[ Page 1197 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

An Act Respecting Okanagan Bible College (Bill PR401). Mr. Campbell 1197

Oral Questions

Origins of restraint program. Mr. Cocke –– 1197

Letter to BCGEU employees. Mr. Reid –– 1198

Government advertising campaign. Mr. Hanson –– 1198

School budgets restraint. Mr. Rose –– 1199

Budget debate

Mr. Blencoe –– 1200

Hon. Mr. Curtis (closes debate) –– 1203

Division –– 1206

Committee of Supply. Ministry of Health estimates (Hon. Mr. Nielsen)

On vote 44: minister's office 1206

Hon. Mr. Gardom

Miscellaneous Statutes (Finance Measures) Amendment Act 1983 (Bill 17). Second

Reading

Mr. Cocke –– 1207

Education (Interim) Finance Amendment Act 1983 (Bill 6). Second reading

Ms. Brown –– 1210

Mr. D'Arcy –– 1215

The House met at 2:08 p.m.

MS. SANFORD: I would like the House to join me in welcoming visitors today from Courtenay in the constituency of Comox. I would like the House to welcome Paul and Monica Turner with their two children Jay and Noah.

HON. MR. CHABOT: From the great riding of Columbia River in Kimberley, we have Mr. Frank Atkins and his son Derek. I would like the House to join me in welcoming them here.

HON. MR. McGEER: Listening in the members' gallery to the voice of British Columbia, which I trust the members will keep from being too staticky this afternoon, we have Edie Apple, a distinguished visitor to British Columbia. She is the assignment editor at the Voice of America in Washington, D.C. I would ask the members to bid her welcome, along with my own policy coordinator and ex-Harvard student Janie Burns.

MR. R. FRASER: The House will remember that I introduced one of my nieces recently, and today I'm going to do that again. I can assure the House that there are two proud grandmothers today, for my brother Peter and his wife Catharine tell me that the most beautiful and intelligent baby of 1983 was born yesterday.

MR. SEGARTY: In the gallery today is a very good friend of mine, Mr. Harvey Venier from Cranbrook. Harvey is on the board of East Kootenay Community College. He's visiting Victoria today with his nephew from Italy, and I'd like the House to give them a warm welcome.

MR. HOWARD: I don't have an introduction to make, but I wonder if I could have leave of the House to make a very brief statement with respect to the shooting down of an airliner by the Soviet Union as reported in the day's press.

MR. SPEAKER: This would not be the time, hon. member, to ask leave.

MR. HOWARD: At the appropriate time, then, I think we should express our indignation.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please, hon. member. It would be appropriate at the time of motions, and then the only thing that could be asked would be leave. We could not go into the reason for it.

Introduction of Bills

On a motion by Mr. Campbell, Bill PR 401, An Act Respecting Okanagan Bible College, introduced, read a first time and referred to the Select Standing Committee on Standing Orders and Private Bills.

MR. SPEAKER: The member for Skeena asks leave to make a motion.

MR. HOWARD: No, a brief statement.

MR. SPEAKER: On a point of order, the Provincial Secretary.

HON. MR. CHABOT: Mr. Speaker, the substance of the message that the member for Skeena wants to convey is, I'm sure, one that could be addressed through the standing orders of this House. I would suggest that the member apprise himself of the the proper standing order, which is, I believe, 35, under which he has the opportunity to make his statement without the necessity of asking for leave. He knows the rules very well. They use standing order 35 very frequently. I would suggest he do that.

MR. SPEAKER: The Chair has been asked to ascertain if leave shall be granted to make a statement.

Leave granted.

MR. HOWARD: I think that the killing of 269 innocent people aboard an aircraft which was shot down apparently, as reported, by the Soviet Union should raise the indignation of everybody in this nation and in the western world. I'm sure there would be no disagreement whatever in this House if the government on behalf of the Legislature would officially communicate our views to the Soviet Union and to the the Canadian government, and ask the Canadian government to express their opinion about this senseless and appalling act.

HON. MR. NIELSEN: With respect to the statement just offered, as House Leader for the moment, on behalf of the government I'd like to....

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please, hon. member. You must ask leave either to make a statement or to have a ministerial statement....

Shall leave be granted?

Leave granted.

HON. MR. NIELSEN: On behalf of the government, we would like to associate the government with the statement made by the Opposition House Leader with respect to this reported incident, about which more information has recently developed. The incident has been in the news media for the past few hours, and statements made by international representatives of the United States and, I understand, Canada as well. I'm sure all members would agree that the act of shooting down of an unarmed civilian aircraft has historically been considered tantamount to an act of war. The significance and importance of this cannot be overlooked. We look forward to the government of Canada issuing a succinct statement when it's within their capability of doing so. The act — as it has been reported — is so significant that I would think most people have yet to grasp the implications of this. So we would associate with the statement made by the member opposite.

Oral Questions

ORIGINS OF RESTRAINT PROGRAM

MR. COCKE: Mr. Speaker, I would like to direct a question to the Premier as a result of listening to his speech this morning. The Premier has repeatedly lectured this House and the public on his government's restraint program. Can the Premier confirm that the restraint program was originally designed at a cabinet retreat at Schooner Cove on Nanoose Bay on Vancouver Island in January of 1982?

MR. SPEAKER: The second part of the question is in order.

[ Page 1198 ]

[2:15]

HON. MR. BENNETT: Without appearing to duck a question which is out of order because it asks about decisions made in a cabinet meeting, I would say this government's commitment to restraint has been well known, particularly where it's been implemented in public policy.... It is of long standing. The response to the recession has taken form on a continuing basis. However, the compensation stabilization program is a key element in that and, of course, was the first part of restraint. Other parts have been developed at various times and will continue to be developed as we meet our responsibilities as government.

MR. COCKE: Maybe I indirectly referred to it as a cabinet retreat. I think it took in more than the cabinet. There were 19 aides at that meeting. I'd like the minister to confirm that the meeting cost the taxpayers for accommodation alone $10,474.94 — talking about restraint.

MR. SPEAKER: The question would be best placed on the order paper. It is a detailed question, and I so rule.

MR. COCKE: Just prior to that, will the Premier confirm that as leader of this restraint-preaching government he enjoyed the luxury of a $450-a-day suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Montreal in November 1981?

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. member, again, questions in question period must have some relation to urgency, and certainly a detailed question, the type of which the member has asked again, would best be placed either on the order paper or in a forum to follow shortly in the course of parliamentary discussions.

MR. COCKE: I'm reacting directly to the preaching that we heard this morning. As a result of that, I'm asking the questions that the Premier knows the answer to. The Premier knows exactly whether or not he spent three days at the Ritz-Carlton at $450 a day. I ask him that question directly. The order paper is no place for that question, Mr. Speaker, with respect.

HON. MR. BENNETT: Though the question is out of order, as is quite often the case with that member, in 1981 we were at the constitutional talks. The suites involved were ordered by the government of Quebec as the Premiers met. Intensive meetings took place at that time on the constitution. I can remember that that member wasn't very interested, but I'll tell you that the work done and the time spent was done by all the Premiers of the country, all in the very same type of accommodation in the same hotel. Arrangements were made not by our government but by the government of Quebec.

Interjections.

HON. MR. BENNETT: Don't say "old excuse" to me, Mr. Member for Nelson-Creston (Mr. Nicolson), because I'm not embarrassed by it at all. The work we did was substantial for this country. I'm going to tell you, British Columbia's reputation for attending conferences is very modest, compared to that of other Premiers, and in particular the Premier of Manitoba.

LETTER TO BCGEU EMPLOYEES

MR. REID: Mr. Speaker, I'd like to address a question to the Provincial Secretary if I may. There was some indication in the press this morning that Norm Richards, president of the BCGEU, has sent some direction to the members of his union by way of a letter instructing those members not to accept relocation within the agency of the government. Could you indicate to me, Mr. Provincial Secretary, if you've received a copy of that letter, and if it's in fact available?

HON. MR. CHABOT: Yes, I just happen to have a copy of that letter here. Essentially, the letter is directed to members of the union who have received notices of termination. I will quote from it very briefly, and I'm prepared to table a copy.

The letter addressed the question of redeployment:

"Before any redeployment program can be implemented it must be negotiated with the union. On behalf of the officers of the union I'm asking for your support in our fight against these program cuts and the legislation, and recommend that you take the following steps: refuse to participate in the development of redeployment plans outside the collective agreement in your union; refuse to provide the employer with information for the priority placement division of the the Public Service Commission; file a grievance, if you have not already done so; advise management personnel to contact the union if you are requested to provide information."

Essentially, the union is saying to its membership to maintain union solidarity at the expense of public service employment.

GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN

MR. HANSON: A question to the Provincial Secretary, Mr. Speaker. It is apparent that the Provincial Secretary is readily able to provide information when he's fed it by a back-bencher, but when we, on this side of the House, ask him to provide information on the ad campaign and the costs involved, he cannot do so. I want to ask that minister why he is unable to provide details on that program to the House, when Dave Brown himself has confirmed that filming is underway, and that one cabinet minister has already been filmed. The cost will be in excess of $100,000 for production, with the booking times on top of that. Why will you not give this House answers to these questions?

HON. MR. CHABOT: Again, Mr. Speaker, that junior member from Victoria wants to lecture the House and the ministers. To suggest that the information on my desk was given to me by a back-bencher is strictly speculation and erroneous as well. This information was provided to me by people other than back-benchers. I gave the member an answer yesterday. It might not be the answer he is looking for, but I gave him the answer yesterday. How many times does he want me to answer the same question?

