[ Page 941 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Budget Debate

Mr. Pelton –– 942

Mr. Passarell –– 943

Hon. Mr. McGeer –– 948

Mr. Rose –– 950

Mr. Strachan –– 955

FRIDAY, AUGUST 19, 1983

The House met at 10:06 a.m.

Prayers.

MR. LOCKSTEAD: I have from my riding this morning my brother Jack Lockstead, his wife Gloria and their son Chris –– I ask the House to join me in welcoming them.

MRS. JOHNSTON: In our galleries today is the chairman of the Surrey school board, Laurea McNally. I would ask you to welcome her, please.

HON. MR. BENNETT: From South Okanagan, I'd like the assembly to welcome my constituency secretary Jan Duncan, here with her husband, her mother and her daughter. Please make them welcome.

Orders of the Day

MR. SPEAKER: The Chair recognizes the second member for Victoria, on a point of privilege.

MR. BLENCOE: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I have a question of privilege this morning; it's the first opportunity I have had to rise on this particular issue.

Yesterday the Provincial Secretary made some serious allegations in this House regarding the position of city council in 1972 in terms of its attitude towards Bapco Paint. The point I wish to make is that those allegations are totally inaccurate. The record as of December 12, 1972 indicates that Bapco left this city for economic reasons, and nothing at all to do with the city council.

MR. SPEAKER: Clearly, at this time, hon. member, the Chair would find it very difficult in any way whatsoever to find that the matter referred to by the member would in any way obstruct his ability or his performance relating to his duties as a member of this House. A matter of privilege is a very serious matter and must bear with it a very serious responsibility on the member who would so raise the point. Hon. member, unless you can in some way demonstrate that this would in any way obstruct your performance as a member of this House, the Chair cannot continue to hear argument.

MR. BLENCOE: The seriousness of the situation is that the minister misled this House.

HON. MR. CHABOT: On a point of order, I would like that member to withdraw those offensive remarks, first of all, and also would say to you, Mr. Speaker, I haven't detected one iota of point of privilege that he's raised. It's not a point of privilege; there's been no semblance whatsoever of a point of privilege by that member, and I wish you would bring him to order.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, this House is clearly engaged at this time in a matter of debate, an opportunity for which will be afforded at a later date in the proceedings before this House, whether in the form of estimates or whatever. Clearly, hon. members, this is not the time to engage in debate, and the Chair rules that the matter raised by the member is not a matter of privilege. At this time, hon. members, we should continue the business of the day.

HON. MR. CHABOT: On a point of order, I ask to have that member withdraw.

MR. SPEAKER: An hon. member of this House has asked another hon. member of this House to withdraw a remark which the first member finds offending. Would the member so do in the interests of parliamentary decorum.

MR. BLENCOE: Mr. Speaker, are you ordering me to withdraw that remark or is that just a suggestion?

MR. SPEAKER: I am asking the hon. member, in the interest of parliamentary procedure, to withdraw the remark, as any honourable member would do, hon. member.

MR. BLENCOE: Mr. Speaker, I withdraw the remark.

MR. SPEAKER: The Chair appreciates that cooperation, hon. members.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I call Committee of Supply, and I see that that great member from Dewdney (Mr. Pelton) adjourned the debate on the motion.

[10:15]

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, prior to recognizing the member for Dewdney (Mr. Pelton), the Chair undertook yesterday to review a motion which was before the House at that time in this particular debate. At this time, hon. members, the Chair rules that the motion put forward yesterday is out of order.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I gather that you have had some discussion with respect to your ruling. Could you tell us why you so ruled?

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, the ruling of the Chair is that the motion contains language which the Chair finds to be of an unparliamentary nature and, as such, would qualify the motion not to succeed.

MR. COCKE: My point of order is that while the Chair finds words in here unparliamentary, I would suggest those words, if directed at a person or a member of this Legislature, would be interpreted as unparliamentary; directed as they are, in general, Mr. Speaker, at a document, it strikes me therefore that the words under those circumstances would not be so found.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, the Chair has ruled on the matter before the House. The ruling is not open to debate; it is not open to criticism; it is open to challenge. But on that there is no further debate.

MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, I would like to know the exact words that you're making the ruling on before a decision is made whether or not to challenge it.

MR. SPEAKER: Insofar as the request by the Leader of the Opposition is concerned, the word referred to is "falsification."

[ Page 942 ]

MR. BARRETT: Not to argue with the ruling, Mr. Speaker, but as a point of information, the accusation has been levelled in order during the four days of the budget debate. It has not been called to the attention of the Chair or the members using the same accusation during that debate.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, the Chair has ruled that the word in question does not comply, and that ruling stands.

MR. COCKE: On behalf of the House Leader of the opposition, who was called away a moment or two ago, just as the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Curtis) hasn't been here for most of the debate of his budget.... But in any event, I would ask Mr. Speaker whether the government would give us an opportunity to remove the two words "and falsification" with leave. This would mean that the remainder would be in order, I gather.

MR. SPEAKER: The problem, hon. members, with the point of order raised by the member for New Westminster is that at this particular time in the proceedings there is no opportunity to put the motion forward — even to ask leave — as this falls in an area in our debate which cannot at this time be entertained for the purpose of putting the motion.

The Leader of the Opposition rises.

Interjection.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. member, I've acknowledged the Leader of the Opposition. For what purpose does he seek the floor?

MR. BARRETT: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Before taking the major step of challenging the Chair on an amendment to the major part of debate, could we have the Chair's undertaking to take this under advisement and give us a further report with specific references to Beauchesne and May concerning this specific wording, prior to us taking the drastic step of having to challenge the Chair?

MR. SPEAKER: The Leader of the Opposition has asked the Chair to provide certain references, and the Chair will so do.

The member for Dewdney continues on the main motion.

ON THE BUDGET

(continued debate)

MR. PELTON: In the short time that I took yesterday to address the budget, I made some general comments, and then I mentioned some specific ones and spoke about them — not at any great length. Starting this morning I would like for a few moments to address this budget in a different way, if I may.

We've heard a lot of discussion about the philosophy and direction of this budget, and I would like to make some observations of my own on that score. This is not a business-as-usual budget. Everyone recognizes that. We have learned much as a province and as a society in the past few years, and this budget, quite rightly, is a sincere effort to apply some of these lessons to the difficult and, indeed, unprecedented problems which confront us. It is my hope that the opposition will respond to the phenomenal changes of the past decade and offer us, if not support, then at least an alternate understanding of those changes and how we must deal with them.

As I understand the history of socialism — in the most general terms, that is — it began as a sincere response to the hardships created by that great upheaval we know as the industrial revolution, and was spurred on by the horrors of the First World War and the Great Depression. It proposed a greatly expanded role for the state in human affairs and anticipated almost Utopian results to flow from that expansion, which was to be guided by a host of well-meaning academics, philosophers, technicians and planners. No one can deny that there has been a vast expansion in the state's role in the past century under many different parties and labels, and clearly there is a consensus in our society that much of the impact of that expansion in providing social services and protective legislation has been beneficial and humane and has enhanced the quality of our lives and society. Those are lessons learned from hard experience, to put it mildly, of millions of ordinary people over more than two centuries of industrial society, and we forget or ignore them at our peril.

There is, however, an inescapable complexity to human beings and to human communities which absolutely and perpetually confounds the best conceived and intended of Utopian plans. This is a point which socialists seem not to have learned or digested after decades of testing their theories around the world. Their vision is based on a paradox, or contradiction, which is so basic to their philosophy that they seem blind to it. Their plans for the average man and women always seem to depend inevitably on the predetermination of society's goals by an elite — that same group of well-meaning academics, philosophers, technicians and planners to whom I referred a moment ago.

Socialism in practice is more elitist and less democratic than any reform-minded, free enterprise system. Socialists may not wish to impose their elitist values on the public, but somehow — no matter how it is sugar-coated — the bottom line with socialism is "Father knows best. You children just don't understand that it's for your own good. Do what Daddy says, or else." These are shades of Pierre Trudeau, the perfect academic socialist. Socialist hostility to free enterprise is often based on the total misconception that a free-market economy is an unplanned economy. If this were true at all, Mr. Speaker, the unprecedented, remarkable and obvious widespread economic progress of the ordinary man and woman under free economies over 250 years would be totally inexplicable in any rational way.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

Free enterprise, Mr. Speaker, works as well as it does because it is far more planned than state-managed economy. In a centralized socialist-planned economy there would be one plan; in a decentralized system there might be as many as a hundred. In a free enterprise economy there are as many plans as there are individuals; today, in British Columbia that means well over two million plans. Members opposite speak with great fervour in promoting decentralization, Mr. Speaker. I don't know how you can get more decentralized than that. I recognize that the free market is an ideal which can only be approximated in reality. I understand that there are inequities between individuals which must be taken into account. Even so, we should not underestimate the value of the simple process of voluntary interaction and relatively

[ Page 943 ]

personalized planning. The budget recognized the need for more decentralized economic planning precisely in its very strong direction towards the free market.

Mr. Speaker, I believe in balance, and I am no more a believer in Utopian free enterprise than I am in Utopian socialism. In recent years many thoughtful people, often those who began their careers as socialists, have come to recognize the paradox of elite-inspired and enforced universal benevolence which lies at the heart of socialism. They have seen the performance of the superstate fall woefully short of expectations time and time again, almost invariably at enormously inflated costs. They have been compelled by this evidence to rethink any love affair they may have had with socialism as a cure-all for the ills of mankind. The spontaneity, the creativity, the independence of mind as well as economic terms of the individuals who comprise our society: these are of enormous value beyond that which can be easily accounted in dollars and cents. If over-reliance on government has cost us dearly in our taxes and burden of indebtedness, it has cost us no less dearly in the sacrifice of these less tangible but no less valuable items.

