[ Page 103 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Throne speech debate

Mr. Campbell –– 103

Mr. Barnes –– 103

Hon. Mr. Phillips –– 108

Hon. Mr. Richmond –– 112

Mr. Rose –– 114

THURSDAY, JUNE 30, 1983

The House met at 10:06 a.m.

Prayers.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Speaker, it is a rare privilege and a pleasure for me this morning to introduce, by way of best wishes for farewell, a person who is very well known to all members of the assembly, Mr. Jim Matkin, the former Deputy Minister of Labour and as of tomorrow night the former Deputy Minister of Intergovernmental Relations. Mr. Matkin has performed long and in a most dedicated fashion, under two different administrations, always in the interests of the general public of our province. He's been a dedicated public servant. I would very much like to wish him and his wife and his three charming daughters well. Great success to you in your future, sir.

MR. HOWARD: Mr. Speaker, along with the House Leader and Minister of Intergovernmental Relations I'd like to join in wishing Mr. Matkin all the success in his new venture and his new vocation. He has left behind him a legacy of a bureaucracy in the Ministry of Intergovernmental Relations which parallels very much that set up by Prime Minister Trudeau in Ottawa, and I hope that the bureaucracy that he left behind really will serve the interests of the public and not just the interests of the minister.

HON. MR. CHABOT: We have in the members' gallery some distinguished visitors who have met with Expo 86 officials and are here to meet today with the Minister of Intergovernmental Relations (Hon. Mr. Gardom) and the Minister of Industry and Small Business Development (Hon. Mr. Phillips). These people are from Ottawa. First of all, His Excellency Dietrich Hammer, head of the delegation of the Commission of the European Communities, and Mrs. Hammer; and Mr. Frank Deeg of the commission. I'd like the members to join in welcoming them here today.

MR. STRACHAN: Would the House welcome the chairman of School District 57, Mr. Gordon Ingalls, who is with us today.

Orders of the Day

SPEECH FROM THE THRONE

(continued debate)

MR. CAMPBELL: As I said yesterday, the throne speech is a great document. It clearly lays out the future policies of this government, and I support it.

MR. BARNES: It is a delight to be back. My, it's been a long time. Where does an oldtimer like myself begin with something really new and different after about eleven years?

I would like to indulge the House, because I feel this is a very special session. It is different from any other session since 1972, when I first came to the House, and I'm not in too big a hurry to jump into any spats. I'm going to take a long, careful look at what's going on on that side of the House. In fact, just before the last session ended, the Premier of the province caught me in the hall and said: "Mr. Second Member for Vancouver Centre, what will you be doing after the next election?"

HON. MR. BENNETT: You said you'd be number one, and you are.

MR. BARNES: Here I am, Mr. Premier, and I see you're still over there wondering what I will be doing after the next election, and here I am trying to figure out myself what would be the best way to keep an eye on you now that you are back.

Interjection.

MR. BARNES: We'll get to that as well.

But we have got to do things a little differently this time around, because those members on the other side, the government side, are not going to be sharing with us all of their strategies and their plans. In fact, I am of the impression, after listening to some of the remarks by speakers on that side of the House, that they've even programmed the content of their statements to be made in the House. It looks as though everything is very organized and coming from a central source. We'll see whether that is in fact the case.

[10:15]

But I would like to first — before I make my remarks with respect to the throne speech — make a few comments about the friends that are no longer with us. We've lost some of our very good members. Bill King was a strong member of the NDP who is no longer with us. We will certainly miss him, and I would like to express my regret at his loss, and that of Jim Lorimer and Ernie Hall. And we understand that Mr. Levi has been unsuccessful in his efforts to return as well. But they were all good members and served this House well, and on behalf of their party I would like to note their loss. The first member for Victoria, Charlie Barber, retired, as well as the member for Coquitlam-Moody, Stu Leggatt, who is now a county court judge.

In any event, Mr. Speaker, we have had some changes. I can't name all of the new members who are here and who will be making their presence known in due course. Nonetheless, I would like to congratulate them on their successes in the various constituencies throughout the province. There is one, however, that I should specifically comment on, and that's the second member for Vancouver–Little Mountain (Mr. Mowat), who has made a commitment to get cooperation from the mayor and the council of the City of Vancouver by attacking them. I was a little concerned, because he suggested that that elected body of officials — democratically so, I might add — must get on the right side. I'm not sure what he means by the right side, but presumably we will be finding out in due course what he means as well.

As I said, I'm not sure just where this session will go or what this thirty-third parliament is up to, but the 22 of us on this side of the House are committed to keep our eyes open, our minds sharp, and to listen to the public as they try to follow this government in some of the statements it's making about its mandate.

The throne speech reiterated some of the thrust of the campaign. Premier Bennett seems to think he has a mandate to restrain everything that moves in this province. I'd like to say first that I'm going to depart from what has perhaps been a safe political stance and ask the Premier and all members of

[ Page 104 ]

this House this: do they really feel they should separate one part of the public from the other in its attempt to make a case that restraint is a one-sided proposition? I would ask all of us to reflect for a minute. I'm not the best one to give the historical background of developments in British Columbia, but I would suggest that the public service, one of the most established and consistent systems in the province as far as providing experience and expertise in carrying out the services we all rely upon, has been identified as culprits to be undermined in the name of trying to improve the economic stability of the province.

What I'm really saying, Mr. Speaker, is that the Premier, through the Lieutenant-Governor in the throne speech, should have made it clear that while the taxpayers appear to have a direct responsibility for paying for the public service — the departments and the individuals who are involved — they should understand that those individuals in the public service are you and I. They are families. They are British Columbians. They are people who have attended our high schools and our universities. They are people who aspire to develop careers and to have security, and to enjoy the amenities of British Columbia the same as everyone else.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

I personally take offence at this blanket statement that the public servants are the culprits in society and must be reduced to whatever manageable numbers are required by the government, as though they are faceless numbers and not people, not families, not British Columbians. What offends me is not the fact that we want an efficient public service and not the fact that we've got to do better and cooperate and try to recognize that there are limitations on tax dollars. What I don't like is the fact that when we make these blanket statements about the public service getting too large and too cumbersome and too expensive, we don't relate the services being provided to the delicate nature of our society. Probably more important than all of that is that most public servants are consumers of goods and services in this province. They are the ones who pay the taxes. They are the ones who pay the mortgages and the ones who buy the food and drive the cars and go to the cultural events and affairs in this society. They are the ones who are really the unidentified small business people in this community, the people who spend their money. Let's not get carried away with this idea about their costing; they also spend.

So I'm a little bit offended when we make these generalized statements about the public service. By all means, I think every public servant respects the need for restraint, but it's about time we stopped and said: "Hey, who are these people we are cutting back?" The government — Mr. Premier and his cabinet — a few years ago were saying that we had to have new programs. They created Crown corporations and a variety of commissions. In fact, the public service has increased substantially since 1975, when the Social Credit government was elected. Those initiatives were considered to be foresightful. There was enlightened wisdom on the part of the government that these were new programs, new ministries, new concepts that the government now says they were wrong on, and they now want to tell us that they have mended their ways the same as they have about their doctrinaire commitment to balancing the budget. Now that they have discovered that it's okay to have a deficit, they've started printing treasury bills at $60 million a week, and they've gotten so carried away with that that they've started to create their own unelected government. They do that through appointments, by disregarding the Public Service Commission, through orders-in-council, by not having sessions in order to allow the opposition to debate decisions on the part of the government, and by not bringing down budgets. There are all kinds of ways in which this government has decided it can run things much more efficiently.

It's very much the way they run their party, Mr. Speaker. The Social Credit Party is one of those parties that doesn't believe in the democratic process. It believes in management by executive council. It has a few meetings here and there, and a few constituency associations that occasionally come together once a year, but they don't involve their rank and file the way the NDP or any democratic organization does. Now they want to run the government the same way — by executive decree. I think it's about time we understood what this Premier and his executive council are all about. It's about time the people of British Columbia understood what the real initiative is in this province and what the silent purveyors of public money are doing — those people whom we do not know, the ones who are unidentified.

That's what the thrust had better be in this province, that's what we'd better do in the opposition, and that's what anyone who cares about the protection of a parliamentary privilege — the first bill on the order paper — is all about. Parliamentary privilege is a very, very delicate and important concept in a free society. In fact, I think we'd better take a very careful look at why it was the first piece of legislation to go on the order paper, in order to protect us in case someone tried to move a motion to destroy this very first piece of business. The very first piece of business is one that the people of British Columbia had better take a look at as well, because I can assure you that, unless we have some better explanations on why the public service is being cut, not merely on the basis of saving dollars but on the basis of services.... We don't need the dollars more than we need the services — or the people that the services benefit.

We'd better have some debate, some rationalization and some reasons why we're cutting back. Where are we cutting back and for what purpose? What are we replacing it with? It's easy enough to say that the private sector will bail us out. It's okay to cut off 5,000 jobs and say that the government can no longer afford it, but what happens to the 5,000 people? What about the responsibilities to those people? What about the planning? What kinds of programs do you have to replace those jobs?

MR. BARRETT: Well, Tozer's all right.

MR. BARNES: We'll be getting to Mr. Tony Tozer and to others as well.

Mr. Speaker, I am personally offended on behalf of the people of British Columbia, not so much that the Lieutenant-Governor brought a message of restraint that we all have to agree with, but because I feel I'm being duped by a very clever, conniving, diabolical organization that knows the right words, phrases, clichés and the right manner in which to market them. They've hired the very best people they can to ensure that they're right by polling information. They have the very best experts. Unfortunately those people in the community are being lulled to sleep. They've figured out what they will respond to as well. They pick the right phrases

[ Page 105 ]

and say them in the right way, and they can just about steal a whole program without a single complaint or murmur.

The people do not understand that we are really seeing a transformation of the parliamentary system by a government that is very, very determined to take over and run everything with a minimum of participation by opposition. You can be sure that if they spend half a million dollars to try to eliminate the first and second members from Vancouver Centre, who were doing nothing more than their duty by working daily on the streets with the people in Vancouver Centre and trying to do their job, there's got to be a reason for it. I can assure you it's not for better government on your behalf. You think about it for awhile. Well, just what is going down, Mr. Speaker? What's really going down?