MR. HANSON: In response to that minister, I don't mind being a junior member of a party that believes in truth and honesty.

Mr. David Brown of Jem Productions has indicated that he is working without a contract on an informal basis with Mr. Heal. Why is Mr. Heal operating with Mr. Brown on an

[ Page 1199 ]

informal contract? Is there no signed agreement and no guidelines available for this program?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: We want Sophie!

HON. MR. CHABOT: I don't know if I should answer the question about "We want Sophie" or what. I take all those questions that are put to me by members of the opposition very seriously. Some of the technical details of the question asked of me yesterday.... I attempted to acquire the answers from Mr. Heal so that I could come back to the House today and give the information to the members who I know are patiently waiting for that information. They really want the information; I am sure they do. So I phoned Mr. Heal yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately he was out of town and so I couldn't get some of these technical details you are asking for. However, as soon as Mr. Heal returns to town I will get all that information for you. It might be lengthy, so in order not to abuse the question period I am prepared to table that material here so that you will have an opportunity to read it, rather than my occupying the short opportunity you have of asking questions in this House.

MR. HANSON: In that telephone conversation yesterday, did you ask...?

Interjections.

MR. HANSON: Mr. Speaker, that Provincial Secretary continues to deny to this House the information as to whether McKim Advertising is the agent of record handling this particular program and this campaign. Is McKim Advertising the agent of record for the provincial government?

HON. MR. CHABOT: Well, I listened to the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) feed you your lines on that particular question.

You understand the House rules that a question taken on notice can't be asked repeatedly in the House. I've taken that question as notice, with a view to getting the information and bringing it back to the House. As soon as I've got that information, I'm prepared to bring it back to the House.

MS. BROWN: When?

HON. MR. CHABOT: As soon as possible.

SCHOOL BUDGETS RESTRAINT

MR. ROSE: My question is directed to the Minister of Education. The minister said in a speech last week to the B.C. School Trustees Association that no budget increases for school boards would be permitted. Even if they face cost increases they would have to operate within the current budget. I believe I'm putting that fairly to the minister. In view of the government's decision to deregulate B.C. Hydro rates, has the minister estimated how many teachers' jobs will be lost or class sizes enlarged? Should school boards have to pay for new unregulated Hydro increases or increased heating costs should this be a cold winter in Prince George, for instance?

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Speaker, I was hoping that the member would have been there on Friday. As my critic, I expected him to be at the BCSTA meeting and I didn't see him there. He was probably campaigning.

In order to answer that question, it's going to take a considerable period of time. As the Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mr. Chabot) has mentioned, I don't think it's appropriate for me to take up all the time of question period — what's remaining — to give a detailed answer to that question in order to give the member the fullest possible answer, so he'll fully understand exactly what the plan is. I would be quite prepared, if the member wants to talk to me later, to give him the full details.

MR. ROSE: I thank the minister for that, the same way as I thank the minister for giving me the briefing through the Ministry of Education that he promised me six weeks ago and has not come through with yet.

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please.

MR. ROSE: I wish, Mr. Speaker, that you would prevent or somehow discourage the Premier from pointing his finger at me. It might be loaded.

I would like to ask the minister, since he obviously dodged the last question: he talked about increased productivity as a possibility for justifying any teachers' increases. The other day he was unable to define teacher productivity. Has he yet been able to come up with a proper. reasonable and sensible definition for this word, or is he still talking about the number of bricks that can be laid by a bricklayer in one day?

[2:30]

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Speaker, I have often attempted to discuss matters with the member, but I wasn't too sure whether it was him I talked to or the person on whose behalf he was campaigning. Now that he's back, perhaps we'll have that meeting. With respect to productivity, one of the reasons that very little was said on Friday last was that it seems to me that it is something which ought to be worked out through negotiations and bargaining between the trustees, representing the school board, and the BCTF and their teacher representatives locally. It's not for the Minister of Education or the government to turn around and tell them how to operate, where they're going to save and how they're going to increase their productivity in the school board. It's not for us to do. Our job was to provide a budget; we have provided a budget, and they're in the process this fall of working on the 1984 budget, now that the accounting definitions have been given to them.

The secretary-treasurers are sending me statements and telling me: "We think the system is a very valid one. It's sound." There's just one problem: there's a shortage of money. But that's no surprise to anybody on either side of the House. It's very easy, Mr. Speaker, to negotiate an agreement when you you’ve got lot’s of money, but right now the real test, to show the real mettle, is to negotiate when we don't have those kinds of funds.

HON. MR. CHABOT: Mr. speaker, I made reference to a letter from Mr. Richard of the B.C. Government Employees' Union. When I quote from a letter I like to have an opportunity to table it.

[ Page 1200 ]

Orders of the Day

ON THE BUDGET

(continued debate)

MR. BLENCOE: Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that the Premier has decided to leave, because before the adjournment I was trying to point out to the Premier that while he tells every single British Columbian, particularly those in greatest need, that they must go through some endurance test under this government, that they must indeed see their essential programs eliminated — human rights, handicapped programs and senior citizen programs — while the Premier talks about restraint and his programs to dismantle some of the basic services that maintain the social fabric of British Columbia, we know what his priorities are.

One item that we have discovered in terms of where his restraint priorities are is that the Premier of this province decided to spend $2,700 of public money on having pictures of himself printed so he could send them to his friends and relatives in this province and in other parts of the country. He did that on September 15, 1981, for a total of $836. Not only did he decide to compound that insult in terms of restraint and telling the handicapped people of British Columbia they can't have enough money so they can work in the community, he then ordered another 750 of them at a cost of nearly $2,000 to the taxpayers of British Columbia.

Twenty-seven hundred dollars may be a small amount, but when this government talks about what it is trying to do to help the people of British Columbia, these tokens are symbolic of their hypocrisy. That $2,700 would provide enough money for five handicapped persons for their CIP allowance for an entire year. That's where this government's priorities are. That's where this Premier is coming from. He would have pictures of himself sent to his friends and his relatives at a cost to the taxpayer rather than ensure that the handicapped persons in this province are given a sense of decency or are allowed to have some meaningful role in the community and in this province. That's where his priorities are, and the people of British Columbia won't be conned. You can't fool them any longer.

We witnessed this kind of spending before the election: cabinet ministers living high off the hog while other British Columbians have been told they must pull in their belts and lose their jobs. This government and these cabinet ministers continue to utilize the public trough for their own benefits and their own fun times. What they do in terms of representing the people of British Columbia is very significant. They may make small of the very things they say don't matter — $2,700 for pictures for the Premier to send to his friends and relatives. It is a small amount, but it is symbolic.

How can you tell the people of B.C. that they have to participate in seeing essential services that maintain their lifestyle in some decency — a degree of compassion — when the leader of the government abuses his position and uses public dollars for such trivialities as pictures of himself? It is a gross insult to the people of British Columbia, and he should pay back every penny that was spent on those photographs. It is symbolic. The leader of the government, if he is to be taken seriously in trying to help the people of British Columbia by his draconian measures and his attacks on the people of this province, then he has got to be taken seriously about not spending money on such trivial pursuits. No one can take him seriously, and no one can take this government seriously. They have seen through them. The polls are there, the Goldfarb report is there.

The people of British Columbia didn't elect this government to do what it's doing: to take on the handicapped and human rights; to attack senior citizens; to take the Meals on Wheels program away from senior citizens; and to take a vicious course of attack on the families of this province. We talk about a lot of things in the political arena, and a lot of the time it is rhetoric and theatre. The people of British Columbia must wonder sometimes what is happening. I personally believe, and I think the people of British Columbia agree, that you can play games with many, many things; you can do things in the name of restraint and maybe get away with it for a short while, but when you play dangerous games with children and families, and with the mechanisms that are there to help those families and children when they're in trouble, you are eroding essential prevention programs that in the long term will save the taxpayer — if you want to talk about cash registers — millions and millions of dollars. By destroying child-care workers and their programs, by abandoning child-abuse teams and taking away those family support workers in a time of the worst recession since the depression, when we need that kind of service, you are threatening — and I say this in all sincerity and on behalf of our party — the very social fabric of this province.

Children and families should not be subjected to the political gamesmanship of Socred maladministration. Children and families are special. Children are our future, the happy things in our lives. There are so many unhappy things happening in our province and in our world — we heard about one of them today — and as families and compassionate human beings, the one thing we can cling to is our children and their future –– I get very angry when I see a government that's decided to make political Brownie points at the expense of our children. That's what they're doing. I don't think any British Columbian would endorse that course of action.

