[ Page 1059 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Oral Questions

Crofton-Vesuvius ferry. Mr. Stupich –– 1059

Mrs. Wallace

Crown Corporations Committee. Mr. Howard –– 1059

Construction of Site C Dam. Mr. Skelly –– 1059

Mrs. Wallace

Northeast coal. Mr. Lea –– 1060

Rental charges on propane tanks. Mr. Lauk –– 1061

Miscellaneous Statutes (Finance Measures) Amendment Act –– 1083 (Bill 17). Second reading.

Hon. Mr. Curtis –– 1061

Mr. Stupich –– 1063

Assessment Amendment Act, 1983 (Bill 22). Second reading.

Hon. Mr. Curtis –– 1068

Mr. Stupich –– 1069

Mr. Blencoe –– 1073

Mr. Nicolson –– 1077

Tabling Documents

Report of Special Committee of the Legislative Assembly to Appoint an Auditor-general for the Province of British Columbia.

Mr. Veitch –– 1080

Mr. Howard –– 1081

THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 1983

The House met at 2:06 p.m.

HON. MR. GARDOM: We have in our galleries today Mrs. Phyllis Ainsworth, who is visiting British Columbia from Charleston, South Carolina. I ask all members to bid her a special welcome.

MR. MOWAT: It's an honour to have in your gallery today, Mr. Speaker, a Vancouver citizen. She was a parks commissioner on the Vancouver Parks Board for four years and is a very dedicated community citizen in our community. I'd ask the House to welcome Mary Ann Fowler.

MR. NICOLSON: Also visiting us from Nelson today are three friends: Roger and Louise Crossley and their daughter Chrissy.

MR. REYNOLDS: Mr. Speaker, sitting in your gallery this afternoon are two distinguished British Columbians and residents of my constituency: the president of Inland Natural Gas Co., Bob Kadlec, and the vice-president of Inland Natural Gas Co., Jim Randall. I'd like the House to make them welcome.

HON. MR. RITCHIE: Mr. Speaker, would the House please welcome two friends of mine. We have Mr. John Shewan, president of the Abbotsford Teachers Association. With Mr. Shewan is Mike DeJong. Mike is visiting from Carleton University, which he's attending. Mike, before going off to Carleton, was the president of the Fraser Valley Social Credit youth group. Would you please welcome these fine folks.

MR. MICHAEL: I would like the House to welcome a relative of mine. Sitting in the gallery today is Mr. Kyle Michael, a resident of Victoria.

Oral Questions

CROFTON-VESUVIUS FERRY

MR. STUPICH: Mr. Speaker, I know there's cause for amusement over there, but would the real Minister of Finance stand up and identify himself? Well, the Premier's the real minister, but he won't stand up.

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please, hon. members.

MRS. WALLACE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the absence of the Minister of Finance, I would like to ask the Minister of Highways a question. He's a member who's always in the House.

Residents of my constituency have been informed — this is relative to the Crofton-Vesuvius ferry — that the ferry will be out of service for at least a month because of the damage that occurred to the landing and the studies that have been undertaken by the Ferry Corporation. Will the minister explain the reasons for this delay in commencing reconstruction of the damaged dock?

HON. A. FRASER: I thank the member for the question. I'm aware of the accident they had, and I think I see why it'll take a month. But I’ll be attending a ferry board meeting Monday morning, and then I can reply in a better fashion.

MRS. WALLACE: I wonder if the minister would also agree to advise the House as early as possible of the in-service date for that ferry, because there is a lot of concern. A lot of commuters who use that ferry are finding it very difficult. Will he give me that undertaking?

HON. A. FRASER: I should be able to give a definitive answer on Monday.

MRS. WALLACE: I have one final question, Mr. Speaker. Residents are now being forced to pay $200 a month — that's $5 per trip each way for, say, 20 working days in the month — to get on and off the island to go to work. That is prohibitive. When the ferry was previously out of service the minister was good enough to provide water taxi service at a reasonable rate for those people. Would the minister undertake to assure us that that or a similar alternative service will be provided for commuters and others needing to get off the island at that end during this downtime?

HON. A. FRASER: I'll look into all those things and try to reply on Monday.

CROWN CORPORATIONS COMMITTEE

MR. HOWARD: I'd like to direct a question to the member for North Vancouver–Capilano (Mr. Ree), the gentleman who is the chairman of the Committee on Crown Corporations. In his capacity as chairman, has he decided to call any meetings of that committee so that it can examine the subject matters that have been referred to it?

MR. SPEAKER: The question is in order, hon. members.

MR. REE: To the member: yes.

MR. HOWARD: Delightfully informative. Could the member say when and which of the subject matters referred to the committee will be dealt with as a priority item?

MR. REE: Soon. The annual report for the last year.

MR. HOWARD: Any idea when this committee might meet?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: He's already answered that!

CONSTRUCTION OF SITE C DAM

MR. SKELLY: A question to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources. Can the minister advise whether his ministry has received the report of the Public Utilities Commission panel which inquired into the construction of the Site C Dam on the Peace River?

HON. MR. ROGERS: Yes, Mr. Speaker.

[ Page 1060 ]

MR. SKELLY: Supplementary to the same minister. Can the Minister advise when the Site C report was delivered to him or his ministry, and has he decided when the report will be made public?

HON. MR. ROGERS: About a month and a half ago, and no.

[2:15]

MR. SKELLY: A supplementary question. Has the minister decided whether the report will be made public at all?

HON. MR. ROGERS: Yes, in due course.

MRS. WALLACE: On the same topic, can the minister confirm that the Site C report recommends that interveners recover their costs on the same basis as the Utilities Commission and the applicants recover their costs: that is, on the regulated rate base of the utility?

HON. MR. ROGERS: I take the question as notice.

MRS. WALLACE: The minister must be a slow reader if he hasn't read the report and found that in it yet.

Can the minister explain why he has written to the Utilities Commission ordering them to cease cost awards to participants at its hearings, and why he has done so without securing the necessary legislative changes to section 3 of the Utilities Commission Act?

HON. MR. ROGERS: It's a matter of government policy as announced in the throne speech.

NORTHEAST COAL

MR. LEA: I have a question for the Minister of Industry and Small Business Development. There has been what appears to be an unofficial policy of the Japanese steel interests, when looking for cutbacks to their needs in coal supply from around the world, and with new mines coming on that they've encouraged, that they would not cut back in those areas. There seems to have been a shift in the Japanese policy, as the Gregg River mine in Alberta has just been told that they will be cut back a metric tonne from $87 to $74 per tonne. In northeast coal, we know that with any tonnage volume cuts or any price cuts, the difference will have to be made up by the taxpayers of this province. Has there been any communication from the Japanese steel industry to this government or to the companies involved in northeast coal — to the minister's knowledge — that there would be some look at a new price structure by the Japanese steel interests?

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: In answer to the member's question, the negotiations between the Gregg River people and the Japanese steel industry.... The contract that they have with the Japanese steel industry — to my understanding, Mr. Member — is somewhat different from the contract which exists between Quintette Coal Ltd. and Bullmoose and the Japanese steel industry, in that the possible opening negotiations for price would not occur until after 1989. Also, because of the fact that the northeast coal-mines — Quintette and Bullmoose — have much larger participation by the Japanese banking and steel industries, various mining interests and the new energy development organization under the Minister of International Trade and Industry, any negotiations will of course be on a much higher plane. Therefore I'm not aware that any solid negotiations between the Japanese steel industry and the two mines in the northeast part of the province have taken place or been requested or that there is the desire to have further negotiations. But I want to assure the member and all British Columbians that due to the very good relationships among the Japanese steel industry, trading companies, banking system and government officials, the government of Canada, Canadian National Railways, the harbours authority, the government of British Columbia, and all of the people involved in this great project which is creating, as I outlined this morning, some 5,000 jobs in the province at the time.... If there is a difficulty, Mr. Speaker....

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. Hon. member, the Chair has very patiently allowed the member an opportunity to respond to a question, and I think the member must bear in mind that he must give an answer and end the response.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I realize that, but I just wanted to make sure that the member was fully aware of all the facts, and to give him a thorough answer.

MR. LEA: I have a supplementary question for the minister, Mr. Speaker, if he's not lost for words.

If what the minister says is indeed correct and there is this good relationship all round, we're pleased to hear it, because the taxpayers of this province are going to suffer if there isn't a good relationship. But it's also obvious to us that if there is a price cut it will affect the taxpayers. The taxpayers will have to pay more money.

AN HON. MEMBER: How?

MR. LEA: By the contract. The minister knows that, because it's based on so much a tonne.

The fact of the matter is that this is not....

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. member, the question?

MR. LEA: The question is: is the minister saying that the Japanese steel interests will not do exactly the same thing to northeast coal as they did to southeast coal? They did not honour the contracts. The contracts are not firm and the coal companies had to take what they could get.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Mr. Speaker, I hate to inform the House and the gallery that the member is really somewhat misinformed in saying that the taxpayers would have to pick up any deficit or downside on negotiations in price. I'd like to inform the House and the member opposite, if he doesn't already know, that because of the great negotiations by the government on behalf of everybody, we will participate in the upside. In other words, if the price of coal goes up, the taxpayers of British Columbia will participate in that new price and help pay for the infrastructure. In the history of any resource development in British Columbia, Canada or indeed in North America, such a deal has never before been struck. The companies have also put up a $750 million bond to protect the taxpayers of British Columbia. So we do share in the upside, but we don't share in the downside.

[ Page 1061 ]

Interjection.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Well, certainly.

You know, Mr. Member, that we have a percentage of the price of the coal at the mine, the same as for copper or any other commodity. Three new coal-mines — not the two northeast — will be officially opened in western Canada within the next month: the Gregg River mine in Alberta, which is supplying two million tonnes a year to the Japanese steel industry; the Line Creek mine, which is being opened by Shell Resources; and the Greenhills mine, which has participation with Pohang Iron and Steel Works in Korea. All of that has taken place since 1976, when this government started going out to seek new international markets for our coal so the people could be gainfully employed in the long term in the province of British Columbia.

RENTAL CHARGES ON PROPANE TANKS

MR. LAUK: My question is to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources. In the last several years the federal and provincial senior levels of government have taken steps to encourage people to rely less on oil as a home heating fuel in particular, and for their other needs encouraged them to go into propane. I think the minister will recognize that there's a certain rural dependence on propane, and that there have been significant increases in the cost of that fuel. Many consumers of propane have complained that they are paying excessive rental charges for their tanks these days. In some cases, I'm told, the annual rental is more than 25 percent of the value of the tank. I wonder if the minister can advise what action has been taken or is being taken by his ministry to prevent such price-gouging.

HON. MR. ROGERS: The member is asking about future action of the ministry, but I might tell the member, for his own information, although I'm advised that he already knows, so I'll tell the House because the House may not know that he already knows, that the rates for the rental of propane tanks are based on the replacement rate for those tanks, and they have a limited lifespan under Canadian safety standards, which are enforced by both the federal and provincial governments.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, yesterday the hon. member for Alberni (Mr. Skelly) sought, pursuant to standing order 35, to move adjournment of the House to discuss a definite matter of urgent public importance. As members are aware, under standing order 35 the matter brought forward by a member should be stated briefly, and subsequent examination of Hansard indicates that this was far from the case at the time. The member's statement cannot be characterized as anything other than a speech, the content of which would be heard in the budget debate, upon which the House has embarked. The member did not forward to the Chair a statement, as required by standing order 35(3). It is abundantly clear that the matter does not come within the ambit of standing order 35.

Hon. members, it is my duty to remind all members of the House that when recognition by the Chair is sought and subsequently gained, it is incumbent upon that member to ensure that he or she does not abuse the procedures of this House, which is tantamount to abusing the rights of all other hon. members. It would be accurate for the Chair to reflect that the manner in which the member for Alberni sought the floor yesterday fell into this latter category.

Orders of the Day

HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Speaker, on this very prophetic day, being four months until Christmas, I would ask leave to proceed to public bills and orders.

Leave granted.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Speaker, I call second reading of Bill 17.

MISCELLANEOUS STATUTES (FINANCE
MEASURES) AMENDMENT ACT, 1983

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Speaker, I move second reading of Bill 17, Miscellaneous Statutes (Finance Measures) Amendment Act, 1983, an omnibus bill containing a number of amendments with varying financial impact. I say again that it is a relatively typical omnibus bill, in that a number of the amendments do not relate one to the other. Given that, and with the permission of the Chair, I propose to address briefly several of the more significant measures during this stage of the bill, and perhaps at a later date to discuss more generally the remaining items at committee stage.

Perhaps the first and most important aspect is that the bill provides for the necessary amendments to implement improvements in the control and measurement of staffing in the government. I previously explained the change which occurred earlier in this session, and I identified those at the time of the presentation of the estimates; I want to review just the main points of the new system and explain why it is being introduced.

The government has changed the way in which staffing numbers are presented in the estimates book. Prior to this year, only the number of authorized full-time continuous positions were given for each program of activity in government. The flaw in that presentation style — and it had been in place for many years — was that numbers for auxiliary staff were not provided. In order to be more accountable to this Legislature and indeed to those people of the province interested in our activities as government, and in order to provide a more accurate figure for the use of paid employee time or the actual workforce required in each ministry, the estimates now before the House contain a staffing estimate on a full-time- equivalent basis. One or two members will look for an acronym; we don't have a perfect acronym but they are shown as FTEs. I explained earlier that one FTE — one full-time equivalent — is the equivalent of one person employed full time for one full working year: for example, two people employed for six months each.