[10:30]

The Premier has said that we've got to cut back. First of all, several years ago he told the MLAs that they'd have to set an example. He asked us to take a 10 percent cut in our pay. We took the 10 percent cut, and I can assure you that with inflation, with the way things are going and the way this government is operating, that 10 percent cut will be the last action you'll see with respect to MLAs' salaries for a long time unless it's to take another 10 percent. They certainly won't be going up. I think that's loud and clear. So when we start talking about poverty, we'll be talking about the opposition, not the government side. They've got their ways of making money. Most of those people over there, I'm sure, have other activities besides their MLA jobs. I won't start calling names but I'm sure they have their fingers in various activities from time to time. We won't go too far and elaborate on that. I don't want to suggest that I know what your business is, but I suspect that if you're not over there yelling and screaming about increases and wanting to maintain some kind of living wage as hard-working MLAs, then there's got to be a reason for it. I can tell you it's getting very tight on this side.

Interjection.

MR. BARNES: We shall see. Before 1972 MLAs were making something like $12,000. I'm sure former Premier W.A.C. Bennett's plan was to keep us poor and hungry. It's almost like barefoot, broke and pregnant, something along those lines, so that we don't have any time to do anything else. They are working a very similar scheme, and I don't anticipate we will get much more in the way of financial resources on this side of the House to carry out our business on behalf of the public. We'll see in due course what the scheme is.

The most important thing right now is this diabolical plan, this smokescreen under the guise of restraint, whereby they intend to destroy the public service by a method called "privatizing services." We shall see if that transition will be smooth. We shall see how many people will lose their jobs, without any hope of compensation or any opportunity for future employment. We shall see if the public service — that is, the so-called private sector.... I find it more and more difficult to differentiate, the more years I'm in the Legislature; it seems to me the private sector does best with public assistance. However, the private sector had better bail out those public servants as they become unemployed on behalf of this government. There had better be something in place.

Interjection.

MR. BARNES: He says they're doing it now. We've just had two federal-provincial programs wiped out — community development projects. One was in forestry; 5,000 people are laid off as of today, I believe. What's going to happen to those people? Is the private sector going to pick them up or are they going to be back on welfare? We shall see. What about the $700,000 going to a program in Richmond? Where is the Richmond MLA? Is he standing up to fight for that children's program? The government is wiping it out, saying they aren't going to supply funds, because the society would not follow their guidelines. I wonder if that's not just another smokescreen to get rid of a group of people who are doing something for the public which we can no longer afford. I'm sure the Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) will clarify that situation.

They've been harping and carping over there about B.C. Place. They've been saying, "Mr. End-zone Emery Barnes." They think it's a big joke. After 18 years in football, one thing I do know is the size of a football field — American and Canadian sizes. It doesn't matter how your PR people cover the end zones, move them around and play games, the facts will speak for themselves. The rules are the rules. You people can change them whenever you please, but they remain the rules. It is an official fact that a football field in Canada is 110 yards from goal to goal, and there are 25 yards in each end zone — not 15, 20, 12 1/2 or 13, but 25, in the official rule book of the Canadian Football League. That's a fact. Mind you, Social Credit doesn't care about the facts; Social Credit does it its way. It builds the stadium to fit its budget and its scheme, then has the commissioner of the Canadian Football League change the rules to fit the stadium. That's what we've got in this province. They change the rules, and then condemn me for standing up and saying the field is not the right size. They also conned the B.C. Lions and everybody else into playing on that field, saying: "Now look, don't make a big deal. You've got a brand new stadium. It doesn't matter about five yards here or five yards there." That's quite true, it doesn't matter. As long as you don't care about the rules, change them.

Interjection.

MR. BARNES: That's all I'm telling you. I'm sure you know that I'm right, Mr. Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mr. Chabot). But it doesn't matter. Let's get on to something else.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: You weren't a very good football player, and you're doing worse as an MLA.

MR. BARNES: I would like to spend some more time on this. I'm enjoying this. Now he's going to give me a chance to talk about myself. I wasn't going to do that, but one of the longest runs ever in Canadian football was made by Neil Beaumont, who set a record of 118 yards. You do your own mathematics. On most regulation-size fields, there would be some possibility of breaking that record. But I can tell you that it will be much more difficult in that new stadium. It won't be too easy there, because he's going to be just about standing out of bounds to do it, because the field is just a little too short. But we won't get into the details; we'll just change the rules. Maybe we can change the records by regulation too — do that by order-in-council.

Interjection.

[ Page 106 ]

MR. BARNES: Well, I happened to be pulling the key block. But this is too serious a matter to be frivolous and have fun. Let's get down to business.

I attended the opening of the Whitecaps' game against the Seattle Sounders, and I also went to the first B.C. Lions game against the Calgary Stampeders.

HON. MR. RITCHIE: As ball boy?

MR. BARNES: No, not as ball boy! But the former ball boy is now the general manager of the B.C. Lions, and he was a ball boy when I played, and that's Bobby Ackles.

HON. MR. RITCHIE: You were there for the roof-raising too.

MR. BARNES: That's right. They pushed a lot of hot air in there and they kept her up.

Interjection.

MR. BARNES: Look, I'm not going to knock the stadium, because it involved a lot of honest people who worked very hard — engineers, all kinds of people. But I will just say this about the stadium. Marvel though it is — it is visible from the farthest of places — it is also a constant reminder that that's free enterprise deeply in debt with the public, and the Premier has been saying: "Oh, no, this is a self-paying program. It's independent. It's private enterprise." Except they had to borrow $200 million or so for the B.C. Buildings Corporation on a loan that I hope they will be paying interest on. But we don't need to worry about that one either. That's just a small detail.

Do you know what you also did with B.C. Place stadium? You created one of the largest pubs in the province, perhaps in the world. You can now drink booze in the corridors and the concourse, and I can tell you that I don't see anyone checking the IDs of those people drinking that booze. I certainly hope they are all of legal drinking age. I'm worried. I was down there and I saw more people out in the corridors than inside the stadium watching the game. They were doing an awful lot of drinking and they were very young. I certainly hope that you have got that under control.

Interjection.

MR. BARNES: I know you have. I know you will be looking into it.

But let's talk about restraint.

HON. A. FRASER: We won the election on it. Go ahead.

MR. BARNES: I'm not going to talk too long. I'm just going to talk for a few more minutes.

Let me run down for you what restraint looks like: get rid of the public service and beef up the Bill Bennett, Social Credit, private government. I'll just read you a few notes that I have here. Most cabinet ministers have several order-in-council appointments in their offices and they usually have a ministerial.... I have a note here about hacks in their constituencies, but I don't think we'll call them hacks. Let's just say they're working for a different public service than the regular one. As well as a constituency secretary and a number of politically appointed order-in-council.... This government has hired well over 100 throughout the various constituencies. These are various private orders-in-council. I don't have the names of all of them. I don't care to name all of them. I don't have the salaries they are all receiving, but I bet you that if we were to add up all of the order-in-council salaries of all of the people appointed by this government throughout the province, we would have a very interesting figure that is probably not subject to the Ed Peck compensation stabilization program, or to any other restraint programs that this government claims it is diligently trying to implement on behalf of the taxpayers of this province.

I will read you just a few, to generalize how serious the problem may be. Take the Premier's office for instance. Mr. Patrick Kinsella is the principal secretary to the Premier and he receives $65,000 per year, as of March 1982. I don't know what he is getting today in the way of gratuities, or bus fare, plane fare, eating fare, or whatever he's getting. He's probably picking up a few dollars more somewhere along the line, but I don't know if he will be subjected to any kind of restraint program.

Mr. Tony Tozer, whom we've been hearing quite a bit about, is the executive director. He worked out of the constituency office in Kelowna at a salary of $49,452. He had a travel allowance of $27,722. He is now hired as government agent in Kelowna at a top-scale salary of $43,116.

Let's go on. We have Joy Williams....

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Why don't you say what kind of cut he took? Why don't you be honest?

MR. BARNES: Why don't you be quiet? You'll get your opportunity to stand up in the next few minutes. Why are you panicking and getting so excited? You've been in this House a long time and you should know better than that by now, not to interfere when a member is on his feet. Try to show some respect, at least for the members in the Legislature, if you don't have any for the people who put you here. What's wrong with you?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: We have a few little problems here. First of all, I will ask the Minister of Industry and Small Business Development (Hon. Mr. Phillips) to withdraw the reference to honesty with respect to the other member.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Yes, certainly, I will withdraw any imputation. I meant being dishonest with his policies....

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you. The withdrawal is accepted. Order! Now I will ask the hon. first member for Vancouver Centre to remain temperate.

MR. BARNES: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Joy Williams, information administrator. Job description: public liaison and correspondence; $27,720. I see another lady here: Norah Laity, public information officer, $22,704. Let me skip down a little lower. There's another female: Doreen Heighten, administrative assistant, $25,726; and Jas Gandhi, secretary to the Premier, $28,000. Terry McLean, senior executive secretary, $21,720. These are all in the Premier's office. The reason I skipped over.... There are a few men here as well, but the disparity is interesting. The Premier is paying his female appointees considerably less

[ Page 107 ]

than the men, I notice. I don't see any of the women in any of these high-paying jobs. But nonetheless, they do have some job security. Robert Hobson — oh, they've got him down as an administrative assistant. He's only getting $22,491.

Michael Bailey — ah! Now Michael Bailey was executive assistant to the Premier at $29,757. He spent $5,593 on travel in his first three months on the job. He is now elevated to the position of executive director at $45,000. Isn't that fantastic? Michael's a very fine person. I've known him for years. In fact, I knew Michael when he was a young man. I was a social worker in the West End. He reminded me of this when he was working as a butcher out in Colwood not too long ago and I was buying meat from him. He gave me a real good deal. It's amazing. My, how it pays to be on the right team.

Anyway, I want to congratulate my good friend Michael Bailey. Michael Bailey is a very hard-working person. He was good as a butcher. He sold products which were fresh and first-class, and I always enjoyed them. And I'm sure he's doing a first-class job for the Premier. But the point is not to reflect on Bailey, or on any of these other people in a negative sense, because all of those people, I'm sure, are honest, hardworking Canadian citizens, and they're just trying to make a living like everybody else. But do they deserve preferential treatment? That's all I'm asking. Do they deserve it any more than the public servants? Why do we pick on the public servants?

[10:45]

You've got a nameless group of people who don't want to get involved in politics, who try to keep their mouths shut, who are scared bloody — blank, blank, blank, blank! They are scared out of their wits about what's going on with this government. What are they going to do to us? The rentalsman doesn't know whether he's going to be here or not. The ombudsman doesn't know whether he's going to be here or not. Nobody knows whether they're going to be here or not. You guys are starting to scare the you-know-what out of everything that moves. And if you don't believe me, pick up the telephone and try to get some information from one of these so-called government information services and find out how difficult it is to get a word out of them. I'll tell you, it is not funny. You people have the parliament buildings and everybody in them under seige. That's what I'm telling you.