In its financial handling of the people's dollars — and I'll go into some of that debt in a minute — this government, in seven and a half short years, has managed to triple the debt of the province of British Columbia. After we left office in 1975, the debt of the province was just over $4 billion, and that was a debt built up by all governments during 104 years of administration: Liberals, New Democrats, Conservatives and Socreds. Four billion dollars in total. The people of British Columbia don't hear these figures very often, because the government is not honest in its figures and in telling people what they're doing with their dollars. In seven and a half short years they have built that Socred debt up from $4 billion to $12 billion — a 173 percent increase in seven and a half years. No one else has done it. On their own, in seven and a half years they have tripled the debt of the province of British Columbia, to three times more than was done by 104 years of other governments.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

Because of their mishandling of the economy and their lack of diversification of the economy, international financiers and New York experts are now saying they cannot trust this government's financial arrangements and they have downgraded our credit rating, which is going to cost the people of British Columbia $9.6 million this year. If this

[ Page 1201 ]

government had been doing its job properly — I mean running the books properly — and not going around spending millions and millions of dollars on advertising and conning the people that they were doing a good job, then $9.6 million would be sufficient funds to pay for the office of the rentalsman, the human rights branch and commission, the consumer education and information branch and about 75 percent of the family support program workers that have been fired. In their simple mismanagement of the economy of British Columbia the people of this province are going to lose $9.6 million this year alone. Over a number of years it is estimated that that could be $100 million to $200 million that the taxpayers of British Columbia will have to pay for because this government has run up the worst financial record in the history of this province.

[2:45]

Their programs and administration have resulted in the elimination of these critical services, particularly those for children and families. If this government had managed the economy properly and had not run up a huge debt.... I'll run through some of those. B.C. Ferry Corporation, when we left office, had no debt; in March 1983 it has a debt of $102 million. B.C. Hydro, when we left office, had a $3 billion debt; now it has an $8.5 billion debt. B.C. Rail in 1975 had a $522 million debt; today it is $1.1 billion and growing every day. BCDC owed nothing when we were in office; today it is $200 million in debt. B.C. Steamship Company owed nothing when we were in office; today it is $3.4 million in debt. B.C. Place is $205 million in debt. B.C. Systems Corporation — which this government has spent millions and millions of dollars on and is now going to sell off to the private sector — is $40 million in debt. The Whistler land bail-out is costing the people of British Columbia $27 million.

The record of this government in its financial arrangements is absolutely atrocious. Mr. Speaker, the financiers who know what's going on have said so. This government has failed to serve British Columbians adequately in the arranging of the economy. They have failed to diversify and give British Columbians a future. They have failed to give British Columbians a sense of vision, a sense of purpose and a future.

They feel the advertising they're about to do will gloss over these particular facts, but the people now have something to compare against. They know that this government goes out and spends millions and millions of dollars on advertising to try and cover up what the truth of the situation is. They know that that advertising and those millions of dollars that are going to be spent will be at the expense of child-care workers, child-abuse teams, family support workers, human rights workers, the handicapped and the senior citizens. They know where their priorities are. Shove aside those people in the name of Socred empire-building and build their image to sell the most draconian piece of legislation that's ever been seen in this province and in this country.

In the galleries over the last few months we've had attention from newspapers, television and radio from all over North America and from the Guardian. They didn't come here because such marvellous things were being done. They wanted to see what kind of government would spend millions of dollars conning the people of British Columbia with its advertising and its cabinet ministers running all over North America spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on expensive meals. They wanted to see how they could do that and get away with that and at the same time start to eat away at the very basis of our province: programs to ensure our children and families are safe and have a future. They wanted to know what government could do that. Now they know.

There has been a 173 percent increase in the debt of this province in seven and a half years. We have lost our credit rating. I don't have to just talk about the facts that are coming out from newspapers. The Employers Council of British Columbia economic outlook, mid-year 1983, just published this week, has some serious things to say about this government, its administration and financial arrangements. "A note of caution should be expressed. Some economists are concerned that the recent provincial budget may have as many negative as positive economic effects. Particular fears have been expressed that the public sector restraint legislation and the tax increases on retail sales and restaurant meals may have a dampening effect on the economy. Another significant measure of how the private sector views this particular budget is that capital expenditures on new machinery and equipment are forecast to decline by 21.6 percent in current dollars, compared to a 14.3 percent decline in 1982. The private sector's expenditure prediction on the purchase of machinery is a significant economic indicator of business's assessments of its prospects, If it expands, it invests capital in machinery. The Employers' Council of B.C. is forecasting a major reduction in capital expenditure. That's a sign that what this government is doing in terms of.... It is saying that the recovery is around the comer. The Employers' Council of B.C. — the supposed friend of the government — is saying that this budget is a disaster for recovery because it has no sense or purpose. It has declared war on the public sector by removing essential services. At the same time it throws an incredible spanner into the works of the private sector's chance to recover by adding major tax increases at a time when the private sector can't afford those tax increases. The private sector, if it is to be the recovery mechanism for this government, cannot afford such major increases in their taxes. To hit them with an increase in sales tax and to hit the restaurant community, the tourism industry.... Even the economists of the right are questioning where this government is going with its economic policies. It is illogical. It doesn't make sense.

If this government was serious about showing the people of British Columbia that it has a handle on the economy, it would table a four-year budget. It would show the people of British Columbia where the diversification of the economy is going to come. For instance, it would say that if you're going to sell automobiles, particularly Japanese automobiles, in the province of British Columbia, you build an assembly plant in British Columbia for jobs for British Columbians.

We hear the Premier and the Minister of Industry and Small Business Development (Hon. Mr. Phillips) say that the mining industry is very glad that this government is here and that they're lining up to do business. However, the record shows that, under this government, the mining industry has had the worst time in its history. The 1982 highlights for mining, one of the basic resources and employment factors in this province, show that 19 of 29 mines incurred losses of $239 million. It was the industry's worst year. The overall loss for the year amounted to $151 million, representing an average return on investment of minus 6.2 percent. Working capital declined by 44 percent, from S628 million in 1980 to $354 million in 1982. The total debt load quadrupled to 29

[ Page 1202 ]

percent of total assets. This government has done nothing at all for the mining industry.

The Premier of this province said the following words back in 1982:

"We brought in a restraint program that does not penalize in a punitive way the people who work in the health care system or the people who work in government or the people who work in education. Because we planned it and because it is encompassing and because it allows for collective bargaining, it is the fairest program of restraint that has ever been imposed, not only in our country but in North America. We tried to bring some measure of sharing the load to people who work in the public service, so that they, along with those in the private sector who are hurting and need services, can join in a common fight to make sure we maintain as much employment as we can, but keep services coming. We haven't asked our people to take major cuts. What we've asked them is to control the rate of increase."

We now have the greatest height of hypocrisy that we have yet seen in this administration. It was announced the other day that the Crown corporations are to have restraints on their rate increases lifted by the Finance minister. At the same time we've got the government saying that it's in so much trouble it's now going to have to spend millions of dollars trying to convince the people that what they're doing is worthwhile. At the same time it's going to lift the restraints on Crown corporations. In the words of the Province this morning: This coincidence gives the Bennett people a problem that no amount of ad campaigning will solve. They will be seen as favouring big, hard-nosed corporations like B.C. Hydro and sticking it to the little people who have to pay the price of the government's restraint policies." Everywhere we turn we hear this government saying — and the opposition Whip talked about it the other day — that it's an endurance test for British Columbian life; you're saddled with Socreds; take it; endure it. But I don't see any restraint on that side of the House. No, not when the Premier of this province can spend $2,700 on pictures of himself, which would pay for five handicapped persons for a year on CIR That's their priority. They're going to allow the Crown corporations of this province to put up their prices. The control is over. They're not believable, not when the government can eliminate the family support program, the family and children's service coordinators, the homemaker service, the post-partum counselling service, income assistance co-ordinators, provincial in-service and resource team, the mentally-retarded co-ordinators, community grants co-ordinators, child abuse teams, human rights officers and commission. Senior citizens' centres grant funding and legal aid — so people can at least fight back — have been cut. How can they be believed that restraint is what it's all about? It's not that at all, because they haven't even tabled how much they're going to save. They haven't told the people of British Columbia how much they're going to save, at all. We don't know how much they're going to save. They haven't got the guts or the determination to tell the people that it's a mission they're on; it's a philosophical mission they are on to take away some of the basic compassionate human ingredients that make a society civilized and progressive. That's what it's all about. The office of the rentalsman, rent controls gone — eviction without cause, declaring war on 355,000 tenants and their families in this province. Mr. Premier talked about payoffs today. He accused us of taking payoffs, Mr. Speaker. The biggest payoff in the history of this province is the money they received from the development corporations, and now they're going to see the elimination of the rentalsman and rent controls and eviction without cause. That's a payoff. I've already asked him to table how much money they got from the development corporations for their campaign. Talk about payoffs at the expense of 355,000 tenants and their families in this province. That's a gross payoff. Eviction without cause! Can you imagine? No security in one's home; sneeze the wrong way, look the wrong way, talk to the wrong person, belong to the wrong party, the wrong colour, too many children, and you can be evicted under this government.

[3:00]

Where is the sense of decency in this government? Where is its compassion? You can't fit every single British Columbian into a cash register, Mr. Speaker. Government has to be responsible. Government has to be financially smart and they have to try to do the best for the taxpayer. We all admit this on this side, Mr. Speaker. But government exists also to ensure that those who need help, particularly in this recession, this worst time since the Depression.... It has to ensure that our people are protected, that they have a sense of decency, and that they are not subjected to the cash register mentality of this government. People can't fit into cash registers. That's the mission they're on. People have become secondary, in their mission. That cannot be tolerated.

Throughout the history of this party, we have fought for these very things. This morning the Premier made fun of Mr. Tommy Douglas. Tommy Douglas was one of the most revered and respected Canadians in this country. If we had people like Tommy Douglas or Stanley Knowles in this chamber, I know what they would be saying.

I urge this government to reconsider their course.