We've made the change to allow more accurate measurement and control to be maintained over the use of staff within the public service. There will be more accurate control over the number of staff employed, as well as the cost of that staff. Ministries have been notified in this regard — fully canvassed, in fact — and they understand that they will not be permitted to exceed the number of FTEs shown in the estimates. As before, they may not exceed the budgeted amount for salaries. A monitoring procedure is to be put in place to allow the actual use of manpower by ministries to be checked monthly against the target that has been assigned to them.

[ Page 1062 ]

[2:30]

There are advantages to ministries in using the new system, because ministries will be given the flexibility to employ the proportions of full-time and part-time staff most suitable for providing a specific program or series of programs within the ministry, instead of being constrained to a certain number of full-time staff. A number of us can very easily imagine that in some ministries the ability to alter the number of employees from season to season is highly desirable. The new system will have no effect on the current status of employees who are covered by collective bargaining agreements or on those who are excluded. The change will simply assist the government in monitoring progress towards its goal of a particular size of public service. By the end of September 1983, it's expected that most ministries will have met the target of a 15 percent reduction from the base which was in place for 1982-83. A further reduction is to be achieved in 1984.

Moving to another aspect of Bill 17, we also include a change to the Home Owner Grant Act that will increase the minimum real property tax payable to $150 from $125, after deduction of the homeowner grant. This change is to come into effect on January 1, 1984. Again, I emphasize that this new minimum will not affect eligible homeowners who are 65 years or over, or those who are, in the context of the act, handicapped. Accordingly, the maximum grant of $630 that is currently available to these property owners remains, as does the $1 minimum property tax payable.

Under the heading "Miscellaneous taxation amendments" with respect to some of the remaining items contained in Bill 17, there are a number of amendments to various taxation statutes. The purpose of these is twofold: first, to assist the Crown in protecting its revenue sources and enhancing its ability to collect outstanding taxes; secondly, to attend to several tax administration matters. With respect to the latter, the bill makes provision for the prepayment of property taxes in the non-municipal areas of the province and requires interest to be paid on the money received. The amendment to the Taxation (Rural Area) Act will therefore enable affected property owners, property taxpayers, to take advantage of a convenience which is presently available in municipal jurisdictions. I trust that that one has the full support of all members. It has been a practice in most municipalities, if not all, for interest to be paid on prepaid property taxes and for the ability to prepay property taxes if one so chooses, but that has not been the case in terms of property under provincial jurisdiction.

There is also a series of amendments to give legislative effect to the recently signed reciprocal taxation agreement between the province of British Columbia and the government of Canada. The agreement came into force on April 1, 1983. Under this agreement the federal government will pay taxes and fees, whereas formerly the federal government was exempt. Amendments to three taxation statutes are needed to eliminate the exemption for federal government purchases following April 1, 1983. These are the Social Service Tax Act, the Motive Fuel Use Tax Act and the Gasoline Tax Act.

I spoke of other amendments impacting taxation administration. These amendments clarify the existing provisions under four statutes with respect to the timing of the coming into existence of the Crown's statutory lien. The clarification confirms a taxation court decision.

The final administrative amendment corrects a drafting omission that occurred in 1982 with respect to the exemption of goods leased by fishermen under the Social Service Tax Act.

Speaking further of revenue protection measures with respect to enhancements to the government's collection efforts, there are four measures, each of which amend several taxation statutes. One of the measures amends ten tax statutes in order to provide the government with a greater ability to collect taxes by way of attachments or third-party demands than is currently the case. The statutes to be amended for this purpose under this amending act are the Corporation Capital Tax Act, the Gasoline (Coloured) Tax Act, the Gasoline Tax Act, the Hotel Room Tax Act, the Insurance Premium Tax, Act, the Logging Tax Act, the Mining Tax Act, the Motive Fuel Use Tax Act, the Social Service Tax Act, the Taxation (Rural Area) Act and the Tobacco Tax Act.

The remaining three measures impact consumer taxation statutes. Together they ensure that taxes owing under these statutes are collected and remitted to the Crown by vendors, hotel operators and persons who function as receiver-managers. The measures concern cancellation or suspension of vendor-operator registration for failure to collect or remit taxes under the Social Service, Hotel Room and Tobacco Tax Acts; court injunctions ordering vendor-operators to cease operating until he or they fulfil obligations under those three acts just identified; and clarification that receivers are required to remit all taxes collected prior to distribution of property. This refers to the Social Service and Hotel Room Tax Acts.

Finally, a number of amendments which the House may decide are more appropriately dealt with in detail in committee: they render financial management and control more effective and, we believe, less costly. With one exception, all of these amendments impact the Financial Administration Act. A significant result of these amendments will be to broaden the government's access to information concerning the financial affairs of public bodies. As well, Treasury Board will be empowered to authorize the payment of fees and commissions to persons employed in collecting, managing or accounting for public money, either before or after deposit of public money to the consolidated revenue fund. This will provide the flexibility to reduce the paper burden for all concerned and will also reduce associated costs to government.

Further, Treasury Board, under this amending act, will be authorized to approve additional expenditures from a vote based on the amount by which actual recoveries or credits exceed estimated recoveries or credits through the course of the year. I think this one will be widely welcomed in government, Mr. Speaker — and I speak of those who manage in government. It will permit flexibility by authorizing expenditure of recoveries or credits not originally expected or planned for in the determination of a net dollar amount in a vote. As an example, it would enable something such as the Queen's Printer to fund any increased demand for its services from the increased revenues generated by a corresponding increase in business activity.

I thank the House for its patience as I dealt with these in considerable detail, and I move second reading of Bill 17.

MR. SPEAKER: I recognize the member for Nanaimo.

HON. MR. GARDOM: A six-month hoist?

[ Page 1063 ]

MR. STUPICH: Mr. Speaker, I'm tempted to accept the suggestion of the House Leader and say, let's have a six-month hoist on this so that we can look at some of the sections the minister didn't relate to in his remarks.

HON. MR. GARDOM: We'll deal with it in committee.

MR. STUPICH: I am encouraged by the House Leader to deal with it in committee. The Minister of Finance chose to deal with it in second reading, and I will deal with it somewhat in second reading. No doubt there will be something left over for committee, if and when we get to that point.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

HON. MR. CURTIS: I am sure there will be.

MR. STUPICH: The minister is sure that we will.

HON. MR. CURTIS: No, I said there will be something left over.

MR. STUPICH: Yes, there will be something left over. I thought he meant that he was sure we would get to committee stage in this bill. Frankly, I am not sure of anything these days. I thought we were going to have a budget. We had a budget on July 7, we debated it for three days, and then we forgot all about it until a just a few days ago when we picked it up again.

AN HON. MEMBER: Order!

MR. STUPICH: It is in order as much as anything else is these days. Mr. Speaker, I have been urged to be in order. I don't know what is in order these days. I thought we almost came to the point of voting on the budget. Certainly we know how we are going to vote; I can only assume the government has not yet decided how it is going to vote on the budget. Once again they have backed off from budget consideration.

Now we are being ask to deal with yet one more bill. Earlier today, I believe, the hon. member for Skeena (Mr. Howard) went down the list of bills that have been introduced for second reading, debated for a while and then abandoned while the government decided which bill to introduce next. You know, in the good old days when the Leader of the House, who is interjecting, was in opposition in this House, it used to be the format that we had a budget, we went through the budget debate and we voted on the budget. Then we went through estimates and we knew what the government was going to do with the money that it was raising. This time we started a budget debate and we abandoned it. We have not yet had one word from the government about its spending plans. We should be talking about them before we deal with legislation raising money.

In his introduction of this particular legislation, Bill 17, Miscellaneous Statutes (Finance Measures) Amendment Act, 1983 the Minister of Finance said that it has varying financial impact. I wonder what that means. Varying to me means that in some instances it is protecting revenue for the Crown; in other instances it is spending it. Well, I don't know where the spending came in, except in his last remarks where he said: "If the government comes into some fortuitous gain — money that wasn't expected — then the members of the Legislature shall have nothing to say about the spending of that money. The Treasury Board are going to say how that money is going to be spent." Talk about not a dime without debate!

We are now being ask to consider legislation. I suppose we are being ask to approve it, but we are certainly being ask to consider legislation at this point. I raise that question because I am not sure that the government ever intends to get beyond second reading in anything. As I interpreted the minister's remarks in second reading, with this legislation we are giving Treasury Board the approval to spend money that comes in — money that was not expected, money that arrives because revenues in some instances exceeded expected revenues, budgeted revenues or whatever. We are going to tell Treasury Board to go ahead and spend this any way that they see fit. They have been doing it anyway, so I suppose we are not really changing anything. At least up to now it hasn't been legal.

[2:45]

We have had to make it legal afterwards. When the government decided to blow $.5 million, $1 million, $1.5 million or whatever on an expensive weatherman advertising campaign preceding the actual election, they went far beyond the estimates that were voted upon in the Legislature. Yet with the budget and these motions that are coming before us, we will be approving those expenditures afterwards. In this instance it would appear as though we were not even going to have the opportunity after the fact to say whether or not this money that is being spent purely at the discretion of Treasury Board is spent wisely, should have been spent, shouldn't have been spent, should have been hoarded or whatever. It is going to be up to Treasury Board to do as it will. In the minister's remarks — there may be something in the legislation — he didn't even indicate that there would ever be any particular report to the House as to what Treasury Board did with this money.

In his introduction the minister talked about several parts of the legislation. The first thing I would like to ask him about is the varying financial impact. I wonder if at some point — perhaps in closing of second reading or in committee stage if he likes — he will tell us just where the varying financial effect is.

Control the levels of staffing. There are several pieces of legislation before us with the announced intention of doing something quite different. The actual intention, though, would seem to follow the line of the government, and that is to reduce the levels of public service staffing. The Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mr. Chabot), I believe, was the first to indicate this to the House. He was the one that first used the figure of some 300,000 employees in the public service — 300,000 when you add them all up with all the different agencies. This legislation before us is yet one more way of apparently making sure that the government is going to reach that target — one more way of ensuring that there will be increased unemployment in the province of British Columbia, that fewer services will be offered to the people in the province who need it most, and that the advances made in the province of British Columbia over the last three decades are going to be wiped out in the event that we do actually proceed far enough to dispose of the legislation before us. As the minister said, this is just one more way of making sure that we control the levels of staffing.

That's not the way to go. The minister told us that previously in estimates we were given the number of authorized

[ Page 1064 ]

full-time staff, and the numbers of auxiliaries were not accounted for. But he neglected to point out that when we voted on those estimates we did vote dollars to each one of those ministries and for each one of those votes, and by voting for those dollars we in effect set the limit as to what might be spent for auxiliary employees and everything else. The Legislature did have the authority in those days to discuss with the minister, when estimates were being presented, what the minister had in mind with respect to full-time and auxiliary employees and what kind of services he intended to offer in the various votes coming under the jurisdiction of his ministry. We apparently are not going to have that any longer. We are simply going to be presented with figures, and perhaps during estimates we'll be able to ask: just what does one full-time equivalent mean?

I really did appreciate the minister's definition when he told us one full-time is equivalent to two people working half-time. Some of the mathematicians on this side of the House might have had trouble working that out, so I do appreciate the minister's help. One full-time equals two half-time. He might have gone on to say that one-full time equals four at a quarter-time, and that would have been very helpful. We really would have appreciated that kind of assistance. But I wonder what that really contributes to the debate about how far the government intends to go in withdrawing services from the people of British Columbia.

I don't have a copy of the minister's notes; all I have is what I scribbled down as he was speaking. One of the things he said, as I took it, was: "As before, the ministers may not exceed the budgeted amount." That makes sense. That's the way it's supposed to have been for the last 20 years I've been around here at least: ministers were not supposed to exceed the budgeted amount. But, Mr. Speaker, you'll recall that in every year since this government took office late in December 1975, their expenditures in total have exceeded the budgeted amounts, and generally by several hundred million dollars. There has been that rule, it's not supposed to have happened, and yet it has been the practice and pattern ever since this government was elected. Even last year, when we came up with a deficit of some $978 million, when the government was supposed to have been practising restraint, we find that the actual estimated.... I believe it's called "actual estimated" in the budget, since we don't have the final audited figures yet. We find that the figures for expenditures include those budgeted for in the budget for the year ending March 1983.

That happens, but I don't know that it should happen in the figures it's been happening in. I said last year when the budget was presented that I didn't believe the figures in the budget. I didn't believe that the government really believed them, and I suspected at the time that it was an election budget, one that produced figures where revenues and expenditures magically balanced. I didn't believe it, and of course the proof of the pudding was in the eating. We found out by the end of the year that they were almost a billion dollars out, when you take into account revenue shortfall and expenditure overruns.

Nevertheless, as has always been the case, ministers are not supposed to exceed the budgeted amount. We know that in the year 1983-84, by the time we see the figures for the end of that year, once again we're going to find out that actual expenditures will not equal the budgeted expenditures. The difference this year is that I suspect, and I think a lot of other people in the community suspect, that the government's figures for expenditures are sadly overestimated. Either that or its program of restraint is a complete and abject failure. For the budgeted expenditures for the year 1983-84 to be 16 percent more than the original budgeted figures for 1982-83 shows that they are increasing their spending enormously compared to every other administration, or shows that they are padding those figures in an attempt to impress upon people the need for restraint in the province of British Columbia.

I appreciate the minister's advice that his ministers are not supposed to exceed the budgeted amount, but there ought to be some obligation on them to spend the money that is going to be voted upon in this Legislature in providing the services that they are supposed to be providing. They shouldn't exceed them, but neither should they be markedly less than the amount voted upon in this Legislature. One small example of that: it should not happen during the year that the government unilaterally decides to cut out one service, without any discussion in the Legislature, without any discussion anywhere presumably, except on Treasury Board benches, and to completely disregard the wishes of the members of the Legislature and abandon a program that was voted upon. In the same way that ministers should not exceed moneys approved for them, neither should they cut back in programs that were approved.