There is a conspiracy going on. Even the Premier is trying to pass messages through his Speaker. The Premier is attempting to use the Speaker to peddle his garbage. Some of the words I've heard from...

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. member, order, please.

MR. BARNES: ...the Speaker, I do not believe came from anybody other than the Premier of this province.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please. Reference to the Speaker will have to be withdrawn immediately.

MR. BARNES: I withdraw it, Mr. Speaker, and make reference to the member for Delta (Hon. Mr. Davidson). The member for Delta is passing on messages from the Premier and you know what they are. They have to do with the Spetifore land. They have to do with Dawn Development Corp., and some of those things that are going on in that area. I believe that the things the member for Delta has been saying do not come from his mouth, but come from the Premier, the only person capable of that kind of subterfuge.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please. A reference to the member for Delta will also have to be withdrawn. The member for Delta is the Speaker. That is my ruling.

MR. BARNES: Well, the Speaker won't....

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Will the member please withdraw the references to the Speaker and....

MR. BARNES: I have no desire to argue with the parliamentary procedures and processes, and if you ask me to withdraw, I will certainly withdraw, because I'm sure that people will be drawing their own conclusions about what's going on with this government.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you.

MR. BARNES: Mr. Speaker, there is a whole lot going down these days. There are a lot of people who are upset in the community. A lot of people are saying: "Please, go to those people and tell them to show some restraint on their impetuousness, show some restraint on their arrogance. Tell them to show some restraint and not be taken away with the awesome power we've given them to work on our behalf because we believed in what they were saying, but they seem to have been using it as a gimmick to do something else. Just what's going on? Please keep your eyes on them." That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to do it, but I'll tell you, it's going to be difficult with a government that refuses to give us access to information, that is smug when you ask them about the processes we use in this system. You can be sure that we are all going to be paying dearly in the next few months as this government begins to unfold not as it should but as it is doing, unless we find some way to alter the direction in which it's going.

I will say this, Mr. Speaker, in all humbleness, because this is still the democratic process and I, for one, intend to respect that process and respect the rules by which that process operates, and when I'm in this Legislature I will expect to be treated as a duly elected member of the Legislature, with the rights and privileges provided, and will expect that the government will not look on me as an individual as much as a representative of one of the 50 electoral districts in this province, and will provide the information we need. We are in a very, very serious situation in this province. We have nearly 200,000 people unemployed. They don't care about your statistics; they don't care about my statistics. It does no good to someone who is out of work to tell him that the economy is improving and that we are now beginning to get a reduction in the statistics — that the numbers are less and less. As long as one single person is out of work you cannot expect that person to be happy with those statistics. That person needs a job to pay their own bills, to raise their own family.

That is what we've got to be caring about, and this is why I say that when you start using sweeping generalizations about how many people are going to be removed from the public service, you'd better talk about the names of those people, the jobs they are doing and your concern about their right to access to the amenities and to the good life we have in this province. Stop telling us that we are doing it on behalf of

[ Page 108 ]

efficiency. Efficiency, my eye! You people are spending money so fast it is incredible. You've already abandoned the only principle you ever had about balanced budgets. Now you've learned how to spend money and you're spending it, but you aren't spending it on behalf of the people. You are doing a dirty, dirty deed to the public, and I hope that we will have all of those points amended in due course.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for your attention. Once again I'd like to congratulate all members on their success at the polls, and I hope that we will be able to put into practice some of those principles of co-operation that we've all talked about so much.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Mr. Speaker, I was hoping that the first member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Barnes) would have stayed in his seat for a moment, but I guess he intends to cut and run, which I wouldn't say is typical of that member, but certainly it is typical of a number of the speakers from the opposite side who come in and make great charges against our great government over here and then run because they don't want to have any true debate. Usually, when there has been a great decision to be made in this Legislature, it has been typical of the socialist members opposite to run to their offices and hide. It has happened more than once.

Mr. Speaker, I want to say how proud and happy I am to be here in this first session of our thirty-third parliament, representing the great constituency of South Peace River. I listened a couple of days ago to the member for Cariboo (Hon. A. Fraser) saying that the constituents in the Cariboo had been voting for the government since 1952. I want to say that the constituents of that great, dynamic area of the province that I represent have also voted Social Credit since 1952, and they will continue to do so, Mr. Speaker, because it has been the policies of this government that opened up that great area to the rest of the province.

The socialists opposite were against extending the highway system into that great area and against building the railway extension into that great area and against the great pipelines being built that bring the wealth of that dynamic great area to the rest of the province and indeed to the international markets. I remember, Mr. Speaker, that when I tried to foster the development of the great gas fields of that area by building the Grizzly Valley pipeline and the Pine River processing plant, the socialists opposite were against it. That's why the arguments from the other side are a little shallow when they stand up and talk about the unemployed in this province. I want to tell you that the socialists opposite were against every project that has taken place in this great province, yesterday and today — the projects that are going on, that are gainfully employing literally hundreds of thousands of people. So I find their arguments about unemployment very shallow and hollow indeed, like most of their policies.

Mr. Deputy Speaker, I would like you to convey to the Speaker my very good wishes for a successful thirty-third parliament while he has the opportunity to reign as the Speaker. I also want to congratulate you, the member for that great constituency of Prince George South, on being nominated by the unanimous voice of this House to that place of very high esteem.

I would like to welcome all of the new members on the Social Credit side of the House. I want to tell you that your constituents have elected you to this great position with the greatest political party that has ever been in British Columbia. It wasn't too many years ago that I came in here as a back-bench MLA on the government side of the House, and I had the opportunity to listen and learn. Then I had the opportunity — and a terrible experience it was — to sit on the opposite side of the House for three years during those dark, terrible days in the history of this great province. But I'll tell you, right survived and the people of this province realized in 1975 the error they had made, and of course since that time this province has gone nowhere but forward.

I see that we have another visitor from Ottawa on the opposite side of the House. Well, we have them from time to time. They don't last very long, and they find....

MR. ROSE: What about Jack Davis?

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Yes, we've got one on our side of the House as well. But we've found that on the opposite side of the House they don't last very long. They come and go, getting disillusioned with the policies. They realize that this is the world of reality. Anyway, it's nice to see you here sit, and I look forward to the day when you will be leaving and joining your other buddies who have come and gone.

MR. ROSE: I was accused of being you yesterday on the street.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Were you? I welcome you here. I feel a little sad for you, because I know that you will soon become disillusioned with the rump group that you have over there fighting among themselves. But I hear that you're a very intelligent individual — I can't understand why you're on that side of the House — and we look forward to being kind to you while you are here.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

There has been a lot said about the great team and about the leadership of our Premier, but when I say that I'm proud to be back here I really mean it. I'm proud to have had the opportunity to serve under the leadership of our Premier. I can remember when our Premier was first elected as the leader of the Social Credit Party, and I can remember the scorn and the abuse that was heaped upon him by the now lame-duck leader of the socialists over there. All for nought, because our Premier has shown to the rest of Canada that indeed he has vision, courage and brains. He's been able to pull a team together and he has shown the rest of Canada that he is indeed a great Premier.

As a matter of fact, it was a little shallow for the Prime Minister to go on television the other night and say what a great job Ottawa has done with regard to restraint. Like my colleague, the member for Cariboo (Hon. A. Fraser), I was in Ottawa for the first ministers' conference when our Premier pointed out to the Prime Minister and to other cabinet ministers in Ottawa, and indeed to the other Premiers in Canada, that we were facing an economic recession and that restraint in government was going to become a necessity in order for the system to survive. He pointed out that the private sector could no longer be milked, that there had to be a cut in government. The Prime Minister wouldn't buy it, because he didn't have the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the other Premiers at that time and say, yes, we should go along with it. He didn't think that it would be politically astute to do so.

[ Page 109 ]

[11:00]

But when our Premier and our government led the way, and it was recognized that, indeed, the whole population was going to be in favour of what we were doing, that even our civil servants knew that there had to be some cutbacks in government spending, and when it was deemed to be popular, then Ottawa came along with a program that was stiff and rigid. Now they're trying to say that they were the leaders. I'm proud to be on the Bennett team because the Bennett team has shown leadership, and not only in leading Canada in restraint. Thank heaven the people of this province recognized on May 5 that British Columbia — in many areas, not only in the constitution or leading Canada into the Pacific Rim, export trade or many other areas — had a role to play. What they used to call that sleepy little province to the west of the Rockies was leading Canada in many areas. They recognized that had they rejected the policies of this government and rejected restraint in government, no other provincial government in Canada would touch it and probably the national program would have gone by the wayside.

I have a great deal of faith in the intelligence of the voters of the province of British Columbia. Not only did they vote for the policies of restraint, but they voted for the leadership that this government has shown in bringing about dynamic expansion in the lower mainland area, the southeast coal fields and the infrastructure which will assist the rest of Canada in exporting our goods and services in the next decade. They backed the dynamic leadership of this government in developing the northern part of this province. That was their stamp of approval on the vision and the courage that our Premier had in seeing that this great project — the only major project going ahead in North America today — continues to grow.

Again, the arguments being put up by the opposition are very shallow when they say they're concerned about unemployment. They have been against every project — including northeast coal, which today is employing about 12 percent of our construction labour force in the province of British Columbia. So their arguments are shallow, and the people of British Columbia recognized that their arguments were shallow, that their policies were hollow and that they had no leadership. What our Premier has been able to do is to tap the energy and the vision of the citizens of this province to work together for the good of all. That's what leadership is all about.

There's a lot of strength in this province. There's a lot of entrepreneurship. There's a lot of individuality, and what we and our Premier have been able to do during this time of crisis is to pull that together. That's why British Columbia came through the downturn in the economy, and that's why British Columbia will once again lead this nation in economic revival. If there is one thing that we as citizens of this great province have learned during the recession, it is that the arguments and the beliefs of the socialists are very shallow and hollow. The young people of this province have recognized that there is no free lunch. The young people, and many others who believed in socialism, believe and know from experience that the world doesn't owe them a living. This is a myth which has been perpetuated in this province by the socialists opposite. I want to tell you that if you go out and talk to the young people in the province as I do, you will find that they want their freedom. They don't want the government to give them a living; they just want the ability and the opportunities — the same as we had when we were growing up — to do their own thing. I'll tell you something further. They want the right to work, and they don't want any union leader telling them whether they have the right to work or not.

