1983 Legislative Session: 1st Session, 33rd Parliament
Hansard
The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.
(Hansard)
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10, 1983
Afternoon Sitting
[ Page 727 ]
CONTENTS
Routine Proceedings
Oral Questions
Rentalsman's office. Mr. Blencoe –– 727
Mr. Lauk
Letter to Parks Ministry staff. Mr. Mitchell –– 728
Highgrading by Macmillan Bloedel. Mr. Lea 728
Tenure for contract positions. Hon. Mr. McGeer replies –– 729
Harbour Board Repeal Act (Bill 25). Second reading.
Mr. Nicolson –– 730
Mr. Lauk –– 733
Mr. Cocke –– 738
Mr. Barrett –– 742
Mr. Macdonald –– 748
Appendix –– 750
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10, 1983
The House met at 2:06 p.m.
Prayers.
MR. REYNOLDS: A number of my constituents have come over to Victoria today, and I'd like to introduce them. I beg the House's indulgence for the numbers that I've got here. Mr. and Mrs. Dorte and Thor Frosiev, who are the owners of the Brackendale Art Gallery and Theatre Restaurant in Brackendale, British Columbia, are sitting in the gallery today. I would ask the House to welcome them.
I'd also like to welcome Mr. Brian Purdy of Crane Canada Inc. He's from West Vancouver and is sitting in the gallery today.
Mr. Speaker, sitting in your gallery we have three distinguished members of our community: Mr. Rahamin Amram, who's a businessman from Vancouver; Mr. Bernie Smith, the president of the Social Credit Party; and last but not least a famous British Columbian, a man who lives in the constituency of the second member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk). I'm sure you will be happy to see here one of the world's greatest promoters, Mr. Murray Pezim.
MR. KEMPF: Mr. Speaker, in your gallery this afternoon is a friend of a very good friend of mine, Dr. Peter Montgomery. Dr. Montgomery is lecturing at Camosun College at the present time, and on behalf of that mutual friend I would ask this House to make him very welcome.
MR. LAUK: I thank the hon. member for West Vancouver (Mr. Reynolds) for bringing to my attention the fact that I have a constituent in the Speaker's gallery. I want to welcome him here to the Legislature and retract what I said about him in Hansard. I'll give him the citation and thank him very much for that recent cheque. Thank you, Murray.
Interjections.
MR. REID: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if that representative of that constituent would also be interested in buying a bank on behalf of Mr. Lauk.
Mr. Speaker, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to introduce a Vancouver small businessman who is in the audience today: past national president of the Automotive Retailers' Association, Mr. Dave Bruce. I'd like you to welcome him.
MR. GABELMANN: We have as many elected representatives from North Island in Victoria today as there are MLAs, I think. One of them, at least, is in the gallery this afternoon, and that's alderman Pat Cadden from Port Hardy. I'd ask the House to make him welcome.
Oral Questions
RENTALSMAN'S OFFICE
MR. BLENCOE: I have a question for the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. Given that no agent or spokesman for the Social Credit Party is on record as stating during the recent election campaign that the Social Credit government will abolish rent regulations and security for tenure for B.C.'s 355,000 tenants, does the minister agree that the government has no mandate for this action?
Interjections.
MR. BLENCOE: A typical response: lack of, Mr. Speaker.
I have a supplementary question. It is sometimes alleged that the silent majority supports this and other regressive actions by the government. A recently published survey shows that 72 percent of British Columbians oppose the elimination of rent controls. Does the minister not agree that this is a conclusive expression of public opinion on this matter?
MR. SPEAKER: The question is out of order.
HON. MR. McCLELLAND: Mr. Speaker, would you ask the member if he would table that survey to which he referred in the question?
MR. SPEAKER: The question was ruled out of order, hon. member.
MR. BLENCOE: Mr. Speaker, a further question. One of the results of that survey to which I referred is that a further 67 percent agree the rentalsman should be maintained to protect tenants from arbitrary eviction. Has the minister decided to stop listening to property developers and professional ideologues such as Michael Walker, and listen to the people of British Columbia?
HON. MR. HEWITT: Mr. Speaker, that is a typical question from that member in regard to the comments he makes prior to putting the question.
[2:15]
We had a mandate on May 5 that spoke very clearly on what the people of this province wanted the government to do. If the member across the floor identifies with, I believe, 313 questions raised by the Province newspaper in their survey, as opposed to 2.5 million people in the province of British Columbia, as the type of direction or voice of the people, I say that his numbers are wrong. I prefer to look at the election results, which were far more conclusive than the member's comment about a questionnaire.
Secondly, Mr. Speaker, the rationale of the rent controls being lifted on July 7 was given considerable consideration at that time. At that time 35 percent of the rental accommodation in this province was under rent controls; all others were outside the rent control limit. Vacancy rates in Vancouver and Victoria were approximately 3 to 3.5 percent, and vacancy rates in other areas of the province ranged anywhere from 5 to 15 percent. It's fair to say that this government identified this particular time as a window in which we could move to let the marketplace work and allow renters the opportunity to have available to them rental accommodation and have competition as opposed to government intervention in the marketplace.
MR. BLENCOE: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the minister. Does not the minister agree that tenants have certain basic, inalienable rights, and that they should not be allowed to be evicted from their homes and their apartments without cause? Does he not agree that there should be cause for eviction in those notices?
HON. MR. HEWITT: Mr. Speaker, the question, of course, relates to legislation before the House at the present
[ Page 728 ]
time, and I think the debate would be more in order when the legislation comes up for debate.
MR. LAUK: A supplementary to the minister. In answer to the question from my colleague from Victoria, the minister said that the questionnaire didn't reflect the opinion of the voters, that the electoral result on May 5 did. Is my understanding of the minister's reply correct?
HON. MR. HEWITT: That's the democratic process.
MR. LAUK: I wonder if the minister can confirm that it's part of the democratic process that candidates in Vancouver Centre representing his party denied that there was any plan to abolish rent controls, that indeed they would be enhanced to protect tenants. Is he about to undertake an investigation into that kind of false advertising?
HON. MR. HEWITT: I appreciate the question, because there could be a tremendous amount of investigation going on with regard to comments by candidates during campaigns, such as those on the mining policy of the NDP — one candidate in Omineca saying one thing and the Leader of the Opposition saying another; one candidate in Peace River saying to the people of Peace River that northeast coal is the best thing that's ever happened, and the Leader of the Opposition saying he wanted to close it down.
The question is out of order, but I think the member opposite knows that when a candidate makes statements during a campaign he is not dictating future policy of any party or government.
Interjections.
MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, it would appear to follow that if a question is out of order, an answer would also be in the same category.
MR. LAUK: If the minister is suggesting that we are not to believe Social Credit candidates, can we then believe the Premier, who placed a full-page ad during the 1979 election, saying, "We shall not abolish rent controls," signed "W.R. Bennett"? Will he investigate that as false advertising?
HON. MR. HEWITT: To answer the member's question, no, I will not investigate it. He is now talking about the 1979 election, and we didn't abolish rent controls between 1979 and 1983. So the ad was correct.
Interjections.
LETTER TO PARKS MINISTRY STAFF
MR. MITCHELL: Mr. Speaker, I hope you have better control over this House when I ask questions of the minister I'm directing them to than you did in the case of the last two.
My question is for the Minister of Lands, Parks and Housing. Will the minister advise why parks and outdoor recreation division staff have been ordered in writing not to express personal opinions about government policy or otherwise offer comment about the wisdom or correctness of government decisions on which they might disagree?
HON. MR. BRUMMET: I believe the member refers to a letter that went out from one of the acting deputy ministers. The intent of that is that people should be carrying out their jobs and not be getting involved in political hassles during the day.
MR. MITCHELL: I'd like to follow up with a supplementary to what he said about working. Staff at the parks and outdoor recreation division have already been fired from their jobs, and others working in the campsites have already been told to look for other jobs. Would the minister explain why these actions have been taken?
HON. MR. BRUMMET: First of all, I would like to have a list of the people who have been fired, if the member has such a list, because in the parks and outdoor recreation program auxiliary staff have been notified that they would not be rehired in the future. I hardly call that firing. I'm sure they wouldn't want to put on their application form for another job that they were fired when they were basically told that they wouldn't be renewed. I think the member is simply fishing here.
MR. MITCHELL: Can the minister confirm that the real reason this gag order has been introduced is that the government is starting to privatize all provincial camp facilities in British Columbia?
HON. MR. BRUMMET: Again, it's typical to make these sorts of accusations. We are not privatizing the parks. We are privatizing some of the operations. We have been upfront and announced that we are privatizing the government operations at Manning and Cypress. We are not selling the parks. The parks will remain as part of public land. Why would we want to gag people about that? The only things that we have discussed about privatization have been open and upfront.
MR. MITCHELL: Can he assure this House and the province of British Columbia that he does not intend — and I didn't say that he is intending to sell or give away the parks — to privatize the services in the provincial parks in British Columbia, and that this government in the next term of office will not allow the parks to be leased out on privatization for separate fees outside of the present park system?
MR. SPEAKER: There is future policy implied, hon. member, in the question.
HIGHGRADING BY MACMILLAN BLOEDEL
MR. LEA: To the Minister of Forests: on Monday I asked the minister if he as satisfied that a correct assessment was being done on whether too much waste was being left on the forest floor. The minister replied that there's a standard practice within the ministry. He said: "However, my advice to the member is that we carry out constant waste assessment throughout all cutting permits. Standard practice within the ministry is to have a minimum of 12 test spots to assess waste per logging opening."
I'd ask the minister whether those test plots are done by the company or by the Forest Service?
[ Page 729 ]
HON. MR. WATERLAND: Mr. Speaker, waste assessments are generally done by Forest Service staff.
MR. LEA: The minister is not answering the question.
Are the 12 test plots done on an opening after logging done by the Forest Service, or by the company that does the actual cutting?
HON. MR. WATERLAND: Mr. Speaker, as I said, they are generally done by the Forest Service. I'm sure there are times when we ask the private sector to do test plots and to scale them by a professional forester. As long as we accept the professional ethics of foresters, we are bound to accept such test plots as well.
MR. LEA: Mr. Speaker, to the minister, I would suggest that's not the standard practice. The standard practice is that they are done by the companies, and 10 percent of those 12 test plots are then checked by the Forest Service. On the Queen Charlotte Islands alone, because there are no scalers in the Forest Service to ensure whether or not the companies have actually done their job, there are presently 200 hectares of forest land that have not been checked at all by the Forest Service. Would the minister confirm that that's the case?
HON. MR. WATERLAND: Mr. Speaker, I will confirm that as time goes on we'll be doing much more auditing work and much less policing work by the Ministry of Forests. Our whole intent is to get government off the backs of people and to accept the fact that people do act in a responsible manner. We will continue to audit all the work that is done by the ministry, but we're not going to be a police force, as that member would probably like us to be.
TENURE FOR CONTRACT POSITIONS
HON. MR. McGEER: Mr. Speaker, yesterday I took on notice a question from the member for Nelson-Creston (Mr. Nicolson). Fortunately, I'm able to bring an early reply to that notice question because I see that the name to which people are responding in the advertisement raised in the House by the member is Dr. E.G. McGeer, someone known to myself. This particular advertisement was sent for publication on June 24, which was prior to the time that legislation was introduced into this House. The question concerned tenure-track positions, a phrase used in this particular advertisement. I should advise members of the House that "tenure track" is a euphemism for people employed by universities to distinguish those employed on hard money versus soft money. Soft money is that not coming from the standard grants that would be in the estimate book, but from research grants. And I might add that in my experience the bulk of productive scientific work in North America is done by people who are on so-called soft money, or grant money, and therefore not in tenure-track positions.
TUNNEL-THROUGH PROGRESS
ON ANZAC BRANCH LINE
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: I rise to make a ministerial statement. As you know, British Columbia Railway has been building what is commonly known as the Anzac branch line to connect the great and growing port of Prince Rupert with the northeast coalfields, which are presently under construction by two great Canadian mining companies investing over $1.3 billion of private money and creating thousands of jobs.
What I really want to share with the House is the fact that the port on the west coast is almost built and the mining company, the mines and the infrastructure in the northeast is almost built, but in between we're trying to build a railway branch line which consists of two major tunnels. One tunnel has holed through, and I would like to tell the House today — because I know the members of the opposition are very interested in this — that yesterday the progress made on the Table East and Table West tunnels was a total of 27.1 metres, and that there remains only 223.6 metres to go. I know the House will want to share this great news. The anticipated tunnel-through, as it is called, will take place about August 20. Thank you.
[2:30]
MR. SPEAKER: A response?
MR. LEA: Yes, I would like to answer in kind. Bubblybub, buh bu blah blah, beeblabub, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blee blow, blah, blah, blee, blee, blah! Thank you.
HON. MR. WATERLAND: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, I take offence at the comments made by the member for Prince Rupert. I would ask him to withdraw.
MR. NICOLSON: I was wondering if it was the responsibility of the Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mr. Chabot) to give us a direct translation.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. Hon. members, prior to proceeding to the next point of business, could I read from Beauchesne one simple line, our first rule in question period, which is: "The question must be a question, not an expression of opinion, representation, argumentation or debate." Hon. members, I think that, while we adhere to most rules in the House, it is time we paid a little bit more attention to the rules that we must follow for question period. I thank members for their attention.