A case in point, Mr. Speaker, was the $91 million that was voted upon some 16 months ago to provide some tax credits to low-income people. It was a program abandoned, apparently, by the Minister of Finance. Mr. Speaker, I see you nodding your head that we shouldn't be talking about that. I would remind you that we have not yet concluded discussion of the budget itself. We haven't talked about expenditures. I would remind you that Bill 4, the Income Tax Amendment Act, has not yet passed second reading. Everything we talk about these days is in limbo. It's very hard to say that the Legislature shouldn't talk about Bill 4 while talking about Bill 17, because Bill 4 is not legislation. It's simply part of a government program that has been announced, has been introduced for second reading and has been abandoned, perhaps because the government has changed its mind and wants to bring in an entirely different Bill 4. We don't know where we are with respect to Bill 4, Bill 2, Bill 3, Bill 6, Bill 7, Bill 9, Bill 11, Bill 16, Bill 23 — we could go right through the list. We don't know where we are with any of them. We don't even know whether the government has changed its mind about the whole budget. So it would seem to me that almost everything is either out of order or almost anything is completely in order at this stage of debate until the government decides what it wants to accomplish in this session and when it wants to arrive at some targets.

The minister said — another note I made — "no change in status on staff covered by collective bargaining agreements." Mr. Speaker, you sort of shook your head a little earlier, so I guess I shouldn't say that one of the bills before us — Bill 3 — says in effect that in the event a collective bargaining agreement is signed that is contrary to any of the provisions of any of the other legislation, it isn't worth the paper it's written on. It provides no protection at all, even though a collective bargaining agreement has been signed, giving that protection. So to say that there is no change in status — so what? The government signed an agreement with the B.C. government employees that there would be no firings, that there would be orderly cutbacks in the level of staffing. This says "no change." That agreement's still in

[ Page 1065 ]

effect. Yet almost on a daily basis we hear of programs being wiped out and people being laid off. So when the minister assures us that the legislation before us right now actually means that there's no change in the protection afforded people who are living and working under collective bargaining agreements, he's telling us the truth. There is no change. They have absolutely no protection now, and this does not take away from them something that they don't have at the present time. So that part of the legislation, I'm afraid, is not going to be very reassuring to anyone.

The minister gave as his target that by the end of 1983 there will be a 15 percent reduction in staff. The minister won't answer today, I think, even if we get to concluding second reading today, but certainly there will be opportunity, if we get to estimates, for us to ask searching questions as to just what levels of staff are contemplated and how the target of 15 percent reduction in one fiscal year is reflected in the costs of the operations of the ministries, when we get around to discussing those in detail. I think the ministers will be hard put to show us that the figures they are actually presenting in this House bear any relationship at all to a slowdown in programs to the effect that the work being done will be covered by 85 percent of the staff, rather than the present staffing level. He goes on to promise his ministers to threaten the economy of British Columbia by saying that there will be further reductions in the next budget.

Mr. Speaker, one of the sections of the bill changes the homeowner grant. As the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs (Hon. Mr. Gardom) said to us, why not leave it until committee? But the minister did mention this. It's one of the amendments in this bill. Once more, whether the amount is reasonable or not, the government, in following its program of restraint, is saying to the poorest people in the community.... Anyone who lives in a house that is going to be able to take advantage of this particular legislation is living in pretty poor and mean circumstances. They're not living there by choice. They're living there generally because that's all they are able to afford. Sure, it isn't very much to a cabinet minister; it isn't very much to an MLA to pay $25 a year more. It's the principle of the thing. For the government to say to those who are in such low circumstances: "We are going to ask each and every one of you" — most of them in rural areas, because the figures would hardly be applicable in urban areas — "to kick in another $25 each towards our fight against a $1.6 billion deficit...." It's not reasonable. It's not fair. It's the wrong time to go to those people and say they should make a greater contribution in the fight against inflation.

The minister commented on the legislation giving effect to reciprocal agreements with respect to sales tax, motive fuel tax and gasoline tax. I wasn't able to write fast enough. I think he said that there had been negotiations with the federal government on this and that agreement has been reached. I would hate to think that it was being done unilaterally. I'm not even sure about the legislative authority to do it unilaterally. I believe the minister was reassuring me, and he'll have an opportunity to do that in some detail when we get to his windup — if we get to his windup. But I am pleased that the government is not acting unilaterally by imposing taxes on purchases by the federal government and that it is something that has been worked out.

It reminds me again of something that came up in another context. That was concern.... I expressed it at the time and I keep on bringing it up because I want the minister to be aware and always to have in mind that I think it would be a very backward step for the province to start levying its own personal or corporation taxes. I had hoped that the threat that was actually included in the budget speech about two budgets ago, where B.C. was giving active consideration to that, was something long forgotten; it hasn't appeared since. The fact that in this instance the minister assures me from his seat that it was reached by agreement encourages me to think that there is some cooperation at least between the federal and provincial Ministers of Finance — that we needn't worry about breakdowns. There are other problems, like logos on ALRT transit — that kind of thing — but in this instance I gather that the Minister of Finance is cooperating, rather than looking for opportunities to fight with Ottawa.

[3:00]

He mentions revenue protection measures: four amendments relating to tax collection. That's not an example of varying financial impact; these are ways of making sure that the government gets every penny that's coming to it. I have no sympathy for people who withhold what is due the government. I sometimes wonder at some of the steps that are taken to collect it. I did raise this yesterday, and I'm not sure that the situation has changed very much. I was talking about the government's laxity in making sure that it counts all the money that comes in and that some of it doesn't go into the garbage. The apparent concentration is on finding out who the messenger was, rather than correcting the situation. I pointed out that the auditor-general has been complaining about the lack of internal control in every report filed with this Legislature. This was just one very concrete example of a lack of sufficient internal control. It's all very well to say that everybody should pay all the money they owe, but in some instances, no doubt, with the examples I've produced, there are taxpayers in the province who are being dunned for money that they have in good faith paid, and the money just hasn't been recorded because of the breakdown in internal control.

"Number of amendments, financial management more successful, and the Treasury Board may set fees."

I'm almost back to the point where I started. Once again we're saying that the actual business of the House will not be conducted in the Legislature, not in the kind of public forum that we have here today, but that more and more the raising and spending of money will be decided by cabinet, which does not meet in public, or by Treasury Board, which presumably may report to the public.

Last year I put a question on the order paper asking for the amount of revenue that the government expected to collect because of a large number of user fee increases. The question was on the order paper, and the minister promised to get the answer, but he said at the time that it would take time. He did write to me and said that it would take some time to get it, and I appreciate that. In the intervening period the Legislature prorogued, we had a new election, and we had to start all over again. I don't criticize the minister for not having given me that information some time ago. I recognize that it's a lot of work getting it, and I believe it's on the order paper again. I know I prepared it. It's one that I do want to pursue.

I'd like to know just how much authority the Legislature has given to cabinet for increasing revenues, rather than having them come into the House and talk about changes in tax legislation. Just how much more money is being collected? How much authority are we giving to Treasury Board to set fees' What kind of fees are going to be set? What

[ Page 1066 ]

publicity will there be to the fees that are set by Treasury Board? Orders-in-council — motions made by cabinet and signed by the Lieutenant-Governor — at least are made public, and then the public generally has an opportunity to find out to what extent the cabinet is increasing government revenue. They're going around behind the Legislature; it has nothing to do with the legislative debate. The cabinet is making these decisions in cabinet meetings, but what is the effect? How much money is it bringing in?

It would seem to me, from what I took from what the minister said — I admit they were hasty notes taken down while he was speaking — that the minister is saying that no longer will we have orders- in-council to which we may refer when we want to find out how much more money the government is extracting from the people of British Columbia without introducing and discussing legislation; that we are also going to have Treasury Board setting fees. Perhaps the only people aware of the new fees established by Treasury Board will be those who are directly affected. It's an axiom that ignorance of the law is no excuse. Treasury Board might set a fee and then forget to tell someone, and yet that someone may very well be responsible for paying that fee.

I don't know what kind of fees Treasury Board has in mind. I know there is some explanation in the legislation and a little explanation in the minister's remarks, but it seems to me that there's a lot left unsaid with respect to giving Treasury Board — I believe it's the first time it has happened; I don't recall that kind of wording before — the right to set fees. Certainly the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council has had that right in the past. For the last four or five sessions we've argued about the extent to which the Legislature is giving up its right to control cabinet — is agreeing that cabinet shall have the right to set fees, without benefit of legislative debate. I recall the cry, "Not a dime without debate!" that was raised over and over by the Social Credit Party when they were in opposition. Little by little they have concentrated the power of government in the cabinet room. My concern and suspicion about what the minister said with respect to the bill now before us is that we are going one step farther, and that power is now being concentrated in Treasury Board so that even the cabinet members may not be aware of what is happening.

I come back to his conclusion and my conclusion. If money does come in in excess of what is expected, or if it comes in from some source that was not expected at the beginning of the year, that should be part of consolidated revenue. I can appreciate what the minister said about the need in some cases to have some flexibility. The machinery has always been there to allow for that; there has always been provision for special warrants; there have always been opportunities for overexpenditures. In my mind, there is no need to say that any money coming in in excess of what was budgeted for or of what was expected or from any fortuitous source should be allocated to Treasury Board to be spent any way in which it sees fit.

The record of this government since it was elected in December 1975 makes me very concerned about the uses to which this particular Treasury Board might put that money. If indeed the legislation before us, omnibus legislation though it may be.... If by this legislation the Legislature is giving up any of its rights to control the spending of public moneys, by giving some of those rights to Treasury Board, then even though there might be some good features in this — and there are some; I appreciate the need to cooperate with Ottawa on taxation — if that is what the minister is asking us to do, we have no recourse other than to oppose this legislation.

The Minister of Intergovernmental Relations (Hon. Mr. Gardom) — I would call him House Leader, but he isn't here at the moment — invited me to propose a six-month hoist. I think six months isn't long enough, if that's really what the legislation says, if it's asking us to say to Treasury Board: "Without ever coming back to the Legislature and without even going to cabinet, go ahead and spend whatever money you deem to be unexpected — any fortuitous grants or money that comes in. If it wasn't expected and wasn't budgeted for, Treasury Board may spend it at will." Do you remember the stories about the thousand-dollar bills being handed out of the Premier's office? If Treasury Board is going to have that kind of authority, then a six-month hoist isn't long enough. However, it's the standard way for the House to express to government that there should be further consideration of this legislation, and I think it may come to that. For the moment, so that we may have some further time to consider this, I would like to move adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of the House.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

[3:15]

Motion approved unanimously on a division.

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

HON. MR. GARDOM: Second reading of Bill 22, Mr. Speaker.

MR. HOWARD: I want to raise with Your Honour a point of order that was dealt with earlier today, but perhaps not as extensively as it needs to be gone into. I draw Your Honour's attention to a decision of Mr. Speaker on March 30, 1976, page 399, in substantiation of the point of order.

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: I am going to ask members — particularly when a member is on his feet with a point of order that has some validity to the proceedings — to either take their places or leave the chamber, but to do so quietly. This is the last time I will so advise members. I ask for courtesy to be extended to all members by all members.

MR. HOWARD: The events leading up to the 1976 decision to which I referred you involved some comments in Hansard by the then Premier, who is the Premier today as well. I can appreciate that this may border on an area where Your Honour would say that he should not have any knowledge. It relates to conversations leading up to and involving the proceedings and the business before the House. However, the Premier of the day went extensively into the relationship of Whips — one to the other — and the orderly development of legislation and business before the House so that the House would be aware through the Whip system of what would or would not be called at any given time. In 1976 the Premier went extensively into that, unhindered, and I don't want to repeat what he said word for word. But he said the Whip system is a system which must function and operate on trust,

[ Page 1067 ]

one with the other, and cannot be policed, ordered or anything of that sort.

In calling the bill that the government House Leader has called, I submit that the decision to call that particular bill was thoroughly and completely contrary and opposed to the understanding which our Whip advises me had been developed as to which bills would be dealt with today. I ask Your Honour to take that into consideration.

Perhaps what we need to do is follow the Speaker's decision which resulted out of comments in 1976. This is admittedly not out of a specific ruling based upon procedural matters, but Mr. Speaker said on March 30, 1976: "Because of that, and the fact that I believe that something could be worked out" — that related to being worked out between the Whips — "I hereby declare a 15-minute recess. I'll be back in the chair in 15 minutes." The House then recessed and came back again. The government House Leader then proceeded to declare what the results of that conversation.

I submit that because there appears to be a breakdown in the ordinary, normal and usual communication about what business will be called at any given time, perhaps Your Honour might take under advisement the possibility of now declaring a recess so that the Whips might meet and conclude, if they can, between them what it is that will be dealt with and what will be called. Otherwise, Mr. Speaker, I submit that the manner in which the government is proceeding is going to completely destroy the communication between Whips, which is so vitally necessary to orderliness in this House.

MR. VEITCH: On the same point of order, I believe the Whip system can work very well in this House or in any parliament, but there must be constructive agreement such as Whips have between each other. But there also must be constructive debate and argument and not obstruction in this House, and that's the problem at this point in time.

HON. MR. SCHROEDER: On the same point, Mr. Speaker, we have been very patient in listening to these points of order, which are completely fraudulent.

MR. NICOLSON: Order! Are you calling Speaker Smith fraudulent?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please.

HON. MR. SCHROEDER: As the hon. member for Skeena (Mr. Howard) well knows, those matters which pertain to discussions between Whips are not of interest to this House or to the Chair. I would encourage Mr. Speaker to ask all hon. members to carry on those kinds of discussions outside the chamber and, if they come to your attention here, to call them out of order.

