — and many of the other resource regions of the province such as Atlin and Columbia River, which do generate well, require social services and are usually concentrated in urban centres — deserve to be heard more strongly.

Those people who have worked and lived in the non-metropolitan area of this province understand that the requirements of those areas are very different from the metropolitan area. I'd like to quote for the record the Warren commission's comments on this. He says: "The geographic diversity of British Columbia requires careful consideration of the vastness of rural and remote areas and not just a census head count if effective and equitable representation is to be achieved. As stated earlier, this necessity is clearly identified in the order-in-counciI establishing this commission."

He goes on to say: "The difference between urban and rural interests was very significant. I take the liberty of paraphrasing some of the observations he made on that occasion when he drew attention...." of those who read this report what those observations were.

I'd like to quote him. His comments fully justify his recommendations in terms of addition in these rural areas. He says:

"Urban districts are concerned primarily with problems related to people, industrial development, financial institutions, governmental administrations — in brief, those things that make a city what it is. To those concerns I would add education, the arts, and other special services to people. Where such problems and concerns exist in rural districts, the latter have special interests in the environment, in conservation, in transportation, and in the resources upon which the economy of their district is based."

Mr. Speaker, there's not one member who's knowledgeable of this province and who's worked in a rural riding that wouldn't suggest that Mr. Warren's statement is accurate.

He goes on to say:

"Members of the Legislative Assembly who come from urban districts have special advantages in their communications with electors. They can, by a single act of publicity, cover nearly all their constituency."

Who would argue with that?

"Rural members deal with large geographic areas — in some cases vast areas — which are sparsely populated. In consequence, the ability to communicate is seriously impaired."

I might add to that that they must deal with a multiplicity of media outlets; both metropolitan media which affect the rural areas, as well as local media.

It goes on to say:

"Rural members are obliged to deal with many and varied competing claims for attention and assistance: claims, for example, from agriculture, fisheries, mining, recreation, forests, hydro developments. Urban members deal only rarely with such a range of problems."

I don't think there is one urban member in this Legislature who would deny that claim.

He goes on to say:

"The media tend to be concentrated in the urban centres: radio, television, the large newspapers. They deal almost solely with urban not rural problems. Electors in the rural districts do not have a significant voice: they have little or no access to powerful media, even though problems which at first sight may seem remote or perhaps inconsequential may suddenly take on provincial significance."

Then he goes on to say:

"Urban members have much greater access to specialized facilities and resources (libraries, documentary centres, statistical banks and, more particularly, to advisers, counsellors, and experts). Rural members tend to be denied such resources because they live outside the larger metropolitan area."

Mr. Speaker, those are the words of Commissioner Warren in his report justifying his recommendation for the Cariboo, Columbia River and North Peace River tidings. I believe that he could have added to that the whole problem of elected officials and volunteers in those areas, in terms of the public service, school boards, college councils and municipal councils, all of whom must come over a thousand miles to Victoria to have a consultation, whereas an urban council can come over in a matter of about 40 miles. The cost of those councils is excessive in terms of the cost borne by the metropolitan councils.

Mr. Speaker, if we were to live in a world which was totally run by mathematical formulas, then I suggest it would indeed be a sadder world. As the member for North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Davis) pointed out, the formula that Mr. Warren brought in is a basis and a start for the future, but I for one would hope that in the future public representation in this province would not be confined solely to geographical region, area and population bases.

In conclusion, I would like to suggest that a valuable piece of legislation is, as the Provincial Secretary said, borne within our Canadian citizens' belief in continued efforts, and that fair representation is a major cornerstone of democracy. We are all aware of the major population growth that has taken place. We are all aware of the geography of British Columbia and its problems. We are all aware that British Columbia has one MLA for every 48,000 people, which is twice as many per MLA as the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. I would suggest, Mr. Speaker, that we are all aware that the Warren commission report is not perfect. But I also believe that we must respect his integrity and his effort, and we must respect the reasoning he has put behind his recommendations. We must, in consideration of the citizens of this province, respect Bill 80 as being a vehicle through which the Warren commission report recommendations can be brought to action and through which any deficiencies can be met by the appointment of a permanent commission, which has always been a claim of the NDP, but which in fact was never enacted by them and which will be a great improvement in this province.

Mr. Speaker, I'd like at this time to move adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of the House.

Motion approved.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Second reading of Bill 78, Mr. Speaker.