This budget seeks anew balance between state and citizen based on very real learning and experience, not only here but around the world. The spending priority on social areas and the increases in those areas make it crystal clear that we have not forgotten the lessons of the 1930s. Far from it. The new emphasis and the striving for a balance more directed toward the individual planning of free markets is an indication that we did not cease our learning in the 1930s, but have continued to change and adjust to a world which is changing at an ever-accelerating rate. To put it another way, government has learned a measure of humility in dealing with human affairs. I was very impressed with the observation of the Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) that, even given the entire provincial budget, she could not supply the human needs that can only be supplied in their very nature by the institution of the family. The recognition that society is far too complex, far too alive, for any one institution to monopolize is a lesson of the 1980s, which is every bit as relevant and necessary to our future as the lessons of the Dirty Thirties.

[10:30]

I have said that there is a need for balance, and I hope the opposition will seriously consider this question: when, and in what areas, is enough government enough? Their refusal even to hint at an answer was, I believe, the underlying cause of their electoral defeat, and I believe it goes a long way toward explaining their party's federal decline. We are trying in this budget to strike a new balance between state and citizen. It will not be perfect, and further learning and further adjustments will undoubtedly be required. But the point is that we are trying very seriously to come to grips with the evident need for a new balance. Those who ignore the process risk being consigned to a status of permanent irrelevancy by a public which will not accept business as usual from its political leaders.

In closing, Mr. Speaker, I would state my belief that this budget is a reaffirmation of the basic tenets of this government's policy, which see government in a role supporting private initiative out of which springs permanent and rewarding jobs; a role which builds a secure and prosperous economic future; a role which does not recognize any benefit from an ever-expanding and overbearing bureaucracy; and a role which sees individual initiative as a means to extricate us from the recession in which we have found ourselves.

In one of the best media reports that I have heard recently — radio station CHQM, as a matter of fact — it was suggested that the budget is "an historic document." I believe this, and I believe it will be emulated within other jurisdictions as we strive to find the economic highway — a throughway, we hope — which will lead us to a complete recovery, and at least a partial return to those halcyon days of robust economy that will provide us with the necessary elbow room to improve the quality of life for all British Columbians.

Mr. Speaker, I believe this budget is an historic document in the truest sense and I commend it to the support of this House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Continuing on the motion that Mr. Speaker do now leave the chair, the Chair recognizes the hon. member for Atlin.

MR. PASSARELL: That's the first time the government hasn't given me a standing ovation.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Leader! Leader!

MR. PASSARELL: Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, right at the outset I'd like to say something nice about the budget. I really believe something nice has to be said about this budget. One of the ways this government has to get its message out is to hit the airwaves again. This is a suggestion made to me by my friend up north, old Bob, when I was up there last week doing some fishing with him.

MR. PARKS: How is old Bob?

MR. PASSARELL: Old Bob is doing well. He said, "Now when you get down there I want you to give them some advice on how to get their message across." A previous speaker said this is an historic document; it's more like a hysterical document. He said: "There are some decent things in it, and you need some actors to go on television with a cabinet minister to get some of those decent things across to the public." As a suggestion, he said you could run a 30-second spot between cartoons in the morning, or just before the television goes off at night, and have these different actors and actresses be with the cabinet minister and make some statements. The first one, old Bob advised me, would have the Provincial Secretary and Mr. T. I don't know if most of you know who Mr. T. is. He's the chap with the mohawk haircut. You would have Mr. T. and the Provincial Secretary. Nothing would be said. The two of them would be in bearskin rugs and glare into the camera. A little message would go across on the bottom while these two gentlemen are glaring into the camera, both of them about 300 pounds of solid muscle, and saying: "Do we look like people who fire people?"

That would be one. Another would be the Premier and ex-U.S. president Richard Nixon. The two of them would be saying, "Do we look like the type of people who would not tell you the truth? Believe us." The third would have the Finance Minister with Tom Mix. They'd be sitting on horses, but backwards.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who was Tom Mix?

MR. PASSARELL: A famous cowboy.

[ Page 944 ]

They'd be dressed up in cowboy boots and western gear that they bought at Miss Frith's, sitting on horses backwards, saying: "This government needs a new direction."

The fourth one to get the idea across would have the Minister of Human Resources and Miss Piggy standing in the bush somewhere with chainsaws, and in cork boots, saying: "There have to be cuts in the Ministry of Human Resources." They could even sell this thing to Stihl or Black and Decker to make some extra. But the one I like best has the Minister of Human Resources with Rhett Butler, the famous character from Gone With The Wind. This budget should be going with the wind too. Could you picture that: turning to the Minister of Human Resources and saying, "Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn." That's some advice.

Before and after the election you people found it very successful to run commercials. Those are some suggestions old Bob gave me concerning how you could use some actors and actresses.

Now I've got to say something decent about the budget. I've already led into it that using actors was to get their message across — which they probably do, if you believe what you see on television. Last night I saw a program on the news in which a reporter said the government of the day is going to have its MLAs pass out leaflets on streetcorners to get their message across.

What are they going to say? There are some decent things in it.

MR. BARNES: Withdraw it.

MR. PASSARELL: That would be one.

One of the things in this $8.3 billion budget that I'd like to give credit to is the $1.6 billion deficit. That deserves credit.

Pharmacare has been increased, which will be good for the north. One thing about which I'm personally satisfied and which I'm glad to see is the increase in air ambulance service, which, as you know, Mr. Speaker, coming from the north, is an important and necessary element in our society in the north. GAIN has been increased, and small business and regional industrial development has been increased.

But as with any budget, or most of the legislation that this government brings down, it does have its negative aspects. This government has cut back on services to seniors and, to a certain extent, on highway construction, for which I am the critic. There are many other social services, too numerous to mention at this time, which they have cut back. I will discuss these cutbacks later during specific estimates, when it is more proper to do so.

What really reminds me of this budget is that movie.... You probably remember it, Mr. Speaker, when you were a young guy; I think it first came out in 1929. It was about a couple who went to New York City on a holiday. On the first night they were in New York they got robbed; then they lost all their money and luggage and couldn't pay their hotel bill, so they were thrown out; they had their car stolen and they were out on the street. To a certain extent, aspects of this budget do the same thing. In relation to this budget, the interesting thing is that....

Mr. Member, prior to and during the election, did you find they were campaigning on job creation? When you turned on the television it was: 'A vote for us is going to be job creation." But we've been sitting here now for two months, and I haven't seen any legislation for job creation come up. All it is doing is taking away jobs. Job elimination in the public sector, putting the final nail in the coffin of Ocean Falls. I'd like to know when they're going to fulfil their promises concerning job creation in the new mandate of the government.

What really bothers me is the direction this budget is taking. To a certain extent, it's a direction made by extremists who are attempting to undo certain of the democratic traditions that we've been brought up with and have lived with in this great country. The old adage says that history always repeats itself, and there are conditions and issues facing us that are very similar to the events that faced certain countries in Europe in the 1930s. Before the government of the day embarks on its present course of dismissing workers without cause and dismissing human rights commissions, it should go back to that old adage and remember what happened in 1930 in Germany.

People all over this province are writing me and my colleagues — and, I'm sure, those on the government side of the House — asking why this government is bringing in a budget that's hurting so many people.

Interjection.

MR. PASSARELL: No, Bob wanted me to say that it was a stupid budget. But I don't know, can you say "stupid" in here? Is that unparliamentary?

HON. MR. RITCHIE: Not unless you're referring to yourself.

MR. PASSARELL: Not to me, Mr. Minister of Municipal Affairs. If there's been any stupidity that I've seen in this House in the last few days, I would have to attribute it to you — what you did on television with the Leader of the Opposition. That was probably one of the stupidest things I've ever seen in my life.

[10:45]

DEPUTY SPEAKER: If the reference is to the hon. member, it must be withdrawn.

MR. PASSARELL: Okay. Yes, I understand. Thank you for your advice.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member will withdraw any reference to another hon. member.

MR. PASSARELL: Yes, that's right.

HON. MR. RITCHIE: It's what I'd like to do.

MR. PASSARELL: Well, he talks from his seat about what he'd like to do.

This budget shows that Social Credit really doesn't have the understanding to do anything worthwhile with economic development or job training. It hasn't come out through this budget, and certainly it hasn't come out in the two months that we've been sitting here. It's brutal, miserable, soaks the poor and the sick, and adds living costs to consumers because it harms business and takes revenge, to a certain extent, on public servants. Their excuse is, they say that there are hard times in this province. In fact, they did a great deal to cause hard times by their own bad management and lack of planning over the last few years.

[ Page 945 ]

To a certain extent it's no wonder that they didn't have the courage to stand up before the election, with all their television commercials and PR jobs, and tell the people exactly what this budget was going to contain. Historically budgets have usually come in March. We didn't have a budget this year; it came in much later, after an election. To a certain extent it shows the depth of their incompetence. If they had presented this budget at a proper time, when it should have been, in March when the financial year ran out, they know themselves they would never have been elected running for a mandate on this budget. By keeping their financial incompetence a secret until after the election, and by hiring a regiment of highly paid public relations flacks, they used a campaign of hollow slogans to a certain extent to trick people into voting for them. But then, nearly half the public in this province voted against them, and they really don't have a mandate to call for the program of financial butchery that they want to say is a budget.

We've been off the budget for a month now. Going back over my old notes from a month ago, before we went on to public bills and orders, I could hardly believe it when I heard the hon. second member for Vancouver South (Hon. Mr. Rogers) stand up in this House and say that he had not heard any complaints about the budget. I was wondering where he was living to make a statement like that. He must be living in a world of his own, because wherever I go throughout this province I hear people talking about how they really don't appreciate this budget. They're voicing their anger and disgust. I've heard plenty of complaints about this budget from the north, from the people of Atlin. It's surprising that most of the angry complaints are coming from small businesses in the north.

Interjection.

MR. PASSARELL: For my hon. friend to my left, I will tell him why — because I doubt if you really understand why the small businesses in the north are complaining. As I go along, I think you'll understand, because you're a lawyer and have some business sense.

Interjection.

MR. PASSARELL: He's an honourable man, as are all members of this House.