Orders of the Day
HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Speaker, I ask leave to proceed to public bills and orders, please.
Leave granted.
HON. MR. GARDOM: Adjourned debate on second reading of Bill 25.
HARBOUR BOARD REPEAL ACT
(continued)
MR. LAUK: On a point of order, under the rules of the House the question that was placed before this chamber was a precedent motion to debate the budget.
HON. MR. GARDOM: Leave was just granted. What are you talking about?
MR. LAUK: The opposition, of course, grants leave because we are very interested to see if this government has a plan. But it should be pointed out to Mr. Speaker that the precedent motion chosen by the House Leader has been ignored now for almost two months.
MR. SPEAKER: Hon. member, the point of order raised by the member is not one that can be given a great deal of
[ Page 730 ]
cognizance by the Chair, and is not really in essence a point of order.
MR. NICOLSON: If the member for West Vancouver–Howe Sound (Mr. Reynolds), who is the member who adjourned debate on this, does not wish to speak further, I seek the floor on the bill.
It's interesting how time kind of fuzzes up various things. Yesterday we certainly didn't have any explanation of why the government wanted to repeal the Harbour Board Act.
The Harbours Board has been very successfully collecting revenues and transmitting these revenues to government. The Harbours Board was granted no equity capital upon its creation in 1967, but it has received Crown advances totalling $25 million, all of which have been repaid, with $7 million interest. Looking over the financial reports of the last couple of years, we see that the Harbours Board has actually performed quite well, that it has given up some of its retained earnings to the province of British Columbia, that it will have actually been returning.... It looks like the return on this investment, the original capital of which is all paid up, is now something like $7 million, $8 million or $10 million per year.
[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]
So one really has to wonder why it's necessary to get rid of this organization. Is it because of bureaucracy? Is it because of the downsizing of government? Is that what we want to do? Do we want to get rid of the one legal secretary, who also doubles as a bookkeeper? Do we want to get rid of the manager of special projects, the comptroller, or the executive director, Mr. David King? Or is the real purpose of this bill to get rid of the chairman? You people feel that you should get rid of the chairman of a corporation that has returned millions of dollars to the people of British Columbia. If anybody in the opposition feels that we should not get rid of the chairman, would you please stand up on your chair. Well, Mr. Speaker, obviously they all agree that we should get rid of the chairman. Of course, the chairman being the Minister of Industry and Small Business Development (Hon. Mr. Phillips), I would also have to go along with that. But that has to be about the only failing in this particular entity, because it has operated very efficiently.
It's really rather interesting to hear some of the comments that have been made about this piece of land and to realize that the member who did speak yesterday, but who was told not to continue today....
MR. REYNOLDS: Point of order.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: I don't believe we have one, but go ahead.
MR. REYNOLDS: The hon. member just said I was told not to speak today, and that's absolutely not true. I chose not to continue my speech. It was finished and I said everything I wanted to say.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: That's not a point of order.
The member for Nelson-Creston continues, and members are reminded that under standing order 42 a member may correct a part of his speech which may have been misinterpreted, but that's the only reason.
MR. NICOLSON: That member said that the people of Delta are not afraid of what the government will do with the land. That same member sat in a caucus.... It's rather interesting the way federal caucuses of the Conservative Party and provincial caucuses of the Social Credit Party tend to be the same characters sometimes moving back and forth. Back in 1969 when the land was being expropriated by the then Social Credit government, one of their back-benchers got up and said: "Too much land grabbed. Socred Delta MLA Wenman says government expropriates more than needed." So when the member who once represented Delta as a Conservative and now represents West Vancouver–Howe Sound says that the people of Delta were not afraid of what the government will do with the land.... This former Social Credit MLA for Delta in the provincial House then, and now in the federal house, representing a nearby area which might encompass some of the Delta riding....
Interjection.
MR. NICOLSON: I said which might include some of the Delta riding, because the Delta riding includes....
Well, I don't certainly don't know the federal boundaries, whether it includes White Rock or Douglas Crossing, but I certainly know my geography of Delta, my friends. I wonder if that member could point out Tree Point at Boundary Bay, because I certainly could, being somewhat familiar with some of the geography down there.
The way things change! At that time the Social Credit MLA was saying that the B.C. Harbours Board seemed to be expropriating more land than was immediately necessary for the Roberts Bank superport. He made the comment after it was revealed that 37 Delta property-owners with 2,000 acres of land received notices for expropriation to bring to 4,000 acres the amount of land expropriated for the port. We see that this government is now taking this land — along with the assets that are evaluated at a rather considerable figure — and turning it over to either B.C. Rail.... These assets, worth about $29 million, according to the 1982 public accounts, are to be transferred to BCR and BCDC. That is in contravention of what the people of that area have been saying for many years. Even the present council apparently has been uttering the same kinds of misgivings.
One of the purposes of this act, and one of the reasons that we're here today, is to exempt this transfer, to give a tax exemption on the taxable assets so that sales tax will not have to be paid.
Interjection.
MR. NICOLSON: If it's not necessary, I don't know why it's contained in the bill.
We see that a good portion of these assets are assets on which sales tax should be paid, and yet the government is exempting itself from sales tax while it's increasing sales tax for the people in the province, placing sales tax on meals, depressing small business and putting restaurants out of.... Mr. Speaker, this government has two different standards. They're saying that the people of this province have to pay more tax. They are creating tremendous inconvenience and paperwork for small restaurants who are having to keep track of meals that are over and under $7, and separating bills, bar tabs, services and holding room charges, saying
[ Page 731 ]
that they have to do that. This government is going to exempt itself from having to pay sales tax on the transfer of assets.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: No wonder they used to call you flathead.
MR. NICOLSON: Mr. Speaker, I'll repeat this for some of those who are slow to team. I said that some of these assets are taxable, but the government has created an exemption from the payment of social services tax by this particular act.
Interjection.
[2:45]
MR. NICOLSON: And so they should, I hear.
You know there are some principles of cost accountability. When you make a transaction, maybe we should exempt other exemptions also. You talk between governments. What is government, Mr. Speaker, but people. When one person in Nelson-Creston goes into a restaurant and has to pay tax to another person who acts as a collector, that has to be remitted back down here, and it creates a whole circle. What it does, really, is keep people out of restaurants. It stops the flow of dollars. I say it's rather ironic that the government here exempts itself, but says that.... What would be so wrong in showing some revenue here to the people in general, instead of giving special privileges to Crown corporations? Because that's what you're doing. You're exempting Crown corporations from paying sales tax. There is a real irony in this particular piece of legislation.
The other major point in this bill is that we are transferring thousands of acres of agricultural land and placing it under the B.C. Development Corporation and B.C. Rail. There is also a fight — or was a fight underway a couple of years ago — where Trimac Transportation System of Calgary was seeking legal advice about a ten-year-old document which gave them the right of first refusal on additional land created at the National Harbours Board Roberts Bank coal-loading terminal. Those are tidal flats. They are easily filled and diked and, indeed, that's why the causeways and such have been built there, and Trimac fits into this. So what are we planning here? Is Trimac going to get some tradeoff, Mr. Speaker? We haven't had a decent explanation of this, but what we do know is that some of the very best agricultural land in this province — 4,000 acres of it — is being jeopardized by this action.
This party has no faith in this government which overrides the recommendations of the agricultural land reserve, and then exempts lands like the Spetifore lands, lands out in Langley and the lands at the north end of Seymour Arm on Shuswap Lake, overriding the Land Commission and local regional governments and their recommendations. This places every small property–owner once again in a very untenable position. I have seen people prevented by the agricultural land reserve from subdividing a four- or five-acre parcel of land simply because it.... Admittedly, that piece of land is gravel. It couldn't grow potatoes, although I suppose it could grow anything hydroponically. These people have been given a rational explanation: that while their land is not directly arable, they are very close to high-productivity agricultural land. If there is more urbanization, there will be more intolerance of agricultural activity by the insects that are attracted by a dairy farm operation — the odours that come from pig farms and such. Increased urbanization interferes with agricultural land. When people see 4,000 acres of agricultural land going down the tube, they ask: "What about my four acres? What about my five- or ten-acre parcel? Actually we were going to do more with it if we could have had a small subdivision."
This government is really trying to stir up all those people who have made a sacrifice. I know of one farmer in the Metchosin area who has beautiful seafront land, but it is in the agricultural land reserve. He said: "Thank God. The temptation was getting so great that I might have subdivided." He does support the principle of agricultural land. What this government is trying to do to people like that, people who accept their responsibilities, is to provoke them with all these moves, whether it is the Spetifore lands, the old Grosvenor-Laing lands in Langley — now they've got a different name — and other land assemblies that this government has put on the market. These are Class 1 and 2 agricultural high-productivity land, with an almost no-frost season; yet people in my riding who live at the 3,000-foot level and who have maybe 120 frost-free days are being told: "No, you can't subdivide that Class 4 and 5 agricultural land," and they live with that. They are trying to systematically undermine the basic support that people have, and trying to create an obvious unfairness.
And it is unfair. If you've got thousands of acres and can make millions of dollars by a development, you have the blessing of this government, in spite of the fact that somewhere down the road, when California and other jurisdictions will be unable to provide us with the food we need, or when we cannot provide a sufficient amount of our own food to create prices competitive with imports — and that is the real purpose of agricultural policy in this province for the past 11 years — when we no longer have enough agriculture to create competition for imports, we will see the price of foodstuffs go up in an unexpected way, as if no one had ever predicted it. It will be as much of a surprise to us as the energy crisis was a few years ago. For quite a few people the energy crisis was no surprise. For quite a few people an agricultural crisis will be no surprise but certainly it will be with a great deal of regret that we have allowed powers such as this, and the erosion of another major piece of agricultural land.
I know whereof I speak. I use to work for Hall Packing. I worked out in the fields, testing peas to see if they were ready for harvest.
Interjection.
MR. NICOLSON: Peapicker? Sure, yes. It's not dignified enough work for you, I suppose, but it's work of which I can be proud. I would be prouder of going out to pick peas than I would be of bringing in a piece of legislation like this, which is a disservice not just to this House but to our children and our children's children. Yes, I think that bending over and picking peas and getting a little bit of cow manure on your boots is dignified enough work. There's a darn sight more dignity in that than bringing in this kind of legislation, this kind of budget that we're dealing with in this House and this whole package of draconian, regressive legislation, Mr. Speaker.
Interjection.
MR. NICOLSON: Oh, the big pill that we're being forced to swallow by this government that is gloating in victory. The euphoria of this government. This government
[ Page 732 ]
which thinks that it can bring in anything under the sun and that it should do this sooner than ever.
MR. MOWAT: Take your head out of the manure.
MR. NICOLSON: I guess that's the way they feel about farmers, Mr. Speaker.
This bill is going to reduce the bureaucracy by perhaps five positions — a little bureaucracy of five people that brings in maybe $10 million a year in revenues. That's what we're cutting back here. Well, I'm not fighting for those jobs, because probably those people will have to be transferred. They are the people who know what's going on and probably know how to continue the operations of this until, of course, this land is maybe gobbled up by some kind of industrial development. This government has shown that they don't know how to be entrusted with the kind of responsibility that goes with these kinds of assets. This government has been divesting itself of assets in a methodical way. This government has, since 1980, divested itself of roughly a billion dollars of assets in the form of actual cash deposits in the bank and of other disposable assets such as special purpose funds, and has disposed of land but not replaced anything. It has sold off land assemblies that were purchased jointly by the CMHC, the previous NDP government, and maybe by government in the early days of Social Credit in 1976. Those lands have been sold off for millions of dollars of profit, but now they are scraping the bottom of the barrel. The Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Curtis) has never collected as much in revenue since 1980 as the government has spent in any fiscal year. They have gone through $2 billion in assets, like a spoiled child with an inheritance who suddenly wakes up one day and finds himself penniless. Only it isn't that spoiled child who is going to have to rue the day and pay the price; it's the people of British Columbia who are going to lose 4,000 acres here now, because probably the government is going to look for some way of turning a quick opportunistic profit.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Cut the hogwash!
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please. The minister will come to order.
MR. NICOLSON. This government, Mr. Speaker, is now forced to really start scraping the bottom of the barrel, looking for anything that they can sell, any money they can put their hands on to feed their very expensive habits of meddling in multi-billion dollar projects that are way beyond their competence, way beyond their imagination and very much premature for the time. You people are spending a million dollars to create one coal-mining job.
Mr. Speaker, give a small businessman $10,000 and he'll create five jobs. You could save millions and billions of dollars. That's how you create jobs. You don't spend $1 billion and create a handful of jobs. You don't spend $1 million to create one coal-mining job. That's what stops you short of having to sell off some of the very last land we have in this province. This land is being put into the hands of the B.C. Development Corporation so it can become probably an industrial park associated with the rail access and such which is there, but....
Interjections.
[3:00]
MR. NICOLSON: Is that what the minister is going to do, Mr. Speaker? This land is already paying its own way. It's agricultural land. It has the potential to be put back into food production. It is not alienated....
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: It's in food production, dummy!
MR. NICOLSON: Mr. Speaker!
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! One moment, please.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Yes, I'll withdraw.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The minister withdraws. Thank you.