I keep going back to children, because it's so important. The Victoria General child abuse and neglect team reports that families categorized as "high-risk abuse" or "neglect" increased to almost twice the number in 1982. Crisis lines in B.C. have indicated an alarming increase in the numbers of suicide calls received in 1982. The Kamloops Family Life Association noted a 25 percent increase in suicide calls in 1982. The Prince George Crisis Intervention Society reports an 86 percent increase in suicide calls. Williams Lake reports that suicide calls doubled in 1982. We have one of the highest, if not the highest, suicide rates in young people in this country.

In the last year or so there has been a dramatic increase in the admissions to mental health institutions in this province. In 1981 there were 2,576 admissions to mental health facilities in British Columbia; in 1982 the number jumped to 8,542. Those are human beings.

On behalf of those people, look at your budget and look at your priorities. Don't spend millions of dollars to advertise. Reconsider what you're doing. Lay out the long-range program that would remove that deficit and give our children a future in terms of jobs and employment. Diversify the economy. Return to a high degree of compassion in government. I keep hearing from this government about endurance tests and the public being in the trough. People are made or broken in society. There are enough jungles out there to hurt people. There are enough ways for people to trip. In these times we only have to look at the unemployment figures, the suicide rates, the number of entrants to mental health facilities, and the welfare rates.

[ Page 1203 ]

1 urge this government to return to a sense of compassion and understanding in these times. Have some care, because there is a feeling in the province of British Columbia that the almighty dollar has become far more important than people themselves. People are important. Your budget should prioritize people. There should be a vision of the future for British Columbia. People in British Columbia today feel that they're living in black times. They can't believe that they live in one of richest parts of Canada and one of the richest parts of the world. They are being told that unless they eliminate some of these basic programs of a civilized society, the province will sink into oblivion, which is absolute rubbish. Politics is about priorities. I suggest that this government's priorities are totally wrong for these times and totally wrong in the estimation of the majority of British Columbians.

Let's have a sense of vision. Where are you going tomorrow? What's the future for our people? What are you going to do about jobs? When are you going to stop ripping off the land and just selling it off to the quickest dollar? When are you going to build a future and sense of vision for the people of British Columbia? That's the challenge, and in our estimation this government is not meeting it. It's selling short the people of British Columbia. I urge you and our party urges you to take a new direction, to re-look at your priorities and bring in a budget that shows that people care — not just part of a cash register.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Pursuant to standing order 42(3) I will advise the House that on the motion that Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair for the House to go into Committee of Supply, the Minister of Finance closes debate.

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Speaker, considerable time has elapsed since the budget was presented to this assembly on July 7, and considerable comment has taken place in the interval. I will take some time this afternoon in closing debate on the motion that Mr. Speaker do now leave the chair, because I think it is important to review a number of points.

I do not intend to deal line by line with everything that has been said in this chamber and around the province regarding the budget, but I would like to start with a letter. Some of us have used letters in the course of this debate. This one is the only one I intend to read in full. I think I should explain that I have known the individual slightly for a number of years; he is an acquaintance. He lives, as it happens, in the constituency represented by the member for Esquimalt–Port Renfrew (Mr. Mitchell). The letter was dated August 2. I suppose that I have received three or four thousand letters — something in excess of two thousand letters — since the budget was presented, excluding copies of form letters, which have been churned out in quantity and distributed to all members of this House. I will read the letter in full. It is short, and if it is the wish of the House that it be tabled, I have no objection to doing so. It's dated August 2, 1983, and addressed to me:

"Dear Hugh:

"Neither I nor anyone I know admits to voting for your party in the last provincial election."

Well, Mr. Speaker, I digress from the letter to observe that that person would have been described as undecided or doubtful prior to May 5. He continues:

"I write to inform you that your firm decision to decrease the number of civil servants, etc., in B.C. is quietly more popular than you might possibly appreciate. Should you continue and bring your intentions to a successful fruition, I together with a great number of others shall have no qualms in supporting you when the time comes."

I'll read the first sentence of the first paragraph again: "Neither I nor anyone I know admits to voting for your party in the last provincial election." In many respects that summarizes for me the degree, the volume and the magnitude of quiet support that exists in the province of British Columbia today, on the first day of September, after the budget was introduced within the first several days of July.

If I might speak personally for just a moment, I am a native of this city. I have been fortunate — and I underline the word "fortunate" — to have been raised in this great capital city and to have married — admittedly, a young lady from Vancouver — and raised with her three children now in their young adult years, in greater Victoria. I have worked in the private sector in Victoria, and I have served — as others have observed, including the member who has just taken his seat at the civic level and more recently provincially.

I want to come back later to deal with the preparation of the budget and the hard decisions which the Premier and his ministers and I took leading up to the budget. It also happens that for a variety of reasons — not the least of which have been the duties and obligations of this House and of the portfolio — I've not travelled a great deal this summer. I have spent more time in and around the capital region than would normally be the case. I have, with the exception of when the House has been in session mornings and afternoons, moved through the community to a greater extent than might normally be the case.

[3:15]

1 don't suggest that I have attended formal functions, meetings of one kind or another, so much as I have been simply moving through the community, quite literally from James Bay — immediately near here, in fact, the Menzies-Medana-Simcoe area — all the way to the tip of the Saanich Peninsula, past Sidney into the Swartz Bay area. I have also had an opportunity to reach some of those islands which comprise part of the constituency of Saanich and the Islands, but with the greatest of respect to the Gulf Island residents, my activities and movement in the community have essentially been from two blocks south of here to some 18 miles north of here, through what one usually considers to be the capital region. In shopping centres and in stores of one kind or another, while going to the butcher, while visiting one of the outlets of the liquor distribution branch on a couple of occasions, while pulling in for gasoline and servicing of an automobile, while doing any one of 20 or 30 ordinary activities, I have encountered men and women in the capital region who have said something along the lines of: "Oh, yes, you're Curtis, aren't you?" Or: "Hello Hugh, remember me? I remember you from so and so." Or: "You're the Minister of Finance." In some cases one turns to the other and says: "Isn't that Curtis? Isn't that the Minister of Finance?"

So much for the background. Mr. Speaker, I was not prepared, in my most enthusiastic expectations, for the degree of individual quiet support for this budget. It is unlike anything I have experienced in terms of citizen reaction in something just shy of 22 years in elected office, civic and provincial. I was not prepared for it. I might have hoped for some of it, but I wasn't prepared for the extent of it, for the fact that people would go out of their way to say: "It had to happen; circumstances are such, it is necessary." Yes, these are the same people that the first and second members for

[ Page 1204 ]

Victoria (Mr. Hanson and Mr. Blencoe) refer to as being somehow their personal possessions. These are people who live in the capital region, as do my wife and I and two members of our family.

It is not limited to the capital region or to greater Victoria. Some of my colleagues in government might think I would not experience that in the seat of government, in the capital region of British Columbia, because of the very nature of the community and the fact that a very large number of people employed here are in one way or another associated with the public sector, be it federal, provincial or civic. If I have had that measure of support, freely offered, enthusiastically endorsed, in the capital region, then every one of my colleagues in this chamber has had it fivefold or tenfold.

Briefly put, the people of B.C. are with us in this difficult period. The people of B.C., particularly those who suffered the ravages of the recession, may fault us for not having done this sort of thing two or three years ago, but that's in the past. This morning the Premier indicated the start of restraint with the compensation stabilization program in early 1982. The people of B.C. were supportive of that, and the events of May 5 clearly demonstrate that for every objective British Columbian, there can be no doubt, and that topic was canvassed once again just a few days ago on the lower mainland. The people of British Columbia — and I feel that too often as elected people we tend to forget, we tend to overlook, that the people frequently lead the politicians.... We don't have some monopoly in this chamber on intelligence, on foresight, on an ability to see that which must be done. Hopefully we are representative of our respective constituencies and our communities, but frequently — and I hope that more and more we can recognize.... The people of this province in this particular case clearly understood that because of the severe decline in revenues, and notwithstanding our very sincere and successful efforts with respect to expenditure control, we could not go on as we were, because the ultimate result would be bankruptcy. The Premier again today alluded to that which has occurred elsewhere, whether it be manifested in hyper-inflation or in deficits piling on deficits, defaults and threatened defaults, or the threatened collapse of national economies. I think that the Premier this morning outlined very succinctly in a very straightforward manner, and as a leader of a government should in these times, the circumstances in which we have found ourselves and this government's determination to ease the situation — not for us, not for the government, but for the people who send us here and entrust their affairs to us for three or four or five years.

That was the message in the election campaign. I don't want to attack the news media today — I really don't want to. Well, I am not going to. I have kept this as others may have. This is the Times-Colonist published in Victoria on Friday, May 6, 1983, and the headline is: "Restraint Wins For Bennett." The fourth paragraph in particular quotes the Premier from Kelowna: "I believe the people of British Columbia wanted to be told the truth about the reality of the difficult times." That's what the election was about. That's what the budget was about, and that's what this debate has been about.

MR. MITCHELL: Why wasn't the budget brought down in January?

HON. MR. CURTIS: Well, Mr. Speaker, I am not going to be distracted by that member, except to point out that during his party's brief time in government in this province we had a December election. "Rush to the polls, boys, because we can't tell them anything."

Interjection.

HON. MR. CURTIS: It was snowing. So much for that interjection, which is thrown across quite often.