But for your education today, I'd like to explain why small businessmen in the far north are concerned about this budget. Most northern businessmen make heavy use of telephones. Most of us in the north are not on the B.C. Tel system; we're on another telephone system in the far north, CN; it's a corporation called NorthwesTel. Through their heavy use of long-distance telephone conversations they have to order their mechanical parts from cities in the south of this province. Also, to make an airline reservation you have to use long-distance. Small businessmen who are in the tourist area have to check on airline flights for tourists' incoming flights. Under this budget all these new long-distance phone calls will be subject to a 7 percent sales tax. That is one of the reasons they're angry about it.

The cost of living and doing business in the far north is already much higher than it is elsewhere. That is logical because of the geographical distances. In this budget the government has added an extra burden to these small businesses. During a recession there need to be incentives for consumer spending. Look at Ontario, for example, where they've taken sales tax off major appliances to encourage consumer spending in that province. Since they did this in their budget a few months back, all reports are that it's been very successful, with more spending on the consumer side of the ledger.

We are finding that some of the tax increases have a paralysing aspect on small business in this province. Most of the Atlin constituency small-business merchants and other small-business-related activities suffer loss because — this is particularly in the far north — they do their shopping in the Yukon, which has no sales tax. So businesses, particularly in the communities of Atlin, Lower Post and Cassiar, are finding that consumers are driving the extra 100 miles, or 150 miles if it's from Cassiar and going into the Yukon and buying their products because there's no sales tax. This budget will increase our sales tax in this province to 7 percent.

Mr. Speaker, you know yourself, as a northerner, that the north is the future of the province. This is a region that is going to generate a great many of British Columbia's future jobs; not looking at the short term of 1983-84, but at the 1990s and the turn of the century, it's going to be the north where the jobs are. We have the resources. But it would be logical to have an exemption from sales tax for all people living in the north. So far the government has only, once again, loaded northern residents with extra hardships.

Another aspect of this budget is that a great many of the residents of my riding are the first citizens of this country, the native people, who have also suffered the loss of their lands and resources without any treaty or compensation. One aspect of this budget that directly relates to the first citizens of this country and our province is the First Citizens' Fund, and we have seen the First Citizens' Fund being decreased through this budget. One thing to remember is the First Citizens' Fund is in no sense a payment to native people for the losses and hardships they have suffered. It could be useful in helping them create their own programs and enterprises, but what we've seen is that this government has slashed into the First Citizens' Fund again; cut into it by nearly a million dollars from the fund in this disaster of a budget that the government has announced.

I talked earlier about some of the cutbacks: roads — that's a major issue in the far north, and I'm pleased that I was able to secure the position of Highways critic in the Legislature, because northern roads were seriously neglected prior to this budget. My concern is that now the highway program has been cut by $55 million from the previous year, you may be sure that the cuts in northern road budgets are going to be proportionately larger than in the south. You can also be sure that our rotten roads are going to get worse. There was a rumour going around last week when I was up fishing that some of the potholes are getting so bad that cars are disappearing into them on Highway 37 and on the Atlin road.

Tourism is another aspect of this budget. Tourism is probably, in this recession, the largest source of income for northern people today. Poor roads and increased sales tax will only cause damage to our number one industry in the north, the tourist industry. What we need, instead of cutting back in these areas.... If I'm not mistaken, the tourist budget is the second lowest in the entire budget; only the Ministry of Intergovernmental Relations is less than Tourism. But what is happening is that poor roads and increased sales tax can only seriously damage the tourist industry in the far north. What we need are incentives for tourist development, instead of

[ Page 946 ]

which the government gives us crippling taxes to deal with. The tax on restaurant meals is one of the most distinct disadvantages to the tourist business right through this province and into the north. I noticed this week in the newspaper that a group of restaurateurs in the Kootenays have put together a petition. Approximately 1,200 people — the majority of restaurant owners in the Kootenay area — signed the petition saying that they're opposed to this. A suggestion to the government has been brought forward by the restaurant association is that you would drop the 7 percent tax on meals over $7 and bring in some type of logical tax structure. You could put it at 2 percent for any meal, but 7 percent over $7 makes no sense. A recommendation from that restaurant association group is to drop the 7 percent over $7. It is too much. Come in with a tax incentive of 2 percent on all meals.

Another tax increase in this budget is the increase in rural property taxes once again. This is a hardship to tourist operators, the owners of these small facilities and to all residents in the north. Most of us who live in the north have found that our rural property taxes in the last few years have increased considerably — much higher than the cost of living in some areas. As I pointed out in the last budget speech prior to the election, areas like Dease Lake have found that some of their properties have increased by 400 percent. As a suggestion to this government, they should delay any increases in rural property taxes as long as the present depression or recession lasts.

To go to one of the positive aspects, as the critic for Highways and Transportation, I praise the government for increasing the air ambulance service by 32 percent. By the same token I would be remiss in not pointing out that that is one small aspect of this budget that is positive. The majority of this budget is negative, particularly to the people who we are being punished for living in the north.

A while back in Cassiar the Minister of Industry and Small Business Development (Hon. Mr. Phillips) was addressing a crowd of about 200 people in Cassiar. Questions that are raised to me daily concerning increases in property taxes and highway construction were raised to the minister. Do you know what the Minister said? He said: "If you don't like living in the north, move south." Then we heard the Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mr. Chabot) use a similar statement the other day when the hon. second member for Victoria (Mr. Blencoe) questioned him about some of his statements in this House regarding Victoria's business, and he said: "Well, if you can't get a job here, move someplace else." Where are you supposed to move to in this province? One area is just as bad as the other. You can't go around telling people to move out. We have to address the problems in every community in this province.

I wonder if this government could be persuaded to give something back to the northern people in exchange for all the things we have had taken away from us in the far north — our resources, our water and our land. One positive suggestion to this government is the Nishga. The Nishga people are very sturdy and have been pushing for a very long time for a better deal that will allow them to have a greater degree of economic self-sufficiency. What the Nishga people want is a timber licence that will allow them to cut, process and sell wood in their traditional territory. Yet the government turns a deaf ear to this economic expansion by the Nishga people. The Nisgha are being punished regarding their treaty. This party has shown itself over the years to be a party of big business. It leaves the trees in the Nishga territory in the hands of a huge timber corporation. This timber corporation is doing very little with regard to tree licence No. 1. Why doesn't this government give the Nishga the licence to take some of that over? Tree licence No. 1 is the largest in the province, and it is not being used by this huge timber corporation. They can at least saw it into lumber to build their own homes or tourist resorts. With some encouragement from this government they might be able to develop some new products and new markets from the far north. This corporate monster is none other than the famous BCRIC.

[11:00]

Since Premier Bennett gave away to big business a number of publicly owned enterprises a few years back which were owned by the taxpayers — you and I, Mr. Speaker, and our children — big business has been playing the games of merger and takeover. These paper games have been profitable to the insiders and to the company executives who have made money on these deals. They've done very little for production; they've done very little for jobs. The corporations we're talking about are huge, sluggish private bureaucracies.

This government always preaches empty sermons about free enterprise. When is it going to give the first citizens of this country even a fraction of that freedom that it grants to its favourite friends in the big business corporate area — corporation friends, their friends? They're not really paying their own way and they're not making proper use of the timber placed at their disposal. I challenge this government, Mr. Speaker, to quit its preaching and self-congratulation and do something useful for a change. I challenge them to give the timber licence to the Nishga people.

There's a very interesting article in this morning's Victoria Times-Colonist, section B, entitled: "Savings From Firings Still a Mystery." It talks about "a $2.4 billion deficit, a 12.3 increase in spending, more than 7,000 firings.... The editorial says: "The estimates are marvellous for what they conceal rather than what they tell you." Mr. Speaker, we're all honourable members in this House. Why do we have to present something to the people in this province, people who gave their faith and their support to this government...? Why do we have to have articles written that say: "These estimates are marvellous for what they conceal rather than what they tell you"? Why doesn't this government come out and be truthful about exactly what's going on?

The Finance Minister (Hon. Mr. Curtis) is quoted as saying:

"It he doesn't know how much money will be saved by eliminating 6,841 positions and numerous government services and programs. It does, however, say the way to determine the savings from firings is to multiply the number of jobs lost by the average salary of $23,000, for a total of $93 million — but the ministry will not confirm this figure."

It's very empty. Mr. Speaker, throwing around figures of cutting back.... We're going to cut back 6,841 civil servants in this province, and then say it's going to save $93 million. Why can't they put that down in black and white?"Much of the increase in spending can be attributed to an 88 percent jump in the Finance ministry's expenditures, from $177.4 million to $333.5 million." I wonder whatever happened to that glorious program that the government takes credit for — the 6-and-5 program — in conjunction with their leader, the Prime Minister. That 88 percent increase certainly doesn't fit into the category of 6-and-5. Even if you multiply

[ Page 947 ]

six times five it's still 30 percent; it's still triple what the Finance Minister is doing in his own expenditures.

Further on the article says: "Spending of the Employment Development Account will increase 783 percent to $245 million, according to the budget, but at least $39 million of that money has been shifted to EDA from another ministry."

I talked earlier about the greatest percentage decrease in spending through this budget being a decrease of 20.4 percent in the Tourism ministry, which is already the smallest-spending ministry after Intergovernmental Relations. As I said earlier, the number one industry in the far north is tourism. Our mines are closed; our forestry has not been open for over a year and a half. What we are doing to our number one industry is causing the greatest decrease of any of the ministries through this budget — 20.4 percent. We're seeing a predicted growth of tourism in this province of 1.5 percent to 2.5 percent of the gross provincial product this year. Still, Mr. Speaker, we go out of our way to decrease an important ministry, Tourism. I am surprised that the Tourist minister (Hon. Mr. Richmond) hasn't stood in his place to condemn this move of cutting back.