MR. HOWARD: On the same point of order, just very briefly, I think Your Honour should appreciate that when the government Whip rose to make comments about the point of order he entered into a purely subjective analysis of something, and at no time indicated that what I said was incorrect.

Secondly, with respect to the accusation of fraudulence on the part of the Minister of Agriculture (Hon. Mr. Schroeder), the record should show that that word is being applied by the Minister of Agriculture to the words of his own Premier on March 30, 1976, when he went extensively into the subject of Whips, with the support of the then Minister of Agriculture as well.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, at this point we clearly seem to be engaging in a debate on a system that should best be conducted outside the House. While it certainly is of concern to all members, points of order dealing with Whippery are certainly best discussed outside the chamber. Nonetheless, I would recommend to all members that the smooth working of the House can be very greatly enhanced by the cooperation and understanding of both sides of the House in dealing with the Whips of their respective parties.

MR. LAUK: On a question of privilege, Mr. Speaker —and this is the earliest opportunity to raise it — the remark of the Whip, the member for Burnaby-Willingdon (Mr. Veitch), has caused me great concern and should, I suggest to you, Your Honour, suggest a breach of the privileges of hon. members. It is a clear admission that the tactics of the government side are to inhibit the right of individual members in this House to speak in accordance with standing orders on each and every bill before the House. Of course, to say that the debate of the opposition members in particular is obstruction is his opinion, and that's fine. However, what the Whip has said is that the reason the bills are being called out of order and not debated thoroughly is to inhibit individual members in their right under standing orders to debate — each and every one of us, if we choose to, and many of us feel we have a responsibility to — for the full time allotted. That is clearly the Whip's suggestion, and I suggest that that is a prima facie breach of privilege against hon. members of this House.

MR. SPEAKER: Thank you, hon. member. The Chair, with the greatest respect, finds that it would be difficult at this time to demonstrate how any member who wishes to take his place in debate in this House can in fact be prohibited from so doing when the ample opportunities before us will continue. And, hon. members, it is my assurance to the members of this House that they will continue to have every possible opportunity to conduct the debate for which they have been elected and indeed charged with responsibility.

MR. LAUK: Perhaps I didn't make myself clear, Mr. Speaker. The tactics employed are being used for the sole purpose of preventing members taking their place in debate. That's what the Whip has said in effect.

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

MR. LAUK: Let me finish my point, because I want to show you how under our standing orders and precedents no member can be prevented directly or indirectly from exercising his privileges in this House. We are elected to debate in this chamber, and it's an indirect way.... For example — and I'm not suggesting it has happened yet, but these tactics are leading to this point — if it's clear that an hon. member on this side of the House who is away unavoidably, either through illness or pressing engagement, wishes to speak on a bill, and the bill is called for debate when obviously the government side knows that hon. member must make remarks in this House and get the remarks in the record....

This is a breach of.... Using those tactics impedes the hon. member's right to speak on that bill. The orderly form of debate allows each and every MLA to order their daily

[ Page 1068 ]

routine in such a way as to participate in the bills they choose. This is my point of privilege.

HON. MR. SCHROEDER: On the same point of order, Mr. Speaker, if the opposition would care to give us a list of those members who are going to be inadvertently absent on any given day, perhaps that could be given consideration.

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. Hon. members, I am not going to allow debate to continue, and I mean that. I will take the matter under advisement as brought forward by the second member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk). I will bring a more detailed response to the House outlining why I will reject the application on the matter, but at this time, hon. members, we shall continue on the orderly business of the House. And lest our debates continue to affect a system, such as a Whip system, which might be in place, I would at this time urge all hon. members to take just a small step backwards. Let us give some thought to what we are engaging upon, and as time moves on we will possibly find that we are in a better position to carry on in the time-honoured traditions. I thank members for that opportunity.

ASSESSMENT AMENDMENT ACT, 1983

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Speaker, as I recall, the House Leader had called for second reading of Bill 22, the Assessment Amendment Act, 1983. It is with pleasure that I take my place in this House to speak to the act, one which I trust will have the support of all hon. members.

There is some history with respect to that which has arrived as a proposed piece of legislation in this British Columbia Legislature. It started with discussions in the fall of 1982, at which time the then Minister of Municipal Affairs, now the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. Heinrich), and myself, determined that reforms were available in terms of the assessment procedure relative to property in the province of British Columbia. We discussed these at some length with our officials and with some of our colleagues, and through the period of approximately November 1982 into December 1982, and concluding in January of this year, the former Minister of Municipal Affairs and I, with two or three officials from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and the Ministry of Finance, travelled throughout the province and held a series of excellent public meetings on this topic.

[3:30]

I found, on reflection, that it was one of the more productive series of meetings in which I have participated. They were, without exaggeration, open-ended. They started usually at 9 or 9:30 in the morning, and continued until everyone who was interested in the topic had spoken at whatever length and in whatever detail was appropriate for that individual or group. The meetings were held, as I indicated, throughout British Columbia: Vancouver, Victoria, the North Shore, the Courtenay-Comox area, Saanich municipality, Prince George, Kamloops, Surrey, Kelowna, Fort St. John, Prince Rupert, Smithers, Cranbrook. If I have missed one it is not deliberate; nonetheless, we were in virtually every region of the province.

My colleague and I came back with a very good reading of the views of interested British Columbians relative to assessment practices. We have not been able to incorporate in this amending act all that every participant, every person who spoke would have liked, but we found a number of common themes. Having approached it on a completely open and straightforward basis, we have been able to incorporate a number of those themes in the bill which is now before this assembly.

Briefly stated, the bill accomplishes, in my view, sir, four important purposes. First of all, it changes the dates in the assessment cycle; this change is to take place in 1984. It provides for a full assessment of every property in British Columbia in even-numbered years, with a revised assessment in odd-numbered years to take account only of any zoning or physical changes in a property. By that, as members will certainly know, I mean zoning changes, additions to a structure, significant additions to a structure, subdivision of property and so on. It provides for the December 31, 1982, assessment roll to be updated only for zoning or physical changes in 1983, and that will be the roll used for property taxation purposes in 1984.

Significantly, the fourth point observed by many individuals who came to us and spoke about their concerns provides for a property owner to provide a lessee of all or part of the property with a copy of the assessment notice for the property if the lessee requests it. I think this is a very important reform, one which perhaps should have been introduced some time ago. Nonetheless, it is before us today.

Interjection.

HON. MR. CURTIS: The member interjects: "For a fee?" I see no need for a fee, Mr. Member — simply a Xerox copy of the assessment notice in order that the lessee can examine and could indicate either to the property owner or to a court of revision, if that is appropriate, that he or she has a particular concern with respect to the assessment levied.

Moving to the assessment cycle, the new cycle will provide for the completion of the assessment roll on September 30. That compares to the present date, the date which has been in place for a good number of years, of December 31. Assessment notices will be sent out at that time — that is, following September 30 — and taxpayers will have one month, approximately 11 days longer than at present, to lodge a complaint or, more correctly, notice of the lodging of a complaint with the court of revision — or the individuals who receive such a complaint to be transmitted to the court of revision.

The courts will sit, under this amendment, from November 15 to December 15, and the roll will be authenticated by December 31. This is, as members will know, three months earlier than is the case under current practice. It means that property tax payers and municipalities and other interested bodies will receive assessment information earlier in the year. Hopefully they can therefore react more effectively to assessment changes in their budgetary and planning processes. We did not introduce this specifically for municipalities, but certainly among those who will find this to be beneficial will be local governments in the province of British Columbia.

I might say, as an aside, that I think many of us who receive assessment notices have found that they arrive at a time of unusually heavy mail to our homes, either immediately before Christmas or in the period between Christmas and New Year's, and then there is a limited period of time before which no appeal can be allowed. So we have moved all of that process out of that year-end period, which is in many

[ Page 1069 ]

instances a time when one is preoccupied with a number of other matters.

Insofar as the B.C. Assessment Authority is concerned, the new cycle will permit that authority to improve the quality of assessments. Again, the House will know that the authority is required by a combination of legislative enactment and judicial decision to value property and to complete the assessment roll on the day that I spoke of earlier — that is, on December 31. We know, and it will come as no surprise, that this is actually a physical impossibility. It forces the authority to forecast at an earlier date what the assessed value of property will be on December 31. In a rapidly changing market — and we have experienced such in British Columbia in the recent past, and perhaps will again — this can lead to quite seriously flawed assessments, and I think some of these were experienced by most, if not all, members of the House in 1982. This amending bill will correct this problem by making July 1 the date on which value is to be determined and September 30 the date for roll completion. With regard to the biennial assessment, this also provides for assessment of every property only every two years as compared to yearly assessment under the existing system, with again a revision in the intervening year only for those properties where the actual value of land and improvements has altered as a result of a physical change such as demolition — but not exclusively — new construction or new development, a change in zoning or classification or new-found inventory. We believe that this measure will reduce the cost of the assessment process by reducing the cost of operating the British Columbia Assessment Authority, to a certain extent the courts of revision, and the several assessment appeal boards. As such it is consistent with our policy of reducing the size and the complexity of government.

The new policy of having a full assessment only every second year is to commence this year. We get into the cycle. The roll which was completed on December 31, 1982, and on which property taxation for the calendar year 1983 was based will be updated only for the four situations indicated just a few moments ago.

I want to indicate to the House, and I know that some members are particularly interested in this topic.... As presented, this might suggest that a property owner would have the right to appeal only every two years — appeal, that is, to the court of revision or, if the property owner wishes, to the Assessment Appeal Board. I have received interested comment since this bill was introduced; we have had ample opportunity to examine it; and prior to committee stage I intend to place an amendment on the order paper which will ensure that those who would appeal will have the opportunity to do so once per year, notwithstanding the fact that their property is assessed only every two years.

The next full assessment roll under the model developed in this bill will be done in 1984 for the 1985 taxation year, and it will be done consistent with the cycle I have just outlined. So the next full assessment roll will be completed September 30, 1984, with the next full assessment roll after that being September 30, 1986.

I spoke about the notices. To elaborate as briefly as possible, the measure requires owners of property to supply lessees who have leases with a term longer than a year with a copy of the property's assessment notice upon request. This provision, which by the way compliments a present section of the Assessment Act whereby a registered lessee may obtain a property assessment notice, will ensure that lessors will be provided with information on assessments so that they do have the opportunity to appeal to the court of revision. In some cases they may well do so in conjunction with the property owner. I say that almost as an aside. It is not mandatory, but they would have that option.

In summary, I feel very comfortable with the reforms which are contained in Bill 22. I think they are important reforms. They were produced after extensive consultation with interested individuals throughout British Columbia. I want to thank those men and women, a number of individuals — quite a few organizations, but a number of individuals — who made the effort, in mid-winter as well, to attend meetings. I think of meetings such as those held in the city of Fort St. John, where we were very pleased to see individuals who had travelled some considerable distance from the northern part of British Columbia to express their concerns and to make their observations.

I think we had large crowds in virtually every meeting city, with the possible exception of Prince Rupert, and I observed to Mayor Lester at that time that apparently there were no concerns regarding assessments in the general vicinity of Prince Rupert. But we had good turnouts. We had enthusiastic and constructive participation. I would want to express appreciation, on behalf of my colleague the present Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. Heinrich), formerly Minister of Municipal Affairs, and myself, to MLAs who attended, to representatives of local government and regional districts who attended and participated, who submitted written briefs, and to those British Columbians who simply made observations and spoke to us rather than submitting formal briefs. This is also their document today; this is their legislation. It is an undertaking that I would very much enjoy doing once again. We don't pretend today to have solved, by any stretch of the imagination, all assessment ills, but I think we have taken a major step forward. I look forward to comments by members of the Legislature.

I move that Bill 22 be now read a second time.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That opens debate. The Chair recognizes the hon. member for Nanaimo.

[3:45]

MR. STUPICH: Yes, Mr. Speaker, that opens debate. That starts it. Sometimes it's a little easier to start it than it is to stop it. Maybe that's the reason the government has chosen to start debate on one bill after another, and then to abandon them and get on to something else. As you say, it opens debate. It opens debate on Bill 22, and one wonders what we're going to open it on next.

Certainly the process that the minister described is an interesting one. The idea of travelling around the province, giving people all over B.C. an opportunity to make their presentations to himself and the people who travelled with him, is good. I think it's not the ultimate. The minister did say that many good presentations were made, that they had a very good reading of what interested British Columbians had to say about proposed or prospective changes in the Assessment Act, and that some of those ideas are presented in the legislation before us now. But that's only part of the story. We have no knowledge at all of what ideas were presented in the various communities that were not included in the legislation. This is not a criticism; it's just to say that this information is missing. We have no knowledge really of the extent to which British Columbians are dissatisfied, upset or worried about the operations of the Assessment Authority. All we really

[ Page 1070 ]

have before us is a bill which the minister describes as recognizing some of the concerns that were put to him and his group as they travelled around the province.

I spoke yesterday, I think it was, on another issue, about the idea of having a committee of MLAs travel around the province to listen to people. It would seem to me that if the government actually wanted to get a good reading and to make that kind of information available to all members in the House, or at least to both parties in the House, he might have invited some opposition members to travel around as well. They could also have listened to some of the concerns, and might have spoken in this debate not just on the information contained in the bill itself but on ideas that might have been contained which might have made the bill even more acceptable to the Legislature generally, and more acceptable to the people of the province. We don't even know what common themes the minister heard which he might have wanted to include in the legislation and hasn't included. We don't even know whether all of the themes included in the legislation are themes that were presented to him as he travelled around the province, or whether some of them are ideas that came from within his own ministry or even from the Assessment Authority.