I did want to deal with one other particular part of the Times-Colonist for May 6. It is the lead editorial inside headed. 'A Verdict Beyond Doubt." I will not take the time of the House to read all of it, but I am going to offer a little of it, Mr. Speaker — the last paragraph — and I hope that the editorial writers at the Times-Colonist will perhaps reflect on this and also on their front page from May 6.

"Every party makes a multitude of promises, specific and implied, in the final days of an election campaign. What Social Credit must remember in the cold light of its new dawn is that this province is still in a financial bind, unable to meet even its operating expenses, much less building plans. Promises should be kept, but only when the revenue has been generated to pay for them."

Mr. Speaker, we came out of the election campaign with virtually no promises in terms of what might attract the voters' attention, what might appeal to the undecided. The harsh reality of late 1982 and early 1983 was the issue in the election. Indeed, that was what guaranteed that the socialists would lose. The about-to-retire Leader of the Opposition — who apparently is not present today; I've not seen him — said: "Compensation stabilization, controls on the public sector? We'll drop them." That was the moment....

HON. MR. GARDOM: Who said that?

HON. MR. CURTIS: The present Leader of the official opposition said that, Mr. House Leader. That was the turning point. The people of British Columbia did not want promises. They wanted reality; they voted for reality. They knew as well as we knew that revenues to the provincial treasury were down dramatically, to an extent unprecedented since the 1930s. They knew that expenditure controls were in place to the very best of our ability, and they said: "We make a choice between promises which are being thrown around the province by the New Democrats, or the concern, control and responsibility that can be offered by Social Credit." Again, that was what May 5 was all about.

The budget should have come as no surprise to any member of this House; I believe it has come as no surprise to the majority of British Columbians. Others have enunciated and articulated this; it is important and we must say it time after time: as a newly elected government we had to make a choice between what is essential, what government must deliver with tax dollars, and, on the other hand, what is desirable. The Premier said again today, and others who have spoken — private members and members of the treasury benches — have said through the course of this summer that it could have been much easier for us, We could have had an easier summer selfishly, personally, if we had just turned our backs on the problem and gone ahead with a $1.6, $1.7, $1.8 or $1.9 billion deficit and worried about it next winter with a budget in 1984 for the 1984-85 fiscal year. Mr. Speaker, that might have been comfortable. It might have been more palatable for some in the province. It might have been easier for

[ Page 1205 ]

us. If the NDP had been elected it would have happened because they're used to long vacations. The fact is, Mr. Speaker, that it had to be done now, at the earliest possible time.

[3:30]

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

There are a couple of specifics, I think, which should be dealt with. But before I come to those I really want to restate that particular point: we could have played the old game of hear no evil, see no evil and, in the course of the budget, speak no evil. We could have ignored it, but only for a very few months until early 1984.

In large measure, Mr. Speaker, our current inability to do all the things that we as government would like to do, as well as to fully curtail expenditures in the public sector, is directly related to an agreement signed by the short-lived NDP administration with the BCGEU in 1973. I do not fault individual members of the BCGEU; I fault the government. They gave away the ranch. It's easy to do and sustain that during periods of prosperity. It could, therefore, be tolerated in the short term then, but it cannot be afforded today. It cannot be afforded now, it could not be afforded last year and it cannot be afforded next year. The ripple effect of a 35-hour week, enshrining of tenure and restrictions with respect to the government's ability to contract out and to seek least-cost options just can't be tolerated or, more importantly, afforded. Our taxpayers can't afford it; forget the government. The people who send the money here can't afford it.

I don't want to make too much of it except as a sample not an example, but a sample. How many British Columbians are aware, Mr. Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, that middle-management employees in British Columbia Hydro get 17 days off per year in addition to what I think would be described as a generous provision for holidays to compensate them for reducing their work week from 37 1/2 to 35 hours? We can't afford it, Mr. Speaker.

Through the course of the summer we've heard a great deal about slashes and cuts and insensitivity. Again I point out that we have had to choose, as a responsible, newly elected government, between that which is essential and that which is desirable. We've been accused of slashing programs. Mr. Speaker, I ask, through you to the House, how can you say that a program has been slashed when Medical Services Plan spending has doubled in the last five years? Essential — not desirable. How can one be accused of slashing when hospital spending has been more than doubled in the past five years? Health plan and hospitals more than doubled in the last five years. Essential. How can it be described as slashing when university grants have risen by 50 percent in the past five years? Essential activities.

One of the members opposite representing the NDP spoke about the almighty dollar and made reference to cash registers. Well, Mr. Speaker, as the Premier articulated today, and as others have said through the course of this debate, it isn't a question of the cash register or the balance sheet. It goes far beyond that. Again, I think the quiet majority of British Columbians understand that if we are to maintain the delivery of those essential programs for which government is responsible — and to which British Columbians are entitled — then you have to draw that difficult line. You have to draw the distinction between essential programs like health, human resources and education — post-secondary and K to 12. You have to understand that. And then you have to, regrettably, address other programs that are desirable, which we would like to have left in place, and say that for a year or two or three we can't afford them. That's been the fundamental, underlying thrust of this entire budget preparation, our defence of it and the public's acceptance of it. It's the difference between that which we would like to do and that which we have to do.

It's been a stressful summer. The Premier alluded to that. It's been a summer of confusion for some who have perhaps heard just one side of the story. But it has not been....

Interjection.

HON. MR. CURTIS: Yes, Mr. Member, you're right. We're going to ensure that those who have been puzzled by some comments will have an opportunity to go back to where we were with the Times-Colonist of Friday, May 6, 1983: "Restraint Wins For Bennett."

Those ministers responsible for the delivery of non-social-service programs. those in the employment-generating side of government, have spoken in the course of this debate of many encouraging prospects — even more than encouraging; many very exciting prospects — which are around the corner for British Columbia, and for British Columbians: for those who are here now and for those who are undoubtedly going to come. I think we are very quickly going to be one of the more attractive parts of North America in which to invest and to work; as the Minister of Industry and Small Business Development (Hon. Mr. Phillips) said this morning. It has started already. It's underway. Perhaps we tend to focus on the latest bulletin flown out of Ottawa by StatsCan, or we see a news story on television or in the press, or hear one on the radio. It was referred to again this morning by the leader of this government, but it bears repeating: we have had an increase in employment of 100,000 persons since January of this year. In some respects I think there is a lack of understanding about that fact. Maybe we can be faulted for that, for not adequately explaining that and saying so in all parts of the province, even in those parts of the province where unemployment is still a very serious concern. Fundamental to the budget is the fact that we are vacating government's push in the public sector to ensure that that kind of growth in the private sector will continue and accelerate. The budget is also about that.

I've spoken of my personal experiences, which could be described as "What I did on my summer vacation," in 100 words or less. I talked to a lot of greater Victoria and southern Vancouver Island residents, and they're with us. They understand. One by one my colleagues around the province and in this chamber today can also attest to that fact. Interestingly enough, while the comments seem to go through the whole spectrum of demographics from late teens to the quite elderly, I find the two ends are most supportive: the senior citizens, particularly those who, thank God, survived the Depression and the Second World War, and especially those who survived the Depression — just barely, in many instances — and younger British Columbians, young men and women who turned out in the election campaign, among other things, because they sensed that this government, notwithstanding difficult decisions immediately ahead, could provide the kind of career security that they wanted, in an area of activity of their general choice.

[ Page 1206 ]

Here's my friend again. My acquaintance. I cannot describe him as a friend; that would be overstating it. August 2, 1983:

"Dear Hugh:

Neither I nor anyone I know admits to voting for your party in the last provincial election. I write to inform you that your firm decision to decrease the number of the civil servants, etc. In B.C. Is quietly more popular than you might possibly appreciate. Should you continue and bring your intentions to a successful fruition, 1, together with a great number of others, shall have no qualms in supporting you when the time comes.

Yours truly"

I quietly, enthusiastically, and with determination support the budget which was presented to this House on July 7.

[3:45]

Mr. Speaker, I move the motion before you.

Motion approved on the following division:

YEAS — 28

NAYS — 18

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

The House in Committee of Supply; Mr. Strachan in the chair.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF HEALTH

On vote 44: minister's office, $182,438.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I move that the committee rise, report great progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

The committee, having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Speaker, I ask leave to proceed to public bills and orders.

MR. HOWARD: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, according to standing order 25 the next item of business today is public bills in the hands of private members. There is a bill standing for committee consideration. Maybe the member would want to proceed with it.

HON. MR. GARDOM: The hon. member didn't have his hearing aid on, I asked for leave.

Leave granted.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Adjourned debate on second reading of Bill 17.

MISCELLANEOUS STATUTES (FINANCE
MEASURES) AMENDMENT ACT, 1983

MR. COCKE: Mr. Speaker, I note that the bill was called after the House Leader ascertained that our critic who adjourned debate is not here.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Why not?

MR. COCKE: Just like everybody else, he has other things to do.

In any event, what we have before us....

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, the member for New Westminster has said that the member for Nanaimo (Mr. Stupich) is not here, and I wonder, under standing order 8, whether or not he has permission to be absent from the House.

Interjection.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please, hon. members. Standing order 8 has been canvassed on numerous occasions in this House. The power of the Chair to enforce standing order 8 does not exist. That is a decision by individual members, and must be taken as such.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: I agree with that on normal occasions, but on this occasion we've had one member of the opposition party saying that another member of that party is not here. If the member is clearly not in attendance in the legislative precincts, I wonder if he has permission to be absent.