I find it very hard to understand, Mr. Speaker.... The discontent of the public is being shown out there constantly through demonstrations, petitions and letters to their elected representatives. To a certain extent some of the arrogant manners of these ministers and people responsible for these programs.... The bishop here in Victoria has an article in this morning's paper. In regard to the budget we're debating, Bishop de Roo accuses the Socreds of making the poor carry the rich.

AN HON. MEMBER: What a crock!

MRS. JOHNSTON: Rubbish!

MR. PASSARELL: I certainly wouldn't want to say that to the bishop myself, but you have the right to say it. I would probably be more like the first member for Surrey. No, I wouldn't say that other thing to the bishop. You know what happened in that cartoon in today's paper. Did you see that cartoon, Mr. Speaker?

MR. PARKS: You wish to table the cartoon before this House?

MR. PASSARELL Sure. It's probably the most educational thing you've read in a long time, Mr. Member. It's only got five words on it: a little speech by the Premier regarding all the hoopla about his restraint program. A bolt of lightning is coming from the sky, but nobody's listening.

But on to what the bishop has said. There are some important things that he said in this article by Stephen Hume. I'll quote this one: "The issue is this: is it, in the light of the Gospel and in the light of Christian social teaching, right or wrong that the poor and the weak should pay for a restraint program?" No, I don't think it should be. I think what the bishop goes through in this excellent statement of his commitments is something that all hon. members in this House should take to heart.

MR. REID: What did Bob say?

MR. PASSARELL: We've already talked about Bob. You were out.

Interjection.

MR. PASSARELL: You can't call Bob. You know that Bob doesn't have a telephone.

Interjection.

MR. PASSARELL: Broadway Bob? He'll give you the message in neon lights. Where is he today? He's gone. Broadway Bob has gone to another show.

What we should take from the bishop's statement this morning is the aspect of cooperation, not confrontation. That's what is really needed. As a political party they have to bring forth their budget. If they believe that it has to be drastic in the areas that they believe warrant the attention, they should be able to present this to the public and not try any kind of deception, saying one thing to get elected and then bringing in a budget with this deception afterwards. Why not just take this "once" debate — because this is one of the few debates we have in this House that is limited to any length of time; we have approximately four more days to deal with this budget....

The green light. That means I can go for another 40 minutes? With unanimous consent?

MR. REID: Back to Atlin!

MR. PASSARELL: I'd love to go back, but the plane left about ten minutes ago, and I felt that it was so important to go through with this speech here today. As always when I talk....

Interjection.

MR. PASSARELL: A free vote? Now that's something you've never done. But it's always a slice to talk to this esteemed....

AN HON. MEMBER: Go back to the number one industry in the north. Try to tell me again.

MR. PASSARELL: You'd never get it, Mr. Member. You'd never understand. I would like to take you up north sometime just to see what's going on. You'll get out of the city in winter — sixty below.... I'd like to take you up there, and we'll do some ice fishing. Any time you want to go up there, you give me.... You'd be a lot more helpful than some of the other people that came up from that government prior to May 5.

Interjection.

MR. PASSARELL: The mandate that I got? And you guys talk about your mandate? A 380,000 percent increase in popular vote from one election to the other. I'm a living legend.

Interjections.

MR. PASSARELL: But, Mr. Speaker, it's been a slice. I've finally got them starting to speak. It was too early in the

[ Page 948 ]

morning. They were sitting there with their foreheads on their desks, and now we've finally started to wind them up here.

AN HON. MEMBER: Let's just say you're a legend.

Interjections.

MR. PASSARELL: One at a time here.

MR. MOWAT: If I come up there and you lose in the next election, don't blame me.

MR. PASSARELL: Never. No, I promise that if you come up, I will not get a 380,000 percent increase in popular vote. I will get a 500,000 percent increase.

MR. PARKS: Would that be six more votes?

MR. PASSARELL: No, that would be 11.

Well, Mr. Speaker, it's been a slice. Have a good weekend.

HON. MR. McGEER: Mr. Speaker, it was just over 20 years ago that I was first honoured to be a member of this assembly. During that initial year I was in the corner where the member for Maillardville-Coquitlam (Mr. Parks) now sits. It was a great seat for debate in this House. It's just 20 years now, Mr. Speaker, and many budgets have come and gone in that time. I think it is perhaps reasonable that as a long-term member I might be permitted to indulge a little bit in some comparisons between then and now. The only people in the assembly at that time who are still here today are the first and second members for Vancouver East (Messrs. Barrett and Macdonald), neither one of which, I'm sorry to say, is in the assembly at the present time.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

There are some changes that have taken place — some for the better, some for the worse. Among the changes for the worse is that never ever in that time would the first and second members for Vancouver East be absent from the assembly during debate, nor would any members of the House. Furthermore, never ever would we have the press gallery, as we see today.... I see there's the overflow up there in the top seats, but never ever in the main press gallery would the members of the great fourth estate be absent to miss what the members of the Legislative Assembly had to say in debate. And never ever ever would a member of this assembly dare stand up and give a speech which would waste the time of the House. He would be too embarrassed to appear in the corridors or in the legislative dining room, and the press would never permit that member to forget that he had got up and wasted breath on the assembly and on the people of British Columbia. How times have changed now that we have shifted into dreams of consciousness on the floor of the House and simply dreams in the press gallery. The hard realities that used to characterize debate and the sharp attention to the issues of the day have unfortunately become a matter of history in this House.

[11:15]

My great wish upon reflection over time is that we could recapture some of the attention to the issues and that we could bring back some of the former considerably great debate that members of the opposition once presented to this House, even the first and second members for Vancouver East.

That first budget, which I did not support, Mr. Speaker, was for $373 million. The budget we now debate, which I shall support, is for $8.4 billion. In terms of the capacity of the people of British Columbia to support, the budget is too high, because that budget overspends despite the best efforts of the government to pare. Despite the considerable hostility being attended to that budget right across the nation, Mr. Speaker, that $1.6 billion deficit alone is over four times the size of the budget which I first debated in this Legislature only 20 years ago. What were the components of that budget? Here the comparisons begin to show in the way the priorities have shifted in this province, and the way, in this member's view, the new directions must be sought.

At that time the Health budget in British Columbia was not $2.45 billion; it was $93 million. The Education budget was not $1.79 billion; it was $93 million. The welfare budget was not $1.3 billion; it was $31 million. The Highways budget in that day was $74.8 million, 20 percent of the entire budget of British Columbia. Today, and I'm going to come back to this, the budget for Highways is $468 million, only 5.7 percent of the budget. The government of that day had pursued, for over a decade, an aggressive program of opening up land in British Columbia, knitting together the communities of the province with a highways system which we enjoy today, but which in that time we have scarcely improved upon.

Many, including myself, felt we were lacking conspicuously in British Columbia in our services in health and education. At that time there was one post-secondary institution in British Columbia. Today we have three public universities and one private university. We have 21 colleges and institutes. We have a budget for post-secondary education that has gone from $15.6 million to $708 million. Never again in the history of British Columbia will we ever have a period of such flowering and development of our educational services in this province. In addition to the tremendous variety of post-secondary services that we have supplied, we now have an educational television network, the Knowledge Network, of which I'm extremely proud. We have an open learning institute which will permit people, no matter what their financial or geographical circumstances, or what their previous educational performance, to enter our system and obtain a university degree in their living room. That's precisely how far we've come in 20 years.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

In the health field, the expenditures in those days were $31 million. We have now provided a comprehensive medicare system. We have introduced chronic care. We've doubled the size of our medical school, and we have provided a variety and enrichment of health services that never again will be duplicated in British Columbia's history. That's what has taken place in the last 20 years.

In addition, there has been an enrichment beyond anyone's dreams of 20 years ago in the variety and depth of Human Resources services to help the poor and the disadvantaged. I was a harsh critic of the government in those days because there was so much that needed to be done in the way of development of these services. But then, as now, such things could not and would not be possible unless along the way, in parallel and in fact leading these developments, we

[ Page 949 ]

had the industrial base which would provide not just career employment but the additional resources, surplus to that employment, that would provide for the investment and education of our future generation, and at the same time provide fair and appropriate services to the poor, and to those disadvantaged in health and other areas.

While we were driving to develop a new country and pushing the development and commercialization of our considerable resources — members who were in the House during those years will have been bored by the speeches that I gave — we were making no effort to broaden our industrial base by seeking other opportunities for growth than those related directly to resources.

During the past 20 years, in which British Columbia and most of Canada slept through opportunities, the great growth in wealth and employment has stemmed from those parts of the world that then embraced the opportunities presented by high technology industry, so while Bud Drury in the House of Commons was saying that Canada had all the science it needed from the journals of the day, the leaders in Japan — parliamentary, corporate and civil service — were setting a new direction for that country which has today made Japan the envy of the industrial world. It has provided a growth and momentum unmatched anywhere in the west. We are starting to develop that in British Columbia in 1983, if we stick to this course of action. By the turn of the century we too in British Columbia will enjoy the richness of industrial development that comes to Japan in 1983 as a result of policies that it developed in the 1960s.

Let me reflect a little bit on what the consequences have been of this change in momentum in British Columbia. From building highways, from developing resources to provision of enrichment of social services, our spending has outstripped the ability of our industrial base to pay. It is absolutely mandatory that this disparity be eliminated. Failure to undertake this necessary correction is only going to penalize future generations of British Columbians, because of the shortsightedness, the profligacy, and the inability of those elected today to see clearly the priorities that lie ahead. That is the problem. No one contributes more to that problem than the members opposite. It is not just the content of their speeches; it is their inability to see any more clearly today than they did 20 years ago the appropriate directions for British Columbia.

Since that time the NDP has lost six elections. In 1963 they lost, in 1966 they lost, in 1969 they lost, in 1975 they lost, in 1979 they lost, and in 1983 — six elections, deservedly. In the time that they were in office from 1972 to 1975 they contributed to one massive step backwards for mankind, at least in British Columbia. It was their promotion of inefficiency, their admiration of the labour movement, their inability to serve all segments of society. They thrashed capital, exported our brains and left us with wreckage on the hands of the government that then took over in 1975 to try to set new directions for our province.