Perhaps if the hon. member could relate to the principle of the bill we can maintain orderly debate.
MR. NICOLSON: Mr. Speaker, the principle of this bill is to take this piece of land — 4,000 acres, which produces two crops of peas a year.... A great deal of this land is presently being used for producing turf, which is a compatible use. It will not alienate the future potential of that amount of land dedicated to producing turf for agricultural purposes.
This government is just going ahead and showing.... I suppose the misgivings of the Delta MLA, Mr. Wenman, in 1969, who had some foresight.... It took about 14 years to come about, but now his worst fears are being realized. Yes, this government....
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: You must be the main reason you lost in the last election.
MR. NICOLSON: Now it's being suggested to me that Mr. Wenman was defeated in 1972 because of the stand that he took on this particular piece of land. He was defeated as an MLA. Well, I don't know that that's the case. I think he was defeated because of some of their policies and because of the threat that Mr. Phil Gaglardi might become Premier of this province. That's probably one of the reasons that Mr. Wenman was defeated. He was probably defeated because the party that he supported was against the concept of public automobile insurance cost at cost. I think that there were probably a lot of reasons why that would answer the speculation of the members that are interjecting from behind. There are lots of reasons why Mr. Wenman might have lost that election — absolutely unrelated.
Frankly, Mr. Speaker, if you were to ask me why Mr. Wenman was defeated in 1972, I would say right off the bat.... I'd come right up front and say it's not because of the statements that he made about the expropriation of land by the Harbours Board. I would go on to say that that was one thing that Mr. Wenman did in his career that will probably be long remembered, and it certainly has been remembered for at least 13 years; otherwise we wouldn't be talking about it here in this House today. That would be one of the benchmarks, I would think, in the career of Mr. Wenman. I would hope that all members of this House would bear that in mind when reflecting upon the career of that hon. member, who once served in this House and now serves elsewhere.
This particular piece of legislation is also going to bring about some effects having to do with taxation exemptions,
[ Page 733 ]
pursuant to an act that hasn't even been published. It isn't even in the statutes over there, yet it is a statute of this province. In effect it's a statute that was never actually turfed out or "Sun Lifed". We find that somehow it escaped the clumsy hand of the modernization of the statutes. Mr. Speaker, it's a very interesting statute; it just doesn't seem to pop into one's hands immediately. Sometimes it is a little difficult to come in prepared for bills when the government doesn't seem to know what bills are going to be called up for debate on any particular day.
Mr. Speaker, I would commend to your reading some day — perhaps some evening, if you were having troubles with getting to sleep or something like that — the Pacific Great Eastern Railway Taxation Exemption Act. We are indeed fortunate, because I have been able to find it. One of the things that this bill is going to do is virtually repeal this act, which has been in effect since 1927. You might think that an act that has stood the test of time since 1927, and that is three sections long, should deserve a better fate. This act was printed not by the Queen's Printer, but by Charles F. Banfield, printer to the King's Most Excellent Majesty, being the case in those days. "An Act Respecting Taxation of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway Company." "His Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia," enacted that the act could be "cited as the Pacific Great Eastern Railway Taxation Exemption Act." It established that the company, "its capital stock, franchises, income, tolls and all properties and assets which form part" of that particular operation, and those parts of share capital that "continue to be held by His Majesty" — and incidentally, by his successor, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and her heirs and successors in right of this province — "be exempt from all taxation whatsoever, or however imposed, by, with or under the authority of the Legislature, or by any municipal or school organization in the province; but the exemption provided by this section shall not apply to lands or to improvements upon lands held under lease from the company or occupied for other than railway purposes."
As clear as that act was, it was amended in 1929. It then said that the section "shall not apply to lands or to improvements upon lands held under lease from the company nor to lands which have been subdivided into lots containing one acre or less in respect of which a plan or subdivision has been or may hereafter be registered in any land registration district and which do not form part of and are not used in connection with the operation of its railway." That too would give one some cause to be hesitant, because this bill is now going to change all that. What it meant was that if some land that the railway didn't need, land that was excess to its needs, was to be disposed of to a private individual and subdivided into lots, the taxation exemptions would not apply.
So we had the original act in 1927, then the act in 1929 which said that certain parts will not apply. Now we have an act that says that the Pacific Great Eastern Railway Taxation Exemption Act, the act to which I have just referred, shall not apply. Does it mean that things that originally applied apply again? Does it put us back to 1929 or does it bring us up to 1983? This is for me a very tautological argument, and raises the spectre of....
What really worries me about this is the lawyers. I have the feeling there might even be a secret group in this House. I sometimes have the feeling that over at the Union Club members of this side and that side get together, only they are part of that one profession, which I think might be lawyers.
Call me suspicious, call me cautious. We have this bill which takes an original bill that said certain tax exemptions will apply, a second one that said they won't, and now we have one that says the amended one doesn't apply to that. I am greatly concerned that people who have alienated lands will not have to pay taxes, people who usually.... You know, it will work out that the people who should be paying more taxes aren't, and the people who are already paying too much tax will probably have to pay more than ever. That is what always happens; it seems that is an immutable law of government.
When I see an act that is going to.... I haven't heard any complaints in the past. None of my friends who live in Delta have written to me about the way the act is working in its present form, as it has been since 1929, but if this act is amended, it could put us back to whatever the trouble was between 1927 and 1929 that caused them to bring in that amendment. I think it might undo the amendment, and then we could be facing the same kinds of problems that they were facing back in 1927. So I hope that when the minister rises to close second reading on this bill he will be able to give a lucid explanation of this, or perhaps bring in amendments that will clarify this particular piece of legislation. I don't know why this original piece of legislation isn't simply amended, to put it succinctly. Why isn't this original piece of legislation just done away with and a new piece of legislation taking its place brought into effect that clearly spells out...? Why are we amending some...? Really, by saying that we'll be exempting ourselves from this legislation..... Why not bring ourselves up into the year 1983 in terms of legislation?
Well, thank you very much for your attention. I now move adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of the House.
[3:15]
Motion negatived on the following division:
YEAS — 17
Macdonald | Barrett | Cocke |
Dailly | Lea | Lauk |
Nicolson | Gabelmann | Skelly |
D'Arcy | Brown | Hanson |
Barnes | Wallace | Mitchell |
Passarell | Blencoe |
NAYS — 29
Chabot | McCarthy | Gardom |
Smith | Phillips | McGeer |
A. Fraser | Davis | Kempf |
Mowat | Waterland | Brummet |
Rogers | Schroeder | McClelland |
Heinrich | Hewitt | Richmond |
Michael | Pelton | Johnston |
R. Fraser | Campbell | Veitch |
Segarty | Ree | Parks |
Reid | Reynolds |
Division ordered to be recorded in the Journals of the House.
MR. LAUK: Mr. Speaker, Benjamin Disraeli is dead. Wilfrid Laurier is dead. Mackenzie King is dead. And I'm not feeling too well myself today. [Laughter]. I just want to give
[ Page 734 ]
a little time for the chamber to empty while I.... What bill is this?
AN HON. MEMBER: Twenty-five.
MR. LAUK: Twenty-five. This is the Harbour Board Repeal Act.
[Mr. Veitch in the chair.]
I see I've already made an impression on the Deputy Speaker.
This bill dissolves the B.C. Harbours Board, dismisses its board and employees, and distributes its substantial rights property and assets to the British Columbia Development Corporation and to B.C. Rail.
The B.C. Harbours Board was created in March 1968 to establish the Roberts Bank superport near Tsawwassen. It was empowered to borrow certain sums of money for the purpose of developing these harbour facilities. As we may recall, the debate surrounding the establishment of the B.C. Harbours Board encouraged some response from the federal government of the day, but it was in some respects a jurisdictional dispute between Her Majesty in right of this province and Her Majesty's federal government.
It was a necessary thing to establish, and I think that since 1968 the board has acquitted itself very well. Certainly its current members and its staff have done a superlative job. It seems to me that this government is removing an establishment that has had some success. The Harbours Board has never been criticized for inefficiency, bureaucracy or discriminatory policies in terms of its activities. It has in all ways acquitted itself honourably and well, and as its reward the government is going to abolish it.
The arguments that the government have, in a very fuzzy and woolly-headed way, presented to this chamber for the repeal of this act and for the abolition of the Harbours Board, if they are correct today, in August 1983, were always correct. The arguments that the government makes today could have been arguments used 10 or 15 years ago. They are no more just or correct today than they were then, and this facade of eliminating the Harbours Board must be seen through. We must look for the ulterior motives of the Social Credit government, its party, its supporters and its campaign donors for some of the answers behind the real motivation for the repeal of this act.
It has already been mentioned that almost 4,000 acres of good farmland is going to be transferred to either the British Columbia Railway or to the B.C. Development Corporation. Can the things that I've said about the Harbours Board, with its efficiencies and even-handedness over the years — can these attributes be said of the B.C. Development Corporation and B.C. Railway? When such land, assets and statutory rights and powers are transferred to the Development Corporation, can that be said of the BCDC since this government's term of office? I think, quite simply, it cannot be said. The British Columbia Development Corporation ignored the mandate given by this Legislature in 1974 when this government took office. The British Columbia Development Corporation became controlled by persons with conflicts of interest. The Crown corporation itself became personally directed with a maximum amount of political interference by the Minister of Industry over the years. It has failed, since 1976, to live up to its mandate. It's failed to bring about that kind of economic development and the creation of jobs that it was thought it could bring about.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. member, the Chair is waiting for you to canvass the current bill, which is the Harbour Board Repeal Act.
MR. LAUK: Mr. Speaker, I noticed that you were busy when I was opening my remarks, and I'll recanvass that for you so that you can see that I've connected it clearly to this bill. It's a question of the principle of Bill 25.
This bill not only dissolves the Harbours Board; it's going to transfer the substantial rights, property and assets of the Harbours Board to the British Columbia Development Corporation. I canvassed over the years, and I will continue to do so, about the Harbours Board's efficiency and its record of even-handedness and so on, contrasted, if you will, to what's happened to the B.C. Development Corporation since 1976. I urge the government to reconsider this bill, and leave it where it should be in the hands of the Harbours Board.
You may recall that prior to 1972 the Social Credit Party of the day campaigned on a promise of bringing about a corporation that would help to create jobs and economic development in the province, under the stewardship of W.A.C. Bennett. As a matter of fact you may recall, Mr. Speaker, that that campaign promise was made prior to 1969, 1966 and 1963. And, I suppose, the Social Credit Party has always believed that you never destroy the advantage of a good campaign promise by fulfilling it. I think when the NDP came to power they thought it was a good campaign promise, and they established the British Columbia Development Corporation to help small business in this province and to create jobs. Yes, and to set aside and develop industrial land to provide opportunities to medium and large as well as small companies to establish their manufacturing and warehousing projects within the jurisdiction of British Columbia. But that was not to be. In its first year of operation the British Columbia Development Corporation had a tremendous record.
[3:30]
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. member, the Chair is still waiting for you to connect your line of debate to the current bill.
MR. LAUK: I would have concluded my speech, Mr. Speaker, but these constant interruptions.... I'm trying to....
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Chair will continue to interrupt, hon. member, unless you get back to the principle of the particular bill before you.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: He's just a city-slicker lawyer.
MR. LAUK: I'm just a country boy, Mr. Speaker, trying to do my best in this chamber, not a millionaire used-car dealer who wears fancy $1,200 suits and comes into this chamber with Gucci alligator shoes on. I'm just an ordinary country boy coming in here and trying to defend the rights of ordinary citizens in the province of British Columbia.
Interjection.
[ Page 735 ]
MR. LAUK: I won't be as uncharitable as I just heard in our back bench and suggest that Gucci does not make jackboots.
Interjections.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please. The hon. second member for Vancouver Centre has the floor. Please continue.
MR. MOWAT: How is your Mercedes...?
AN HON. MEMBER: He doesn't drive it anymore. He says he can't afford it.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please!
MR. LAUK: Can you imagine that that second member for Little Mountain said one thing in the hustings...? He said he would defend the interests of the citizens of Vancouver, and now when he comes into this chamber he turns his back on the citizens who voted him into office.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: To the bill, hon. member.
MR. LAUK: Well, it's these interruptions.
The Speaker has asked me to draw a connection between the British Columbia Development Corporation and the Harbours Board. As I was trying to outline to you, Mr. Speaker, and to the members of the House, the record of the Development Corporation has not been good since 1976. It has not done what it was supposed to do. The new minister savaged the board and restructured it with his own friends and political cronies.
Interjections.
MR. LAUK: Some of us are not as intellectually endowed as others. You can make fun of me for not being as intellectual as you are. I'm no millionaire used-car dealer with Gucci shoes.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: You've been spending too much time in your dark basement reading those files you took out of my office.
MR. LAUK: I stopped that now. I'm reading your files, and I'm absolutely shocked and disgusted!
Mr. Speaker, in 1976 the minister changed the board and added his cronies and political hacks. It's surprising to me that after eight years of these people being on the board they haven't drowned in the public trough. The projects that were being proposed by the Development Corporation for Duke Point in Prince Rupert and Tilbury Island and so on have failed. They've failed because of the incompetent stewardship of this government. That's the record that we have to look at. They even put a man on that board who directly profited from a decision of the Development Corporation and the benefits of taxpayers' dollars.