We really have a very small picture of a very worthwhile effort to get a hearing from the people in the province, a picture that could have been much more complete had the minister chosen to set up a committee that included members of the opposition. When the NDP administration was in office, they did set up such a committee — a municipal affairs committee — which included members from government and the opposition. The present minister was a member of that committee. That makes me wonder all the more why, in setting up that committee, the present minister didn't choose to broaden the representation by including some opposition members.

HON. MR. CURTIS: You kept leaving me behind though. The plane would take off and I wouldn't be on it.

MR. STUPICH: Now it's coming back to me. I do recall that the minister was left behind. He was busy politicking in various communities when the rest of them were meeting and listening to the ratepayers, so he kept being left behind.

Interjection.

MR. STUPICH: Mr. Speaker, the minister says that wasn't the whole story, that there were other reasons for him being left behind on occasion. I wouldn't even have known that he was left behind had he not volunteered that information. Perhaps in closing second reading tomorrow, the next day, next month, next year, or whenever he closes second reading, he might tell us just precisely why he was left behind and whether that was the reason that he chose not to include members of the opposition on this committee that travelled around the province.

I think it's a very good idea to travel around the province on legislation such as this — perhaps this more than anything else. Most people don't particularly like paying taxes of any kind, and I would think the most misunderstood, even the most disliked tax of all is the property tax. I think there's a pretty widely held feeling among taxpayers that the only fair tax is the one that somebody else pays. When it comes to property tax, I've had more representations made to me in my constituency than about anything else. There was a time that I was in the business of filing tax returns for people, yet I still had more problems dealing with people who were concerned about property tax.

For lunch today I had a guest from my constituency who, I might add, voted Social Credit in the last election campaign. An 80-years-young woman came down from my constituency to complain to me about property tax. This was just by coincidence, because I didn't know Bill 22 was going to be called today.

MRS. JOHNSTON: Did you refer her to her mayor?

MR. STUPICH: Mr. Speaker, I'm missing so much. If some of these members would stand on their feet and speak, then I could respond.

Interjection.

MR. STUPICH: Oh, now I understand, Mr. Speaker. The member is asking whether or not she complained to her mayor. She complained to the assessment....

HON. MR. CURTIS: Did she have long hair? That's what the question was.

MR. STUPICH: Well, Mr. Speaker, she enjoyed the special in the dining room. I said she was 80 years young, and people 80 years young do not usually wear long hair. I don't think she did; I frankly didn't notice.

Can I get back to the discussion about the assessment?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That would be great. Please proceed.

MR. STUPICH: Well, Mr. Speaker, without all this help I wouldn't be able to do it.

That's why she came down. As a matter of fact she made two trips. She came down on the Monday, thinking I was going to be here, and I was tied up with something else, so she phoned my secretary and made a date, and I had lunch with her today, and she talked about her assessment problems. She's living in a mobile-home park, next door to someone else who has exactly the same trailer but who is paying substantially less tax. As far as she can see, there is no difference between the two properties.

Interjection.

MR. STUPICH: I thought I was being asked whether the lady had been to the mayor.

She's been to the alderman in her district, to the Assessment Authority and to the city collector of taxes, and she has argued with all of them. She took me with her on two occasions. I can't tell her why her assessment is higher than her next-door neighbour, who apparently has the same trailer. I've seen them, and the only difference is that the lady in question has a beautiful flower garden, and she wonders whether she is being assessed a higher amount because her flowers are so good. Then she told me about another one two doors down — a larger trailer, three rooms instead of the two that she has, and assessed at a lower amount again than either one of them. That one has the lowest assessment of three.

[ Page 1071 ]

There are a lot of problems about assessments. Some, I am sure, can be repeated in every constituency in the province. So when the minister was travelling around and listening to these people, I wonder whether he heard all of the common themes — he probably has. I wonder how many of the common themes are actually dealt with in the legislation before us and how many more might have been dealt with had there been a larger committee travelling around, and had there been an opportunity for opposition members to sit down, in the times when they weren't actually taking part in the hearings, and meet with government members to talk about ways and means of handling the problems which people were putting to them. Because, as I say, there just isn't any tax that is resented more than property tax.

Some people feel that they improve their property and others blow their money. The ones who spend their money looking after their property are the ones who are paying the highest property tax, and from what I have seen, there is some justification in them feeling that. There seem to be problems with the system. We tried to deal with that when we were in government, and the previous government tried to deal with it. The previous Minister of Finance — that is, before 1972 — did bring in provisions that assessments could increase at a maximum rate per year. Leaving aside the possibility of changes in zoning or anything else, which the minister mentioned.... In the ordinary course of circumstances, assessments could not increase by any more than, I think, 10 percent per year. At least that gave some control.

Now we're going to have a change in the assessment cycle. On the face of it, it sounds like a good idea. It's going to save costs and, of course, costs are paid by the taxpayers. We're going to have a full assessment in even-numbered years. That's great. I know that the assessment doesn't really control the amount of tax you're paying; I know the way the system works. But I know that when people get assessment notices they right away get concerned. Unfortunately some of them don't wait until they get their tax notice. Some of them look at the assessment notice and start to worry.

If the assessment notice were to come out in 1981, for example, a year when properties were assessed at very high levels, and in 1982 the only changes that could be made were in instances where the property was being rezoned or added to, or for some other reason, how could the assessments in 1982 reflect in any way the dramatic change in property values from 1981 to 1982? I heard nothing in the minister's opening remarks to give me any feeling that there is any way of dealing with rapid changes in property values in an off year. If there were the kind of protection that was there prior to the establishment of the Assessment Authority — that is, if there was a maximum amount by which assessments might increase in any one year — then I can see this system working, but there is no such protection in the legislation. There's nothing in the minister's remarks that would lead me to believe that a concern which I'm sure must have been expressed to him on many occasions, that rapid changes in property values, either up or down — not because of changes in use, or because of expansion or addition, or zoning changes, but because of market conditions.... There's nothing in the legislation or in the minister's remarks to persuade me that any recognition was given to what I think must have been a very common theme expressed to him as he travelled around the province: that the Assessment Authority does not seem to be able to react quickly enough to dramatic changes in market prices. That theme is one about which we should be very concerned.

There is one way that it could have been handled in the past: that is, of course, to have beefed up the Assessment Authority. Unfortunately that isn't the way we've been going. The Assessment Authority has been held back staffwise. They have not been able to cover an expanding province. I don't mean that the boundaries are getting any wider, but certainly within the province more and more properties are being established and more and more buildings are being built. There is more and more work for the Assessment Authority, yet it does not have the manpower to do it.

I understand that staff levels at the Assessment Authority have been frozen since 1975. There have been no additions at all in complement since the NDP went out of office in 1975. In spite of that, the authority has managed. They have improved their productivity; since 1975 they have achieved a 30 percent increase in assessments. The people who are there are doing their level best to get the work done, but I wonder at what cost to the people who are being assessed. If the same number of people are having to produce 30 percent more assessments, does it mean that the assessment itself is liable to be in error because it had to be a rush job? It's one thing to operate at the same level as in 1975, to have improved procedures and become better at their jobs, with more experienced people — to be able, since 1975, to achieve a 30 percent increase in assessments without increasing staff levels. But now the situation is to worsen: now they are going to be asked to do as much as they had been doing to accommodate the growth that was taking place in the province, and to do it not with the same staff they had in 1975 but with a 25 percent drop in staff over the next 14 months.

[4:00]

If the minister thought he was hearing complaints about the operation of the Assessment Authority, as he travelled around the province — and I'm sure he was....

HON. MR. CURTIS: No, very few, actually.

MR. STUPICH: The minister says very few. I accept his word as an honourable member of the Legislature. I can't help but say that I'm surprised.

HON. MR. CURTIS: Complaints about assessments; very few about the Assessment Authority.

MR. STUPICH: Complaints about assessments? Well, it's like saying you don't mind at all the work the baker is doing, but you can't stand eating his bread. There are no complaints about the Assessment Authority, but there are complaints about the assessments. Okay, I'll be careful when I.... They have no dislike at all for the Assessment Authority as an institution, but they just don't like the results. That was happening; I'm sure there's no question about that. As I said, we've all experienced it.

[Mr. Pelton in the chair.]

The feature that property owners should be obliged to provide a copy to the lessee, on request, is a good one. As I said, there are parts of this legislation that we can support. Under the ordinary course of events, it might have been disposed of very quickly by the Legislature. But once again we're dealing with legislation that has to do with raising

[ Page 1072 ]

money. The provincial government raises a good deal of its money from assessments in rural areas, and from assessments in municipalities, now that they take from the municipalities all the school board revenue for commercial and industrial property. The provincial government stands to take quite a bit of money out of all areas of the province, on the basis of assessments calculated by the Assessment Authority. Once again we're talking about the raising of money, and you'll recall that there's a budget before us that talks about the rate of rural taxation. They're talking about raising money without any one minister being able to stand up and tell us how he is going to spend that money.

There was concern earlier — and it was all out of order — about the lack of communication between the Whips as to what we're doing here, perhaps because neither Whip knows what we should be doing here. Our concern is with the process. In the normal course of events, we talk first about what the ministers are spending their money on, and then we talk about raising that money. That's a logical way to go. Here we're talking once again about assessments that have a great deal to do with raising money, without talking at all about what the government is spending it on.

A lot of this money is going to be raised for education. When are we going to get to the estimates of the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. Heinrich) so that we know what he proposes to do with the money that is being raised — money that is calculated on the basis of the work being done by the Assessment Authority? When are we going to complete the budget debate so that we'll be ready to start the debate on estimates?

It's the process that concerns us. I know it's not in order here. Neither Whip is here right now — well, one of them is — but if the Whips could sit down and talk about what the government has in mind and what plans they have for this session, then perhaps there could be some meaningful discussion about what is going on here. Until there is, we don't know what's going on. Until there is, we're determined that as much as we can, we're going to wait until the government is prepared to discuss its spending plans before we approve further measures to increase government revenues.

I was concerned when one member on the opposition side of the House said to the minister in an aside: "Will there be any fee for the copy of the assessment notice that is going to be provided to a lessee on request?" The minister said no, he didn't see any need for that at all — just a Xerox copy. It worried me. Here was one place the government hadn't thought to raise money. I wish he hadn't put that idea into the minister's head, because we may find out that there will be a fee on that. After all, in normal places....

HON. MR. CURTIS: It's a private matter.

MR. STUPICH: Well, yes, it's a private matter. Someone has to pay for that Xerox copy. If somebody buys that Xerox copy, is there going to be sales tax on it?

HON. MR. CURTIS: No.

MR. STUPICH: The minister says "no." If the assessment notice is photocopied, and if the lessee is charged for that, the minister has told us that the Ministry of Finance will not be applying the sales tax to the provision of that document. I don't know how long that's good for, and I'm not sure how good that denial is at the moment. Nonetheless, it's on the record for what it's worth.

I suppose the only thing I can say about the idea of completing the assessment roll by September 30 rather than December 30 is that I wonder why somebody didn't do it one year ago, five years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago or thirty years ago. It's a good idea. I do applaud the government for that.

HON. MR. CURTIS: Oh, you're not through yet?

MR. STUPICH: No, I'm not through yet. Almost.

One of the things that has bothered people is that they get their assessment notice and if they're a day or two late picking up the mail, it's too late to do anything about it. One wonders why this couldn't have been done long ago. I suppose I have to share some responsibility for that and wonder why we didn't do it when we were in office because it certainly is a very logical step to take. I think it couldn't have been done without the efficient work that the Assessment Authority is doing with the very limited staff that they have. We're now able to do this, and that is a step forward. I wish that the Minister of Finance was prepared to exclude from the requirement that the staff of the Assessment Authority must be reduced by 25 percent, because I believe if they had an opportunity to put more effort into the work they're doing, a lot of the problems about assessments.... The minister did agree that in travelling around the province they did have concerns expressed about assessments themselves. At least there would be fewer questions about assessments. I believe that....

MRS. JOHNSTON: Did you read that in this bill somewhere?

MR. STUPICH: The reference to the assessment cycles? The first member for Surrey asked whether I read in this bill that there will be a reduction in the assessment authority. Not in this bill. Unfortunately, this is only one of 26 pieces of legislation that were introduced on July 7 with the budget. It's all part of one package. Because it's all part of one package, it's our determination that it should be dealt with in an orderly manner.

HON. MR. CURTIS: Order!

MR. STUPICH: If we were going to be following order, we'd be dealing with the budget first; then we would be dealing with estimates of expenditures. That's order. The Minister of Finance is calling me to order. I call him to order. Let's have the debate on the budget. Let's conclude that. Then let's get into the estimates of expenditures and deal, vote by vote, with what we're spending money on. Perhaps then we'll start making some progress. The Whips then can sit down and talk and see what's going on. I would urge that course of action upon the government, Mr. Speaker, but I don't suppose they'll pay much attention. They must have some plan. I just can't believe that the ship of government is as rudderless as it has seemed to be since the budget — I guess before that things went in the normal way. We had an opening speech on June 27. We dealt with it in an orderly manner and got rid of it. Then we had the budget and things went along fine.

[ Page 1073 ]

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. member, we are discussing Bill 22.

MR. STUPICH: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Bill 22 will reduce the cost of administration. I mentioned earlier that that sounds good. Any time we're reducing the cost of administration it does sound good. But it's not dealing, unfortunately — I would invite the minister to comment on this sometime later — with the concern I raised about the rapid changes in market values. I had a note to raise the anomalies of assessments, where one's property is assessed at an amount that doesn't seem reasonable compared to that of the neighbour. There will be opportunities to appeal that, he said; amendments will be coming in to take care of that problem. But it doesn't deal with what we do in the event of rapid changes in market value. Supposing in the biennial assessment we're at a high and assessments are up very high; then there's no way in the next year....

HON. MR. CURTIS: Do you want me to answer that?