We have overdone to a fault the ability of our educational system fairly to serve the people of British Columbia, when you have a school superintendent in one of the northern districts of British Columbia paid $84,000 a year and another on the North Shore over $91,000 dollars a year — higher salaries than are paid to the Premier of the province, the number one figure in British Columbia. I mention these examples only to say that the generosity of the public sector has not necessarily been followed by discipline, by efficiency and by cost benefit to the taxpayers of the province.

When the enrichment of the services has been provided, but it has been accompanied by waste and inefficiency, and when the sum of that is beyond the ability of the taxpayers of British Columbia to support by a total of $1.6 billion, on the face of it, it says that appropriate corrective action must be taken. The growth phase is completed.

MR. LEA: What have you done to help?

HON. MR. McGEER: What has to be done now? This is the whole purpose of Bill 3: to begin — now that the Building job has been completed — and to put into place appropriate efficiencies and appropriate delivery of services so that the people who are paying the taxes can get back into balance again.

[11:30]

Mr. Speaker, I want to say that in this time in which our social services have been building, with speed and with inefficiency, to the point where now they have overshot the industrial capacity of British Columbia, at the same time we have almost totally forgotten that we live in an area blessed with riches and opportunities which are forgone as we stare at our feet and haggle with one another. How many members of this House realize that within 300 miles of this legislative building we have a great inland empire over twice the size of Belgium, half again as large as Switzerland, nearly twice the size of The Netherlands, 20 times the size of Luxembourg, almost as large as Ireland, and much larger than Denmark which is so far unexplored — not a road, not a community, not a permanent inhabitant. We have a great inland empire, an untouched country in British Columbia.

It lies south of Highway 16, north of the western provincial highway from Williams Lake to the coast, west of the Cariboo highway, and behind the Coast Mountains; a country almost the size of — or larger than — almost half the nations in Europe, untouched and unopened; flat plain, not impenetrable mountains and icefields such as the Homathko icefields of British Columbia, more spectacular in scenery than anything in Europe or the Rocky Mountains, again unseen by British Columbians.

So we have much to do yet. A quarter of British Columbia, north of Highway 16, behind the Alaska panhandle, is largely unopened because the resource policies have not had the strength they had 20 years ago, because we're being pushed to supply social services that have been developed because the field has been saturated to a fault — the additions are additions of inefficiency and they encumber the ability of those who developed British Columbia and would do so again now to make their contributions.

So, Mr. Speaker, when we recover our balance in this province, it can only be done by curbing expenditures in those areas that have been draining the ability of this province to carry on with the pioneering development that characterized the first 150 years of its settlement. That must be recovered. The great inland empire, I submit, needs to be opened up today even more than it did 20 years ago. I would like to see the day arrive in British Columbia when we can open up the inland empire, when we can once again see development of the great northwest area of British Columbia, when we begin to pay enough attention to the industrial base, when we begin to develop enough balance in what should go to social services and what should be reinvested in the future

[ Page 950 ]

of this province that we can get on again with the development of British Columbia and the realization of the potential it holds for our province.

Yes, there was a time, before we lost our courage, when power was the cutting edge of industrial development. Now, unfortunately, today and for the next two or three years we'll be spilling power over our dams, throwing it away, wasting an energy resource that we've already developed, to say nothing of two-thirds of our potential renewable energy — clean from hydro-electric power — that we yet to touch in British Columbia.

One of the things I think should be done, Mr. Speaker, now that we are spilling power and throwing it away in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Quebec and Ontario — and will be spilling power over dams for years to come — is that we should be electrilizing our railroads. We should be giving power to railroads. We're throwing it away at the present time. If we were to do that, we wouldn't be wasting our money subsidizing and purchasing Arab fuel. One of the great advantages of electrilized railroads — which they have in Sweden and some other countries of the world where hydro-electric power is available — is that the efficiency of railroads would go up, not just that you don't waste diesel engines inefficiently converting diesel fuel to electricity. When you run downhill — as we do — getting our resources out of the interior of British Columbia to the coast instead of wasting energy braking the trains, you're putting energy back into the system. That would be one of the great capital developments that we could take — husbanding those resources that are scarce in Canada and ending the waste of those resources which we have in generous surplus.

It all bears on the ability of this Legislative Assembly and other opinion-makers in this province to begin to see, perhaps for the first time, very clearly what must be the priorities and their balance in developing the province. We went through a considerable period when the opening up of the country and the building of the resource industrial base so far outstripped the requirements of building human and educational services. It got so far out of step. It was unfortunate. Do you know what the consequence of that was? We got an NDP government for one term. What a penalty to have paid! A sin of equal dimension might have that curse revisited on British Columbia. I hope the Lord and common sense can spare us that and that the people of British Columbia will do as they did in 1933, reject the NDP; do as they did in 1937, reject the NDP; do as they did in 1941, reject the NDP; do as they did in 1945, reject the NDP; and in '49, and in '52, and in '53, and in '56, and in '60. I won't go over the last 20 years again because I've already done that and the members opposite recognize that they need to repent and recast their priorities.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the indulgence of the few members of our assembly who attended this little reminiscence. But I do say that this is no time for this member or anyone else in the Legislative Assembly to look to the past. It is no time, Mr. Speaker, for anyone in this Legislative Assembly to look only to next year's budget. It is our task in this assembly to look 10, 20, 50 and 100 years ahead, to set the directions here which, although they may not seem at the time to produce the maximum immediate benefit, will nonetheless establish in the long term what is best for the people of our province. I don't think the required directions have changed in the past 20 years, and I don't believe, Mr. Speaker, the required directions will change in the next 20 years.

We will continue to be a province blessed by enormous resources by huge territories, by a relatively sparse population with unmatched opportunities in the world to develop those territories for the benefit of the fortunate people who live here. In order to do that we will need to set aside the income in our province that will give us appropriate investment in industry — both resource and knowledge-based. Give us that surplus required to open new country for settlement and for resource development at the same time to get that correct balance of investing some of the surplus in resources for people — education, health, and welfare for the disadvantaged. It's not an impossible task; it's only a task which requires sufficient vision to look beyond today, and perhaps a little bit of opportunity to inspect the past, learning about the opportunities that we took advantage of, as well as the mistakes and distortions.

This budget and the legislative session will pass probably with very little note in history. What will endure, despite what the member for Prince Rupert (Mr. Lea) has to say, will be those small portions of this assembly, as in others, that have been directed towards the long-term future of the British Columbians of tomorrow.

MR. ROSE: I always enjoy listening to the speech of the hon. first member for Vancouver-Point Grey (Mr. McGeer), because it's always the same speech. I want you to know that his speech is becoming one of my favourites. Perhaps he might give me an autographed copy of it sometime, so I can have it framed. It's always interesting to listen to him, because his speeches are kind of a "tour de farce" most of the time. He winds up and let's go, but he seldom hits anything. One of the things I did notice in this great free-enterprise speech.... I've known the hon. minister since he was sitting at the fraternity table, quite close to where I used to eat below the salt, at the University of British Columbia. In spite of his support for free enterprise, I don't think he's ever had his snout out of the public trough. I did take note of this concern about the export of brains from British Columbia over the past 20 years; I note also that he stayed home. I don't know whether that means that he doesn't have many or whether we are one of the lucky ones — or B.C. is — to have him around.

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear!

[11:45]

(Mr. Pelton in the chair.]

MR. ROSE: Anyway, I enjoyed his wallow through nostalgia. He bathed himself in these memories. Like all memories, I think they tend to be coloured. Nostalgia erases the unpleasant memories, and you retain only the pleasant ones. For instance, he's obviously forgotten that this great administration that he joined belatedly.... St. Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus comes to mind; it's rather a cliché also. But he fought it until 1975; he fought every step of the way. He couldn't lick 'em, so he joined 'em. So that's where he was.

I think he's made a tremendous analysis of our problem. The only place where we disagree with him is on the solution. That's what he said. He lauded the Japanese. What have we done here? We've created a complete state of insecurity in the public workforce and in the private sector in this province — a complete state of chaos. Then he lauds the Japanese. What does the Japanese worker have? I'll tell you what the Japanese

[ Page 951 ]

worker has, and I'll tell you what the Japanese government has. It has complete government and industry planning; that's number one. The Japanese workers have lifetime job security; that's number two.

Interjection.

MR. ROSE: It's a kind of tenure. It's the kind the minister enjoys — and the Japanese worker enjoys — but it's the kind he would deprive from everybody else. Something else Japanese workers have: low-interest loans from their companies to buy homes. They also have six-month profit bonuses on profit-sharing. They have paid vacations at company resorts. So don't talk about what what's being done in Japan and what you're doing here. You are trying to destroy those very safety nets that we've had here...that the Japanese worker has achieved. And you want to take it away from them here.

The minister said that we have outstripped our industrial base. He said we've been far too concerned with developing our resources. What will happen, he suggests, is that now that we've got that bill, maybe we'll have a little bit left over for people. I thought the reason for government was people. It isn't necessarily for profit or for exports or anything else. It seems to me that it all comes down to being for people — not just what little bit you have left over. The whole reason we have a government is for people; I think we should know it.

The diversification that he talked about has not taken place, which has made us extremely vulnerable. That is the truth, and that is the serious side of what I have to say today. That is one of the most serious things. We haven't done the things other countries have. We haven't provided for diversification. The minister says we've outstripped the ability of our industrial base to pay. Who's done it? The NDP? This administration has been in power for 27 of the last 30 years, so whose fault is it if we've outstripped our ability to pay? It's because we haven't diversified; that's the problem.

What are you going to do about it in the future? You've had a chance, and so has the western world, for at least 20 years of unprecedented growth. The minister also says we've got power spilling over the dams in British Columbia; they've got power spilling over the dams in Washington too. They've got nuclear plants that they can't go ahead with in Washington. How much are we using alternative and non-renewable resources in the province of British Columbia? About 3 or 4 percent. If we're going to do this we could take the leadership from the Minister of Universities, Science and Communications and ask him to help us diversify. Help us to provide the kinds of R and D we need, the aggressive selling, that would make us far less dependent on the megaprojects in the resource field. That's what our problem is.