MR. LEA: Don doesn't know which one you mean.
MR. LAUK: Yes. Guess which one? Mr. Speaker, is that the kind of board of the Development Corporation that we want to take over the substantial responsibilities of the B.C. Harbours Board — Roberts Bank, which has been a success? What's behind it all, Mr. Speaker? That's what I'd like to know. He couldn't reach the Harbours Board, I guess, so now he's decided that he's going to take over the Harbours Board and wipe them out.
[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]
Oh, it's a sad day when this minister is so intoxicated with power and so moved by the fact that he's in high office that he will destroy the original principles of democracy and destroy the opportunity for the B.C. Harbours Board to continue to do its excellent job. It's a shocking thing, isn't it, Mr. Speaker? Here we have a situation where the Harbours Board has been a fine and first-class manager of the resources of the board over the years. It has responded to the need of the private sector in the export of coal. It has responded to the need and has worked hand in glove with the governments of the day to ensure that expansion of the facilities at Roberts Bank would proceed in a timely and seasonable way so that we wouldn't lose opportunities for increasing the exports of our coal to the foreign market. When I look at what's happened to the competence of the Development Corporation and the general direction — misguided sometimes — of the British Columbia Rail company, I'm beginning to realize that this government is not making decisions in the interest of the public as a whole but is making purely political decisions.
It's not enough that this minister would be content with the power and the public funds already at his disposal with B.C. Rail and B.C. Development Corporation, with the money he's draining out of the pockets of single parents, of people on social assistance, of old-age pensioners and others for these vast political projects in northeast British Columbia. That's not enough for him; he wants to take the rights, the property and the assets of the B.C. Harbours Board and do the same thing: run them into the ground. It's a sad day indeed.
Interjection.
MR. LAUK: Well, you can make personal allusions if you like and insult me if you like. The point is that what I've said is correct, and you know it. You have no doubt about it.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: You're getting worse every year.
MR. LAUK: Some of us improve with age; some of us don't. It's one of those things. You shouldn't make fun of people for that.
Interjection.
MR. LAUK: Did you see that, Mr. Speaker? I'm not feeling very good because I read this bill. Would anyone feel good after reading Bill 25? It's a power grab. It's a land grab. It's a money grab.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: You were a disaster....
MR. LAUK: "A disaster," said the minister.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Perhaps the minister could avoid personal references.
[ Page 736 ]
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: No, I mean his disastrous policies were a disaster as Minister of Economic Development; I didn't mean him personally.
MR. LAUK: It's his opinion that my policies were disastrous. I'd call his policies disastrous if I could find them. That minister hasn't had an original thought since he took public office.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Jealousy will get you absolutely nowhere. You know I'm the greatest minister of economic development of any province in Canada.
MR. LAUK: I'm not jealous of a performance such as the performance of the minister of the day over the past few years since 1976.
Now they're going to repeal the B.C. Harbour Board Act. Why? Here we have a board of directors of the Development Corporation who are not loath to grant themselves substantial benefits in a conflict-of-interest situation, either at Duke Point or elsewhere. Is this board going to take over the responsibility of the Harbours Board, its land and assets? I should say not. The government is proposing that.
The staff is dismissed — an excellent staff, economically competent and efficient over the years, as I said.
It seems to me that the transfer of assets should be carefully perused. Some protection for the public's interest should be built in to any change of the B.C. Harbours Board structure.
I'm convinced that relative incompetence and lack of direction of the Development Corporation since 1976 should not be transferred to the area that hitherto has been administered by the Harbours Board. It would be a sad and unfortunate day indeed.
What about the export of coal? What about the opportunities for the Harbours Board in the future — expansion of facilities not only for the export of coal but also other matters involving British Columbia, which is, as you know, the gateway for Canada to the Pacific? Vancouver is one of the finest ports in North America and one of the busiest. There is a role for the B.C. Harbours Board to play.
In the opening remarks of the minister we were told that there is now some kind of agreement or understanding with the federal government. I'm not convinced. We know that the track record of this government in negotiating with the federal government has not been good over the years. We lost millions on the Dease Lake extension because of the incompetent negotiations by this government. We got a junior partnership position when this minister and the Premier negotiated the understanding with respect to the northeast coal development. It was a terrible piece of negotiation. What kind of backroom deals have taken place now? Talk about bush league! What has this minister given away now? He's agreed with the federal government to abolish the Harbours Board in British Columbia. At least when we had jurisdictional disputes, the old Social Credit administration and the NDP administration fought them on the basis of upfront politics. We were able to resist the expansionism of the federal government into what we perceived in British Columbia to be our responsibility. We were not that impressed with the Canadian Harbours Board role, particularly with the port of Vancouver. There have been improvements, that's true, over the years. But I wonder if those improvements would have occurred had it not been for courage and relentless pursuit of the provincial rights in the face of federal encroachment, with respect to the development of our harbours. One of the tools that we used over the years was the B.C. Harbours Board. It was fully supported on all sides of the House in 1968.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: You spoke against it when it was being formed.
MR. LAUK: Not at all. We voted for it; you check the Journals of the House. The NDP voted for it.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: No.
MR. LAUK: You weren't even here then.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: You'd better believe I was around.
MR. LAUK: Where were you?
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: I was here — right here — in 1968.
MR. LAUK: No, I think you were sitting way over there someplace.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: No, I was sitting on the government side, not in opposition like you always are.
MR. LAUK: Well, Mr. Speaker, this is what I call revisionism. The NDP did support, in principle, the question of the Harbours Board.
Nevertheless, over the years it has been used as a very effective mechanism to resist the federal jurisdiction and its unjustified encroachment on provincial rights. Who best to make decisions on behalf of the people of British Columbia than the government of British Columbia? That was the argument. It's not always true, mind you; in the face of these 26 bills we're beginning to wonder.
[3:45]
But it seems to us, Mr. Speaker, that the Harbours Board served us well. There were other ways in which to resist federal encroachment; this was one of the ways, and it served us well. Now we're going to abolish it. That's the reward. After years of struggle, efficiency and good service to the people of the province, the government abolishes it. I think that's a pity.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Why didn't you listen to what I said yesterday?
MR. LAUK: You've been ordered to abolish it. You've given away something to the federal government, which will be disclosed in course. You've sold out the shop again to the federal government the way you did at Dease Lake and the way you did at the northeast coal project, and you know it. What have you given away for one local appointee to the board? What's the quid pro quo, Mr. Speaker?
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Now I know why your leader took you away from being economics development critic and put you down.... What are you — Tourism critic now?
[ Page 737 ]
MR. LAUK: You see, that's all he can do: sit there and yap and interfere, but he can't answer these criticisms.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Sit down. I'll answer them.
MR. LAUK: You'll have your moment. Just relax.
It seems to me that over the years the Harbours Board has acquitted itself well. There is no economic reason for the minister coming and asking to abolish the board. Why are they disbanding the board? What is the backroom deal with the federal government? I've asked two questions that I want the minister to address himself to. Why take these assets and put them into the hands of the BCDC? Why? What are you up to? Which of your friends is going to profit from this move? That's what I would like to know. Oh, you may laugh. They don't tell you everything. I say through you, Mr. Speaker, to the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. Heinrich). They don't tell him everything. You're laughing now. You probably don't know what's going on — the transfer of assets to the Development Corporation and the B.C. Railway. It seems to me, Mr. Speaker, that these questions have to be answered. The British Columbia Railway has had more direct tax money paid into it than most other Crown corporations.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: It had to. You fellows ran it into the ground when....
MR. LAUK: Oh, you know that's not true.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: You went from a profit when we were running it to a loss of $22 million the last year your lame-duck leader was president of the railway.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. members, the minister will have ample opportunity to enter into debate when the debate is closed. In the meantime, could we listen to the member now speaking.
MR. LAUK: This is the kind of thing that the current Minister of Industry and Small Business Development is trying to perpetrate on the public. It's a matter of public record that the British Columbia Railway was in debt over the last several years of the old Social Credit administration. That's a matter of public record. You saw the report tabled in this House. It's a matter of public record that the accounting was manipulated to show a profit when it was actually a fraudulent manipulation. It was not a profitable railway. In the face of facts that came out in court cases and in a royal commission, the minister has the nerve to say in this chamber that it was running at a profit before we took office. In the face of facts like that, he has the nerve to make that accusation. That's the kind of thing we have learned to expect from the member for South Peace River.
It seems to me that we have to look behind the scenes to see what the motivation of the government is. There's farmland, other assets and the rights under statutory authority of the Harbours Board which will now be exercised by a corporation that since 1976 the people of this province have lost confidence in. We pleaded with this government to make changes and they have refused to do so. We have board members on the Development Corporation. We haven't seen the minutes. We don't know whether they've voted on such resolutions or not, or whether these board members have directly profited from the taxpayers' money through that corporation. It's a scandalous situation, and now we're going to have that board running the affairs of the B.C. Harbours Board? Surely the minister should answer those questions. He couldn't get to the Harbours Board, I guess, and that's why he's disbanded it.
Now we've got a situation where he says we've made a deal with the federal government. What kind of deal? Appointing one or two token members to the National Harbours Board or to some regional control or regional management? Is that going to solve the problem? No, it's not.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: I didn't say we'd made any deal with the federal government.
MR. LAUK: You did so. You opened your remarks in this House by saying the reason we've got this bill is that the National Harbours Board is doing better and they're listening to us. That's what you said.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: We made no deal with the federal government.
MR. LAUK: Well, then that's even more of a scandal: you're going to abolish our own Harbours Board when you haven't made an agreement with the federal government. We've got nothing — zero — for abolishing the B.C. Harbours Board.
It's not just Roberts Bank or Prince Rupert. There are tremendous opportunities for port development which are within the provincial jurisdiction, and we should have allowed the Harbours Board to expand, not to abolish it.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: No wonder socialism is declining in popularity, with guys like you....
MR. LAUK: You're declining in your faculties. It seems to me....
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Well, if I lost half mine I'd still have more than you've got.
MR. LAUK: There you are bragging again. An empty vessel makes the most sound.
HON. MR. GARDOM: Oh, good line. Clarence Darrow lives again.
MR. LAUK: Isn't that a good line? Speaking of Clarence Darrow, the hon. member for Vancouver–Point Grey made an early decision. I think he was 12 when he made the decision between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. He's the George Hees of British Columbia.
Mr. Speaker, isn't my time up yet? Isn't my number up?
Interjection.
MR. LAUK: You can't call me that now. Ten minutes? Okay.
Somebody gave me a note here when I was saying quid pro quo. It says: "Kid Pro Kwo was a Korean boxer who was known for giving as good as he could get." Who sent that note?
AN HON. MEMBER: I think it must be one of yours.
[ Page 738 ]
MR. LAUK: It must be.
My criticism of the Development Corporation, I think, is justified on the facts. We have a board which has discredited itself over the years. It has failed to fulfil its mandate. It has had conflict of interest situations arise that are still unanswered. It has dragged its heels on the development of Duke Point. It has practically fallen flat on its face in its role in terms of Prince Rupert. It has to be bailed out by other organizations in the federal government and private corporations and so on. This minister and his Crown corporation are a disaster.
In 1976, the first year of operations of the Development Corporation, they made a tremendous profit, and while they did so they were developing more jobs per month than the corporation created in the ensuing years. It was a total failure, and they have the nerve now to hand over the operations of the Harbours Board to that corporation. The B.C. Railway, I say again, is being used as a political tool by this minister in his own riding to create these massive megaprojects up there at tremendous public expense, and at the expense of ordinary little taxpayers throughout the province. Senior citizens, single parents, young people, old people — we've all paid through the nose to see this kind of project go ahead for purely political reasons. Are these the two organizations that are being asked to take on the responsibilities of the B.C. Harbours Board? I think it's a very sad day, and I urge all hon. members to oppose this bill.
I would ask, before closing, that the hon. minister withdraw this bill. If he won't withdraw it, would he consider thinking about it over a day or two? For the purpose of giving him some opportunity to reconsider this legislation and its impact, I move adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of the House.
[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]
[4:00]
Motion negatived on the following division.
YEAS — 16
Macdonald | Barrett | Cocke |
Dailly | Lea | Lauk |
Gabelmann | Skelly | D'Arcy |
Brown | Hanson | Barnes |
Wallace | Mitchell | Passarell |
Blencoe |
NAYS — 29
Waterland | Brummet | Schroeder |
Heinrich | Hewitt | Richmond |
Michael | Pelton | Johnston |
R. Fraser | Campbell | Strachan |
Rogers | Chabot | McCarthy |
Gardom | Smith | Phillips |
McGeer | A. Fraser | Davis |
Kempf | Mowatt | Veitch |
Segarty | Reid | Parks |
Ree | Reynolds |
Division ordered to be recorded in the Journals of the House.
MR. COCKE: Mr. Speaker, I rise with a sad heart to tell a story of a poor little port in a storm. I know that the minister is in a hurry; he has other things that he prefers doing, rather than sitting in the House. So he felt that if he could close debate at this point he could run along and do those things that he does so well. The thing that he does well is rest. He hasn't done a day's work, that I know of, since I've known him, and that's been years.
[Mr. Pelton in the chair.]