MR. STUPICH: Yes. Would you make a note of it and deal with it in second reading?

HON. MR. CURTIS: Well, I can answer it right now.

MR. STUPICH: Perhaps you'll get an opportunity to close very soon. You never know.

The fact that they may appeal annually does deal with the neighbour-by-neighbour situation; to me it would appear as though it doesn't deal with the question of rapid changes in market value. The Minister of Finance is anxious to close debate on this. I'll come back briefly to the first point I made and leave it at that.

When we were in government, we set up an all-party committee that travelled around. We went further and established a royal commission to deal with property taxation; even the committee that travelled around wasn't able to deal with that problem. The commission did not report until the change in government. The commission was asked to conclude its report quickly. At that time, it did bring in what they said was not a complete report. One of the recommendations of the commission was that they have some additional time to wrap up the report and to make it a better job than it was. The Social Credit administration chose not to give them that time. That's unfortunate because there were some good recomendations in that report. In effect, they said that the government should accept a higher proportion of the share of education costs; it had nothing to do with assessment as such. But a person getting his or her tax notice.... Most people don't differentiate. We recognize the difference but most taxpayers don't recognize that difference.

The McMath commission did good work; it was a good approach. The all-party committee that the NDP administration established was a good approach. I would recommend to the minister, if he has any other proposals, at any time, for listening to the people in the province, that he take a leaf out of the book of his own administration on one occasion. I remember one committee that sat between sessions of the Legislature, travelled around the province and gave concerned people an opportunity to talk to it — only one that I can think of. But there were several such groups that travelled under the NDP administration. It made people feel that they had some direct contact not only with their own MLA but also with government and opposition members alike at some hearings. I think it's a good process. It's one that I would recommend to the minister.

Mr. Speaker, in general we can support the legislation that's before us. We have some concerns; the minister has taken note of some of those concerns. Perhaps after we've heard the minister close the debate on second reading we will then be prepared to vote either for or against the legislation, depending upon the rest of the debate in the House.

MR. BLENCOE: Mr. Speaker, in debating Bill 22, because I haven't spoken for some time this is my first opportunity to reflect on why the government seems determined not to complete business in an orderly fashion. We have serious business in the budget: estimates, deficits and, I believe, serious overestimations of deficits and underestimations of revenue; and we continue to avoid speaking about those, moving on to things like Bill 22.

[4:15]

A number of bills have today been brought forward. I don't know why the government feels it has to bring Bill 22 forward at a time when the people of British Columbia are waiting to talk about other things, are waiting to see what the particular spending habits and direction of his government will be in its budget deliberations. Yet here we are again, on the sixth or seventh bill today. We haven't completed the budget, and we are on to a technical area of assessment in the province, which really is in the wrong place in terms of the logical order of business of this House — in my opinion, of course. I believe the people of British Columbia are entitled to orderly business, are entitled to have budget deliberations presented in a rational, intelligent way rather than jumping around on a daily basis and confusing the people of British Columbia in terms of the intentions of this government.

On previous bills I have talked about the assessment situation in British Columbia. I have talked at length about the inadequacies of the real property tax system, and I don't intend today to go into it or reiterate the particular positions I have put. Suffice to say, however, that the inadequacies of that system are well known and have been known for 100 years. In discussions over coffee with members of the government, they will admit the same thing. They will admit that someday a government — and it looks like it will have to be our government, Mr. Speaker — will indeed have to radically alter the real property tax system and the assessment system in the province of B.C. and bring in a system....

MRS. JOHNSTON: You won't live that long.

MR. BLENCOE: I will live far longer than you, Madam Member.

It will have to bring in a system that the people of British Columbia understand, one that is clearly defined and based once and for all upon the ability to pay taxation at the local level. In my considered opinion, Bill 22, like a number of the other bills relating to taxation, only tinkers with a sick taxation system in British Columbia. It applies the 1,007th bandaid to a collapsing system.

MRS. JOHNSTON: You want the seniors to pay more.

MR. BLENCOE: I have already suggested to you, Madam Member, that if you are serious about the problems of taxation for senior citizens, stop giving them grants through

[ Page 1074 ]

the back door in terms of homeowner, and look at a system to ensure that seniors do not have to pay on the same basis as a wage-earner. Use a formula of taxation that is based upon what a person can pay. A senior citizen can no longer pay what a wage-earner pays, and yet we have a real property taxation system in British Columbia that indeed forces the senior citizen to pay taxes according to the same formula as the rest of us. The $60,000 or $70,000 executive director pays according to the same formula as the senior citizen. That is ludicrous and ridiculous, and if we quietly get together we all admit that that is what is sick about the real property tax system.

Bill 22 does nothing to radically alter the real property tax system in British Columbia.

MRS. JOHNSTON: You want the seniors to pay more.

MR. BLENCOE: Mr. Speaker, if that member knew what she was talking about she would not say those things. I believe senior citizens in British Columbia have paid enough taxes, and when they are on a fixed income there should be a formula to ensure they pay taxes according to what their fixed income allows — the ability to pay according to that fixed income. At the moment that is not in place. I know hundreds of senior citizens in this community who, based upon the taxation system in place for the province, every year wonder whether they are going to keep their homes. Every single year. This government refuses to do anything about that. It tries to con the people by Bill 7 and Bill 12 and Bill 22 that they are introducing evolutionary changes, but they are not. It is another band-aid on a system that has been studied to death by well-educated intelligent commissions across this country, and indeed in North America. Other jurisdictions where they have real property tax have said we need to devise a system of taxation whereby, at least for the majority of services that are rendered at the municipal level, people pay taxes based upon what they can afford to pay, not on what the real estate market says it might be able to get for their homes. That's the kind of taxation system we want. In that way — and I see the member has now left because she knows she was talking.... Well, she was not exactly accurate in her statements so she decided to leave. If we are to protect our senior citizens in the province of British Columbia from the ravages of a tax system such that every year they're not sure what they're going to be paying, and whether they're going to stay in their homes, that's the system we require.

I want to very quickly take a look at Bill 22 and what I consider are some of the problems with it. The Assessment Authority was established a number of years ago. Unfortunately, the Assessment Authority has had its staff complement frozen since 1975. If the government of the day — and currently it's the Social Credit government — insists on maintaining an archaic and unfair taxation system, it should ensure that the very institution responsible for assessing properties in British Columbia, and therefore the local council administering and applying the various tax formulas, has adequate staff to have up-to-date information on the value of individual properties. What concerns me — and has concerned me for a number of years, having been involved at the local level for six years and chairman of finance in the city of Victoria for a number of years — is that we get information that is inaccurate and unfair, which compounds the problem of a taxation system that outlived its time a hundred years ago.

I would tell the Minister of Finance that if he thinks he is doing the municipal taxpayers of British Columbia a favour by only having a roll every two years.... I will say today that we will have the chaos that happened two years ago when very high assessments came out at a time when the market was dropping dramatically, and assessments were 30 to 40 percent higher than they should have been. You're building in to the assessment process the potential for chaos every two years. What will happen is that when the market, for instance, starts to drop or die, people's tax assessment levels will reflect the assessment for the year before, and they won't pay a fair level of taxation. It'll be an inflated level of taxation. You won't get an accurate reflection of what properties are worth.

I maintain — and our party maintains — that if you are going to continue to band-aid a tax system that really needs major surgery, at least ensure that the institution that is in place to tell municipalities how much taxes they can collect is staffed adequately; ensure that it has an accurate roll on a yearly basis.

We all recall — I think it was approximately two years ago, and I'm sure the Minister of Finance will recall this quite vividly — the major revolt of local taxpayers when they got their assessment notices. That was when a roll was done on an annual basis. It put incredible tensions on a lot of taxpayers because they thought they were going to have to pay taxes on that incredibly inflated value. Thousands and thousands of British Columbians had to go to courts of revision to try and get their assessments reviewed. There was a mad panic by the Assessment Authority to try to come clean a little bit. There were some general reductions of 10 or 15 percent in some jurisdictions. In the city of Victoria, I think, before the appeals were even heard, there was a 10 or 15 percent reduction before people went to the courts. But there were hundreds of thousands of people in British Columbia forced into a very complicated, not well-understood process. They had to go and deal with a complicated matter of taxation, because the Assessment Authority was understaffed — and it will be even more understaffed, by 25 percent — and not able to keep up with the fluctuations in the market and reflect actual values that people should pay taxes on.

Now what the Finance minister is saying to the people of British Columbia is that we will build that chaos into the system by only having a roll every two years. That's what the government is doing. I'll again reiterate — and I will continue to do that as long as I'm allowed to speak about taxation systems in the province of British Columbia — if you insist on having a real estate system for municipal purposes, at least ensure that the assessment authority that the municipalities have to rely on for accurate information is up to date on a yearly basis. It's not going to be anymore; that's not going to be in place.

I believe it's also more important that assessments be precise and that equity between properties of the same class be exact, particularly when the government has gone to the introduction of a variable mill rate. If municipalities are going to be able to adjust the various taxations on particular types of properties, they must have accurate information to make fair and equitable changes in the taxes on particular categories, according to the variable mill rate the government has introduced. It's extremely important that if that variable mill rate system is to work as the government thinks it will work, the information that local government works with be

[ Page 1075 ]

accurate. What they will be working on is two-year-old information. In some jurisdictions that may violate the very premise the variable mill rate was introduced under: that is, to try to introduce a degree of fairness in various property categories and shift the load.

One of the particular aspects of this bill that may indeed give some concern, or may create some problems for local municipalities, is the $10,000 exemption for commercial properties. We all know that industrial and commercial properties have gone through some major shifts in assessments in the last few years. I've talked about that for a number of hours, in terms of how we should deal with that. I don't think it's a matter of creating exemptions or special privileges in the system, when you don't create special privileges for the single-family owner, the senior citizen or the handicapped person who manages to own a house. If you're going to create special privileges for the commercial or business property holder, you should have special privileges for the senior citizen and the handicapped person, and you should have exemptions in there.

[4:30]

I understand the government's concern for the industrial and commercial property holder, particularly when the government itself — and I address this to the Minister of Industry and Small Business Development (Hon. Mr. Phillips) ; and maybe he'll remind the Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mr. Chabot), who attacked the local council for forcing industry out of Victoria — put up the lease fees for those industrial leases on the working harbour in Victoria dramatically in the last few years. Indeed, a number of industries have had to move out because of that, one of them being the Lime Bay shake mill, which gave employment in good times to 100 to 150 Victorians. The person who owned that is actually a well-known Socred supporter, and at the time he did not have very good things to say about this government.

AN HON. MEMBER: Did he go broke?

MR. BLENCOE: I would remind that member that that shake mill has been a family business for a long time in this community. They worked very hard to maintain that business. A major factor why that shake mill is gone and now no longer operating is the government's decision to increase the lease fee on that property dramatically, and therefore the assessments and the taxation increased dramatically.

If I may, I would ask the Finance minister and the Minister of Industry if they would indeed review those increases in lease fees and therefore those increases in assessments and therefore those increases in taxation for industries on the harbour front in Victoria. That's one of the basic reasons why this community continues to lose its industrial base. The Provincial Secretary may not be aware of that particular situation when he attacks the local council. I'm sure he's not aware that the shifts experienced in terms of assessments on commercial and industrial property owners in Victoria have had a major impact on local industry, and that's why local industry in this community is in trouble.

You cannot tinker with that particular system. If you are concerned about the commercial or industrial property holders not only in Victoria but in the province of British Columbia, you've got to have an industrial policy, one that is understood clearly and that sees industrial property with a policy behind it to ensure that those industries are not subjected to the vagaries of real estate speculation. That's what's been happening, and Bill 22 does nothing to do that.

Yet they have decided that there will be an additional exemption for commercial properties. Well, Mr. Speaker, there's nothing in particular wrong per se with that move, but the difficulty with doing that is that municipalities that are constantly struggling to maintain their services and infrastructure.... Their revenues are dwindling all the time. The provincial government, in its wisdom, reduces grants and revenue-sharing to those municipalities, or it radically changes the formula for sewer or underground grants, cutting back provincial contributions to municipalities. Therefore what happens is that municipalities have a shortfall in terms of trying to maintain their essential services.

What you may indeed do, by that exemption for commercial properties, is initially help those commercial property holders. But by creating exemptions and not resolving the long-term problems of a particular category of property holders, you are putting a further burden on the local taxpayer. Particularly, that shift, that exemption, has to be made up somewhere, and what invariably happens is that the single-family owner has to take the shift, has to make up the difference. That's not fair. That's not right. The first member for Surrey (Mrs. Johnston) across the way is talking about her concern for senior citizens; I would put it to that member, and to the Finance minister, that creating exemptions for one particular category of property holder is nice for that particular category of holder, but what happens is the five or ten others — there are about eight property categories used in this province — have to take up the slack.

Why not tax the industrial or commercial property holders according to their annual income, rather than based upon property adjacent that's not being used for industrial purposes but becomes the subject of land speculation and consequently radically affects the assessment of those industrial property holders? They pay inflated taxes based upon inflated assessments because of upland property being subjected to speculation. Ninety-nine percent of the time those commercial or industrial property holders do not wish to end their activities.

Here in Victoria we have, I think — at the last count I did — 93 major industrial property holders, most of them longtime family businesses. Yet they are being virtually forced out of this community because we have an assessment system that is unscientific and unfair, and we have a bill today — Bill 22 — that does nothing to change that long-term problem.