MR. LAUK: On a point of order, I'd like to point out to Mr. Speaker that the hon. member who just spoke is not really here either, and hasn't been all through the budget debate. I didn't hear him speak during the budget debate and I haven't heard him speak in any of the debates. Surely there is some sort of substantive definition of attendance, other than just plopping down in your chair and sitting here shouting epitaphs across the floor.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, both points of order leave something to be desired.

[ Page 1207 ]

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: I take some small offence to the comment that the point of order that I raised leaves something to be desired. The House has been told that a member is absent, and under standing order 8 I wonder whether or not that member has permission to be absent.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, if it were the case that the Chair determined which members do or do not have authority to be absent from the House, surely chaos would reign in this chamber. That is not the intention, and I would convey to the government members that if it is their wish to change the standing orders, they have the power to do so. I do not. On this point, hon. members, I will conclude the debate.

AN HON. MEMBER: Closure!

MR. SPEAKER: I will invoke closure on the question, and we will return to the business of the day, unless there are new points of order to be canvassed or members wish to challenge the ruling of the Chair. Only on either of those two points will I entertain further debate.

HON. MR. McGEER: Mr. Speaker, on standing order 8, this matter has been canvassed on numerous occasions, and you as Speaker, sir, have made the position clear that you, yourself, cannot require attendance from the House. But surely standing order 8 would require individual members to obtain prior permission from the Clerks of the House. And I would think that members, to qualify for their stipend, would need to make appropriate application. Perhaps the Chair would entertain a motion that members who do not apply to the Clerk for permission under standing order 8 should automatically have the day's pay deducted.

[4:00]

MR. SPEAKER: Prior to recognizing the second member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk).... Hon. members are aware, I am sure, that a declaration must be filed with the office of the Clerk indicating when a certain number of days in excess of those allowed have been achieved, and it is each individual member's responsibility to file that particular affidavit and to swear to it accordingly. The Chair does not intend now or until the standing orders are changed to alter in any way the time-honoured traditions of this House.

MR. LAUK: Arising out of what the Minister of Universities, Science and Communications has said, I think it would be fair for this House.... Under standing order 70 or an amendment to the Constitution Act cabinet ministers can be absent from the House without leave over and above the ten days if they are on government business. There is no affidavit filed by cabinet ministers as to those days and what government business they are on. That is totally and absolutely a flagrant breach of the spirit of the intention of the standing order.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please, hon. member. Clearly....

MR. LAUK: In order to be helpful in that regard I suggest that we have perhaps a committee of some kind investigate whether or not these cabinet ministers are absent day after day after day on so-called government business.

HON. MR. McGEER: I think that the point raised by the second member from Vancouver Centre is an excellent point about the filing of affidavits on absent days which could easily be extended to the members of the opposition, reminding them, through you, Mr. Speaker, that attendance at the golf course is not attendance in the House. Perhaps appropriate attendance kept by the Clerk would be the correct manner in which standing order 8 might be....

MR. SPEAKER: Clearly now we are digressing into an area that is not covered. On a different point of order, the Minister of Labour.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: Based on the wise ruling you made, Mr. Speaker. I would just ask that there be some instruction to the Clerks when perusing the affidavits that September 1 was the day the House was told that the member for Nanaimo was absent. If they would just keep that in mind when they are looking at those affidavits....

MR. HOWARD: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Labour has just directly accused the member for Nanaimo of being a liar, challenging and questioning the member's integrity.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, in regard to the point raised by the member for Skeena, had the Chair felt that any such accusation or inference was being made, the Chair would have brought that to the attention of the House. Clearly the Minister of Labour now withdraws any....

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: Of course, Mr. Speaker. What I am saying is that the member is obviously in violation of the rules, because it has been admitted he is away, absent without permission of the House, and I just want to make sure that it is drawn to the attention of the House. There is no allegation other than that.

MR. LAUK: As a result of the remarks of the Minister of Labour, it's now a question of privilege. The Minister of Labour has wrongly and erroneously stated the rules of the House. Your Honour has already clearly stated them, and the remarks are totally out of order. So there.

MR. SPEAKER: That is a very appropriate way of concluding the matter.

MR. COCKE: I did mention the fact that it was unfortunate that there was a mysterious disappearance of one of our members. He is in Columbia River looking for a gravel pit.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

This bill, of course, is a rather diverse statute that refers to a number of statutes and amends a number of statutes. It is one of the Minister of Finance's bills. Normally one has difficulty with these bills, with so many principles involved. We've found, however, that there's only one thing we can do in order to have the latitude of debate that's required, and that is to debate the several principles that are within that bill to the best of our ability so that we do have the latitude that one would find desirable.

There are a number of amendments here. I'd like to draw to the attention of the House the fact that the homeowner's grant base has been changed. Previously one could anticipate

[ Page 1208 ]

a $125 base. Now that base has gone to $150. Therefore the average homeowner with a lower assessment value is very likely to pay a higher net tax — this in a day of restraint. The government has shown very clearly that their desire, as a government, is to restrain the public but at the same time not restrain themselves.

I equate this aspect of the bill — this principle of the bill with the recent move to exempt Crown corporations from the restraint that they had enjoyed until September 1. Now the Crown corporations, being a relative of government, can charge all they like. B.C. Hydro can raise their rates. ICBC can raise its rates to whatever astronomical amount it wishes. This, however, is the same situation as we see in this bill. That is, the principle is the same. The principle here is to say to the public: "You are not going to be able to enjoy the same net income that you did previously." Lord knows this government knows how to divest people of their net income. "You will enjoy less net income as a result of this amendment."

It's not fair that a government trying to reduce its deficit a deficit caused by their own incompetence — is trying now desperately to reduce that deficit on the backs of the people that they represent. The majority of the people in this province put that government in power, and the majority of the people have spoken, in my view. But I think that the majority of the people in the province are saddened by the fact that government, instead of saying: "Let's work together. Let's all restrain ourselves...." As a matter of fact, I'm getting so that word offends me because it's so badly used so often. But the government have placed themselves in a position where they're doing it on the backs of the ordinary people in our province. This amendment is not going to affect the wealthy. I don't imagine that it would affect many of the people who live in such areas as Oak Bay and Shaughnessy Heights in Vancouver and Point Grey — my hon. friend from Vancouver East has knowledge of that area.

MR. MACDONALD: That's where I keep my clothes.

MR. COCKE: That's right. Mr. Speaker, it will not affect that wealthy member that much. But let me tell you, it will affect those people who have marginal incomes. You see, those people have had visited upon them cost after cost after cost. Those people — and this is analogous — have been faced with an increased user fee for health care, increased premiums for medicare and increases across the board from the government they love so well — the government which yesterday raised the price of booze in this province 13.5 percent.

Interjection.

MR. COCKE: Not correct, the Minister of Finance says. Shame on me. Then I hope that you'll tell your employees to reduce that price. I'm just talking about the increased cost of liquor in the liquor stores.

HON. MR. CURTIS: As of today.

MR. COCKE: As of yesterday.

In any event, we now have a prospective increase in hydro. We have a reduction of that income here. I suggest that it's not fair to the average person. The minister indicates that there hasn't been a recent increase in the cost of alcohol in the province. We sure know there's been a much-increased rate in terms of other sin taxes: tobacco and others. In any event, all I'm saying is that if the government were to be fair, they would say to people, "Look, we know it's tight. We want to work with you to see that we get out of this thing together," instead of creating further indebtedness for the people that they're serving. The more you reduce people's net income by taxation, the more you reduce their ability to purchase consumer goods.

This government has an ideology that they claim will increase consumption of consumer goods. How, may I ask, will you increase the consumption of consumer goods if people have a net loss of income? That's what they're having. This government thinks it can get away with going around patting small business people on the back and saying: "We love you. We know perfectly well that you support us because you believe in our ideology." Then they turn on them like an adder clasped to the breast of the public and bite them with a reduction of net spendable income. This is one of the aspects of this bill that I feel is rather negative.

[4:15]

1 don't think that after an election is the time to make the kind of announcements that we continually see before us since the budget was introduced on July 7. What would the government have done in terms of eliciting support had they gone out to the ordinary people and said to them: "We're going to reduce your net income. It's only to the poor or to those who are marginally in the situation of home ownership. At the same time it's very tight in terms of income, We're going to raise the base from $125 to $150"? If they had said that then, and the people had property understood what they said, I think that there would have been quite an outcry. There isn't a great outcry now, because — this was good strategy, or it appears to be good strategy — so much bad stuff is buried in such a big mound. When you bring in some 26 to 31 bills, much of them being quite hard to take, people take their eyes off some of these smaller areas.

However, these smaller areas may be overlooked, they are still part and parcel of the government's determination somehow or other to crawl out of the hole they created by doing what they're doing here. It's no different to all the other areas of restraint that they've talked about. A government that's determined to have a restraint program should recognize the fact that people have to make a go of it. People have to live. People who have offered them support don't deserve this kind of treachery. Mr. Speaker, that's what they're getting.

There are many other areas in this particular bill that worry me. There will be people in the private sector that are going to be quite concerned about some of the penalties and admonitions in this bill with respect to collecting taxes and taking further responsibility for the collection of those taxes. What the Minister of Finance wants now is for small business to be his tax collector and to be totally responsible. If mistakes are made, it's their mistake, even though sometimes one would wonder at the instructions that people get. How can people avoid making mistakes?