The one problem that we have solved with this bill is that the chairman of the Harbours Board gets fired along with everybody else. Everybody knows that the chairman is the Minister of Industry and Small Business Development (Hon. Mr. Phillips). He could easily have quit his job and moved over to let somebody with a little more kudos handle it.
The history of this entire question goes back a long way and through a number of governments. In 1968 a very able group of local politicians came down with a report that suggested very strongly....
HON. A. FRASER: What year?
MR. COCKE: It was 1968. Joe Francis and company, Emmott and many other politicians in the lower mainland, all highly regarded, and with a great deal of unanimity came down with a report that suggested that the Roberts Bank corridor — the rail corridor leading from the CPR across the Delta farmlands and finally culminating at the Roberts Bank port....
Interjection.
MR. COCKE: I'll edify that poor, uninformed minister anytime, but this isn't the place, because you see, Mr. Speaker, you would no doubt call me out of order if I discussed ICBC — a very involved question that that minister would have a great deal of trouble understanding.
In any event, back to the corridor. At the time it was suggested, very definitely by the group who were doing the planning survey and study — a group who had been commissioned by the Social Credit government of the old days....
Interjection.
MR. COCKE: The Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mr. Chabot) remembers it well, he tells me.
They came out with not only a suggestion, but a demand, that the Delta corridor not be abused with warehouses and industrial development throughout. It angered the then-Premier. As a result of his anger he dismantled the committee and sent them packing. So that land was destined to be developed industrially right through that corridor. It was saved, however, by virtue of the 1972 election, when we brought all that farmland back into farm use, which is something that some of the Socreds are not happy about to this day.
One thing, however, that came of this whole question is the fact that we had our own little port, and we had its Harbours Board — a very small staff and an efficient job well done — once we guarded that farmland. Now much of that farmland is still held by that Harbours Board. That farmland is leased out to people who are farming it, to people who are
[ Page 739 ]
providing for the needs of our community. What greater needs are there than those supplied by agricultural land?
Interjection.
MR. COCKE: We are not arguing with the coalport. As a matter of fact, we are calling for that Harbours Board to remain in charge. Do not turn that harbour and its accompanying lands directly over to the B.C. Development Corporation — I'll give you some examples of why I say that — and the rest of it to B.C. Rail. Talk about failures! Two of the biggest failures we've ever seen in the province of British Columbia are those two agencies under the direction of the present minister. It wasn't always so, but it is so today. The Ministry of Industry and Small Business Development is now to be involved with some of these assets — the Ministry of Industry and Small Business Development through its B.C. Development Corporation. The B.C. Development Corporation came into New Westminster in 1976 and said, "We will serve you well, brothers and sisters," or whatever they liked to call New Westminsterites at the time. They said: "We will decorate your waterfront with housing, hotels and assorted commercial development."
Interjection.
MR. COCKE: An improvement? What they had there were viable docks, providing at least some taxation base for our city. What we have there now is....
AN HON. MEMBER: ...good restaurants.
MR. COCKE: There's not even a good restaurant anymore. It's gone. They barged it away. What we have now is desolation.
MR. REID: Wait till it's finished.
MR. COCKE: I have been asked to wait till it's finished since 1976. I'm just waiting till it starts — Mr. Member — seven years later. Now that's the kind of efficiency we look forward to in the implementation of Bill 25. I see the furrows on my colleague's brow when he thinks about his precious Harbours Board being dismantled by this minister without a conscience.
Mr. Speaker, it's too bad that we have to face in this House a bill that creates a storm in this port, a bill, among others.... They thought they could hide it. The monstrous bills that we have before us, naturally, in most instances, would take our minds off something of this magnitude. But we must not let our minds be led astray by virtue of the fact that there are other bills in this session of the Legislature that have a great deal more impact.
If we had any imagination here, we would refer back to some of the reports that have been made over the years on potential harbor development in the province. Instead of that we say: "We're not interested. Turn it over to the railroad." The minister was talking about that railroad that was so successful over the years until suddenly there was an NDP government. I ask the minister where that unaccounted $45 million went last year.
[4:15]
Do you know how they show a profit on that railroad that is to take over some of these assets? The government loans them money and then forgives the indebtedness. Then they say: "Hosanna! We have made money." That has to be the fastest job of bookkeeping that one could ever imagine: lend them $45 million, then excuse the $45 million with no interest and no payback and then say they have made some money. Inefficiency sublime! The inefficiency of that minister and those aspects under him are well documented.
If he would step aside as chairman of the Harbours Board and leave the Harbours Board in place, I think we as a province would be well served. Then we could find a chairman with imagination, a chairman who would look all over the province for opportunities for harbours — sites that haven't even been looked at seriously other than by the Ministry of Environment and a few able people outside the present minister's purview. They give documented sites in the Prince Rupert area.
The federal government are now saying in terms of their ports: "Let's have some local control." I don't particularly like the way they run their shop down in Ottawa, but at least they are asking for some local autonomy. What a difference from this centralist group over here. During the time Mulroney was in town, he spent most of his time washing his hands and saying, like Pontius Pilate, "Take this away from me." He felt he didn't in any way want to be identified with the centralist philosophy — this autocratic direction — of the Socreds in B.C., yet he has difficulty keeping himself at arm's length. He said he would not participate in the way that they have, yet I see a lot of centralism in his philosophy as well.
We have to be worried when we see a minister decimate a Harbours Board that's costing us virtually nothing, one that is proving harbours can make money. In 1977 the then Minister of Energy, Transport and Communications, the member for North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Davis) — poor benighted chap — was speaking to a group at the Empress Hotel. Speaking to the ports and ports policy people of Canada, he said:
"Ports should pay their own way. The reason why I am hammering this issue is twofold. One, with the exception of Prince Rupert — an infant port, a port with a future — ports out of the Pacific pay their own way. They have been paying their way for years. Most ports — that is, in eastern Canada — haven't. I doubt if all of them will or can in the immediate future. The habit of running to Ottawa to bail them out is too ingrained; it's hard to shake, and will take tremendous effort on your part."
He was giving advice to port managers across the country. Here we have a port that's been making money. Can you imagine in your wildest dreams, Mr. Speaker, that port making money once it gets into the hands of the Development Corporation, or into the hands of B.C. Rail? I can't, and I'll tell you why: it will be embroiled in all the political things that happen in those two areas. As with northeast coal, they will then be subsidizing foreign steel interests with cheap coal. Already we see a tremendous downturn in southeast coal, which incidentally goes directly to Roberts Bank, directly to the Harbours Board that we're now talking about repealing.
I think it's a mistake. In particular, I think it's a mistake because, at the beginning of his debate when the minister rose and explained why this was in fact occurring, he gave us no reason. He waved his arms and told us what a splendid fellow he was, what a splendid province it was because he was
[ Page 740 ]
around, and, urging us to support Bill 25, he sat down. Maybe the minister wasn't feeling quite himself that day; therefore somebody from either the government back bench or the cabinet would have been up supporting him. No. Instead, the member for West Vancouver–Howe Sound (Mr. Reynolds) — that reluctant bride, hoping for a defeat so that he could get the leadership of the then-decimated but future Conservative Party of British Columbia; in any event, his ambitions weren't realized — jumped up and said he agreed with the minister. Did he give us one argument? Did he say one thing that was succinct?
Interjection.
MR. COCKE: Yes, he did; the member for Surrey is quite right. I'm quoting him now, so don't misinterpret what I'm saying. He said: "Mr. Speaker, I move adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of the House." The business that followed was a switch of bills. "Get off it," they thought, until maybe they could put together a few arguments about why this bill should be presented and adopted and proclaimed in this province. Well, overnight they slept, and we expected that today.... All my colleagues, didn't we? We discussed it in caucus in depth. We had lots of debate, saying to ourselves: "Surely they're going to come in here today and tell us why it is they want to dismantle the Harbours Board." They're sitting dumbfounded. Then, for goodness' sake, as I was about to speak, the minister jumped up to close debate. I predict what he would have done, had he had that opportunity....
MRS. WALLACE: Said nothing.
MR. COCKE: Precisely, because he has no reason to close down a Harbours Board that has done well for the province. Should he have wanted to in any way alienate the farmland that we're dealing with here, some 3,900 acres — I can't convert that into hectares, but sometime when I get out my converter I will — had he wished to take that 3,900 acres away from the Harbours Board and give it to somebody else without decimating the Harbours Board, then we could have dealt with that in and of itself. But we can't. It's far too vague. It's amorphous. We don't know what he's going to do. But we do know that the track record of the economic development corporation in its handling of this sort of thing needs a tremendous amount of in-depth examination from our side of the House.
I lost myself there. There's a word that just escaped me, and I'll get it before I'm through because I think I've got just a few more minutes — maybe 20 or so.
In any event, I worry a good deal about this acreage, and I also worry about the 3,500 acres outside the diking, some of it under water.
MR. REID: Did you worry about the 726 acres at Tilbury? You never worried about that, did you?
MR. COCKE: The member from Surrey, who seems to be terribly preoccupied by Tilbury, could very easily get up in this debate and tell us why he supports this bill.
MR. REID: The same reason I supported Tilbury.
MR. COCKE: He's told us what we feared the most. He supported Tilbury, which was the alienation of farmland and we know that.
MR. REID: It was done by your government.
MR. COCKE: Yes, it was done by our government at the time.
MR. REID: You're talking out of both sides of your mouth.
MR. COCKE: I'm not talking out of both sides of my mouth. It was a project that was well underway, and unfortunately was too late to do anything about, in my opinion. That is neither here not there. We're talking about far more land in terms of numbers of acres than we're talking about at Tilbury. Frankly, I wish it had not been alienated. That's my own personal bias. In any event, it has been. It was done by us, I recognize that, but let me tell you something. To be able to admit a mistake is something that some of us should take cognizance of. We're not talking about 700 acres, in any event; we're talking about 3,900, and that member has told us the whole story. Get it out of farm production and get it into industrial development. That's what Tilbury was all about.
MR. REID: It's all covered with coal dust now and it's no good for anything.
MR. COCKE: Mr. Speaker, that's not true. They are farming that land successfully. That same member stood in this House and told us the Spetifore land doesn't grow things. What a crock! That land has been growing things in that family for years and years. The only time good agricultural land quits growing is when people quit looking after it; and that member knows that.
Interjection.
MR. COCKE: Okay, maybe we could use some of that out there and grow better crops. In any event, what I'm interested in is the better crops. We have here 3,900 acres that will be sorely needed.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: You were a disaster running ICBC and you're still a disaster.
[4:30]
MR. COCKE: Isn't that fortunate? Anything more? Any more about my disastership?
The Minister of old hubcaps. He has a record made of old hubcaps that goes around and around and says: "Disaster, disaster, disaster." He knows it better. He's an expert on disaster, Mr. Speaker.
That farmland is a heritage that we must not deny the future generations of this province. I don't know how many times one must say it: not we, very likely, at our age; maybe not even our children; but there are generations to come who, denied the agricultural land in this province, could very well starve.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!
MR. COCKE: Oh, what a bunch! They could very well starve, Mr. Speaker. We are dependent today on California to
[ Page 741 ]
a large extent, and believe me, their land use policy is abysmal.
AN HON. MEMBER: They can grow eight crops a year.
MR. COCKE: You can grow six crops on that land, and you know it. Their land use policy in California is abysmal, and our land use policy under the Socreds is abysmal. All we can do as an opposition is work to protect as much of that land as we possibly can.
We took an awful lot of flak, I'll tell you, in 1973-74, when we introduced the land use act and the Agricultural Land Commission. It was probably one of the best pieces of legislation ever introduced here, or anywhere in North America. The reason that it was such excellent legislation was that it protected the future food of the people to come in our province — your grandchildren, mine, and everybody else's.
The member talks about the Burns Bog. He knew perfectly well that what was asked of the regional districts of the day was: "You decide on what's to come out and what's to stay in. Give us your maps."
MR. REID: And you made the decision; it wasn't the regional district.
MR. COCKE: The Agricultural Land Commission made the decisions. What do you think we set it up for?
Interjections.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. members, please. Hon. second member for Surrey (Mr. Reid), the hon. member for New Westminster has the floor. May he please continue uninterrupted.
MR. COCKE: In a way, Mr. Speaker, he's rather helping me with my speech. And I just adore the responses from the minister. The minister, who got up in this House to introduce an important bill like this and said absolutely nothing in defence of his action, spends all of his time criticizing the opposition for asking for answers, begging the government to get up there and support their own minister and his bill. They won't. One member got up yesterday and moved adjournment, and that was it. I haven't seen the Minister of Intergovernmental Relations (Hon. Mr. Gardom), who isn't in Toronto right now — surprise, surprise....
AN HON. MEMBER: Oh, don't hurt him that way.
MR. COCKE: Oh, sorry.
Anyway, I haven't seen the Minister of Intergovernmental Relations get up and defend this legislation. You know why he hasn't got up to defend it? He can't. He's ashamed of Bill 25. He's as worried about it as I am, because he knows....
MR. REE: Sit down.
MR. COCKE: Are you going to jump up if I do? Oh, so one member speaks for a minister? Hey, I'll tell you something, we've got coordination over there like we never believed.
Interjections.
MR. COCKE: How're you doing?
Mr. Speaker, I just want to allow plenty of time for the member for Kootenay (Mr. Segarty) to settle down.