I urge the provincial government to look at an industrial commercial development strategy that takes into account those vagaries in the real property tax system.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

Some of our industrial property holders saw their assessments go up not 100 percent, not 200 percent, not 500 percent, but 1,000 percent. Major industrial bases in this community saw their assessments go up 1,000 percent. B.C. Forest Products, which at the time was closed down and which used to give hundreds and hundreds of jobs to this community.... When it was closed and not earning money it was faced with a $1 million tax bill. Its assessment had jumped 1,000 percent because in the Uplands area there were some of those fine development people talking about putting in high-priced condos and strata titling and fancy

[ Page 1076 ]

hotels. What happened is that the adjacent properties owned by B.C. Forest Products saw their assessments jump 1,000 percent, and they had to be forced to pay $1 million in property taxes when they weren't earning a penny. They were shut down. That's what this government has to tackle. That's the problem. That's the only way you're going to maintain jobs in the province and particularly in Victoria. You've got to tackle that. This won't do it, with respect. I know you're trying to improve things. I'll give you that. You're trying. But if you're really to resolve those deep, deep problems of job loss and industrial assessment skyrocketing, and consequently $1 million for a plant that's not even operating, you've got to be determined to look right at the root of the problem. There's an old adage. Governments always go around fire-fighting problems, looking for the quick and immediate solution. I think we have a variable mill rate; Bills 7, 12 and 22 are part of that quick solution. But there's an old adage: if you don't ask the right questions, it doesn't matter what kind of solutions you find. With respect to those hon. members who have been part of putting together Bills 7, 12 and 22, I give them their due. They may indeed be trying their best. But, with respect, I don't think they're asking the right questions.

Do not be so concerned with saying you found a magic solution so that the people of British Columbia think this government is doing a good job. That's the name of politics, I realize. That's what it's all about. But....

Interjections.

MR. BLENCOE: Was it a private joke? You'll share it with me later.

Ask the right questions. As I said, I know in political life it's very tempting to always be saying: "We're finding a solution; we'll find it in two or three weeks and we'll get it out there. Everyone thinks we've done a marvellous job." But take a little time and ask the right questions. Participate with local government in looking at assessment problems. Don't cut them back by 25 percent so they can't do a good job and play an accurate role, so that people will pay fair taxes on an annual basis. That's not right. That's not fair. Ask the right questions. I suggest that one area in western constitutional democracy that needs major revamping and changing is the property and real estate system and how we assess for taxation purposes.

This question may be somewhat rhetorical, because I'll try to answer it a little bit. If the government introduces — and it seems to want to do that — a system whereby we have a semi-scientific analysis of property values every two years, many property holders may be facing higher taxes than they should be according to their assessment. If that happens, what is the government prepared to do when the thousands and thousands of property holders, like they did two years ago, say: "For heaven's sake, do something about the assessment system." I recall when it happened two years ago. The Premier and the Finance minister said: "We will really get to the bottom of it. We'll really try to improve it. We'll really try to avoid sending assessments out that reflect nine months hence." You know what happened? Those assessments came out, and they didn't reflect the value of their properties. They knew what the value of their property was. Now it could be that we'll have close to a two-year gap between the assessments and the changes in the market.

[4:45]

Does the government have a course of action — as it said it did two years ago — to tell the people of British Columbia that that won't happen again? With respect, if this bill goes through as it is, that will happen again. The market, as you know, may suddenly pick up and then drop again. And what happens is that the assessments will come out reflecting someone's house at $150,000, and it's dropped down to $100,000 and they'll pay taxes according to the $150,000 assessment. Then you will get the angry citizens saying: "Why didn't you resolve that problem?" You're not doing it. You're weakening the system by having a roll done every two years. Improve the system. Don't lay off 25 percent of the Assessment Authority, They can't keep up now; they can't do a good job now.

It's incumbent upon this government to ensure that municipalities have fair and accurate documents to work with when they are allocating taxation levels for particular categories — particularly, if you're serious about Bills 7 and 12, the variable mill rate, and if you want those bills to do what you say they're going to do — that is, a degree of fairness over property categories — you've got to have an accurate roll. You won't have it with Bill 22. You cannot take into account the swings. You didn't do it two years ago with a roll done each year. Now, every two years, can you imagine what swings you could get, and what could happen to particular property categories? I hate to think what may happen to B.C. Forest Products. It's open now; I hope it stays open. But what could happen is that because of the swing or because of the major jump in assessments in properties surrounding it, that company could face a $1.5 million or a $2 million tax bill, when really that property is nowhere near worth that. That's what you're doing with this particular bill. You're certainly not trying to resolve the long-term problems of real-property taxation at the municipal level.

The authority's 1983 operating budget will be cut by 11 percent from 1982 levels. This year's grant of $8,397,000 is $933,000 less than the 1982 grant. To the extent that the provincial government controls the authority revenue either as capital or operating grants, or through setting the percentage of the uniform levy on all taxable property, the reduction in the operating grant will not be made up from any other source.

One of the major sources of irritation for citizens in municipalities is the property taxation system. The decision of this government to introduce Bill 22 and to reduce the staff complement by 25 percent will further irritate local taxpayers, in my estimation. The Assessment Authority takes a lot of abuse. Yet I believe that the staff there have tried their utmost to work with a taxation system that really — as I've said already, and I don't want to say it again — should be radically altered. They have been reasonably efficient and have tried their utmost. Many of them work long hours, and during the crisis a few years ago they worked many overtime hours trying to deal with that crisis. It would seem that for their efficiency and their attempts to be a model Crown corporation they are now going to be penalized by a major staff reduction of 25 percent. It is highly unlikely they will be capable of continuing to provide the same level of service that they currently provide.

MRS. JOHNSTON: Are you going to speak on the bill all day?

[ Page 1077 ]

MR. BLENCOE: No.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that there is concern in the provincial government with the current assessment system and the property tax system. The Minister of Finance for many years was involved in local politics, and he knows of the problems. I'm sure as mayor of Saanich he heard many complaints about taxation systems and assessment notices. I'm sure he did. He knows about them.

Mr. Speaker, I notice my time is running out. Again, I ask the government to ask the right questions about the property tax system. Don't be so concerned with finding quick-fix solutions that look good on the surface but just prop up a system that is totally inadequate for today's municipal operations.

Municipal operations were totally different 100 years ago than they are today. Many of the services provided by municipalities no longer directly relate to property and therefore property tax. That's true. What this government has to do is look at a two-tiered tax system for municipal operations: retain the assessment authority and therefore retain property taxation for a number of services that are directly related to property. There's no problem with that. That could be isolated and done, but you'd develop a system for many of the other services, like recreation and sporting facilities, and develop a second-track level that would collect taxes at the local level based upon the ability to pay.

Initially that may look cumbersome and difficult to work out. I think that has been one of the reasons why people haven't wanted to go for it. But it has been done in other jurisdictions and is working successfully. If the government wishes to work on this very important problem with the opposition, we are quite prepared to work together with them. If the government in its wisdom decides to set up a special select committee on real property taxation system, with the intention of bringing in a system in, say, a year or two that will once and for all be fair and equitable and is understood, we will participate in that. A special committee of the House....

Interjections.

MR. BLENCOE: Well, it has to be done.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Your time under standing orders has elapsed.

MR. BLENCOE: I urge the government to do that.

MR. NICOLSON: Mr. Speaker, the bill before us is but a symptom of a very misguided policy which has led us year after year to consider attempts to treat the symptoms of a very rampant disease. That is the method by which this government has run out of control. Spending, particularly on themselves in the expansion of their offices and on promulgating government policies has led government to look for new sources of revenue. An institution which was brought into this province in order to create some fairness in one sector of taxation revenue — and, I might say, an area that was mostly intended to raise revenues for local governments — has become the very misplaced object of resentment for people who have seen the levels of property tax growing beyond any rate that can be justified. It's growing way out of control to the detriment of homeowners, landlords and tenants, and commercial property owners or lessees.

For instance, in my community the taxation has risen at Kootenay Forest Products, a division of B.C. Timber. You will see that in 1976, 1977, 1978, 1980 and 1981 the taxes have risen from rather modest, manageable numbers progressively to numbers that are way out of control. Look at the taxes paid by residential property owners. Residential property taxes have outstripped the growth of average weekly wages, not just slightly ahead of them but double and three times for many families. What is the reason for this? The reason is largely the fact that this provincial government participates less in school taxes than any other province from here to Ontario. Now this government pays less than one third of the school tax bill. But of course they've come up with a special wrinkle this year; they've confiscated the commercial and industrial taxation. Now they give it back and are claiming that they are providing 60 percent. As a result we have a bill such as Bill 22.

The industrial corporations have no way of appealing the amount of taxation they're paying, and the residential property owner has no way of appealing the amount of tax he or she is paying. Now we're even taxing recreational vehicles that are parked at certain campsites all winter long in my riding. They have been going to every length to hit people who can't appeal the tax that's been imposed upon them. The only thing they can appeal is the assessment. That is the public's day in court: the court of revision. For those who have the time and are still determined enough, they can also appeal beyond the court of revision.

[5:00]

Mr. Speaker, we see more tinkering with the system here today, when the system itself is absolutely misguided and out of control. It is creating real hardship. It is stifling enterprise, business and industry in this province. It is a fixed cost which has caused some people not to ride out the down part of the cycle. It was a fixed cost so large that it led some people to absolutely remove all machinery, buildings and such and thereby remove that taxation burden rather than look forward to the possibility of better economic times and being able to reopen some of the plants that were idled during this current — not recent but current — recession. I note that quite a few of the members opposite talk about the recent recession. Well, most people who are in business and who are attuned to the real world know that we have certainly not seen the end of it. We hope to see the end of it, but the....

HON. MR. BENNETT: I agree with you. It's not over yet.

MR. NICOLSON: That's right.

Mr. Speaker, we have this bill before us, and it's very hard, because there have been so many bills before us today. If I were not careful I would start talking about the Gasoline (Coloured) Tax Amendment Act because that was the one I was prepared to speak a little bit about, and the Miscellaneous Statutes (Finance Measures) Amendment Act.

This particular piece of legislation brings in a method of having actual assessments done every two years instead of every one year. I anticipate that with some of the computer technology that has been installed they will do little estimates on properties on which there have been no building permits taken out or other types of possible upward valuation due to things like upward zoning. This bill is an illusion of a government doing something about assessments; it looks like the government is being active and responding to the record

[ Page 1078 ]

number of people who have turned out at the courts of revision. But in my estimation, this is not going to curtail the record number of people who are turning out at these courts.

I know people who sat on those courts of revision who have indicated that they no longer wish to, because the whole system has become so out of tune. They aren't really there to do the kind of thing or to have the time to give the kind of careful consideration they were originally able to do. Last year, when enough people in certain areas gave notice they were going to appeal, I know 10 percent was knocked off almost automatically, whereas the problems of assessment are such that it should be the exception or the oddity that gets detailed examination.

For instance, the French school in Argenta, which is on private property, is a series of buildings that were created for a private school. I believe they get no funding, nor have they applied for funding under the independent schools act, but they have questioned the market value placed on these buildings in the remote community of Argenta. It has been necessary for them to go not just to the court of revision but beyond it in order to appeal to the Assessment Authority. That is the kind of problem that needs to be addressed in this House. What is the market value of so many square feet of building located in a rather remote area? What is the marketability of a school building placed on a rural farm property which is at least 40 miles from a community the size of Kaslo, and even farther from a community the size of Nelson, which has only 9,000 people? These are the kinds of things we should be addressing, rather than this smokescreen of legislation, some of which is laudable. One can't criticize making assessments available to lessees. It is certainly in their interest. I quite agree with the minister on a move like that.

This province has seen a huge inequity created, but the problem is not in the area of assessment. This is not the area in which we have to look to do something better. We have to look at a more equitable way of raising taxes. Assessment is probably the most precise instrument, in spite of the shortcomings I've already outlined, as in the case of the Argenta school. Assessments are probably the most precise part of the taxation formula. The thing that is lacking is the proportion of taxation support for schools that comes from general revenue. At times, when property assessments have accelerated way beyond people's actual disposable incomes and their ability to pay taxes.... They have accelerated because of the increase in assessment being way beyond normal growth. At the same time there are increases in such things as the statutory mill rate from 26.5 to more than 40 mills, which it was at one time. If you multiply those two things, you get an increase that is double the rate of inflation.

Mr. Speaker, I'm afraid that with this bill the people who turned out en masse last year are going to be very much misled. They know there's an assessment amendment act before the Legislature this year. They might even hear that the NDP supported this bill in second reading, and if not in second reading, then maybe after the minister brings in the amendments he has promised us, which would not preclude people from going to the court of revision every year, as actually is or may be precluded in this act. The minister is going to clarify the act, so people might feel that we have an Assessment Amendment Act; and if even the NDP supported the act, they might feel that assessments are not going to hit us the way they have in the last few years. People will be under the mistaken impression that their taxation problems — their school property tax, which is the major part of a taxation bill that we all share, whether we live in a city or in rural areas.... People may feel that something is being done. When they get their assessment they might feel that somehow something still was done. Only when they get the actual tax bill will they realize that this bill, if it has served the people of this province at all, has served in a very small way.

Every year people come to my constituency office complaining about their tax assessment, and as an MLA I take it as my responsibility to point out to them, at my own political peril lest I be misunderstood, that the idea of 100 percent assessment is not per se wrong or bad. It is the growth of things like the basic mill rate levy in the education finance formula that has been at fault. It is the way in which the burden of taxation has been shifted onto the local property owner, and the lack of participation of the provincial government from its other very wide range of revenues. The provincial government has access to resource revenues, sales tax revenues and personal income tax revenues. These revenues have not been used where it has been necessary to increase taxes, to the extent that the government has simply shifted the burden onto local governments. So people get very annoyed. I hear colleagues from the dense-pack in the corner talk about local governments growing out of control.