There are amendments here that are very difficult to understand. For example, I see the taxation of the federal government in two or three sections of the bill. Intergovernmental immunity from taxation is immensely complex and involves volumes and volumes of case law and judicial decisions. However, it seems that the province can legally tax the feds if a statute clearly so provides, yet there are measures here which, for the sake of harmonious federal-provincial fiscal relations, are usually undertaken only after a good deal

[ Page 1209 ]

of discussion and consultation. I would ask the minister — if he was around — just how much consultation has gone on with respect to the seemingly new tax-the-feds aspect of this bill. What worries me is that we expect the federal government to contribute its share to cost-shared programs such as health care, welfare and others. On the other hand, if we create antagonism through lack of consultation.... And there's no way one could ever know whether one has had consultation or not, because the minister is not even here to nod.

I spoke to a parliamentarian from another area not too long ago. This parliamentarian said, after viewing our House: "Is it usual for a minister to leave the House while that person's bill is being debated? In our House that would be tantamount to an abuse of the House, and there'd be an immediate adjournment of the House." No matter how inconsequential the minister may find my remarks, it is not an insult to me that he would leave the House; it's an insult to the institution. Naturally, this bill could be far more adequately debated by our finance critic than myself, but he doesn't happen to be in the House, nor is he available to debate it at this time.

Interjection.

MR. COCKE: Who said so? I said he wasn't here. Here means in this House, in this chamber.

MR. REID: You said he was in Columbia River.

MR. COCKE: Let's speculate. Where might he be? You think he might be in Nanaimo. That's purely conjecture.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: We are on Bill 17.

MR. COCKE: Okay, Mr. Speaker. Once again, now that that peripatetic Minister of Finance has returned, and now that we see some additional taxation is visited upon the federal government by the provincial government, I'm asking how much negotiation and extensive intergovernmental discussion went on around this question.

HON. MR. CURTIS: It's reciprocal.

MR. COCKE: It's nice that he's here now to answer that question. I would hope that when the minister gets an opportunity, after some discussion of his bill — which incidentally might have been over by now had they called the bill at an appropriate time.... Trickery. In any event, when he gets the opportunity, I'm sure he will give us a full....

HON. MR. CURTIS: Cool it. Don't be so touchy.

MR. COCKE: I'll tell you, I'm touchy all right. I have been in this place for 14 years and never have I seen it so disorganized, in such chaos, and so absolutely authoritarian in terms of the government's position. Never before have I seen a situation where a bill has not been announced at least the day before. Now we get seconds to advise ourselves of a bill that is coming before this Legislature. It's an absolute shock. It's dictatorship. As far as I'm concerned, I'm ashamed of this government. I'm ashamed of their actions, and sincerely wish that everybody in the province could understand what you people are doing. It's a shocking situation,

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please. The business of the House at present is Bill 17.

HON. A. FRASER: He's been making that same speech for 14 years.

MR. COCKE: That's a lot of nonsense, Alec, and you know it. There was a time when there was some civilization in this bush-league place. but it has certainly gone right down the tube this year, and everybody knows it.

I would also like to draw attention to the fact that again we have before us a bill that will come into force by regulation. We don't have proclamation clauses any more. We used to have proclamation clauses in bills. We've got another bill before us now that's going to change proclamation to regulation. So this bill anticipates the passing of another bill, but I'm not going to deal with that.

I will talk about this bill that comes into force by regulation. Guess when. Sections 11, 12 and 34 are retroactive to April 1, 1983. On April 1, 1983, an election hadn't even been called. We were all waiting for a call of the Legislature so that we could discuss a budget. Then there was no budget. There was a government that ran by order-in-council and special warrants for every nickel they got until well after the election. The budget was not brought into the House until July 7. Furthermore, after having debated that piece of news for three days, it was dropped until just a few days ago. Then it was dropped again and it finally passed today.

HON. MR. CURTIS: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, we are dealing with Bill 17, which is a relatively common omnibus bill in this parliament. I wonder if the member for New Westminster is not in fact reflecting on a vote.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That point of order is well taken. The House is also reminded that during discussion of a miscellaneous bill such as this, it is very difficult to establish principles. Normally it's done in committee. I'm sure the member can relate to the several principles contained within this bill, and will keep us in order during second reading.

MR. COCKE: I would like to remind you, Mr. Speaker, that when the minister introduced the bill he dealt with specifics in the bill — seriatim or whatever. Naturally one has to.... This is a further principle of the bill. I was saying that they had the opportunity, the time and the place, You know, this place was vacant in the spring when we weren't here. They could have brought in this legislation. It could have been passed, and then it would have been law without this retroactivity clause. Instead, we resort again to doing it after the fact. Everything after the fact. I think people must be getting pretty fed up, because it's very difficult to anticipate in April what somebody might say in September — or July, for that matter, when the bill was introduced — about the way we lead our lives.

Retroactivity is something that should be used very infrequently and only in case of an emergency. There's no reason why the government has to provide for its comfort with the potential discomfort of others. That's what retroactivity does. Retroactivity is an area we should avoid, yet it is increasingly becoming a habit with this government.

I was talking about the aspect of the bill that calls for proclamation. A section of this bill will come into force by

[ Page 1210 ]

regulation — I shouldn't call it proclamation any longer. That is the whole question in the homeowner's grant. Why that?

[4:30]

In any event, I suggest to the government that there should be some system by which they could tell the people what they're going to do beforehand, as opposed to letting the people go by guess and by gosh, and then suddenly be confronted with something that was law before they knew what was happening.

I would just like to ask why it is that there is also a bit of a contradiction in the section that I talked about before, with respect to the homeowner's grant. In one place it says "by regulation," and in another place it says "on January 1, 1984." I gather that that's necessary, but is there a possibility of a change of mind between now and then? One would seem to preclude the other. I think that's something the minister should deal with, because that's a rather unusual situation that we have before us.

I wonder if there's any particular reason why the aspect of the repeal of the exemption of the federal government for gasoline tax.... Why is that retroactive, and was that discussed? I gather the feds have agreed to it. But the other, related one — that is, if the Minister of Finance is going to give us an in-depth discussion on that.... The other aspect is the exemption for social service tax transactions for fishermen and the repeals of the exemption of the federal government from social service tax. Those are all part of a parcel. Mr. Speaker, I'm just going to ask the minister when the negotiations took place and why the government, subsequent to the negotiations, didn't make an announcement of what they were going to do. Failing that, why wasn't it brought in earlier so that it could have been passed by this House in prospect, as opposed to retroactively, as we're doing it now?

To sum up, the parts of this bill that I can find that I feel are complementary to what the government is doing, visiting the backs of the ordinary people with a reduction of that income for their own purposes — that, I find, is very difficult to take. However, I don't find it surprising by virtue of the fact that this is the way it has been from day one. With all the increases in government fees, with all the increases in government cost of services, we see here another increase — because that's what it amounts to — in terms of a means of government garnering from the ordinary people. Mr. Speaker, I suggest that one should look at this bill with a good deal of suspicion. I can't tell you that a person can do an in-depth on every aspect of this bill, particularly when charged with the manifold responsibilities that one has in this House. All I can say is that the aspects of the bill that I've looked at worry me, to the extent that I felt obliged to stand in this House and say that with the knowledge that I have of it, unless I can be sold a great deal by the Minister of Finance, I couldn't possibly support the bill at this juncture.

I would move adjournment of the debate until the next sitting of the House.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Motion approved unanimously on a division.

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

HON. MR. GARDOM: Adjourned debate on Bill 6.

EDUCATION (INTERIM) FINANCE
AMENDMENT ACT, 1983

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Speaker....

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, if the Chair recognizes the minister it would be for the purpose only of closing the debate, unless he seeks the floor for another reason. No? The member for Burnaby-Edmonds.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Speaker, I'm not surprised that the minister wants to close debate on this particular piece of legislation. It's a dreadful piece of draconian legislation, and I know that as soon as he can terminate the whole discussion of this bill, that's what he will do.

As my other colleagues who've spoken on this bill have said, it not only deals with the centralization of power here in Victoria but is actually a direct assault and attack on another level of government. The duly elected school trustees of this province, elected by the democratic process, with responsibilities to the people who elected them, are under attack. What the minister has done with this piece of legislation is to take unto himself the responsibility which the voters thought they were giving those duly elected school trustees.

[4:45]

With this piece of legislation he now takes complete responsibility for designing and deciding all kinds of issues in the field of education, which today during question period he said he didn't want to have. I regret that I do not have access to the Blues from this afternoon's question period, because I wanted to quote back to the minister precisely what he said. I'm sure that my colleagues who are speaking after me are going to quote the minister's words to him again. This afternoon during question period the minister made it absolutely clear that he did not want to have responsibility for deciding how much money school boards should spend, what courses they should give and what decisions they should make, etc.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Read the Blues.

MS. BROWN: I will read the Blues, and so will my colleagues, Mr. Minister, and feed your words right back to you.

In this piece of legislation there is absolutely nothing for school boards to have responsibility for. They have become the errand-boys and the hired guns of the provincial government. That's all they are. They're here to take the flak for bad decisions made at the provinicial level. The Deputy Minister of Education and the Minister of Education are the ones who make all the decisions in the area of education for the children of the province, and the school boards are there to take all of the blame. That's the only responsibility they have left.

I want to quote, as my colleagues before me did, a statement made by the Premier of the province back in the days when he was running for the job of Premier, and the commitment that he made to this province in terms of education. At that time he said that if elected the British Columbia Social Credit government would return authority to local school boards.