I was listening yesterday with a great deal of interest to the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) when he talked about coalitions. Well, I want to tell you, if there was ever an unholy alliance, an unholy coalition, there has been one in this province for a number of years. But it broke apart at the seams during the last election because the workers recognized that maybe some of their NDP leaders weren't acting in their best interests. That has been an unholy alliance if there ever was one. I have challenged publicly before, and I challenge again, the labour union leaders to start working for the good of the people they represent and not for their own political beliefs. You talk about an unholy alliance: I remember getting the IWA Barker — that's a little magazine put out by the International Woodworkers of America — and it was telling their workers how to vote. Talk about ads in a free paper called the British Columbia Automobile Association magazine, which goes to everybody in this province! The messages from the NDP that were contained in their rags that went out to their union members only, telling them how to vote, didn't work. They sent one out to the teamsters who were working on the northeast coal project, telling the teamsters' union members: "Oh, my heavens, if you want to keep your job and if you want to do anything for anybody, you know, vote NDP." I'll tell you, those teamsters' union members used their intelligence, because they recognized that they wouldn't even be working today if it wasn't for the Social Credit government.

I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, you talk about alliances: well, it didn't work for the NDP this time, didn't work at all. So when I listen to the member for New Westminster who stands up here — I don't know whether I can use the word "pontificate" or not; I can use that word — the man who, as the Health critic, last year was the author of "rent a disaster".... Every second day he would come into this Legislature and talk about some great disaster in the health-care system of this province. Every time he was proven wrong. Did he ever apologize? I'll tell you, that member — I don't know how he got elected; it must have been the union or somebody — has been the author of working against those who might possibly be afraid of something happening in the health-care system; working on fear, promoting in this province, among the aged and those who may need our health system, fear when it was not warranted, because this government has brought about in this province the best health-care system of any province in Canada.

What we are saying is that we want, in our health-care system, value for the taxpayer's dollar, and to anybody who is human enough to recognize that a little bit of fat creeps into any system we're saying that we just want to ensure that our health-care system continues to be the best health-care system, and that we are devoted to that. We also recognize that in order to have the best health-care and education systems, and the best services to all of our people in need, indeed we must have a growing and dynamic economy. There again, the members opposite who stand up and preach about all the great services for people and how we need more services for people fail to realize that it's the private sector that provides the tax dollars we use to provide those services.

So I find that the arguments emanating from that side of the House are the same arguments they had prior to the last election. For the first two or three days it was calm over there,

[ Page 110 ]

and I thought maybe there were going to be some positive suggestions, which we have asked for in this Legislature time and time again. "Please come forward, Mr. Socialist Party, with your positive suggestions and assist us in the job of running this province." Instead of that they have fallen back into their old habits of being nothing but harping, carping critics. You know, they talk about jobs, and yet they get in bed with somebody on the GVRD and kill a major housing project. And tomorrow they'll stand up in this House and say: "Oh, this government hasn't done anything to provide housing." My, oh, my, they are the same old shallow group with the same old shallow policy. I just have to wonder if they're in bed with some of the GVRD people who can't find a place to put their garbage. I have to ask you, Mr. Speaker: do they want to put the garbage on the Spetifore property? Is that the reason why the GVRD voted yesterday against that? As I said yesterday, we have had thrust upon us by the socialists opposite that old theory that the world is going to starve to death. It's a bunch of garbage! I'll tell you, the biggest problem they had when they were putting together the European Economic Community was a surplus of food. How long have people lived in Europe or England? Today the big fight in the European Community is how to distribute the production of the farmers, yet the socialists are teaching us and trying to tell the young people of the world: "Oh, we're going to starve to death. California won't have room to grow tomatoes, potatoes and those things." If you make agriculture economically viable and pay the producer what it cost to produce, agriculture in this province could feed all Canada.

In the great Peace River country we have literally millions of acres in the Fort Nelson area that still have to be brought under production, but they wanted to close down the railroad that would serve that area. When you start really analyzing their policies, they are pretty shallow and very hollow. That is why socialism in Canada has dropped from 26 percent to 19 percent to 16 percent and dying. The people are becoming intelligent and are seeing through the shallowness.

They talk about being great Canadian citizens and supporting British Columbia, but when something comes up in Ottawa that affects Ontario, where do you find the NDP members voting? They're voting with Broadbent. Our future and the future of Canada depends on international trade. There are probably more than two million people employed directly in Canada, and a greater percentage in British Columbia, in production for international trade. Freer trade among all nations is going to provide jobs in Canada. Yet we have the NDP leader....

AN HON. MEMBER: Which one?

[11:15]

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: In Ottawa. Well, the whole group is getting together. You don't hear the lame-duck leader from the socialists in British Columbia standing up and fighting to see that the Crow rate goes. You don't hear him standing up in this Legislature, saying that the greatest portion of international trade with Japan comes from British Columbia, that freer trade as a policy has to go. They don't condemn the Ottawa Liberals when they are going to bring in immoral and illegal measures to curb trade with Japan. That's why the public of British Columbia, indeed the public of Canada, are looking at the policies of socialism. At your convention in Regina this weekend I challenge you to sit down and take a good look in the mirror. The opposition in this province and in Canada has a direct responsibility to the public to offer alternative suggestions, not just to do anything or say anything that you think will perpetuate you in power. I challenge you at your convention to sit down and take a good look. I challenge all of those NDPers who are involved in civic politics, whether on the GVRD or in regional districts, to quit playing politics and start serving the good people whom they were elected to serve.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

Interjection.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: We don't need any side comments from the pretty boy from Victoria. You will have your opportunity, my friend, in due course.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. member, please, personal references are unparliamentary.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: I withdraw that. He's not a pretty boy at all.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That's also unparliamentary. Please continue with the response to the throne speech.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: I want to talk for a few moments about that great northeast coal project. I really wish the project were not so far away from the population of the lower mainland. Unlike B.C. Place, the stadium, the ALRT, all those great things that this great government is doing in the lower mainland, this major project is many miles away from the bulk of the population in this province. I wish there were some way to take the population up to the area, which I visit regularly because part of it is in my riding.

The last time I visited Prince Rupert I stood on one of the grain elevators being erected about ten stories above the ground on an island which 12 months ago was nothing but swamp and bushes and muskeg. I stood on that cement structure which will facilitate the shipment of Canadian wheat farmers' grain into the international marketplace, and looked at that beehive of activity — Canadian workers putting together the second international port on Canada's west coast, fulfilling a dream the city of Prince Rupert has had since 1910. As a Canadian and a British Columbian, my heart filled with pride that this government had the courage to force Ottawa to bring about that great development for all Canadians. It was the medium of northeast coal that fulfilled that dream, and I'm glad I was part of a team which had the vision and the courage. Had the socialists been around it never would have happened, and I wonder where those people who are so gainfully employed today in that project would be working.

Some recent articles in the paper said maybe the international coal market is fading. During the election campaign the lame-duck leader of the socialists tried to work that dynamic area of the southeast of the province against the northeast. Thank heavens that sane heads prevailed. He didn't tell anybody in the province that while northeast is going ahead, new contracts for millions of tonnes have been signed in the southeast. He didn't say that three new mines are presently being developed in the southeast while the northeast is going ahead. He thought the only way he could get some votes and replace that dynamic member from the

[ Page 111 ]

Kootenays was to work the southeast against the northeast and the rest of the province. I'm proud of that member because he worked against tremendous odds, going around his constituency telling the truth, telling the facts to his constituents. The project is on stream, on budget, and I hope that in early December we will ship the first trainload of coal out of the northeast. History will prove that that project could not have been built at a better time in this province, when the jobs and economic activity were needed, when those thousands of small contractors and fabricators throughout the province have been able to get contracts from this great project.

I am very pleased to report to the House today that the Japanese steel industry is starting to look up. Signs of recovery of demand for Japanese steel are appearing on many fronts, improvement being currently led by export demand, notably from Pacific Rim countries. But there are also tentative signs of improvement in some important domestic sectors. Until they are satisfied that sustained recovery of domestic demand has occurred, the Japanese steel industry is, of course, being very cautious about predicting crude steel production levels greater than 95 to 96 million tonnes. The view of our embassy in Tokyo is that for the year 1983 production could well approach 100 million tonnes.

We have predicted time and time again, Mr. Speaker, that when the northeast project comes on stream the economy will be back on the move again, there will be more demand and more coal projects will proceed in this great province. None of that would have been possible, Mr. Speaker.... British Columbia and, indeed, Canada would not have been able to take their rightful place in supplying a larger portion of the coking coal needed by the steel mills, not only of Japan but also of the other countries of the Pacific Rim — and, indeed, in the European market — had it not been for the vision and the courage of our leader to see that this project went ahead.

You know, we get a lot of yapping criticism from the other side of the House about us taking sojourns in the international marketplace. I want to tell you a story. I went to Korea for the first time, representing the province of British Columbia and the taxpayers of the province of British Columbia, in 1978, and I started talking to them about some purchases of coking coal from the province of British Columbia. They said: "We're not going to buy coking coal from the province of British Columbia, because we went to British Columbia in 1974" — and you know who was government in 1974 — "and we were interested in buying coking coal from your province at that time. We were left in the Four Seasons Hotel to cool our heels, and the message finally came through that the government of the province of British Columbia was not interested in selling coal to our country."

MR. REID: Who would do a thing like that?

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: That was when the socialists were in government. I had to overcome that image of British Columbia that had been left by the socialists when they came here. We didn't go there; they came here to buy. At that time we were selling practically zero percent of the coking coal requirements of Pohang Iron and Steel — the Korean steel industry. I am pleased to say today that because of the work of the private sector in conjunction with the leadership the government has given in that area, we are supplying Pohang Iron and Steel with over 32 percent of their coking coal requirements.

I am also pleased to say that the same thing basically happened with thermal coal. Korea Electric Co. were buying zero tonnes of thermal coal when this government sent their first mission into Korea. Today we're selling them over 28 percent of their requirements. And, Mr. Speaker, the Premier was in Korea when the first deal was signed. Today hundreds and hundreds of people are employed in the southeast part of this province producing both thermal and coking coal for the Korean market. And then that lame-duck leader of the socialists goes down there and tries to work the northeast against the southeast. But our member down there told the good people of his constituency what this government had done to keep their jobs and to provide jobs for the future, and that's why he's here today.