Back to the bill. Just to give an idea of what we're talking about here, they're taking a paying port.... The member for North Vancouver said is that what we need in this country, and he insists that all the ports should pay their own way. We've got one that does, and they're turning it over to a loser. They're turning it over to B.C. Rail; they're turning it over to the B.C. Development Corporation and we've now been told by the member for Surrey that the reason for that is so that it can be like Tilbury. That's why he supported it, he said.
Interjection.
MR. COCKE: What he's saying, Mr. Leader of the Opposition, because you're looking quizzical, in effect is....
Interjection.
MR. COCKE: Garde, are you being bored?
HON. MR. GARDOM: Yes.
MR. COCKE: All right. Then ask that man to withdraw this bill and I'll gladly sit down. We've got 26 more where that came from that you'd better start thinking about withdrawing.
HON. MR. GARDOM: Now you're threatening.
MR. COCKE: I'm threatening! And what are you going to do about it?
HON. MR. GARDOM: Now we know what your silly little game plan is.
MR. COCKE: Our silly little game plan, my foot! We're dead serious in terms of the direction of this government. The direction is all wrong, dead wrong, and we're dead serious, Mr. Speaker. If there were arguments in defence of Bill 25 we would have heard those arguments by now, surely. Hasn't this bill been before this House for some couple of hundred minutes? That's a fair length of time — two or three hours or more, Mr. Speaker — and the member is worried about wasting time. As far as we're concerned, we are dead serious about this and every other bill that hurts this province or its future.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: You're dead in the water.
MR. COCKE: Wouldn't that minister like to think so!
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: That's why you're in opposition; that's why you remain opposition.
MR. COCKE: Maybe. Mr. Speaker, the minister says that I'm in opposition, and will be in opposition, and have been in opposition. Yes, I've been around for a while, and I'll tell you something, Mr. Speaker: our form of government demands an opposition. It demands a responsible opposition, and that's what I plan to be in the next few years. As a responsible opposition member, it's up to me to see to it that
[ Page 742 ]
we don't have the kind of legislation that's being poked down the throats of the people of this province by a government who never told anybody what they were trying to do until they got here. No, Mr. Speaker, we're not going to accept this easily; we're not going to accept it all.
Getting back to this bill, I would just like to say that rather than go the direction that we're going we should have been going in the direction of expanding opportunities. Take a look at other areas. That minister is talking about industrial development and about the great opportunities in B.C., and what is he doing? He's taking away an arm that could very easily be looking at other site possibilities for the B.C. Harbours Board. There are other site possibilities. He knows it and I know it. But, Mr. Speaker, what's that minister doing? No, no, he's turning it over to his Development Corporation that he's wrecked and that is wrecking New Westminster like it's never been wrecked before; he's turning it over to his B.C. Railway that's borrowing money to subsidize the Japanese coal industry. Come on, Mr. Minister, what are you expecting from us? You're expecting us to give you assent or to give you any kind of support on this? No, we can't.
Interjection.
MR. COCKE: I keep getting an increased majority. I don't know what the minister's talking about.
Interjection.
MR. COCKE: I know, and you're very happy about that. Why don't you come over and run against me sometime? You'd do fine up north, but you wouldn't do very well down here, because they know you down here.
You see, Mr. Speaker, that member never goes home, they don't know him anymore, and he does okay up there. But let him run down here where people know him. I dare you to come near New Westminster. I'll tell you something: the majority there would go to 95 percent. Even the best would vote against you there.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Bill 25, please.
MR. COCKE: Mr. Speaker, I'm sorry for getting off Bill 25, but sometimes that minister gets to me, and he gets to me in such a way that I have to say this: I do not and will not support a bill that takes away the agricultural land from those people that have now got it. I don't support a bill that turns over assets to the B.C. Rail or to the B.C. Development Corporation. I want the minister to sleep on it, and I move adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of the House. How do you like them apples?
[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]
[4:45]
Motion negatived on the following division:
YEAS — 16
Macdonald | Barrett | Cocke |
Dailly | Lea | Lauk |
Nicolson | Skelly | D'Arcy |
Brown | Hanson | Barnes |
Wallace | Mitchell | Passarell |
Blencoe |
NAYS — 29
Waterland | Brummet | Rogers |
Schroeder | Heinrich | Hewitt |
Richmond | Michael | Pelton |
Johnston | R. Fraser | Campbell |
Strachan | Chabot | McCarthy |
Gardom | Smith | Phillips |
McGeer | A. Fraser | Davis |
Kempf | Mowat | Veitch |
Segarty | Ree | Parks |
Reid | Reynolds |
Division ordered to be recorded in the Journals of the House.
Interjection.
MR. LEA: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. I would like you to ascertain how the Minister of Universities, Science and Communications (Hon. Mr. McGeer) got the floor.
MR. SPEAKER: I wasn't aware, hon. members, that I had given the floor to any member.
MR. LEA: Then why was he speaking?
MR. SPEAKER: A question, hon. members, that could well be asked at many times during the course of the proceedings.
Continuing, hon. members, on Bill 25.
[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]
MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Universities, Science and Communications has left to catch the government plane back home. At a time of restraint he's making sure he doesn't fly at night because they have to turn the lights on and this is a little saving on behalf of the peasants of British Columbia. The little car waits for them and picks them up and carries their soft derrieres out to the airport, lifts them into the plane and takes them home so they can rest overnight. Sometimes Alec would like to go to the races but there's no room in the plane for him. He's just the minister who gets the heat when he has to table the books. By the way, when are the books coming? When are the books coming from the plane rides?
Interjection.
MR. BARRETT: I certainly do, and I know where my home is too, Mr. Speaker.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. members, perhaps we can cease with the interjections and ask the hon. member now taking his place in debate to speak to Bill 25.
MR. BARRETT: That's right, Mr. Speaker, and I certainly intend to speak on this bill sometime during the 40 minutes that I have.
Actually, we know what this bill is all about, but nobody wants to talk about it. This is a companion bill to the move of the government to eliminate the Crown corporations supervisory committee. This is an attempt to remove from any
[ Page 743 ]
scrutiny in this Legislature assets in the normal process of dealing with budgetary items and ministerial responsibilities on boards. Put it under Crown corporations, emasculate the Crown Corporations Committee, and there'll be no more accounting to this Legislature or to the people what they intend to do with the properties.
The one person in this chamber on the government side who has had the guts to stand up and publicly say that he won't see the Crown Corporations Committee emasculated is one of the true right-wingers over there. He's got a sense of accountability. I know that that member for Omineca (Mr. Kempf) was thinking exactly of this kind of legislation when he spoke out against his own government's move to eliminate the Crown Corporations Committee. We know exactly what is intended by this legislation. It seems to be innocuous and seems to be the matter of some debate on a lazy afternoon, but it is actually designed to remove from public scrutiny examination of control of those lands. That will be slipped into the Crown corporations, and the Crown corporations can't do research or study any more.
I remember that the Crown Corporations Committee was established to avoid exactly what they're attempting to have take place here in this legislation: putting in the hands of those Crown corporations more and more assets. Big government on the backs of the people, hidden in the Crown corporations that have no accountability whatsoever to this chamber. While this government spends tens of thousands of dollars looking for cliches and slogans to sell its policies, and while they have high-priced hacks from Ontario designing buzzwords about getting governments off the backs of people, this bill is designed to get governments right on the back so that they can cover up what they intend to do with this land in the people's names. Where will the accounting be once the Crown Corporations Committee is emasculated? Do you think that that minister, of all ministers, will come into this House and tell us all what's happening to that land?
AN HON. MEMBER: Stonewall Phillips.
MR. BARRETT: That is complimentary, Mr. Member.
Interjection.
MR. BARRETT: Well, I have to repeat, Mr. Minister, I'd rather be lame-duck than lame-brain.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: How come you're both then?
MR. BARRETT: Well, my dear friend....
You know, it's very interesting to see how they behaved four months ago in the election campaign and how they behave now: " Oh, we want accountability. No sirree, boy, we won't change anything." Do you remember how they were? They got on television and said: "Oh, we won't charge more on medicare premiums. No sir, not us. Oh, no, we won't dismantle rent control. No sir, not us. Oh, we won't do away with the Crown corporations. Just vote for us and trust us." They lied, Mr. Speaker, and as example of this....
Interjection.
MR. BARRETT: The Social Credit Party lied, Mr. Speaker. That's who lied. Now there were members in that party who delivered the message, but it was the party that lied — not the members or the candidates or the ministers or the MLAs. It was the party that lied.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. member, I must remind all members that when canvassing debate, temperance and moderation in language is certainly a courtesy in this House, and if we can avoid unparliamentary language.... I would also remind the hon. member that he is anticipating other legislation. We are on Bill 25.
MR. LEA: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, are you telling us that the Leader of the Opposition is not in order?
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Chair found some of the terminology offensive, hon. member, and there were also references to another piece of legislation, which offends the rule of anticipation.
MR. LEA: Do you have a ruling on that, Mr. Speaker?
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, there is a ruling on anticipation.
MR. LEA: Are you ruling that that was anticipation?
DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, I was just cautioning the member, hon. member.
MR. LEA: Mr. Speaker, why did you interfere if you have no ruling or anything to say?
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. member, the rule of anticipation is quite clear. It is stated in Sir Erskine May and is a parliamentary standing order in this House, and I'm sure the member is aware of it.
MR. LEA: That's true, Has there been an infraction, Mr. Speaker?
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, hon. member, there is....
MR. LEA: Are you ruling there has?
DEPUTY SPEAKER: I was cautioning the member speaking that....
MR. LEA: You're not ruling?
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Does the member wish a ruling?
MR. LEA: Well, Mr. Speaker, you either have to rule on it or not interfere.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. member, the Chair can caution members. It's a common comment in Sir Erskine May that the Chair may intervene when in fact they presume or they understand that a rule is being offended. The rule of anticipation was being offended.
MR. LEA: I see. That's your ruling,
MR SPEAKER: Yes.
MR. LEA: Then I challenge your ruling.
[ Page 744 ]
[5:00]
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. members, the time under standing orders has elapsed.
MR. LAUK: On a point of order, the time is not elapsed in accordance with the clock in the House, Mr. Speaker. I don't know what measurement you're using, but under standing orders it's quite specific.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. member, the standing orders are specific. There are two timers up here, which I believe are accurate, and the time has elapsed.
MR. LAUK: Oh, there are lots of two-timers over there.
[5:00]
Deputy Speaker's ruling sustained on the following division:
YEAS — 28
Chabot | McCarthy | Gardom |
Smith | Phillips | McGeer |
A. Fraser | Davis | Kempf |
Mowat | Waterland | Brummet |
Schroeder | Heinrich | Hewitt |
Richmond | Rogers | Michael |
Pelton | Johnston | R. Fraser |
Campbell | Veitch | Segarty |
Ree | Parks | Reid |
Reynolds |
NAYS — 16
Macdonald | Barrett | Cocke |
Dailly | Lea | Lauk |
Nicolson | Gabelmann | D'Arcy |
Brown | Hanson | Barnes |
Wallace | Mitchell | Passarell |
Blencoe |
Division ordered to be recorded in the Journals of the House.
MR. BARRETT: Could the Chair advise me exactly how much time I have left? Thank you. I don't want to inconvenience too many cabinet ministers.
I was making a point that is obvious to almost anyone who wants to scrutinize this legislation carefully. It's true that I did mention another piece of legislation; I won't do that any more. But in terms of Beauchesne and May, the other part of what I was saying — it's a part I intend to leave at this moment — is thoroughly researched and permissible: a person or a member cannot lie, but a political party can lie. If anybody wants evidence of that, just examine what was said in the last election campaign by that political party. It lied all the way through the campaign. That's the point I'm making. I don't need to overemphasize it.
In that context, we must deal with the bill that's before us. It is a bill that will permit the weakening of legislative control and authority over property that is held in the name of the Crown on behalf of the people of British Columbia.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: We did nothing of the kind, and you know it.
MR. BARRETT: Go make another long distance call to Australia. Did you ever pay those Australia phone bills?
Interjection.
MR. BARRETT: Thank you. Now we understand each other.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The minister will come to order, please.
MR. BARRETT: The fact is, as these assets are moved to the Crown corporations named in the bill, both the railway and the Development Corporation, they pass from jurisdiction of examination and ministerial accountability in this House for those Crown corporations.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: You know that's hogwash.
MR. BARRETT: If the minister would only calm down a little bit! When I see his anxiety over this probing scrutiny on the bill, one begins to wonder if a deal has already been made for this property. Is somebody waiting at the trough for the slops as a result of the election campaign? Is there more payola waiting out there to push this bill through to get control of that land? I know very well the record of this government and access to government property, and the number of criminal records that have been established through a former Social Credit government, and cabinet ministers going to jail.
AN HON. MEMBER: How many years ago was that?
MR. BARRETT: How many years ago? That doesn't wipe out the record. The only cabinet minister in the whole Commonwealth who went to jail came out of that cabinet bench right over there.
HON. MR. BRUMMET: And that's relevant to the bill?
MR. BARRETT: It certainly is, because the record of this government makes me question the loss of control of public land that is of high value and may not have accountability here in this Legislature. We've seen what's happened before.
MR. REID: What about Tilbury?
MR. BARRETT: What about Tilbury? Has there ever been any allegation that any NDP member made any money out of the development of Tilbury? None whatsoever, and you agree with that.