We've been insisting upon that kind of diversification all through this budget debate. I don't know why we're on the budget debate today. Why today particularly? We had two or three days of budget debate and then we didn't see it again; it went away. We did all manner of legislative striptease. We had a little ankle showing on Bill 9, perhaps some cleavage on Bill 6, and maybe a glimpse of a shoulder on Bill 3, or something like that. They tantalized us with these things. They were so proud of the budget they wouldn't even bring it forward for debate. That's the truth.

We've had some severe times here in the last year, and we began to wonder when Moody's actually reported that we had slipped in our credit rating, because our economy was in such a turmoil. I think it is going to be worse, not better....

AN HON. MEMBER: That's what you hope.

MR. ROSE: I don't hope it gets worse. Why would I hope that? If people are bragging about how great things are and somebody in the opposition seeks to clarify and set the record straight, and if the government spends most of its time patting itself on the back, then I think somebody else should have a look and see exactly what the causes are.

I would like to read into the record, Mr. Speaker, the transcript of a telephone conversation with Molly Conway of Standard and Poor investment rating house, New York. Ms. Conway is on the Canadian desk, in charge of credit ratings. She was asked why the province has been downgraded to AA from AAA, and I'm now quoting Ms. Conway: "It reflects a deterioration of the province's own creditworthiness. There we were primarily concerned with the economic volatility of the province." Is the economic volatility getting any better? Is there labour peace? Is there the kind of tranquility that would allow us to expect greater investment here at the moment? Of course there isn't, because the government has chosen to use a sledgehammer on both the public and private sectors, as well as to attack those people who could least afford to protect themselves.

Continuing to quote from Ms. Conway: "The downturn last year was much more significant than any of us expected. It indicated that the economic base hasn't been diversified." What have we been calling for for years? R and D, diversification, aggressive selling, new products. Has that happened in British Columbia? The minister gets up a little while ago and calls for all of these things. Where has he been? He's been sitting in that government since 1975. What's he or the government done about that? "It hasn't been diversified to the extent necessary to protect the province from that kind of downturn." Now what Conway, of this prestigious investment house, is saying is simply this: if you're completely dependent upon megaprojects and the exports of primary resources, then when you have a world downturn, you're stuck and vulnerable, and you're going to be wounded. That's what has happened in British Columbia.

Now that we have the government back in power, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, is that somehow going to change? Well, Standard and Poor doesn't think so, not in the immediate future anyway:

"That was the primary reason the downturn last year was much more significant than any of us expected. It indicated that the economic base hasn't been diversified to the extent necessary to protect the province from that kind of downturn. We were also concerned about the size of the budgetary deficit last year and the budgeted deficit for this year."

A lot of people are concerned about it. A lot of people besides Standard and Poor are concerned about the same thing.

Then Ms. Conway was asked this question: "There has been some commentary that the deficit may be in error. Did you get close enough to gauge its accuracy?" "We would expect the deficit to come in somewhat lower than budgeted because the province has tried to be conservative in its revenue estimates." Where have we heard this before? Overestimate spending, underestimate incomes, and guess what you've got? Deja vu. The same thing is going to happen again. Again quoting Ms. Conway: "As you know, last year the big part of the deficit was caused by a revenue shortfall. I think they're pretty careful not to do that again."

[ Page 952 ]

Now this is not a radical socialist speaking here. I'm not quoting anybody like J. S. Woodsworth or Tommy Douglas or anyone like that. I am quoting a telephone conversation from one of the most important investment houses in New York City. They have condemned this government's performance. Well, the Premier can smile. He can smile all the way to the bank. When he gets to the bank this year, he'll find it's cost him two hundred million bucks more in interest alone. So laugh that one off at the bank. That's a very serious thing. And it's because the province has been mismanaged.

Interjection.

MR. ROSE: Don't blame me; I'm NDP. I wasn't here. I was one of those evil people that you're trying to keep out.

Interjection.

MR. ROSE: The minister mentions, too, that he's praying to the Lord. Well, Remi de Roo is praying to the Lord too. Are you praying to the same Lord? I think Remi's probably plugged into the Lord a little better than the Minister of Communications (Hon. Mr. McGeer) is.

AN HON. MEMBER: Is that good leadership?

AN HON. MEMBER: Standard and Poor don't think so.

MR. ROSE: No, they're standard and we're poor. That's what happens.

I want to turn to something else now. We always hear that the economy is fragile. I'm quite sure that that word has probably resulted from advice of the pollsters, because, you know: "Don't rock the boat. The economy is fragile." I think that's true. The economy is fragile. Recovery is fragile; it may not even be here. I'm quite sure that if we didn't draw any attention to the sins of the government, members across the way would feel that the recovery would be much more rapid. We don't buy that, because we think it's our job to point out the error of their ways, their sins. But anyway, we hear that.

I want you to know, Mr. Speaker, that I'm really concerned about it, too. I think that we can't go on the way we're going, locked in this kind of struggle. I think that we're going to somehow have to find our way out of this, because you can't have a province working if it's going to be locked in mortal combat. So we're going to have to look for some way out.

On July 18 the Financial Times came up with this editorial: "Consensus, Not Combat." We've heard from other people, not just New Democrats, who say that we had a mandate for restraint, not revenge. This is what this budget looks like to me: a vengeful budget. Remi de Roo said it was an evil budget, because it treats the weakest segments of our society.... It attacks single parents, the elderly, the people who need social assistance, the handicapped....

MR. MOWAT: Tell us where.

MR. ROSE: I'll come to that.

Here's the Financial Times editorial on July 18. The Financial Times, I think, would be called a responsible journal and not necessarily a New Democratic Party publication. It has this to say: "The British Columbia government, like those of other provinces, needs to get its deficit down. But a 16.6 percent increase in the retail sales tax to rate 7 percent from 6 percent, may not be precisely what the doctor ordered to promote economic recovery." We've heard what the restaurateurs have said. They've come out of a very fragile economy and they find that extra tax on meals hard to swallow. So do a lot of people who go to restaurants.

[12:00]

"It's hard to quarrel with the objective of smaller government. But a time of high unemployment — British Columbia's rate stood at 14.1 percent in June — may not be the best time to dump thousands of fired government workers on the labour market. It is worrisome, too, that the planned smaller government appears to become more centralized and powerful, with a new mandate to intervene in what have been local matters."

That covers a lot. It covers the schools, the municipalities, every fire and police department, junior colleges, the universities — this centralization. This really hasn't got a great deal to do necessarily with employment or economic recovery, but it certainly is a facet of this budget. It certainly is a thrust, a theme, of the budget: more control by the Kremlin and less control in the local municipalities. That's what it means.

It says here: "The provincial government's own spending is rising by more than 12 percent, when most other provinces are holding spending increases to about 8 percent." Everybody else goes down, but the provincial spending goes up. On what? On more centralization, more mega-projects? What are you spending it on? "This difference suggests the Bennett administration is restraining others, but failing to restrain itself." It goes on to say: "The new harsh tone of politics implicit both in recent federal actions and the British Columbia budget seems to indicate that some of our leaders are turning from consensus to combat." These aren't my words. They're the words of the Financial Times. "The talk about consensus may be cheap, but fighting each other could prove expensive." I think we've seen this. We've seen a deliberately leaked document, or what appears to be a deliberately leaked document, on the changes to the Labour Code. These changes would make B.C., instead of one of the most progressive provinces in terms of labour legislation and labour rights, one of the worst. You think you want to make this place the Alabama of Canada? You want to take away people's rights so that they'll come down there and the right-to-workers will move in and start a textile mill? So tell everybody to tote that barge, lift that bale, and don't belong to a union. Decertify them all.

MR. REID: Equal opportunity to work.

MR. ROSE: I didn't mean to provoke them, Mr. Speaker, but you see how the tensions have risen. If we can be shouting at one another in anger across the floor, even in simulated indignation, it's obvious that what goes on here may or may not be a microcosm of what goes on in society. If there were a lot of social and religious tensions and economic tensions, then how can an investor be confident about the future of the province? Is that the kind of climate we need to have our province progress, whether it's through the Social Credit or any other government? I don't think it is. What we have to do is to develop some kind of a means whereby we can get working with one another again and stop beating one another up.

[ Page 953 ]

I would like to indulge myself in another quote from another radical journal — I've just left the Financial Times. This radical journal is called....

AN HON. MEMBER: The Democrat.

MR. ROSE: No, it's not the Democrat; that's not radical. It's the Vancouver Province. The Premier's cartoon is not particularly flattering to him. He looks like a thief in the night. He's got this cape on. I'll withdraw that because....

The headline of their editorial is: "Here's a Chance for Compromise." The editor has this to say: "Premier Bennett should grab at the opportunity handed him by the B.C. Employers' Council to negotiate a truce with his restraint opponents and work out ways of reducing government services with less confrontation." We'd all agree to that, shouldn't we? I think we could all agree with that.

"Council president Jim Matkin says the government and the various communities of interest affected by its legislative program should sit down and resolve their differences. He says each problem area in the controversial package should be tackled one by one." I'll skip a little bit, but I think we agree with this. We're not going to agree with it while this sword is hanging over people's head, because you don't whip British Columbians around. Our traditions of bargaining rights, organization and collective bargaining go back a hundred years. They go back to the coal-mines, where people just didn't lose their jobs; they lost their heads when they tried to organize. We have a tradition in this province that nobody's going to wipe away with just one fell swoop without trouble. But do we need trouble? I don't think we need trouble. We need to calm the place down.