I must say, Mr. Speaker, that when the economy of the world increases and is on the move — and it's on the move now, although it's very fragile.... That's why our policies, as outlined in the throne speech, will nurture that fragile economy, will help it forward with kindness and tenderness and less milking from the government. That's what it's all about. We will nurture and assist with government policies where we can this fragile economy and the fragile private sector, which has lost billions of dollars in profits in the last few years during the recession. That's what government is all about. We will not compete, but we will assist and we will nurture it. The same is happening in many other countries in the world.

I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that because of the policies of this government, because of the infrastructure we have built, because we have sold abroad.... We want investment in British Columbia. We're not like the socialists in Ottawa, who say: "We don't want any investment from foreign lands; it's bad business." We have built up an attitude in British Columbia that is: "You come and you bring your money. You keep British Columbia green. You come and bring your money and you invest. You come and you create jobs for British Columbians. for our young and growing labour force." We've created that climate here, and as the economy increases and as it grows, not only in British Columbia but also in Canada and the United States and the other international marketplaces around the Pacific Rim, British Columbia will be in a position to serve those markets because we made those bold, dynamic decisions that were timely. We went ahead while port facilities and railways in other parts of North America were cancelled. We saw that the window was open. We made the decision when it was necessary.

[11:30]

We talked to the Japanese steel industry, and we did it when it was timely. After all of the criticism about northeast coal, I didn't hear the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Barrett) or any of the socialists condemning the Gregg River mine in Alberta. I didn't hear them saying: "Oh, that's competing and the Alberta government shouldn't have allowed it to go ahead."

There are a number of things I wanted to say about many things, but I see my time is up. There will be other opportunities, I'm sure, for me in this Legislature. Once again I want to pass on my congratulations to you and all new members of the House, and say that in the weeks and months ahead I will be so proud to be part of this great government which has shown leadership not only in this province, not only in Canada, but is being looked at by the entire free world.

[ Page 112 ]

HON. MR. RICHMOND: I'm indeed pleased to take my place in this throne speech debate. Like the rest of my colleagues, I would like to take a moment to congratulate you on your re-election as Deputy Speaker; I trust you have enjoyed yourself thus far. My congratulations also to Mr. Speaker.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank publicly the people of British Columbia in general for returning this good government to Victoria. In particular, I would like to thank the people of the Kamloops constituency for the faith they showed in not only this government, but in myself. I thank them sincerely, and all those workers who worked so very hard for myself. I would also like to congratulate those who ran in this election and were not successful, and all the people who worked very hard for them. I know what a disappointment it must have been. I do commend them for the effort and for keeping the democratic system alive.

The people of Kamloops and this province voted for a government that would encourage the private sector, that would see we had recovery where it belongs: through the private sector and the creation of permanent jobs, which is happening in this province. As the Minister of Industry and Small Business Development (Hon. Mr. Phillips) said, it is fragile and is happening slowly, and we must nurture that recovery, which we have every intention of doing. The thrust of this throne speech — and what the people voted for, in my opinion — is that they want less government in their lives. They want government to stay out of their lives as much as possible, and therefore out of their pockets, and this government is going to see that it happens — that we stay out of people's lives wherever possible, stay out of their pockets and encourage the private sector, not make-work projects.

They also would like to see government doing those things that only government can do, or that government can do much better. Things that government can do are things such as you saw the other morning. I was very proud to be on the stand when the Premier pressed the button to start the ALRT system. I think it was a proud moment not only for us, but for all British Columbians: to see a system that is not only state-of-the-art today, but which will remain state-of-the-art for public transportation well into the next century. I don't think I would have been nearly so proud to stand there and watch a streetcar go by, as was proposed by one member of the opposition late in the last sitting.

MRS. JOHNSTON: He's not here anymore.

HON. MR. RICHMOND: Maybe it's because of that type of thinking that he's not here.

This system is a system conceived and built in Canada; moreover, it is a system that is in place, and will be in place for a long time to come, because someone had the courage and vision and, if you like, just straightforward guts to say it's time we did it. And we did it and got on with it.

Another project that could only be done by a government, and a government with some foresight and guts, is B.C. Place. I don't think there is a British Columbian today who isn't proud to drive by that stadium and point it out to their friends or to go to a football game in there. Yet I remember the negative comments from that side of the House — from that philosophy over there — that it was a waste of money. I don't hear any of them knocking it now, including the mayor of Vancouver, as he did before. In fact, quite the opposite is happening with the opposition and the mayor of Vancouver.

Indeed they are trying to take credit for the project rather than knocking it.

The same goes for every megaproject — that seems to be the popular term — that this government has either initiated or assisted in. They were against them. The Minister of Industry and Small Business Development has spoken at length about northeast coal, another generator of dollars for this province. Yet those people would turn off the generators. They have a great penchant for spending money, but they don't seem to know where it comes from or how to earn it. The generators in this province, thanks to the leadership of our Premier, are in place and will be for a long time to come. I am proud to say that the northeast coal project alone is providing thousands of jobs for British Columbians and other Canadians. Many people in my constituency are working on the northeast coal project, so it is not only benefiting that one sector of the province.

It's providing a deep-sea port at Prince Rupert that has been promised for many, many years. But even more than that, it is opening up an area of the province that many people have never seen and would never see if it weren't for the infrastructure being put in place by northeast coal. It is opening up three new provincial parks that will attract many, many visitors to the northeast sector of this province. It will benefit tourism immensely.

I want to touch on two aspects in the throne speech that were mentioned briefly and expand on them. One is the tourism business in British Columbia — the hospitality industry. I think during this downturn in our economy of the last two years we have seen what a stabilizing influence tourism has been on our economy. When the primary industries are suffering, as indeed they have, they suffer very badly when their markets dry up. Tourism, although it suffered in the last year or so, doesn't suffer nearly the upturns and downturns of the primary industries. It has become a stabilizer in the economy, and although it suffers ups and downs, they are not nearly so drastic. It is responsible for providing approximately 70,000 jobs to people of British Columbia who have very diverse backgrounds — from the highly skilled, highly trained people to those with little or no skills. This is all through the private sector, I might add. The effects of losing those jobs are very drastic. We must realize the value of tourism and the hospitality industry, and the fact that 10,000 private businesses in this province depend on it to stay open.

British Columbians are still our largest tourism market. Therefore my ministry has undertaken a program to encourage British Columbians to travel within British Columbia. They account for nearly 50 percent of our tourism dollars. We have launched a program called Vacation Road, which has had a tremendous response thus far from the public, in spite of an unfortunate error in the insert in the newspaper, an error which happened to get by several different people. I apologize for it. But in spite of that error the program is very successful to date. I guess if something good comes out of an error, it's the fact that we have received a tremendous amount of publicity — thanks to the media — for our insert called Vacation Road. I thank the media for that because we have received some front-page coverage, which we would normally not receive.

I would like to congratulate the British Columbia Association of Broadcasters for cooperating with us in this program. They have come forward and realized the need for tourism, and for British Columbians visiting British Columbia, and have cooperated with us on a series of two-minute

[ Page 113 ]

travelogues for the various regions of the province. The response has been tremendous. I have had several members of this House come up and tell me that they have had a good response from their constituents to the Vacation Road program running throughout the province on the various radio stations.

I'm happy to say that the number of visitors — particularly from the United States — to British Columbia is up considerably this year. The vehicular traffic thus far is up in the neighbourhood of 20 percent over last year. So 1983 is looking a lot better than 1982. One of our principal assets in the tourism industry...

Interjection.

HON. MR. RICHMOND: Well, besides a stable government. ...is the people in this province. One of our number one assets is people. We haven't ignored the front-line troops who meet the tourists — the persons who serve them meals and gas and meet them in hotels — and we have launched a resident awareness program to make those people feel as important as they are to our industry. Without those people meeting the visitors and meeting them with the right attitude, our tourism business would soon disappear.

I also want to talk for a moment on another item mentioned in the throne speech, and that's Expo 86. It's just another project initiated by this government under the leadership of Mr. Bennett, who had the foresight several years ago to approach the Bureau of International Expositions to host a world fair in our principal city in 1986, with the theme of communications and transportation. It's a very fitting theme, as that year marks the anniversary of the Canadian Pacific railroad coming to our shores and endeavouring to unite this country.

[11:45]

Expo 86 will probably be the most significant event to happen in British Columbia in a long, long time, perhaps in 100 years. It's an event that will make all British Columbians proud to be here, and it will help unite this country. It will make all Canadians proud to be Canadian, and it is taking place right in beautiful downtown British Columbia, Mr. Speaker. It's a very special and very complex project that is little understood by many people. It is a project — when you look at the complexity of it — that makes many other projects pale in comparison and look like child's play. It is fraught with the problems of international politics, which many of us do not understand, but we are fortunate to have a person in the personage of Mr. Patrick Reid, the commissioner-general, spearheading the international sales of Expo, and to date he has managed to sign up 16 foreign countries to participate in Expo 86. By the time the fair is in place, we will have signed up somewhere between 30 and 40 countries — countries that will be proud to display their technology and their culture, among other things, in British Columbia.

The international complexities of Expo are only one thing — dealing with the foreign countries and the sites and their locations on the fairgrounds. The fair is fraught with problems such as land acquisition, which is virtually behind us; putting the services in; erecting, on a very stringent timetable, 200 or more separate buildings, which must all be serviced and which must be placed in strategic locations; building a seawall of incredible proportions and complex problems; running into budget problems that one cannot foresee that you have not budgeted for; plus being ever cognizant of the fact that it must be a first-class and entertaining show. There must be the show business aspect; it must entertain people, it must inform them, it must satisfy everyone who comes. I'm confident that with the board of directors we have, made up of top business people of British Columbia, and with the people that we have put in place, they will pull this project off, on budget and on schedule, in spite of very stringent time constraints. There is no flexibility, Mr. Speaker, in the opening date of Expo. Other projects might have some flexibility on when they must open, but Expo 86 must open at 10 a.m. on May 2, 1986.

Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to take those few moments to point out to everyone what a tremendous and very special and complex project Expo 86 is. Based on very minimal figures of 15 million visitors, which are the most conservative figures available to date, the provincial government revenues alone will be in the neighbourhood of $125 million — just direct revenue to the province. The wages and salaries paid by Expo, based on that very minimal figure, will be in the area of $715 million — job creation by this government. The total economic activity that will flow from Expo 86 — incremental economy activity, if you like — will be somewhere between $2.1 billion and $3 billion to this province, and in employment alone it will produce in the neighbourhood of 49,000 person-years of employment. This is just another example of the tremendous foresight and planning that has gone on by this government. Yet we heard from the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) over there yesterday that there is no planning or foresight by this government. The very projects I've listed off alone account for thousands and thousands of person-years of employment and billions of dollars of economic activity in this province — the generators of money, the motors that keep our economy going.