AN HON. MEMBER: I don't know.
MR. BARRETT: "I don't know." Well, I'll tell you, Mr. Speaker. There has never been an allegation of that. My suspicion here is in terms of access to land by this government, and loss of control of this land. The record of those kinds of wheeler-dealers over there is that accountability will be lost, and who knows what's going to happen to that land? Do you? Do you know, Mr. Speaker? Does the minister know? Can the minister, in closing this debate — sometime in January or February — assure this House that there will be no
[ Page 745 ]
private development of any of these lands without bid, without open sale, without access to everyone? And, indeed, if there is a plan for private sale of these lands that are being transferred? Is there already such a plan?
Mr. Speaker, this government has a record of lack of accountability. It has a record of lack of consultation with the people in the community. And this move will allow the land that is now held by the Harbours Board to go into the hands of those Crown corporations and then it may be disposed of by those Crown corporations. It is a way of finding a vehicle to transfer valuable land assets over to Crown corporations, and then put them up for sale. Is that the plan? Is somebody in line to buy it?
Interjections.
MR. BARRETT: Well, my good friend, we've seen this before. We've seen it many times. We have the present Minister of Municipal Affairs (Hon. Mr. Ritchie) who stood up and said that the Attorney-General saved him from recommended prosecution by a Crown prosecutor. Now when a Crown prosecutor goes out and recommends that a politician be prosecuted, and then the politician gets up in this chamber and says, "I have been saved from prosecution by the Attorney-General," one gets suspicious about the motivation behind this kind of legislation. If I were a police officer and had to go out and do an investigation on a politician, and the Crown prosecutor recommended on the basis of that investigation that charges be laid and a prosecution take place, and the minister — who was then an MLA — stands up and says that even in spite of a Crown prosecutor recommending prosecution, "The Attorney-General saved me"....
That's the record of this government, Mr. Speaker. Now it's not known to too many people, since there are probably about 50 or 60 in the galleries, but the fact is that we have Crown ministers admitting that the Attorney-General has saved them from prosecution after the Crown prosecutor recommended prosecution. We wouldn't want that to get out to too many citizens. But for those who are there, let us understand the record of this government, how they handle Crown property, how they wheel and deal, and when they get caught they look for protection politically within this government.
What is being set up here? I'll tell you what is being set up.
MR. MOWAT: Opportunity.
MR. BARRETT: Opportunity? Good, good, good! He's learning fast, Mr. Speaker. Opportunity! Opportunity for who? Mr. Speaker, we've seen Crown assets disappear into the private sector. And end up where?
MR. LEA: There was $5.5 million last time.
MR. BARRETT: Well, the $5.5 million that disappeared in McKim ad agencies — they won't call the police on that. I want to know....
AN HON. MEMBER: What about Panco Poultry?
MR. BARRETT: Is there any allegation of wrongdoing in Panco Poultry?
Interjection.
MR. BARRETT: Well, all right. You just call the police if you've got any allegations to make. But I find it interesting that in situations like this, when these assets are being slipped across, under the umbrella of a Crown corporation that will no longer have to report to a committee.... What do we know is going to happen to those assets? Does the minister have a plan to sell off that land? I'd like to know that. Is there already a plan in hand to sell this property off?
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: You're pitiful.
MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, personal attacks on me are completely acceptable — I mean, if that's all you've got to say. But aside from any personal feelings you may have for me, the validity of the question is there. I don't think you like me; and I love you. I don't understand why you don't reciprocate. On occasion I've even blown you a kiss, but you've ignored me. In spite of our friendliness, the fact is that the specific question that you have to answer in closing is: are there already plans to dispose of any of these assets that are going to be transferred to the British Columbia Development Corporation and B.C. Rail?
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Look out, the sky's falling in. You'd like to make people think that, wouldn't you?
[5:15]
MR. BARRETT: Oh! Well, just get up and deny it. Just get up and tell this House....
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Will you sit down? I'll get up and deny it.
MR. BARRETT: Get up, when your time comes....
Just calm down. Mr. Speaker, every time that minister gets riled I know that I have pressed the guilt button somewhere. Just calm yourself; there are some more questions.
Interjections,
MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, it might be worthwhile to reconsider the earlier Speaker's lectures, or little informal classroom discussions, to some of the new back-benchers. If you want to interrupt, get a few years behind you and learn how to do it properly.
We have been through this before, Mr. Speaker, where innocuous bits of legislation come into this chamber. It is being sold as some administrative possibility of better control, only for us to discover that those assets that were acquired in the name of the Crown on behalf of the citizens of this province have ended up under the private ownership of friends of the government. Now is this not part of the same pattern that we have seen time and time again, where a little bill has slipped into this chamber; where a little bit of administrative transfer is going over; where there's just a little bit of shifting of ownership and it's no longer under the scrutiny of the Crown Corporations Committee, and all of a sudden six months from now or eight months from now contributors to the Social Credit Party end up, as free-enterprisers, the owners of this land? What an amazing series of coincidences.
Mr. Speaker, the chances of that happening are better than winning a lottery ticket when there are only two of you in the lottery. What is happening here today is that tremendously valuable property worth tens of millions of dollars is being
[ Page 746 ]
quietly scooped out of the control of the Harbours Board. The Harbours Board is being killed, and these assets that are scooped out are being transferred over to two Crown corporations that no longer have to have accountability to this chamber through the Crown Corporations Committee.
What is going to happen to that land? Well, I am going to make a prediction.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: What a bunch of hogwash!
MR. BARRETT: You know, in the 23 years that I have been here, wilder things than what I have suggested have come true. Who would have thought that carpets or land deals or gravel pits would be part of a major scandal in this province? It all came true. Is nothing Socred? Mr. Speaker, when you look at it that way, anything is possible when it comes to dealing with this outfit. Anything is possible! It took them a little while to figure that one out, but they laughed. But a little touch of humour only recalls exactly what we have seen in this chamber time and time and time again.
Interjection.
MR. BARRETT: Trust them! They've got a long record. I don't know if it's a good record, but it's a long record.
MR. REID: It's going to get better.
MR. BARRETT: If it's going to get better, it will be a longer time maybe; I don't know. Maybe the people of British Columbia.... Maybe they'll get paroled; I don't know. Certainly I wouldn't give them probation, not after the lies they've told.
Mr. Speaker, if you examine under the interpretation section, you notice that not only is there a specific outline of what is to be transferred but there is this curious no. 4. I want to bring to the attention of the House "transfer date." What's the rush? Why is the transfer date specifically mentioned in the opening paragraph of this legislation? Normally when such a transfer takes place, it can be handled through regulation, not in the bill itself. Is this an attempt to lock in, legislatively in this chamber, a specific transfer date so that any court case afterwards can say: "This is not regulation; it is in the legislation itself"? It's an absolute signal. It's a signal to anybody who's out there waiting.
It goes on to talk about this section here that justifies the suspicions I have. The disposition of assets and liabilities of the corporation. Everything goes; and all it has is assets. And what has the Development Corporation and B.C. Rail got? Debts.
Do you know what the argument will be when the property is put up for sale? The argument will be that we have to reduce the debts of B.C. Rail. It's like walking down the street and seeing your neighbour's house mortgage-free. So you go and expropriate your neighbour's house, incorporate it into your mortgage, and then sell your neighbour's house, saying: "We need to reduce our debt." They're taking the assets that the taxpayers of this province have already paid for, transferring them to a Crown corporation, and then they'll sell them off.
I find it interesting that the minister does not give us a reason for the disposal of the assets. Why? What is the rush? Why is it necessary to put these assets in the hands of those two Crown corporations, unless, as I suspect, there is a move to sell those assets as quickly as possible? Will the minister tell us when he closes that there is no intention to have those assets sold off? Will the minister tell us that?
Mr. Speaker, I think we have found the real reason for this bill. I think it's becoming all the more obvious why this bill has been presented. I believe that this was a simple transfer of assets to facilitate sale of these properties to the private sector so that there will again be access to Crown property. To whom? We've seen enough evidence of the philosophy around this kind of land. Need I mention Gloucester, where the minister himself went to the hearings? Gloucester Estates. The minister, Mr. McClelland, went to those hearings and beseeched the ELUC committee to remove those lands. Unprecedented. There in the minutes — the verbatim transcript of the committee meetings — the minister is pleading for private citizens to have access to a decision that would remove farmland — and immediately increase its value. Spetifore is another case.
You know, it's very interesting how these members respond.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: The Harbours Board could sell that land if they wanted to.
MR. BARRETT: Oh, they can sell the land if they want to, eh? The Harbours Board has no intention of selling the land, so the way to get around that is to get rid of a recalcitrant board and put it under the control of a Crown corporation that no longer has to report their scrutiny to this chamber, one more malleable to the desires of the minister and his goals of eliminating public control.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: That's wrong.
MR. BARRETT: Is it wrong, really, Mr. Minister? We have seen....
Interjections.
MR. BARRETT: I'm enjoying this. We're finally getting a little bit.... You know what we're getting an indication of from this kind of interruption now? It is indeed an idea to sell. Yes, it's coming out slowly. I'm sorry that I only have 40 minutes; another hour of cross-examination and I'd have the names of these people who it is denied have access. Are the Olma brothers involved? Well, we can eliminate them; they're too high-profile right now.
But let's examine what the minister just said. He just said: "Well, the Harbours Board could have sold the land." They don't want to sell the land. That's why you're getting rid of the Harbours Board. You want to sell the land. That's what's going on.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: You're such a disaster. No wonder you lead your party into opposition all the time. You're an absolute disaster.
MR. BARRETT: I want to encourage the minister to keep talking. Please, Mr. Speaker, the more he talks, the more we get a glimpse of what's really going on behind there. The minister is not a very complicated person.
Interjection.
[ Page 747 ]
MR. BARRETT: Certainly I'm simple. Once I see a crook I recognize one, Mr. Minister. I've seen this government dispose of Crown assets and get in trouble before. Ministers have gone to jail. Others have been hidden behind the Attorney-General. That's a matter of record. Your record is one of shameful loss of control of Crown assets, and I say that this seems to be another move in the same way. No one on this side has ever gone to jail for accepting bribes; only a Social Credit cabinet minister has done that in my time here.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment, hon. member. I'll advise that there are an awful lot of interjections going on. They're quite unparliamentary. And there have been terms used that the Chair has found most offensive. Perhaps we could allow the speaker now addressing the debate to speak uninterrupted.
MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, I'm making a case under this bill. This House is losing control of these assets and it is my suspicion that these assets, once transferred to the Crown corporations mentioned, will be made available for disposal to private interests. It is my suspicion that the private interests that these will be disposed to are probably already known — already know the date. Why else would the bill have a transfer date in it when normally, with assent of the Legislature, dates are set by regulation afterwards? Why does this bill actually specify a transfer date? Because there is anxiety around related to a business deal.
Then we go through this bill, and we discover that accountability for the people's assets, land owned by the people of this province, is now disappearing. Again, it's another move under the guise of "restraint" to give people access to Crown assets, to privatize in a way that individuals benefit. There's no other reason on the face of this earth to eliminate the Harbours Board — other than to get rid of a recalcitrant administrative group and turn over the assets to pliable, manageable Crown corporations that don't have to report to this chamber and will allow the loss of ownership.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: You know full well that both the railway and BCDC report to this chamber.
[5:30]
MR. BARRETT: Again, when you let him talk a little bit it comes out a bit more. "You know full well that the B.C. Railway has to report in this chamber." I refer you back, Mr. Speaker, in the context of this bill, to the $45 million taken by warrant from general revenue in the last week of March 1982 and handed over to B.C. Rail. When that minister was asked where the $45 million went, and when the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Curtis) was asked the same question, they refused to answer in this chamber. It took almost 15 months to discover that the $45 million that had been taken from general revenue, out of school and hospital budgets, had been handed to B.C. Rail and used as a debt write-off.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: That's only half of what was lost the last year you were Premier.
MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, whether we lost or won, we told the truth. You didn't tell the truth about that $45 million. That minister never answered a question in this chamber. We found, 14 or 15 months later, that that $45 million showed up in public accounts, written off as a bad debt. Why weren't we told the truth then?
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Why can't you keep your MLAs in to listen to you when you're speaking?
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please. The minister will come to order.
MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, sooner or later the public of this province will catch up to this government. Sooner or later there'll be a day of reckoning and accounting. But until that day comes, and as long as I'm here, and I may not be here a long time, I'll speak in defence of public assets against a selloff by this government — any single time.
There was $45 million taken out of schools, hospitals and from the elderly of this province and written off as a bad debt, and no truth to the people of this province.
Interjections.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please. The House will come to order. Thank you.
MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, I don't mind the interruptions or the catcalls, but no matter how much the minister raises his voice it still doesn't cover up the intent of this bill as a pattern of what we've seen by Social Credit before: an attempt to move assets into a Crown corporation and then sell them off. Why else would this bill be in front of the Legislature today? Why else would there be a transfer date in the legislation rather than in the regulations? Why is it in Bill 3 they can't come up with regulations, but in this bill they've got regulations material right in the context of the legislation? It leads me to believe, as I suspect, that these assets will be transferred to the Crown corporations and they will then be sold off to private interests. I believe, because even the transfer date is included, that the principals involved are already salivating over the prospect of getting control of these lands. How would I say such a thing and have it be even remotely believable, except for the fact that it is the record of this government to do exactly that, time and time again? Then we have these scandals and have to bring these matters up in the chamber, and in some instances a minister of the Crown had to go to jail. They still haven't learned a single thing. They think that winning an election gives them licence to do anything they want.