[ Page 9238 ]

COAL AMENDMENT ACT, 1982

HON. MR. SMITH: I congratulate you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and also the Speaker, on your elevations to the high offices in which you are entrusted to keep our deliberations orderly. As a new Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, my moving second reading here today of Bill 78, the Coal Amendment Act, represents one of my first official duties in this portfolio. I should say at the beginning that I'm happy to assume the role of one of the most dynamic ministries in this government. I hope I'll be able to bring energy to this portfolio.

The ministry that has charge of this bill may be small in size, both in terms of personnel and the annual operating budget — it's smaller than the ministry that I was used to for three years, by a long shot — but the contribution it makes towards the economic prosperity of this province in revenues and opportunities to the people of British Columbia is really quite immense. The mineral industry in this province is undergoing somewhat mean times as a result of the global recession, which has cut the demand for mineral resources and has certainly seen world prices for minerals at an all-time low. But one bright spot is our vast coal inventory and such projects as northeast coal. This is a high-profile project, and one all hon. members in this House should realize is of high importance to the economic recovery of the province. Northeast coal is probably the biggest single undertaking in any British Columbia resource sector in the history of this province, involving, as it does, our largest export contracts in Canadian history. It's a unique undertaking, and very important.

I'm not going to make a speech on northeast coal, but I am going to make a few more remarks about it. The purpose of this bill, of course, is to facilitate the system of recording and licensing that will be set up under the bill, and will ensure the protection of title and leases on the part of those persons who are going to invest in this gigantic undertaking.

I want to list a few of the important aspects of northeast coal, and to emphasize the magnitude of it. Two railways are involved, Canadian National and the B.C. Railway; two major coal companies are involved; the whole Japanese steel industry, seven separate corporations; and on top of these players there's the Japanese government, the banking system, the government of British Columbia and the government of Canada. There's federal participation in the project under the National Harbours Board, Ridley Terminals Inc., the federal Departments of Transport, External Affairs and Regional Industrial Expansion, and a whole series of federal agencies. In British Columbia almost every ministry in government is in some degree involved, in one way or another, in the project or the important benefits from that project.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

I would be remiss if I did not at this time pay tribute to my predecessor in this portfolio, the present Minister of Labour (Hon. Mr. McClelland), and particularly my colleague the Minister of Industry and Small Business Development (Hon. Mr. Phillips), whose energy and vision have been, to a large degree, possible in promoting and putting together this gigantic project. He's played a key role over the past few years in helping make this project what it is: a tremendous source of investment capital and jobs for British Columbians and Canadians.

Northeast coal could not have come into fruition at a better time in this province's economic history. As you all know, we're blessed in this province and often recite our blessings, with our vast array of natural resources. At this point in time, when resources industries not only here but almost everywhere in the world are undergoing an economic downturn, we can thank our lucky stars that the dedication of the people involved in the northeast coal project helped bring this on the way to reality.

We should also remember that when we talk about northeast coal, we're talking about capital investment in the neighbourhood of $2.5 billion. We're talking about almost 6,000 new jobs in existence right now in construction related to the project. We're talking about 1,500 permanent new jobs in the coal-mines themselves. That is just touching on the prosperity which the project has generated to date. It doesn't even mention the spin-off developments which this project will create in construction, manufacturing and the service industries across this entire province.

I notice that the member for Prince Rupert (Mr. Lea) is nodding his approval. He knows the importance of this project to his community. It is true that there has been controversy, and criticism of the northeast coal project from the members opposite, but I think that privately many of them applaud what this government is doing.

The reality that northeast coal represents, then, is an important reality for economic recovery.

In coming to the slightly more narrow import of the bill itself, in introducing second reading of this bill, Coal Amendment Act, I want to say that there are a number of acceptable reasons for making these changes. The scale of activity in the coal sector as a whole, and in northeast coal particularly, has as its closest parallel the petroleum industry. Major project financing has to meet certain basic criteria. In basic project financing, the primary consideration for the lenders, the people who finance these massive undertakings, has to be a government-authorized system under which the interests of these lenders can be recorded, and an undertaking by the government that these parties who hold leases to develop resources, coal in this case, have the exclusive right to do so in the area covered by their lease.

Would banks write mortgages if they couldn't record the documents somewhere or register them in some recording system that would protect their title? Of course not. Would they fund oil and gas projects if those documents couldn't be filed and security effected? Of course they wouldn't. A recording system under the Coal Act is in keeping with accepted commercial practice. It's the bare minimum to which lenders in this province are entitled to expect if they're going to invest in massive undertakings, as is the case here.