In this throne speech we are also asking all others who spend public money to become our partners in restraint. We're asking them to show some responsibility when they're spending the taxpayer's dollar. I think that, too many times, they lose sight of the fact that just because it comes from another level of government, it still comes from the taxpayer's pocket. I don't care whether it's a hospital board, a regional district, a municipality, a school board, a federal government, or whoever, it's coming out of your and my pocket. We're asking them to show the same restraint and responsibility that is being shown by this government under Premier Bennett, who initiated restraint in this country. We're asking them to show the same responsibility as we are showing, not only when it comes to actual spending, but when it comes to negotiating contracts, to planning elaborate sewer systems, to anything that they do that requires public money — to remember where that money comes from and to show a little bit of restraint. This province, as I have said, under the leadership of Premier Bennett, has led the way in this country on restraint. As the Minister of Transportation and Highways (Hon. A. Fraser) pointed out, long before the feds got onto their 6-and-5 program, Mr. Bennett and Mr. Fraser were in Ottawa trying to convince the rest of the country and the other premiers that restraint was needed.

But the main thing is that it's working. British Columbia is leading the way out of the recession. We're not following, we're leading the way out, however fragile we are on the recovery, and we cannot and will not destroy that fragile recovery by imposing a greater tax burden on the people of this province. That to me is the easy way out: when you're short of money....

[ Page 114 ]

AN. HON. MEMBER: That's the socialist way

HON. MR. RICHMOND: That's exactly right: that's the socialist way out. When you're short of money, spend some more and just reach into the taxpayer's pocket a little bit deeper to come up with some more money. We're not going to do that; we're not going to dip into the taxpayer's pocket and make him dig just a little bit deeper and give away a little bit more of his earned money to government.

I don't even know the right words to use when I read articles like the one about the gas station makeover being set. I start thinking of the difference between a free-enterprise, private-sector government and a socialist government that thinks the government should own and control everything. When I start reading — and this is the federal government, which has been practising socialist policies for about the last 13 or 14 years.... When I think of what this will cost you and I as taxpayers — when I read about Petro-Canada planning to spend $30 million to convert some old gas stations that they bought for $347.5 million because they want to be in business, in competition, with the private sector — I can't help but think of the thinking that comes from across there when I listen to the member for New Westminster along these same lines, who was shocked at the thought of — and he's speculating on this — 35 employees going to be gone from the Ministry of Tourism, when he was speculating about the magazine Beautiful British Columbia. It seemed abhorrent to him that 35 jobs should be transferred from the public sector to the private sector.

AN HON. MEMBER: He doesn't understand.

HON. MR. RICHMOND: That is the whole thing: he said he didn't understand the word "privatize," and I believe him.

I think that that kind of thinking pervades that party and that side of the House. I can't understand the thinking that says people have to work for government instead of the same people doing the same job but working for the private sector.

When you're short of money it's very easy to raise taxes for the money you need, or to borrow, or both, because one precipitates the other. If you go and borrow more money than necessary, you're going to have to pay it back and you're going to have to raise taxes. The difficult way, the way that takes guts, foresight and courage — biting the bullet, if you want to use a cliché — is to cut government spending, reduce the size of government, and therefore reduce the burden on the people of this province. It's the difficult way, because the decisions are tough and difficult; they're not palatable to anyone, but they are necessary. It sometimes takes a little courage to make those difficult decisions; anyone can make the easy ones. The tough ones are where you separate the socialist from the private enterpriser.

I challenge everyone on either side of the House to look around and see the differences in jurisdictions in this country and throughout the world, between socialist thinking and private enterprise thinking. Show me a place where socialist thinking is working. Take a look at Quebec. Take a look at the federal government and the tremendous debt being built up. And they are still spending as though they had the money. As I pointed out, with an article in the paper the other day, they're still spending as if they were flush, as if the economy were booming and they had all kinds of money. The debt is mounting and mounting, and we're going to have to pay it back.

Yesterday I listened to the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke). He accused the Minister of Forests (Hon. Mr. Waterland) of still fighting the election, and then he went on to do the very same thing himself. In fact, all the speeches I've heard from the other side are doing the same thing: refighting the election. In case they haven't heard, I've got news for them: it's all over. And guess what?

MR. COCKE: The people lost.

HON. MR. RICHMOND: Isn't it funny how when things don't go their way they say the people weren't wise enough to elect them.

The other day a phrase came from that member: we're climbing out of the recession on the backs of the working people. Quite the opposite is true: we're providing jobs for the working people and allowing them to keep the money they earn. We're trying to allow them to keep a good percentage of the money they've earned, instead of taxing them to death.

The course of action, taken by the throne speech and by this government is not only what is needed at this moment; it is what is wanted by the people of British Columbia.

I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to take my place in this debate. Like the Minister of Industry and Small Business Development (Hon. Mr. Phillips), I will have many opportunities in the coming weeks to further debate many individual programs, which I think will prove very interesting. I fully support the contents of the Speech from the Throne, the leader of this province, and this government.

MR. ROSE: In this, my first opportunity to speak to this august body, I would like to say that it is a pleasure to be here. For a moment I thought I was going to have to shout a lot, because when I heard the Member for South Peace River (Hon. Mr. Phillips) I thought that was the pattern in here. I wondered for a while why we needed microphones. I noticed that the Minister of Tourism (Hon. Mr. Richmond) was much more moderate at least in his tone, if not in his ideas, and therefore I think I'll try to match that. Most of the time I'm not much of a shouter or screamer. I know I'm going to have to learn a new style here, and I'm prepared to do that. If that's the way it operates, that's the ball game, and I'm quite pleased to do that.

[12:00]

It's a great honour to be elected to public office. I think too few women and men have that opportunity. I consider it a public trust. It is probably the highest honour that the community can bestow on anyone. The fact that it has happened to me six times — four times federally, once municipally and now once provincially — is a tremendous honour, and I thank the voters of Coquitlam-Moody. I'd be less than frank, though, if I led this House to believe that I left Ottawa to take this particular chair. I don't think anybody would believe that. Lots of people have left the federal House to run provincially. I can think of a number, including the member for North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Davis). For instance, T.C. Douglas left to become Premier of Saskatchewan. Ed Schreyer left to become leader and Premier of Manitoba; Gerry Regan left to become Premier of Nova Scotia; Frank Moores — it even happens to Tories — left to become leader in Newfoundland; Bob Rae of our party left to become party

[ Page 115 ]

leader, if not yet Premier, in Ontario. What about Don Jamieson? He left the federal House to become leader of the Liberal Party in Newfoundland — a great honour to him. As a matter of fact, I'm one of the few people who left the federal House to become a back-bencher.

AN HON. MEMBER: Don't forget Jack Davis.

MR. ROSE: He didn't leave the federal House voluntarily, remember. He didn't quit. He was fired by the voters.

Anyway, I've made some progress. At least I'm now a member of the official opposition. I must admit, though, that the night my party lost the election and I won, I was seriously thinking of demanding a recount. I haven't yet accustomed myself to this place, but I'm not yet persuaded to run in my own by-election. I don't think I'll be doing that. Some people have been kind enough — or unkind enough — to suggest that probably the only way I'll ever be a minister is if I enrol in theological school. Somebody else said: "Well, they probably wouldn't have you anyway."

That's politics, though, and nobody can quarrel with that. Elections are often a matter of luck. Who gets where in politics is often a matter of timing and luck. I congratulate the Premier — not for being lucky, but for running a very good election campaign, a technically perfect election campaign. I congratulate the people who were elected along with me. I think it shows that democracy is still at work regardless of how much it is threatened. I don't think you can say that people voted for a particular person or that — and we don't like it on one side or the other — somehow the people were stupid. I don't buy that at all. As is the case in elections, to the victors go the spoils. Some of those spoils sitting over there I can't agree with. Some of them, I'm sure, are fine people, and perhaps even well motivated. Let's say they are well motivated. I think — my way of thinking anyway — they possess a very insular, blinker view of the world and what's happening. That doesn't make me all-wise and all-knowing, full of wisdom and sagacity, if that's the word, but I think we're going into a world in which the old answers won't prevail. I don't care whether they're the old free-enterprise answers or the old socialist answers. I think we'll have to look for new answers. Anybody who doesn't see that probably hasn't done enough thinking about the subject. I don't think the old slogans are any good anymore for anybody, regardless of side.

The government over there has been returned with a satisfying, comfortable majority. The job of government is to govern, and no one quarrels with that; but don't be after this side if we oppose, because that's our job too. Out of all the hype on the one side and the criticism coming from the other is supposed to come good government. It wouldn't without us. It won't without the opposition. We've had one-party states in Alberta, two or three of them. You don't get anywhere with a one-party state; democracy is lost. If you're sorry you didn't win all the seats, I'm not, because you don't win anything and the people don't win anything if you have a big, arrogant government.

I caution the government not to read too much into this election or the results. Let's look at the election results. Of every 20 people who voted, 10 voted for the government, but 9 voted for this side. That's hardly a rolling and snowballing kind of majority. It was just that close. I don't think the people of this province emphatically gave the government carte blanche to slash and privatize everything in sight. That's not my reading of it when it's merely 10 to 9. I don't think the people of this province gave this government the right to slash and destroy and pick away at all the social gains we've made over a generation. I don't think that is what the government's mandate is, so I'm going to be watching very closely. The gains we've made in standards of living and human dignity over the past 25 years are not to be swept away with slogans from anyone, and we're going to make sure that they're not. If privatization and cutbacks and staying out of private enterprise and not intervening in the economy is so great, why did we have the Great Depression? We had a Bennett once called R.B. Bennett. He was going to blast his way into the markets of the world, and do you know what happened? Two of the parties that sit in this House were invented during those years because of the reluctance of the old-line governments to intercede when people in western Canada — in fact, all over Canada — were in serious trouble.

We must have learned something over the last 50 years. This silly rhetoric about the glories of private enterprise and the dead hand or bogey of socialism is just nonsense. Everybody knows that both sides of this House believe in a mixed economy.

AN HON. MEMBER: No.