MR. REID: To govern.
MR. BARRETT: To govern, but not to hide from the police, Mr. Member. What happened to that $5.5 million that went through McKim? Would that help you to govern, or did any of that get laundered to the Social Credit Party? Let's find out. What are you afraid of? Now you're moving to less public scrutiny on Crown assets, which are being transferred to the Crown corporations that will no longer have to report to those committees. We know what's going on. I've seen it all before. It's like a bad play.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: You can't even keep your members in the House.
[ Page 748 ]
MR. BARRETT: Well, no one's sitting next to you. It could be B.O.; I don't know what it is. Mr. Member, when it comes to sitting next to you, you've got a problem, and you're the first to make reference to it. I offer you my friendship, my attention. You spurn it, and no one else is even sitting next to you. There used to be a soap called Lifebuoy; have you ever heard of it? It may help you. But I'm not here as your personal counsellor.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: You've lost control of the ship. I know that.
MR. BARRETT: The minister is a pretty cool customer; he's pretty tough, hard-nosed. He's kicked more used-car tires in one month than most people will do in their whole life. He's got the finest-honed figures of anybody in that business. He's turned back more odometers than anyone else I know in the business.
That same kind of mentality that leads to the kind of invective and personal attack you have used only covers up what we know as the pattern of behaviour by cabinet minister after cabinet minister in that government. We know very well what is happening here. We know very well that the access to this property....
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Keep on with your personal attacks. You're heading the mud-line now, are you?
MR. BARRETT: As long as he keeps his mouth open, he disengages what's left of his mind. But once in a while a word slips through and he responds and we discover what's lurking behind there. That's correct, isn't it? Even through that verbosity and camouflage....
MR. MACDONALD: You mean a thought escapes?
MR. BARRETT: No, a confession escapes. And what is it that we pull out bit by bit between his inane interruptions? Why, indeed, we've discovered in the last 40 minutes that the Harbours Board could sell the land anyway. So that means it's going to be sold anyway.
He needs to answer these questions. Why is the transfer date mentioned specifically in the legislation and not in regulations? He needs to answer why this bill is going through in the first place, if not to sell off those assets. He needs to tell this House that those assets will not be sold off. I bet he won't say it. I bet he will not guarantee this chamber that those assets that are transferred will not be sold off.
Interjection.
MR. BARRETT: I suspect you may be right, member for Burnaby-Edmonds (Ms. Brown): the deal's already been made. As for the date, the fix is in; I mean about the date, Mr. Speaker, not anything else.
Mr. Speaker, since I've seen this kind of legislation before, since my suspicions in the past have been correct, it would be well if there was greater scrutiny of this legislation. Because of that, I move adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of the House.
Motion negatived on the following division:
YEAS — 15
Macdonald | Barrett | Cocke |
Dailly | Lea | Nicolson |
Gabelmann | Skelly | D'Arcy |
Brown | Hanson | Wallace |
Mitchell | Passarell | Blencoe |
NAYS — 27
Waterland | Brummet | Rogers |
Schroeder | Heinrich | Hewitt |
Richmond | Michael | Pelton |
Johnston | R. Fraser | Campbell |
Chabot | McCarthy | Gardom |
Smith | Phillips | A. Fraser |
Davis | Kempf | Mowat |
Veitch | Segarty | Ree |
Parks | Reid | Reynolds |
Division ordered to be recorded in the Journals of the House.
[5:45]
MR. MACDONALD: There was a Premier in this province once by the name of W.A.C. Bennett.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Great man.
MR. MACDONALD: I hear some of the hon. members saying "great man." He had his faults, but....
HON. MR. BRUMMET: And you have yours.
MR. MACDONALD: And I have mine, and I have people who are willing to point them out. I've got one or two people who are ready to take advantage of them.
W.A.C. Bennett had vision in some fields, and he established the B.C. Harbours Board. He didn't see any reason why the federal government of Canada, which as the minister said is 3,500 miles away, should be running the harbours and coastlands of the province of British Columbia. The minister said that the port of Rotterdam, which I've never visited — I've passed through there on the train, and I've had a view from the window of the train — is one of the great ports of the world. It's very close to Amsterdam, so it's a very convenient city. In the port of Rotterdam there is local control of the ports by the municipality of Rotterdam.
Now in this bill we're saying goodbye to yet another of the dreams of W.A.C. Bennett. We're saying that the only vehicle British Columbia has to take local, provincial control of our coastline and our harbours is to be negatized b this minister. What W.A.C. Bennett saw as a chance to have a vehicle to assume control of our coastlines is being denied by the present minister. There's no reason in the world why we should not have that Harbours Board and why we should not be negotiating with the federal government so that there will be provincial control not only at Roberts Bank but right through the harbour of Vancouver and the harbours in New Westminster. But if you shoot your horse you can't even run in a race with the federal government for that kind of provincial control. You're shooting the horse and abandoning the opportunity.
[ Page 749 ]
HON. A. FRASER: What do you know about horses?
MR. MACDONALD: I visited the PNE in the last election and I had dinner with Jack Diamond — a very nice dinner, too, in the club there.
The whole question of harbours is a very live one, not only out in Delta, but in the city of Vancouver. We have a very active waterfront access committee of citizens who can see that there can be not only community access to the waterfront but also industry running in tandem with that, with the one not interfering with the other. Why should we not be saving the B.C. Harbours Board and sending a minister to Ottawa with some bargaining savvy, a bit of clout and a little bit of finesse and diplomacy, and bringing back into British Columbia the whole control of our waterfront? As they have it in Rotterdam. What's the use of the minister getting up in his blowhard way and talking about the desirability of local control of the waterfront and then shooting the only instrument that we have on the statute books of British Columbia to take over that control and run the whole of the waterfront in the interests of industry and its development — waterfront access by citizens, community, recreational and commercial facilities, including restaurants and other things that can be very usefully located on the waterfront. Why shouldn't we plan that kind of development for ourselves?
HON. MR. BRUMMET: We do.
MR. MACDONALD: No, you don't. You've turned the whole thing over to Prime Minister Trudeau and the federal government. You're throwing up the white flag and saying: "Okay, let it go back to the private world." You know who controls the private world so far as the waterfront is concerned? It's Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Pepin — from 3,500 miles away.
I can see that the member for North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Davis) is listening intently to what I'm saying at this time, because he knows what I'm saying. I would like him to get up in this debate and make a case for provincial control of our waterfront, make a case that our B.C. Harbours Board should not be allowed to die, because that's the instrument by which we can accomplish local provincial control. I will look forward to the remarks of that hon. member.
We have a good team in this present Harbours Board. The executive director — I think that's the proper title — is one David King, who plays a fair hand of bridge in addition to knowing about harbours, railways and hydro. He's a little reckless in his bidding, but then he's willing to try the odd finesse or two to see himself through and try to make his hand. Here you have Dave King, a very capable public servant of British Columbia. You have the other officers — I suppose there's a comptroller there and a secretary, and you'd have a lawyer employed there somewhere, and there's some staff. What is happening to these human beings? While we're talking about the larger principles of the bill, we should not forget that a number of our fellow citizens are being arbitrarily terminated when this bill is passed by the Legislature — if it ever is — and the order-in-council comes through proclaiming that it is effective law.
At the same time, these employees of the Harbours Board are not only being terminated but being denied access to the courts of the land. They are being placed, according to sections in this act....
Interjection.
MR. MACDONALD: The minister is muttering that he doesn't think I know any law, but I know as much as he does.
Interjections.
MR. MACDONALD: I don't know who could know less.
To the minister, through you, Mr. Speaker: what about the arbitrary termination of these employees? You say that they're going to be terminated and you use that strange, mysterious date of July 7, 1983, and you say that after that they're going to be.... Are they going to be allowed to sue in the courts of the land?
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Why don't you do your homework?
MR. MACDONALD: I see that under this bill you are going to place them at the tender mercies of Bill 3 in terms of some compensation which is going to be set arbitrarily by the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council.
HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Go on nattering, just like you've done for the last 20 years.
MR. MACDONALD: No, 21 years. I wish the minister would get his facts straight. You're arbitrarily terminating employees in this bill simply by repealing the statute. One more little step in the gamesmanship of the government, which thinks that everyone doing good work for the public who is thrown of of work is a gain. It makes your rich backers feel better because they can see that they don't have to pay so much income tax and different taxes to support families working in the public service. Never mind that, as in this case, they're doing worthwhile business on behalf of the people of the British Columbia. Never mind all that. Any one of them thrown out of work is, according to this government, a great gain for public economy. It's kind of hard in terms of the unemployment rates, in terms of the social welfare rates in many cases. It's a drain on unemployment insurance. But according to this radical right-wing government, anyone taken out of the public service and thrown on the relief rolls is a net gain.
Mr. Speaker, what we have in this bill are employees being arbitrarily terminated, with their remuneration, if any, set under Bill 3 — which has not seen the light of day so far as this House is concerned, and which I hope never will — by regulations to be passed under Bill 3, setting out some kind of severance pay. At the very least, we could expect the minister to withdraw this bill. We haven't even seen the regulations under Bill 3, which is referred to in this bill. What are we going to do? Will those regulations deny these employees any access to a court case in the event that their compensation for severance can't be agreed upon?
Interjection.
MR. MACDONALD: Well, no, I know you don't want to see anybody have the right to go to court when their job is arbitrarily severed as soon as this bill is proclaimed. Instead of that you say that we're a very generous government and we will instead allow you to have in compensation as severance
[ Page 750 ]
pay whatever we may set in the future under some regulations that are going to be proclaimed under another bill. Now I say that we're doing a great injustice to the employees, few as they may be, under this particular legislation, in addition to wiping out our opportunity to control the harbours of the province of British Columbia.
I also share the fear that this government, so anxious to privatize everything, is going to dispose of the lands that the Harbours Board now controls which are now in the public domain, and through the B.C. Development Corporation in particular.... The minister is fanning himself, or throwing up the white flag, I don't know which. I don't think there's any doubt that of the acreage that's left.... How many acres are left now under the B.C. Harbours Board? About 25,000 acres, I believe. I don't think there's any doubt that within a year of the passage of this bill a lot of those valuable acres will end up in private hands, sold by B.C. Development Corporation. It's a roundabout way of disposing of land, privatizing more land and taking more land out of the public domain.
I'm going to conclude my remarks, because the clock is coming around to 6 o'clock, and I'll conclude by saying that this bill should not be read a second time. It refers to other legislation which has been amended according to the order paper, or is about to be amended: Bill 3, legislation that this Legislature should never pass. Therefore I move the adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of the House.
[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]
Motion negatived on the following division:
YEAS — 15
Macdonald | Barrett | Cocke |
Dailly | Lauk | Nicolson |
Gabelmann | Skelly | D'Arcy |
Brown | Hanson | Wallace |
Mitchell | Passarell | Blencoe |
NAYS — 28
Waterland | Brummet | Rogers |
Schroeder | Heinrich | Hewitt |
Richmond | Michael | Pelton |
Johnston | R. Fraser | Campbell |
Strachan | Chabot | McCarthy |
Gardom | Smith | Phillips |
A. Fraser | Davis | Kempf |
Mowat | Veitch | Segarty |
Ree | Parks | Reid |
Reynolds |
Division ordered to be recorded in the Journals of the House.
MR. SPEAKER: The first member for Victoria seeks the floor.
MR. HANSON: We're resuming debate, are we, Mr. Speaker?
MR. SPEAKER: The first member for Victoria has been recognized by the Chair.
HON. MR. SCHROEDER: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, may I draw your attention to the clock.
MR. SPEAKER: The House Leader.
HON. MR. GARDOM: I move adjournment of debate until the next sitting of the House.
Motion approved.
Hon. Mr. Gardom moved adjournment of the House.
Motion approved.
The House adjourned at 6:09 p.m.
Appendix
WRITTEN ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
50 Mrs. Wallace asked the Hon. the Minister of Environment the following questions:
Under section 13 of the Waste Management Act —
1. Has the Minister issued any variance orders?
2. If the answer to No. 1 is yes, (a) to whom were they granted; (b) what were the requirements of each; and (c) what were the periods of time of each?
3. Have any of the variance orders detailed in No. 2 been (a) cancelled, or (b) renewed or extended, and (c) if answers to (a) and/or (b) is yes, give details in each case?
4. If the answer to No. 1 is yes, in which instances, if any, were public information meetings held prior to the issuing of such variance orders?
The Hon. A. J. Brummet replied as follows:
"1. Yes.
[ Page 751 ]
"2. Each time a variance order is issued, a notice is published in The British Columbia Gazette outlining the terms under which the variance is being granted.
"3. No.
"4. Public information meetings have not been held. In lieu of holding public information meetings, the variance request has been discussed with elected representatives such as city councils, regional districts or both, elected labour representatives, Chamber of Commerce, medical health officers, other Government agencies and in some cases, citizens who would appear to be directly affected by the issuance of a variance."