Similar recording systems exist under the Petroleum and Natural Gas Act and the Mineral Act. Furthermore, I might add that these documents are not only kept on file, they are available for inspection. The amendment embraced in section 9 of the bill of which I have the honour to move second reading is a perfectly reasonable and sensible provision. It is designed to provide a very simple yet effective recording system. That amendment will provide for the recording of coal permits, and licences and leases as well. Under the current Coal Act, as it stood before to the introduction of this bill, no provision was made for the recording of documents of this kind.

Very generally, the other sections of this bill in the main clarify current practices under which the holders of a coal

[ Page 9239 ]

lease or licence have the exclusive right to explore for, or develop, coal at the location specified in that lease. The amendments to section 12 through 22 reflect current practice and are legislating that practice.

The amendments to sections 14, 18, 24 and 25 will allow the government to set fees by regulation, rather than under legislation, which is the case at present. The rationale for that is that the government will be able to set fees which relate to and are sensitive to changing economic circumstances, thus ensuring that the public interest is fully protected.

The amendment to section 35 is a consequential amendment which will allow the government to set rents on the coal resource by regulation. The purpose here is to make clear that these rents will be set on a per-hectare basis....

Interjection.

HON. MR. SMITH: I was going to substitute "acre," but I'm forced to use the expression " hectare," of which I do not entirely approve. There will be a per-hectare rate, and not a flat fee rate for the location.

The changes in legislation will also bring the language into line with the language used in the other resource acts. Words such as "assignment," "transfer" and "sublease" are being disposed of, which is defined in the Interpretation Act. Those provisions are a simple matter of housekeeping, to bring the wording into line with accepted commercial practice.

The legislation makes it clear that both licences and leases confer exclusive rights to explore for, develop and produce coal. That is not new in this province. That is not a departure in policy or practice. It is a departure in legislation, but not in practice. It clarifies the existing practice.

The thrust of the legislation is to modernize the Coal Act in light of changing practice and new projects of the magnitude of northeast coal, which call for a system of recording permits, licences and leases, and makes clear that these licences and leases do confer exclusive rights. This will protect the rights of those investors and lenders, and will also be in accordance with public policy in this province in the past. I anticipate that the members opposite will be supportive of these changes and progressive reforms in the legislation, and will be anxious to expedite the passage Bill 78, the Coal Amendment Act, in order that this project, which is the bright light on the economic horizon in this province in 1982, may continue and flourish, and ensure that the final arrangements of the project will go forward unimpeded.

I must say, in moving into the awesome world of energy from the turbulent and often unnerving field of education, one has to master new concepts, such as talking out at the introduction of the bill in the Legislature, which one never had to do when one was faced with esoteric measures such as the Education Interim Finance Act. Introducing a bill in the field of energy, and trying to understand the implications of that.... In my former life I was a mere criminal and civil counsel in the courtroom. I did not deal in land registry, or ferret around and look at leases and licences to ensure that lenders were protected. So I have had to bring about quite a massive change in my lifestyle, in my thinking, and try to think of these projects as I would if I were a corporate lawyer advising a major lender, or advising a coal company, to see if proposed changes are reasonable in protecting the public interest, and in doing so, to see if such provisions will also protect the public interest. As a mere counsel in matters in the criminal courts and before the Labour Relations Board, as the second member for Vancouver East (Mr. Lauk) earns his part-time bread, I never really dabbled in the complexities of petroleum and natural gas licences and permits.

I might add that the Energy portfolio is a very challenging one in other directions. It involves, in addition to the coal projects, the great challenge of hydroelectricity and the whole area of petroleum marketing, of great importance to the recovery and future of this province, as well as the challenge of offshore and the settlement of the offshore problem. I know from the meetings I've had in the past month with people in the field of energy that those who work in the area of energy, whether from the standpoint of the corporations or the very dedicated environmental groups, approach their business with a pragmatism and clarity which I must say was sometimes lacking in other fields in which I've dabbled in government.

I know that the members opposite are supportive of this bill and are desirous of having a system which will register the permits and licences under the Coal Act. We are also desirous of ensuring that the rights to explore and develop in relation to coal will be protected under the existing practices and in the law.

I formally move second reading, and have the honour to move the 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 5:48 p.m.