MR. ROSE: Certainly they believe in a mixed economy. Everybody knows that the road to social Utopia isn't by nationalizing everything in sight. The kinds of things and approaches that we made in the thirties are not necessarily appropriate for today, not in any way. Does the government wish to privatize ALRT?

AN HON. MEMBER: We will.

MR. ROSE: Who are you going to sell it to — the B.C. Electric? Does it wish to privatize the domed stadium?

AN HON. MEMBER: Probably.

MR. ROSE: Are you going to sell it to Peter Pocklington? Does the government wish to privatize B.C. Place? Is it going to privatize the schools? Nonsense! Unless we have substantial and continuing public support in things like those that I've mentioned — plus the member for South Peace River's (Hon. Mr. Phillips') pride and joy, the Tumbler Ridge project — unless we keep pouring public money into those things, they're going to collapse. They need public support, so don't get up and prattle on about the jobs of private enterprise, because it's a hollow thing. Maybe the pollsters tell you it's good, I don't know, or maybe you're just into that habit. I am not quite as ideological.

On the one hand the government brags about its job-creating, publicly funded projects, and then it claims in contradiction in the throne speech debate that you can't spend your way out of recession. Well, I'll give you another little bit of information: you can't restrain your way out of recession either, because what you're doing is restraining on the weakest members of society, and we're not going to put up with that. So that's a fact. We can all support motherhood statements about cutting red tape. Everybody is in favour of cutting red tape. We're all in favour of increasing productivity. What's new about that? Did this party invent feather-bedding? Of course it didn't.

[ Page 116 ]

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

What about cutting red tape? What does it mean? Does it mean getting rid of "regulatory roadblocks"? Does it mean cutting out pollution inspections — is that what you mean by it? Does it mean that developers are going to be free from now on to rape the farmland? If those are the regulatory roadblocks and you're going to eliminate them, then I don't think the people are going to buy it. You won 10 to 9, and half the people, or every second house out there in the streets, vote for us, so we're not as irrelevant as you might think. If the Tories or federal Liberals could win with 45 percent of the vote next time, they'd be deliriously happy.

What about productivity in education? Is that going to mean larger classes? Obviously if the teacher teaches bigger classes he's more productive, right? Now there might not be much learning there, but he's more productive. Does it mean we are going to have a longer school day, or a longer school year? Is that how you do it? If you pay less for the services, therefore you have less capital investment for an output — whatever that is — and therefore you are more productive. Do you think the people of B.C. want that for their children? I don't think so.

We are really a little concerned about some of those buzzwords that are in there — high tech is another beaut. Think about Consolidated Computer. That went to the wall for $125 million last year in Ottawa — public money, by the way.

Mr. Speaker, this side will be watching very carefully to make certain that restraint isn't just a buzzword or a byword as an excuse to cut services needed by people. We're going to be watching very carefully that education is not savaged — that we don't all end up as keypunch operators in our schools and computer tappers, while all the humanities, the fine arts and all the programs that make us human are abolished. We are not going to allow that sort of thing to happen. We're going to scream about that.

I don't know why or how these victims are picked out. They are often teachers, let's say, people on welfare. Does some number-crunching pollster say that these people aren't currently very popular, so therefore we can hammer them with impunity? That's called the lazy bastard theory of social welfare: obviously they've got to be lazy or else they wouldn't be out of work. That's just nonsense. It's kind of silly and ideological, and I think for the most part it's drivel. I've heard it all week long from the other side. However, the other side has no monopoly on drivel; I'll grant you that. We all get hooked into our own sort of word patterns.

I was interested in this whole thing written by Gary Engler in the Vancouver Sun. It is a sort of sarcastic or satirical way of expressing how some members of the public feel about the kind of ideological claptrap — that's with an '1', Mr. Speaker, not an 'r'; the suffix is 'trap' — that we hear so often. Now this is satire; you've got to be very careful, because you might not get it. "Canadian workers would be better off if they were paid less." We hear that all the time — you've got to get lean and mean.

"Poor people must be given less money, and that will make them work harder. Rich people need more money to expand the economy. Rent controls cause rents to be too low, which is bad. Free market causes land prices to soar, which allows speculators to buy hockey teams and baseball teams and football teams, which is good. High interest rates are necessary to reduce inflation, make work for bankruptcy lawyers and create opportunities for the happily unemployed. Unions are going to destroy this country by fighting for better pensions, proper health care, safety legislation, medicare, equal pay, the minimum wage for farm workers, decent maternity leave. B.C. forest workers should take wage cuts in order to expand the American economy and get more houses built."

Tighten your belts, Canadians, and expand the military — tighten your belts and compete with the dollar-per-day militarized, beaten, tear-gassed South Koreans that the member for South Peace River (Hon. Mr. Phillips) loves so much. Cut back social services. Isn't life wonderful?

[12:15]

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Engler brands such lunacies as unfair, unworkable and wrong-headed, and I happen to agree with him. But I hear it all the time. This almost becomes a theology, and I don't understand it. Well, I understand it, but why should anybody try to solve the problems of the rest of us by attacking the weakest members of society, not the strongest? That's what we're about, and that's where we differ ideologically from the people across the hall.

Contrast that approach to the recent musings of the council of Catholic bishops. What did they have to say about the economy? Now these aren't wild-eyed socialists....

HON. MR. CHABOT: Pinkos.

MR. ROSE: Pinkos. Bishop Remi de Roo of Victoria is a pinko? The Provincial Secretary is calling the Catholic bishops of Canada pinkos. Shame! That's almost the same as telling the Catholic bishops to go to hell. I hope you visit confessional next Sunday. You're going to need a lot of forgiveness. You'd better count those beads. Tote that barge and lift that bale. You'd better do that.

AN HON. MEMBER: He's past redemption.

MR. ROSE: He is, eh?

Anyway, this is what Remi de Roo, the bishop of Victoria, has to say.

First: "Unemployment rather than inflation should be recognized as the number one problem to be tackled in overcoming the present crisis." That's what he had to say first. He talks about the number of jobless. I'm not going to carry on with all the quotes. "While efforts should be continually made to curb wasteful spending, it's imperative the primary emphasis be placed on combating unemployment." How are you going to create employment by throwing more people out of work? I don't understand that kind of logic. I don't understand that kind of economic thinking.

Second: "An industrial strategy should be developed to create permanent and meaningful jobs for people in local communities. To be effective, such a strategy should be designed at both the national and regional levels, and it should include emphasis on increased production." You'd agree with that, Mr. Minister — creation of new labour-intensive industries for basic needs, and measures to ensure job security for workers, not scare the hell out of them. Who's going to lose his job next?

Third: "A more balanced and equitable program should be developed for reducing and stemming the rate of inflation, and this requires the shifting of the burden for wage controls to upper income earners, and not lower ones." Now I hope

[ Page 117 ]

that doesn't sound too radical, and too pink, and too offensive, because for the last 50 years the distribution of income in this country, in spite of medicare and unemployment insurance, hasn't changed. The top 20 percent of Canadians still get 42 percent of the income, and the bottom 20 percent — the poor, downtrodden — get about 4 percent. And that's just not fair.

I know that over on this side we're gloom-and-doomers. We're told that all the time. We're just downers, somehow. And the optimism is all over there: life is wonderful. Well, it may be for some people — for most of us, in spite of all we say. Certainly for some of us sitting in here — a rather privileged group — it's a pretty great country, and it's a pretty great province too. Nobody's going to deny that, So we shouldn't get so preoccupied with hacking up one another that we forget that what we have is perhaps the envy of the world. We've got to admit that one, too.

But anyway, the bishops — the pinko bishops, according to the minister over here — go on to say: "Greater emphasis should be given to the goal of social responsibility in the current recession. This means that every effort must be made to curtail cutbacks in social services, maintain adequate health care and social security benefits, and above all guarantee special assistance for the unemployed welfare recipients, the working poor in one-industry towns suffering from plant shutdowns." A perfect example of that would be Port Alberni.

Fifth: "Labour unions should be asked to play a more decisive role." Look, industrial democracy is not all that foreign, you know. We don't have much of it here, but in West Germany union heads sit on the boards of directors of many corporations. I think that's important. That's known as social responsibility, or industrial democracy. "This requires the restoration of collective bargaining rights where they have been suspended, collaboration between unions, the unemployed and unorganized workers, and the assurance that labour unions will have an effective role in developing economic policy." Now when the bishops say that, what they're saying is: how can we develop a social contract if all we have is conflict? Unless you get people working together on these problems, how on earth can you ever come out of this? We're just going to have the adversary system heaped upon us forever and ever and ever — like we have in this House. That's no way to work. It's not going to work that way. And I don't think anybody believes it ever will work.

Anyway, these aren't pie-in-the-sky musings. I think that a great number of people believe what the bishops had to say. Certainly they're compassionate men. Does that make them idealists? Not hard-headed? Is compassion out of fashion? Are we so hard-headed that we have no feeling for anybody else?

Anyway, I suggest that maybe the whole paper could be read by somebody who's interested in what's happening in the world, because I think we ignore the warnings at our peril. Three countries, Mr. Speaker, control the economies of the western world. If three countries get together — the U.S.A., West Germany and Japan — they will decide when our recession is going to be over. God didn't make the recession, you know; men did. And it doesn't matter what this government does, or what it says. It will be when those three countries.... When the United States decides it's had enough of the recession — the people who operate and are behind the Reagan government — that's when it'll be over, regardless of what we do here.

If the Premier and his party wish to take the credit for our recovery, then I don't see how they can escape the blame for the recession. You can't have it both ways, because I think it will be largely beyond their control. That's what I think are facts, and those are my views on these topics. I think that perhaps I sound a little bit preachy — not quite as loud as my friend from South Peace River (Hon. Mr. Phillips), but I can be fairly loud.

Interjection.

MR. ROSE: Well, you said you were going to be kind to me. Are you kind to your enemies too? I heard you say earlier that you were going to be kind to me; you said that you were going to take me up to Prince Rupert or Tumbler Ridge or something.

MR. LEA: He didn't say you were coming back.

MR. ROSE: One-way ticket.

I'd like to turn now for a few minutes to some more of the traditional aspects of a maiden speech, and offer the hon. members a description of my riding. This won't be an extensive travelogue, I hope, because outlining the beauties of Coquitlam-Moody is probably a bit redundant, since all of British Columbia is beautiful — even Kelowna, where I lived next door to the Premier for some five years. I didn't get contaminated. It didn't contaminate him very much either. But, anyway, he was a very good neighbour.