Anyway, Mr. Matkin is a former deputy minister and is well known in government circles in both this administration and the one preceding it. He says: "Governments often reveal their legislative objectives in green papers and white papers so as to get some feedback from the public. Specific legislation is then formulated, based on public response. That's a well-recognized part of the parliamentary process." Have we had that? No. We've had leaked documents to debate in public, like the changes to the Labour Code. Have we had consultation? Sure, we put down the bills — Bill 9, Bill 3, Bill 6 — and then say: "Well, we're going to consult now." When? As the editorial has to say:

"....they do not 'negotiate' on legislation already introduced. Mr. Matkin would argue he's merely suggesting consultation, which, of course, he is. But in practical terms the consultation would have to involve some give and take by the government as well as the groups concerned, if Mr. Matkin's objective is to be achieved. He says 'we want to get back to business in the province.' "

I don't think I could say that any better. I think that's very sound advice. I don't think we will achieve it in this particular atmosphere, because I think it's far too highly charged.

Mr. Speaker, I think we've noticed this in other instances, but people can accept change. Human beings and society are quite able to accept change. But they can only accept change at a particular rate. You can't change everything on them — all their traditions, all their security packages, all their safety nets, all the things that have grown up in a generation — and suddenly cut those out overnight without inviting trouble.

I return to my theme: why double trouble? It's gone from triple-A to double trouble for $200 million, and what we want to do is to try and see if we can get something operating in some sort of a manner of consensus in which we will be able to get the province moving again. I think that is the important thing. But you can't expect people to absorb.... People don't like to change. All of us have a conservative streak. We don't like change. We find it unsettling, uncomfortable. But if you change their whole lives, their traditions, how they go to work, how they go about their business and how they express their grievances, of course they're going to react. Why should you expect them not to react? With our traditions here of militantism, of course they're going to react. They're going to react militantly, because they're not going to be pushed around, and that is no atmosphere.... You push too hard here, and somebody else is going to push you back.

MR. MOWAT: Only if you inflame things.

MR. ROSE: Oh! That's a tremendous compliment. I've never been complimented in such a way — that my speeches would be inflammatory. Most people find them kind of dull, but if you find them inflammatory I would think that I've made progress.

I'd like to return to another theme. I've got all kinds of things that I could read into the record. I think I'd like to read this little letter here. It's from a man by the name of Sam Taylor. He sent it to all MLAs. He's printed it by hand. He's got this to say. Mr. Taylor, by the way, lives on 13th Avenue in Vancouver. He suggested:

"The Social Credit Party was elected by the people of British Columbia to restrain government spending. Under the terms of this budget government spending has increased in spite of layoffs.

"The public expects its politicians to work within existing labour practices, laws and ideals of humaneness that have taken hundreds of years to develop in the western world. The twenty-six pieces of legislation that the government has proposed abolish many social services and eliminate the expectations of fair dealing for public service employees, renters and those who in the recent past would have taken their grievances to the Human Rights Commission. This legislation was not presented as an election platform."

I've noticed, Mr. Speaker, that parties in other countries — certainly in Britain; parties other than their own, and I think all parties are guilty of this, including my own — are far more open when they publish an election manifesto that is their platform. It isn't just the Labour Party which publishes manifestos — or is the plural of it manifesti? I don't really know, but let's call the plural manifestos. Anyway, you can fairly well depend on it that that's what they ran on, that's what they'll be elected on, and that's the legislation that they'll introduce. That hasn't happened here this time.

As this man suggested, there's nothing here that suggested there was anything under the hat regarding those 26 bills during the election campaign. Some people have said that the Government lied during the election. I wouldn't suggest that. They suggest that the party lied. I am not suggesting that. I am far too refined to make suggestions like that.

Interjection.

[ Page 954 ]

MR. ROSE: I'm quoting Mr. Taylor, and I notice that the Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. Nielsen) is here:

"Our political system is based on the premise that politicians present platforms and the citizens through their votes choose the party which best represents their collective will. Not only did the Social Credit Party not present its views, the leader, Mr. Bennett, lied. During the campaign, when asked if hospital user fees would increase, Mr. Bennett replied that they would not.

"The budget and accompanying legislation should be withdrawn. A new budget and new legislation should be drafted in keeping with the ideals of fairness and democracy that as a civilization we have worked so hard to develop."

I don't know Mr. Taylor, but he seems to make eminently good sense to me.

Interjection.

MR. ROSE: Don't shout any of that "hyperbowl" at me. I want to ask you, Mr. Speaker, whether or not you feel that if you were anywhere in the public or private sector you would feel confident at this time to either invest or even buy anything. What would you be doing with your money? I think you would probably suggest that it would be a good time to save it. I don't think that is what the businessman needs.

Interjection.

MR. ROSE: No, you haven't sold it all yet. You want to sell British Columbia. Well, you are doing a pretty good job, but you haven't sold it all yet. You haven't sold that big nation in the interior that the Minister of Communications (Hon. Mr. McGeer) was talking about. We just about sold it once to Wenner-Gren, but we haven't sold it lately.

Interjection.

MR. ROSE: Mr. Speaker, I wish you would ask them to stop picking on me.

I used a little example the other day, and I would like to repeat it because it is one of the best examples I can think of. If you were a young teacher planning a renovation for your house or buying a new house, would you think this a good time to do that?

MR. MOWAT: Yes, if I'm a teacher with two jobs on the side.

MR. ROSE: The second member for Vancouver–Little Mountain says he has two jobs on the side. I thought this job was a full-time job. I would like him to spend a little bit more time in the legislature and stop his outside moonlighting.

MR. MOWAT: On a point of order, I understood the member to say that I had two outside jobs, and that I was not putting in my full time at this House. He was referring to teachers. I said there were many teachers who have moonlighting jobs. I would ask him to withdraw the suggestion that I am not doing my job in this House.

MR. LEA: It can't be a point of order on the part of the member for Vancouver–Little Mountain, because he can't even speak. He can't speak in the House, because this member has the floor. So what is the point of order about?

Interjections.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: We really shouldn't be interrupting the hon. member for Coquitlam-Moody. However, if the hon. second member for Vancouver–Little Mountain has any concerns about the content of the speech, he may bring them forward when the hon. member for Coquitlam-Moody is finished.

MR. ROSE: That is extremely sound advice, Mr. Speaker, and I can see that you are certainly learning your job in the chair with extreme rapidity and alacrity. We will all benefit from your judgment on this. I want you to know that I wouldn't want to misquote the hon. member, but I think if he is going to rise, it shouldn't be on a point of order. It should be on a point of personal privilege. If I've vilified him in any way, and I certainly wouldn't intend to do that....

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. member, could we please continue on the budget?

MR. ROSE: I know you're anxious to hear my concluding remarks on the budget, Mr. Speaker, so I won't make you wait any longer.

We were talking about the person described as a teacher, who might go out and buy a house and.... I don't know if the member said the teacher had two or three jobs or he himself had two jobs. Anyway, he said that it would be a good time to do this. Maybe prices are so deflated that this would be a good time — I don't know. But if he was going to buy or renovate a house, the teacher has to be really stupid to buy things with the kind of job security they have now. If people are insecure, how can they? If they have no job security.... If you don't intend to do that, then why don't you tell people? Why are you spreading all this insecurity? You're not telling anybody anything.

AN HON. MEMBER: How come we increased the budget by 7 percent in education?

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

MR. ROSE: I'm suggesting to you that you're cutting back over the next three years by about that much too. So what are you doing? You're running faster to stay in the same place.

I don't want to get deflected by these asides. What I am saying, Mr. Speaker, is that people are not going to spend their money if they don't have any confidence. They're not going to spend it in the hardware stores; they're not going to spend it anywhere. If a person who is going to renovate a house is a public servant or a teacher, they may not be able to get a mortgage to do it, because they've got no job security anymore. If they are stupid enough to proceed at this time, they're not going to be able to employ the carpenter, the guy that sells cement, the man who sells lumber or the person who sells glass and doors and doorknobs and that sort of thing. The theme I'm trying to underline is that if there is no confidence in your security or the economy, people are unlikely to take investment risks. That is also underlined by our friends in New York, Standard and Poor. They've said that the

[ Page 955 ]

economy is so fragile, because people have no confidence in it, that we're engaged in combat instead of consensus and that there is little chance of the recovery becoming more than fragile. I'm suggesting that people in government, people in high places, powerful people, look and see what they're doing and don't just rely on some sort of a Rotary Club ideology that somehow smaller government is going to make us all rich. It's been defied everywhere in the western world. I don't know why it's going to work here. The reason we're in trouble is that we've spent too much of our interests and efforts on single-resource exports and have not diversified our economy. Don't take it from me, Mr. Speaker; the member for Vancouver–Point Grey has suggested that we've been too conscious about resource development and haven't looked into....

Does that mean two minutes? I thought that was a little Peter Rabbit sign or something. You should be putting it up there.

AN HON. MEMBER: He just graded your speech out of 10.

MR. ROSE: I suppose this is a facetious time but I don't think it's foolish. I think what we're talking about is what is accepted by many thoughtful people. If you think you're going to get your way out of this by high tech I've got some words for you on that one as well.

Anyway, I've finished all I can say in the time I have available. I think the way we're going is dead wrong. I think it's wrong-headed. I don't think it's going to work and I don't think it's going to help. All it's going to do is hurt the people that are the weakest and poorest and have the smallest voices in our society.

I wish I had time to read to you, Mr. Speaker, in conclusion: "Dear Socred government: I voted Socred last time, and I'm writing to express my strong disapproval of the package of legislation being proposed by the government." He signs his name — it went to everybody — Mr. Garnett.

Interjection.

MR. ROSE: No, he wrote to the office of the Premier. If people are saying that who supported this government, it means we haven't won them all. Some people are really disappointed in this and think it's wrong, including the supporters of the government.

I hope you will correct the error of your ways, your shortsightedness. Let's get on and try to do something about building this province, instead of isolating one another into armed camps where we're beating each other up, punching hell out of one another. In the meantime, the province goes down the drain.

MR. STRACHAN: Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise this afternoon to take part in this debate and support the fine budget introduced by the Minister of Finance some time ago.