If you look at the cost per pupil, if you look at many other indicators and compare them with Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario, British Columbia isn't doing too badly. Our school boards are pretty doggone efficient. The real thing that you notice when you compare the western provinces and Ontario is that the provincial government is not paying its share; that support to local school boards has dropped from over 50 percent in 1975 to less than about 30 percent at this time. Almost all other provinces pay over 50 percent, and in the province of Alberta I think 60 percent of school budgets is provided by the provincial government. So it's not the fault of assessments or of the Assessment Authority except in very rare and isolated cases, for which the remedy of the court of revision was intended.

We are spending far more than need be on the courts of revision. The courts of revision are being reduced, I think, to a very meaningless exercise in which they can't properly function, and this bill does nothing to address that problem. This bill has, as I say, merit, but the danger is that people will think we're finally doing something in this Legislature about property tax, when we aren't really doing much even about tax assessment. People are perhaps going to be bought off, or fooled, or appeased for another year, and we continue to drift.

I think it was almost better back in the days when we had a really inequitable property tax assessment: when W.A.C. Bennett made the mistake of freezing property tax assessments and then, not knowing how to get himself out of the problem, allowed it to go on and get a little bit worse each and every year; when education finance formulas which were based on total assessments were absolutely unfair because assessments in Surrey didn't mean what assessments in Nelson meant. There was absolute inequity all over this province. Now we've seen a tinkering with this system. What we should have seen was limits being placed on the extent to which we should rely on property tax. But in this bill we see that we're going to be bringing in some things which are simply going to....

[5:15]

Okay, we're going to reduce the number of actual onsite inspections being made, instead of once a year to once in two years, with the exception of improvements being made. This,

[ Page 1079 ]

I suppose, will help to reduce staff. In lieu of having a human being come out and do that, we're going to have a computer run its model and do an assessment based on the latest comparable sales that have been fed in. So each year a reassessment will be made, but it'll be based on a computer model rather than on the actual work of an inspection. This will allow us to cut the staff by 30 percent, but it's a staff that hasn’t grown since 1975. This has not been one of the areas in which there has been rampant runaway growth. This has not been an area like, for instance, the budget item putting a roof over the Ministry of Forests, which went from $3.5 million to $19.5 million in two short years. We haven't seen this kind of runaway growth in the Assessment Authority, in spite of increasing their workload by 30 percent — a 30 percent increase in productivity. There has been virtually no increase in staff. So this is hardly one of the areas that one should even be looking at in terms of effecting restraint and cutbacks.

The failure to assess the real problem is going to mean the continued growth of appearances before the court of revision. That is very wasteful. We could cut back the activity of the courts of revision. In fact, most of the people who serve on those courts haven't been looking to being tied up for weeks on end; they have taken it on as a little bit of a duty and a little bit of an honour to be put forward by the government and asked to serve, and appointed by the Lieutenant-Governorin-Council. This act is not addressing that. It's not going to reduce the abuse of the court of revision.

I notice that this act is to come into force by a regulation of the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council. But what if Bill 31 doesn't pass and we don't change the laws which would require that an act come into force by proclamation? In other words, I find it passing strange that this bill is Bill 22, and I believe the Regulations Act is numbered Bill 31, so it would appear that this act was in anticipation of something that hadn't even been introduced in the House. It tampers with the very long-standing tradition, and something about which.... The Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Smith) has even expressed on the floor of this House that there might be some regret in his own thinking and something which may not come to pass. This act, in its present form, is imperfect. I know that Mr. Speaker is probably losing some sleep over that too. I'm sure that Mr. Speaker is concerned that this act may be imperfect in its form. It is very difficult when one is faced with the dilemma of the chicken and the egg and which comes first.

This act is going to help the anticipated shift of the tax burden from industrial and commercial to residential property. It is a companion piece of legislation to Bill 7. I say, I very much appreciate the problems of industry and commercial business. As a member of the committee struck by the regional district of Central Kootenay to look into the ways and means of reopening Kootenay Forest Products, certainly one of the problems with which we became very intimately aware was the burden of local property taxation and the rate at which it had grown. You can't solve one problem by simply pushing it somewhere else. I am afraid that is one of the things this is going to do, although I suppose the point of principle will have to be decided by a vote in Bill 7. This piece of legislation certainly is one of the pieces of legislation that will be required to help create the kind of flexibility that the government requires. It is part of a package built around the other bills.

The government could very well have brought in other measures which could have put British Columbia on the road to recovery. We could have looked at the problems of property taxation. As my colleague the second member for Victoria (Mr. Blencoe) said, members of this side of the House would be willing to sit on a select standing committee, as has happened in this House before. I think it is only when we hear representations from the public that we can get at the real root problems that this bill very superficially seeks to address. The problems are very complex, and I think that we need to look at another simpler, more basic way of raising money to provide the goods and services which we are presently providing through a very complex and convoluted system of taxation. This bill just creates more complications. The minister might call it flexibility, but they have been introducing more and more flexibility into this system. The Education (Interim) Finance Amendment Act and then the amendments to it provided more flexibility so they can steal money from the areas such as one of the school districts that I represent, School District 7, and from the dams that we have on our rivers and from some of the industrial plants that create a lot of pollution and smoke nuisance, and so on, and then redistribute these to communities which are isolated from this type of disruption, such as Oak Bay, where if anyone were so much as to cut a trillium there would be a SWAT team brought in to apprehend the culprit.

HON. MR. CURTIS: Trillium-cutting is not dealt with in his bill.

MR. NICOLSON: This government seems to feel that the areas that have to put up with a lot of desecration of the environment have to give up one of the incentives that was used to bring in industry. We're building a house of cards. It's getting larger and larger and larger, and it's also getting more and more vulnerable. It's getting weaker and weaker, and it is getting closer to the moment of collapse. This is one more card we're placing on the top. Or, if you would — to put it in terms that the Social Credit members might understand — it's like building one of those fountains made out of champagne glasses that they have at some of their lavish parties. You build up more and more champagne glasses. We don't do that at our parties. We might use beer glasses; we use plastic glasses. But we're reaching the point where the whole thing could come tumbling down because people individually are being put into very difficult situations.

There is a disincentive to improve property. Property tax reaches a point.... There's a very fine dividing-line as to how much you can actually tax property and where it really pays people to make improvements to property. Why make your house look nicer? Why put on an extra room? Why put in a swimming pool if it's going to...?

MR. REID: It's terrible costly.

MR. NICOLSON: I have it from first-hand experience back here that it's terribly costly.

There are disincentives to economic development and to economic activity if we don't address the real problems. I had the experience very recently of having a property-tax assessor come to my property. I might have mentioned in this House that last winter, in order to try to do my bit in stimulating the economy of British Columbia, I took $10,000 of savings and invested it in having a garage and workshop built on my property. I employed local labour. But you know, we weren't even hanging up the garage doors when the property-tax

[ Page 1080 ]

assessor was there, and I wondered to myself, have I done the right thing? I thought I was being a good, responsible citizen. I was listening to leaders in the province and the country talking about a consumer-led recovery and saying that Canadians were great savers, and that if only these people who saved money would invest it we might get the psychology turned around and create some investor confidence. Imagine my dismay when we hadn't even balanced the garage door — we hadn't even put the return springs on it — and there was this very pleasant young lady who came up and inquired and started doing some measurement. The carpenters knew this lady; they had seen her before. Very efficient, I might say. She measured the whole garage, my friend.

[5:30]

Interjection.

MR. NICOLSON: It isn't the assessment that might stop me from doing this, but it is the combination of the mill rate times the assessment — the final tax bill — that is going to make me stop and think before I go out and voluntarily raise my own taxes by trying to stimulate the economy of British Columbia. I think that is something that is stifling the economy of B.C. today. This is a very small and personal example.

When I meet with people who are trying to start up businesses — and I have assisted several of them in the past year, even during the recession — and look at the tax bill that they're being faced with today, it is something that has grown out of proportion. Simply taking it off of the backs of industry to try to get jobs going and putting it onto the backs of residential property owners.... Senior citizens, who might get a pretty hefty homeowner grant, are going to be paying taxes, and they would have never paid more than a dollar since the day they retired.

I would thank you for your attention, Mr. Speaker, and I would move adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of the House after today.

Motion approved.

Presenting Reports

Mr. Veitch, Chairman of the Special Committee to Appoint an Auditor-General, presented the committee's report, which was read as follows and received:

"Mr. Speaker, your Special Committee to Appoint an Auditor-General begs leave to report as follows:

"Your committee unanimously recommends to the Legislative Assembly that Mrs. Erma P. Morrison, FCA, be recommended to the Lieutenant-Governor for reappointment to a further six-year term as auditor-general for the province of British Columbia, to exercise the powers and perform her duties as required by the Auditor General Act.

"All of which is respectfully submitted.

Elwood N. Veitch, MLA, Chairman."

MR. VEITCH: With leave, I move that the report be adopted.

Leave granted.

MR. VEITCH: Mr. Speaker, speaking briefly to the motion, this is only the second time that a special committee of our Legislative Assembly has been struck for this purpose. Provision for this committee is set out in section 2(2) of the Auditor General Act, a copy of which is appendixed to the Clerk's report. This act was passed originally in 1976 to provide an independent vehicle of accountability for the spending of public funds through the office of an auditor-general mandated to report annually to the Legislative Assembly. This report is a broad one, mindful of the fact that great sums which were authorized for expenditure each year by our assembly are not our own funds but the people's funds. That mandate includes therefore not only a duty to report on cases of error but includes also a positive scope for the assessment of the appropriateness of accounting practices for the purposes of fair presentation and disclosures. The person selected as auditor-general must exhibit, therefore, a high degree of technical skill in exercising and meeting the mandate of this office and also a depth of understanding and a breadth of vision equal to the gigantic task gained in an overview of financing such a large organization as government.

The current auditor-general, Mrs. Erma Morrison, Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, was selected on the basis of a report of a previous special committee presented to this assembly on June 21, 1977, by the chairman, our current Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (Hon. Mr. Hewitt). I was pleased to serve as secretary on that original committee. By the terms of section 2(6) of the Auditor General Act, appointment is for a term of six years after which time the auditor-general may be reappointed to a further six-year term in the same manner that governs the initial appointment.

The current committee, Mr. Speaker, met on two occasions — August 12, 1983, and August 29, 1983, and at the latter meeting members were unanimous in the view that Mrs. Morrison had discharged her duties to this assembly and to the public we serve in an admirable and diligent manner over the past six years. Over this period — 1977 to 1983 — a healthy exchange of views has occurred which had considerable impact in living up to the promise of the 1976 legislation. In this regard, Mr. Speaker, all members may wish to recall the auditor-general's statement on page 18 of her most recent report, which states:

"In response to each of my last two reports the Ministry of Finance prepared and published a document which describes the progress made in implementing my recommendations, as well as other actions the government has taken to strengthen financial management. In his introductory statement in the response to my 1981 report the hon. Minister of Finance, Hugh A. Curtis, stated in part, 'This response indicates that much progress has been made and many improvements effected but also that much remains to be done.' I concur."

All members can be proud of the substantial strengthening of financial ability which has been represented by the office of the auditor-general.

In conclusion, I wish to thank all members of the committee for their contribution to its deliberations, and particularly the hon. second member for Surrey (Mr. Reid), who served as secretary to the committee. It is indeed a significant event that at this time a bipartisan legislative committee is able to

[ Page 1081 ]

deliver to the assembly a unanimous report on a matter of such great importance.

MR. HOWARD: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, unanimous as our representatives were in committee, we are unanimous in the House as well, with respect to the report.

I think perhaps one should say at the outset that, at least in my view — and I don't say this in a critical way — that it was not a bipartisan committee; it was a non-partisan committee, because partisan actions and partisan thought did not enter into the deliberations. It shows not only confidence in Mrs. Morrison's ability to function as an auditor-general in a very able and competent way, but also that the committee system in this Legislature can function and can serve the interests of the general public. The mere fact that not only was it required by law to be a unanimous decision but that they worked towards that unanimity in a very friendly spirit and a very friendly manner in the committee would indicate to me that other committees of this House can operate in the same fashion. I would certainly urge the government to expand its vision a bit and make a greater use of the committee system in this House so that the interests of the public can be served. You know, Mr. Speaker, from personal experience, as I do from the same personal experience, having been members, in the immediately preceding parliament, of the Committee on Crown Corporations, that that committee functioned exceptionally well in a unanimous way on many occasions because our perception of the rules and of what was required of us pushed and helped us in that direction. Other committees can work that way as well.

The auditor-general's office is one of the few checks and balances against the excesses of government expenditures, one of the few checks and balances of an examination nature to show where inappropriate use has been made of public funds. In a sense it's regrettable that the auditor-general and the Committee onPublic Accounts , which is and should be a companion to that type of examination activity.... It's regrettable that we were always looking at the expenses of government for some period of time in the past, namely two years ago in this instance. The committee and the auditor-general, I would hope, would be able to look currently at the situation and have an opportunity to examine current, immediate expenditures when that is required. I would urge the Committee onPublic Accounts to examine that, so that we are not looking at past practices in the hope that if difficulties are found in those past practices redress will be made.

I say in closing that it's interesting to note that the auditor-general herself, a very understanding person about the role and requirements of the Auditor General Act placed unanimously upon her and her staff by this Legislature, finds her activities confined and restricted because of a lack of availability of staff to do the job properly. That is something that, as an aside, in support of the motion, I would urge be looked at as well, so she can do an even better job in the future than has been done in the past.

MR. VEITCH: I am happy to move the motion and ask that the House please deal with it.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Chair will put the whole motion: that this House recommend to His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor the reappointment of Mrs. Erma P. Morrison, Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, as an officer of the Legislature, to exercise the powers and duties assigned to the auditor-general for the province of British Columbia pursuant to the Auditor General Act, Revised Statutes of British Columbia, 1979, chapter 24.

Motion approved.

Hon. Mr. Gardom moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 5:44 p.m.