I guess in some ways Coquitlam-Moody is a microcosm of Canada. Bounded on three sides by water, it has a rail line, a port, lots of fishing, light industry, lumber mills, and it has lots of problems, too.

One of its problems — I wish the Minister of Highways (Hon. A. Fraser) were here — is traffic stagnation. We have a big railyard and a lot of dangerous cargo there. That's of concern to people, because Port Coquitlam stands right in the way of anybody trying to go on the north side of the river up the valley, and that's where the railyard is. So we're concerned about that, because we don't want another possible Mississauga in Port Coquitlam. We lack public transit into the new subdivisions — and we have new subdivisions in Coquitlam. And we have some urban intrusion into rural land. As we press up the valley, the pressures are going to be intense far more intense than they are in the delta region.

I would like to talk about four or five municipal areas that come within the boundaries of Coquitlam-Moody and what some of their particular problems are. In addition to the bookend ones — that's Coquitlam and Moody — there's Port Coquitlam; there's the new village of Belcarra-by-the Sea — it's beautiful; plus some unorganized territory in Anmore and Buntzen Lake. Each of these areas has splendid amenities. They are close to Vancouver and yet just far enough away.

I would like to highlight some of these today. The village of Belcarra was formed four years ago because the residents wanted to keep their quiet way of life. They didn't want to be absorbed into the larger urban scene, so they formed their own municipality. The people of Anmore and the unorganized territory feel the same way about it. The district of Coquitlam, whose concerns I share with whoever wins the court case — and I think it's the....

AN. HON. MEMBER: Mr. Parks.

[ Page 118 ]

MR. ROSE: Are you allowed to call him Mr. Parks in here, or the member from Maillardville-Coquitlam? Whoever he is, I'll just say that we face a serious landfill problem. Coquitlam has been taking other people's garbage for years — like Delta — and now thinks it's somebody else's turn. It's a major problem as far as we are concerned. That mountain by the river is not natural; that's a landfill. Incineration and recycling is the modern way, but they are still going to need lots of assistance — those five municipalities that supply that.

Interjection.

MR. ROSE: Nobody wants anybody else's garbage, though. That's the problem that everybody faces, but the problem has to be solved. Pitt Meadows doesn't want it, Texada Island doesn't want it, but Coquitlam has had all it can stand. It's a very serious problem.

Port Coquitlam wants me to say to this House today that it wants to draw to the appropriate minister's attention that among its major concerns is traffic congestion. As the population goes up the valley eastward, on the north side of the Fraser, we get severe traffic problems. We've got a Bailey bridge there serving what was supposed to be the Mary Hill bypass. We need to complete that; otherwise the problem is only going to intensify. I'm quite sure the member for Dewdney (Mr. Pelton) would want to see that Mary Hill bypass completed as well. It's not just NDPers sitting there, getting mad in their cars, as they wait for that Bailey bridge. There are probably some Social Crediters as well. I heard there was the odd Social Crediter up there in Dewdney — and some even ones as well, perhaps.

Mr. Speaker, I want to tell the Minister of Highways that during peak hours this city of Port Coquitlam, because it stands right in the way, cries out for solutions that are beyond local control. Trucks going to and from the CPR yards have to wait because there's a single-lane bridge right in the middle of town. Anybody who wants to take a helicopter ride over that place during rush hour can see how difficult it is. The local people can't look after that.

A similar thing is happening in Port Moody. Port Moody is a logjam. Anybody going to Burnaby or to Vancouver along the Barnet Highway is right in the middle of town. I know that a lot of these things are really not very gripping. They're not things that you can get very emotional about, but they are local concerns, and I think it's the job of the person who represents a community to express these local concerns.

The local city council was really nervous the other day because of a newspaper article in the May 29 Province. This newspaper article is headed: "ALRT High Cost Derailed Commuter Railway Service." I looked on the map the opening day of the ALRT — the grand opening of the B.C. Spirit....

AN HON. MEMBER: The Spirit of B.C.

MR. ROSE: The Spirit of B.C. Well, as long as it's not mean-spirited. I'm sure the federal government might think it's a bit mean-spirited. I noticed in the two-page ad that was in the Province for this grand opening that the commuter rail service is on the map. This is part of the great traffic pattern down here, but a few days earlier on Sunday, May 29, the Province published this with the musings of the head of the Transit Authority, MLA Jack Davis, who said: "I personally don't think commuter rail has much of a future." That's what he said to the people of Port Moody. Then he goes on to say: "With the government in the red, I don't think it would be willing to add another $40-odd million to supply commuter rail from Coquitlam down to the SeaBus."

[12:30]

Further on he says: "The ALRT will eventually go all the way to Coquitlam anyway, and so it would be a duplication." Anybody who knows that area at all knows that if you look at where the commuter rail is going to go sometime after the year 2000, if it gets there then, it's going to end up in Maillardville. What are people going to do in Port Coquitlam when you can't get through the place now? Where are they going to park?

One of their own supporters — I won't name him because he would be a little bit embarrassed about this — has written the head of the Transit Authority with the following argument. He's the head of the transit committee of the city of Port Moody. He wrote Jack Davis, saying: "We have been assured on numerous occasions of the commitment of the provincial government to commuter rail," but after reading the newspaper he's wondering what happened. He made the following points:

"The official community plan is being developed to reflect a commuter rail station; Port Moody's excessive rush-hour traffic is expected to be alleviated somewhat by the community rail, which is to be taken into account in a provincial highways-funded study. He makes a further point: Port Moody's participation in Expo 86 is centred around commuter rail as one of the convenient transportation aspects, since this city will be just 20 minutes away from the Canadian pavilion, compared with an expected 45 minutes by ALRT"

The people in Port Moody are worried. They feel betrayed that this is likely to go anyway. The minister in charge of transit was out to Port Moody for the Golden Spike Days last Saturday. I'm sure she got an earful from the local council. It's not a partisan issue. People on both sides of the political spectrum are concerned about this issue. She was out there because we have a little ceremony called "driving the golden spike," commemorating the completion of the terminus of the CPR. She hits the spike with a 10-pound sledgehammer — that is, she gallantly hit at the spike, and caused one local mayor, who is a bit of a wag, to suggest that the minister should be nicknamed "Lightning" because she has never struck twice in the same place. Anyway, she tried her best. I hope she got an earful and that she knows how the people of that area feel.

For the remainder of my speech in the time I have left I would like to talk a little bit about the critic area that I have inherited — that is, of Education. I, like the minister, have a lot to learn about education. Oh, there he is over there; I'm pleased to see him. I didn't recognize him over there because I couldn't see through the Premier; lots of people can but I.... I'd like to congratulate him on his new appointment, and tell him that I'm really pleased to be his critic, since we're both old Mission boys, and we're all conciliators and compromisers and get along well with people. All Mission boys do that, with one exception: Phil Gaglardi came from Mission, but he wasn't quite the same personality.

We know that in future years we're going to be facing an increasingly sophisticated world. It's going to depend on skilled people, lots of skilled people. We know that there's a

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recent U.S. study that pointed out that American education is in an appalling state. Because of the complex nature of education we know that you can't scapegoat teachers. There are all kinds of problems, in addition to teaching problems, that cause schools to be less effective than they might be. If your society is chaotic — lacking in form or in any kind of reasonable values — how can you expect the schools to be much different? This business of blaming the schools for the ills of society, or blaming the teachers for it — going out and nuking teachers, like the minister's predecessor did — is not good enough.

The minister has made a fine start, a fine recovery in de-escalating the kind of tension that developed between teachers and trustees over the past year. He's going to have a honeymoon for a while, but in my view he won't be able to sweet-talk his way out of it forever. He'll have to make some reasonable changes to give teachers a feeling of some kind of security, boards a feeling of some kind of self-worth and autonomy. Don't brand everything and stamp these things out district after district just like cupcakes, as if one formula is going to work in every instance, because it's not going to. We welcome the minister and congratulate him on the work he's done until now, but we're going to be watching him.

You know, Mr. Minister, the province's share of educational funding has been dropping over the last 10 years. The share is now appallingly low — one of the lowest, by a lot of indicators, of any province in Canada. You can keep taxes low, but as a former alderperson would know, it isn't going to help them if all you do is pass it off to the local residents. All you're doing is shifting the burden; you're not changing the tax. We arrange our rich provinces in education from very low to dead last in some very important measures. Boards are worried, I am told, that certain financing formulas are being contemplated which might cause them great difficulty. It might be based on productivity and costs vary a lot between boards. Things like heating bills — the minister comes from the north — transportation bills, number of immigrant children in classes, all cause per-pupil costs to vary. So we look for a flexible kind of approach. If you have a lot of teachers who are senior on the salary scale.... When I first went to Kelowna as a teacher, everybody was young. Ten years later I moved to Westminster, where they weren't 10 years older, they were about 30 years older, because that was a stable society and there wasn't much change. So if you have a lot of senior teachers on your staff, your costs are going to be higher than if you have a lot of younger ones.

I think the worst thing about it all is the uncertainty in education. We're been through the soft cop, tough cop routine twice now in education in the last few years, so we want to know whether you're going to be the soft cop or the tough cop, and which tough cop will follow you if you're too soft. We'd be interested to know that; we don't now.

I think this uncertainty was pretty well illustrated recently in a little news story, quoting Dan Lupini of the largest district in the province. He says: "Now for 1983 we still don't have a budget. We know we have a cap on it of $169 million, but we still don't have a settlement for our teachers, and we don't know if that settlement will cost too much and if our staffing will be effective." Uncertainty, Mr. Minister.

I'm told that my time is about to run out. I will close by saying that I'm sorry I couldn't say something more about students and their problems with student loans. I would like to close by saying to the minister that I wish him well. I hope that when we're talking to him we'll be talking to Edgar Bergen and not Charlie McCarthy, because people want to talk to the organ grinder; they won't be satisfied with the monkey. He's got a big job, he's going to need all the help he can get, and I really appreciate the fact that we will have this association and wish him the best of luck.

Just before I close may I pay a tribute to Judge Stuart Leggatt, my predecessor, who served municipally on the school board, federally and provincially, and is now on the bench. He's my predecessor, and he's done a great job. He's an outstanding British Columbian and an outstanding Canadian, and I'm pleased to have had the honour to follow him representing Coquitlam-Moody.

Mr. Segarty moved adjournment of the debate.

Motion approved.

Hon. Mr. Nielsen moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 12:41 p.m.