As the member for Mackenzie (Mr. Lockstead) and the member for Atlin (Mr. Passarell) and I have often discussed: fiat lux — let there be light. This afternoon I'm prepared to shed some light from our perspective on the budget, and I'm sure the hon. member for Coquitlam-Moody, who has entertained us so well and provided some insight from the New Democratic side, will be more than prepared to listen to what I have to say.

It has been obvious during the budget debate that has transpired within the last couple of days that we do have a contrary opinion in this House as to where we're going and why we've said what we have; why we've said it and why we've done it. I guess, as the mouse said as he ran across the mirror: "There's always another way of looking at it." Something we have to consider is that we do have contrary opinions. The proposition that government spending should be increased — I'm sure that's what the New Democrats are asking us to do — to provide an economic stimulus is really seductive, in the classical sense. The music is sweet, the melody familiar, but, like Homer's Ulysses, we can only be assured of a safe passage through stormy seas by deafening our ears to the siren's song. It is a very seductive message that we in fact pour money into the economy, into the civil service or whatever, to do this.

One of the things that's always intrigued me is the sort of magic that comes with a civil service salary if he's injecting his money into the community. As long as that money is injected into the community, no matter who injects it, it's a good thing for that community. I was interested to hear one of the members — I believe it was my good friend from Atlin — state that it would be a bad thing if civil servants were unemployed, and he came to the conclusion that those people would stay unemployed. I would be critical of that, hon. member, in terms of what you said, not in terms of you yourself: the presumption that once a civil servant leaves the civil service he is unworthy of any other employment. I would submit that that's an incorrect presumption and something you should avoid saying, because you're not giving those people any credit at all. As a matter of fact, I can relate two instances in Prince George of civil servants who have been terminated and have already found employment in the private sector. I think we have to realize that those people are talented people: they do have skills that they brought to government which they now can bring to the private sector. That is something we have to endorse and not say that because they're terminated by government they'll never find other employment. I think we're doing a great disservice to the civil service by saying that type of thing.

As I mentioned earlier, we do have contrary opinions here, and many things have been said. The opposition and other people have asked if we really did say during the election what we were going to do. I can assure you that I did, hon. members, during my campaign. It's been a position of mine since I was on school board that the less government, the better government. I'm prepared to stand on that. I've maintained that position for a long time. My record on school board was to support contracting out — oh, a dirty word! — but that's the way I felt. I've always felt exactly that way. I would submit to you and all hon. members of the House that the more we can encourage the private sector to do the work that government has been doing, and the more we can get that government money out to the private sector to perform some of those services, the better off we'll be. We did take that position during the election campaign, and we're prepared to stand behind it now.

I'll tell you of a couple of other interesting positions that were taken during the election campaign, particularly in Prince George. The hon. member for Coquitlam-Moody (Mr. Rose) spoke about the right to work. That member might be interested in knowing that I have a tape recorded by CJCI

[ Page 956 ]

May 3, 2:30 in the afternoon, where one of the candidates, Mr. Andrew Schuck, says: "The people of B.C. need the right to work."

AN HON. MEMBER: Who did he run for?

MR. STRACHAN: The New Democratic Party. I'll be more than happy to share that transcript with the members, if they wish.

MS. SANFORD: You're really stretching it this morning, aren't you? You're really reaching.

MR. STRACHAN: No, that's there, hon. member.

Another candidate — a leader at that point during the election campaign — said: "If our party is elected, Prince George will get a steel mill, Victoria will get an $11 million tourist convention centre, and all sorts of wonderful things." Victoria gets a convention centre and we get acid rain. Thanks.

Back to the budget, and back to the proposition that government spending has to be increased and we have to provide that economic stimulus; that no one but government can provide it, and certainly not the private sector. The general state of democratic societies in the late twentieth century may be compared to drug dependency. Western democracies have become so psychologically habituated to the quick fix of unrestrained government spending in response to every conceivable complaint and social ill that in some cases the very foundation of those systems may be at risk — a past reference to Bill 3. As you know, in some of our legislation we are concerned about administrative salaries. The hon. Minister of Universities, Science and Communications (Hon. Mr. McGeer) spoke about this earlier.

[12:30]

I've said that the very foundation of systems may be at risk unless we do take action now; it's a serious concern of mine. For instance, I'll give you an example of administrative salaries. I happen to know that the administrator of the Prince George Regional Hospital — 415 beds, including an extended-care unit, CAT scanner and many other great services provided by the Ministry of Health and by the government of British Columbia — receives what I consider is a good salary: it's a little less than what a cabinet minister would make, so you've got an idea of the range. I think it's a handsome salary and an appropriate salary for a man who is running an operation of the size of the Prince George Regional Hospital — a truly tremendous service in our city.

Yet I find out that in fact the administrator of a far smaller hospital in the Okanagan, with 250 beds, to be precise — I won't go into any further detail than that — is making one third more salary than the administrator in Prince George. That just can't be accepted. We have to get a handle on our government spending, understand where it's going and bring some of these types of salaries into order. We have reached a point in social development where one in four employed persons is employed at some level or emanation of government. Beyond this very obvious and direct dependency, other large sectors of the community are dependent upon government through direct income or support through a host of other programs.

In striving to ameliorate an open list of social conditions on an incremental basis, democratic governments around the world have nearly lost sight of the overall relationships between the citizen and the state and between production and consumption. That is the problem we face now. In western democracies the overall government share of the economy, broadly defined, is clearly predominant and nearly the majority share of all reported economic activity. In a spirit of open-handed generosity, we have travelled down the road to what Nobel prize-winning economist Frederick Hayek dubbed "the road to serfdom." That's the position we're in now, and that's why we have to address what we are doing.

Many comments have been made today, one of which was about job creation. I'm sure the New Democrats are going to say, "Why don't you have a few people contribute to job creation?" As a member for Prince George South, I can assure you that we have contributed considerably. I would just give the one example that's affecting our area so dramatically and in such a positive manner, and that is the northeast coal project. It was quite interesting for me to learn a couple of months ago that general construction contracts to Prince George general contractors on northeast coal have totalled $85 million and are rising. That was a figure that came from the month of May. I'm sure they're far higher now. But that, in fact, is the contribution that government does make through the private sector to our economy on how to make our economy go. It's certainly been a benefit to Prince George.

Let's not forget that probably one of the most significant benefits the government made to the private sector was the position we were able to take and maintain during the recent countervailing discussions with the U.S. It was a long hard strike. It was sustained mostly by the private sector industry, and my hat would be off to Adam Zimmerman of Noranda. But in fact we won that fight. If we hadn't, I can assure you that the economy of British Columbia would be in dire straits right now.

There's another note that I've made about government helping the private sector. The member for Atlin (Mr. Passarell) asked what we were doing for the native people. I'm going to allow my colleague from Omineca to speak to the Attachic TFL that was offered by our Ministry of Forests and is serving the native people, the first citizens of that area, in an extremely good way.

Mr. Speaker, constituencies of dependency, once established — that is the constituency of dependency of the social service and all the social services we have provided — prove almost impossible to dislodge. For convenient political purposes they may coalesce to oppose any change which aims at independence and thus threatens the organizational and bureaucratic structures which grow up to service those dependencies. Each constituency of dependence, through automatic entitlement programs and a host of accompanying statutes and regulations, progressively adds layers of impediments and disincentives which combine to clog and harden the artery of society and to restrict the flow of its life blood.

Yesterday's undreamed dreams of luxury become today's absolute rights. Memories shorten. All sense of historical perspective is lost, and the cult of instant gratification, magnified by television, challenges any form of fiscal reality and threatens to destroy the precious spirit of independence, freedom and initiative.

Interjection.

[ Page 957 ]

MR. STRACHAN: Slavery? I'm glad you mentioned that, Mr. Member — the leader — because we have become slaves to the social service system. That's exactly what we're trying to dispense with. We're trying to shed that yoke. We have to do it now or we'll never do it. That's our picture. That's our message. Can't you accept that? That's the problem we're in, I can assure you. But we will do it. We will do it through the private sector by encouraging the private sector.

It's Friday afternoon, so I'm going to maybe close. But I was encouraged by the recent annual report of the Ministry of Tourism. Maybe here's a good example of how the government, through initiatives and through its direction, can encourage private sector industry in our province. What I find most interesting is on page 33 of the annual report of the Ministry of Tourism, where they talk about the great job that that ministry has done in marketing British Columbia as a preferred area for shooting feature films, because of low production costs and a variety of location choices. I might point out to the hon. member for Atlin that a lot of the filming for the movie "The Ice Man," on which about $10 million was spent in British Columbia, was done in Stewart. Is that in your riding? I thought you would be pleased to know that and to know how government can....

Interjection.

MR. STRACHAN: Yes, $10 million. That's throughout B.C., but a lot of it was spent in Stewart because a lot of the filming was done there. A movie called "First Blood" actually spent about a million dollars in the town of Hope.

Getting to where the opposition can understand how government can encourage the private sector and how they can participate in our economy, if we look at page 33, the total amount of money spent on films shot in British Columbia, using our great scenery, comes to $36 million. That ain't hay, I'll tell you. That's a lot of money spent in our province. The majority of it stays in British Columbia; most of the people working on the sets — the electricians, carpenters, welders, tradesmen, lighting people — are all British Columbia citizens. When a major film company comes to our province they bring some stars, a director and a very small crew. The labour-intensive sector of film production in the province is British Columbian labour, and I would commend that to all of you.

I've been given numerous notes here, as it is Friday afternoon, from the House Leader (Hon. Mr. Gardom) and from our honourable Whip (Mr. Veitch). Accordingly, I move adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of the House.

Motion approved.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, earlier today the Leader of the Opposition asked the Chair if references could be brought on a decision that was brought in earlier. I would refer members to Beauchesne's fifth edition, page 152, section 423; and page 153, section 424, paragraph 5.

Hon. Mr. Gardom moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 12:39 p.m.