Interjection.

[ Page 1211 ]

MS. BROWN: It's right here in a little booklet which was sent around to everybody. It said that they would return authority to local school boards. He said: "We in the British Columbia Social Credit Party believe that meaningful educational policies can only be developed in cooperation with local school boards. After all, the local school trustees have been elected by the people in their own areas."

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: Well, it's here. The minister had to leave, he is so embarrassed. I'm not being critical of the minister, Mr. Speaker, when I read this, because he was not a part of this; he did not help to draft this. This is signed by Bill Bennett. In the tradition of the House, when I'm through I'd like to table this.

MR. BARRETT: No! You can't table fibs.

MS. BROWN: I'm reading from a document, and in the parliamentary tradition of this House I have no alternative.

MR. BARRETT: No, no lies are permitted. You cannot table that.

MS. BROWN: Hon. leader, I have no choice.

It goes on to say, Mr. Speaker: "We would therefore return authority to local school boards, while at the same time eliminating the bureaucracy in the Department of Education. We would also work to return dignity and responsibility to individual classroom teachers, trained professionals who deserve more authority in setting educational objectives for their pupils."

MR. REE: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, I overheard the Leader of the Opposition saying: "You can't repeat this stuff." I've got to agree with him. This is repetitive debate because the same article, which I support, was read by other members in the debate on this bill, and possibly we could chastise the member for repetitious debate.

MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, I was pointing out that lies cannot be brought forward in this House, and the member is correct. He says he believes it. How can you vote for this legislation if you believe what is in that pamphlet? Which way is it going to be? That's the point the Chair has to deal with. The Social Credit Party was lying in that pamphlet. Now you say that you support this pamphlet. Are you going to quit the party? Shame, Mr. Speaker! The member is confused and he should be taken outside and spanked.

MR. SPEAKER: Members who seek the floor on one point and then begin to canvass what can best be described as partial debate, certainly in themselves abuse the rules of the House.

MR. REE: I want to thank the Leader of the Opposition for clarifying things. Usually what he has to say is misunderstood by most of the people, so I thank him kindly. But I still feel that we are having repetitious debate to delay and obstruct this House, and I would ask you, Mr. Speaker, to speak to the member.

MR. SPEAKER: Notwithstanding that it is the right of a member to seek his or her place in this chamber to express his or her views, whether or not those views may have been canvassed by other members, is really a very difficult interpretation for the Chair to make. Members must be afforded the protection of the Chair if they are to have an opportunity to express their personal views, regardless of how they may conflict or concur with those of other members of the House.

MS. BROWN: This is the first time I have read this into the record and I think it is the kind of thing that bears repetition; it needs to be repeated over and over again.

Very clearly, the people who drafted this brochure are not the same people who drafted Bill 6, which the Minister of Education is now introducing to the House. In discussing Bill 6 I think it should be brought to the minister's attention that the bill he is introducing runs absolutely counter to the statements made by the Social Credit Party in 1975, when it asked the people of British Columbia to elect it as government. That has to be repeated over and over again, in the faint hope that the Minister of Education will see the error of his ways and withdraw this piece of legislation, and will redraft it so that it is more in keeping with the sentiments expressed in 1975 by his then leader, his now Premier, when he affixed his signature to these words. I don't believe it is possible to repeat this statement too often. I am convinced that there are a number of people who probably never voted Social Credit before....

MR. BARRETT: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, we have got to have a quorum in this chamber. If the government is not prepared to deal with the legislation, I suggest you call adjournment until we have a quorum.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, at this time it is the responsibility of the Chair to determine if there is a quorum. Usually, hon. members, I talk long enough for enough people hopefully to come into the chamber. Usually that is the case. I do not see that taking place at this time. I will make a very careful count to see if in fact the point of order brought forward by the Leader of the Opposition is valid. I will begin the count.

We have a quorum, hon. members. A bare quorum.

MS. BROWN: I don't know what is bothering the member for West Vancouver–Howe Sound (Mr. Reynolds), but there sure is a lot of rumbling coming from his side of the House.

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: Fair enough, I am happy to give it again.

This is what happens, Mr. Speaker, whenever you decide to talk about education on the floor of this House. None of the government members wants to listen, so there are these continual interruptions. Despite that, I am going to repeat this brochure: "A British Columbia Social Credit government would give B.C.'s young people a better quality education." That was a promise made in 1975. It went on to say that it would return authority to local school boards because it believed that "meaningful educational policies had to be developed in cooperation with local school boards because local school trustees were elected by people in their own area." In other words, it says that at the grassroots

[ Page 1212 ]

level.... That's what the trustees are: grassroots-level politicians. They understand the educational needs of their area much better than do the bureaucrats in Victoria or Ottawa. That's what this statement said and I agree with it; I associate with it. My only regret is that the Minister of Education, in introducing Bill 6, did not take that into account.

It is true that no two school districts are exactly alike, no two school areas are exactly alike. What gives the Minister of Education the authority to think that the bureaucrats in Victoria, and the minister himself sitting in Victoria, would know what is best for Burnaby School District 41, for example, my school district; would know better than those school trustees who live in Burnaby and were elected by the parents and the residents of Burnaby itself? What makes him think that? I am going to talk about the chairman of School District 41 in a few minutes. This is what this legislation says. It says that the Minister of Education, the Deputy Minister of Education and the bureaucrats here in Victoria have a better understanding of the kind and quality of education that the children in School District 41 should have than do the locally elected school trustees.

Let's look at the facts and see if they support that position. In fact, under the new formula devised by the minister, Burnaby school district is treated the worst of all. Over the next three years there's going to be a shortfall of something like $11 million which they're going to lose under this formula. There's going to be a reduction of something in the neighbourhood of 20 percent of the budget that they need to operate. Now the minister would say: "Well, what's so bad about that? There's declining enrolment; fewer children are entering the school system than last year and the year before." He doesn't take into account a couple of things that are peculiar to Burnaby. They may happen elsewhere, I don't know; but I'm addressing myself specifically to two factors that affect Burnaby. One is that more adults are using the school system in Burnaby than anywhere else. More adults are in the continuing education program than anywhere else. More and more people past the so-called school age are going back to school, and we are finding that our school trustees, through the public school system, can deliver that education much less expensively than even the community colleges or PVI — I saw the member for Burnaby-Willingdon (Mr. Veitch) here a minute ago — or any of the vocational schools. The school trustees in Burnaby are proud of that and make a big issue of it. It's not easy to be able to deliver that quality of education and at the same time stay within a budget as effectively as they have done. It also says something about a community that has so many of its adults interested in pursuing education.

Instead of allowing Burnaby the flexibility to continue to make the kinds of decisions that will meet the needs of the residents and the community of Burnaby, the minister, like manna from above, like the potentate he has become, is now, with his Deputy Minister, to decide how Burnaby's schoolboard dollars are spent; what courses they give, to whom and under what conditions, completely ignoring the special kinds of interests that Burnaby has, and ignoring the special needs, which the school trustees recognized and moved to meet.

[5:00]

The school trustees recognize those needs because they were elected locally. They had to address themselves to local concerns in order to get the vote. They were not elected in Prince George to make decisions about educational needs in Burnaby. They were not hired and do not live in Victoria to make education decisions about Burnaby. They have to go before the electorate every two years; they have to renew their mandate every two years. They have to go back to the people of Burnaby and say: "Re-elect me so that I can give you this kind of education, so I can deliver this kind of education." And the people of Burnaby dictate to their school trustees what they want. Of course, they're paying the taxes to ensure the school trustees can meet their requirements. I'll talk about taxation afterwards, and what this government's done to our tax base in Burnaby.

So for the minister to introduce a piece of legislation which takes the flexibility away from the school trustees is to damage the education system in Burnaby. This bill is going to have a negative impact on Burnaby. And that is one reason why I am not prepared to support it.

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: No, I'm not going to support this bill. The second thing is that we have a large component of students for whom English is a second language. My colleague from Vancouver mentioned that yesterday when he was speaking. It's on the increase as well. The number of new Canadians who are moving into the community and whose children are entering the school system puts additional pressure on the educational system. As long as the trustees have the power to make decisions, they can be flexible in terms of meeting the needs of those children for whom English is a second language. That's going to be taken away from them under this piece of legislation. Now the minister, the deputy minister and bureaucrats living and working in Victoria are going to bring down a formula which does not take into account the special needs of that section of the community in Burnaby. I mean, the statistics are increasing. There are more students entering the school system in Burnaby for whom English is a second language than there are students entering the system for whom English is their first language. The new Canadian population is growing. The school board has to take that into account, and has to be able to be flexible in terms of how programs are designed, so that by meeting the needs of those children for whom English is a second language they do not fail to meet the needs of those students for whom English is their first language. They have to be incredibly inventive and innovative to see that they do not penalize one group in order to enhance another, and vice versa.

Those decisions have to be made at the local level. That's the only level that's relevant, as far as those decisions are concerned. It's as ludicrous as asking Ottawa to make those kinds of decisions for us. It can't be done. And if the Minister of Education had the commitment to education which this 1975 brochure of the British Columbia Social Credit Party — under the signature of the Premier — said it had to ensure that every child in British Columbia has the best-quality education affordable, the minister would indeed return power to the local level, would indeed allow the local school trustees to have more flexibility to be able to be more innovative, and would reward them for being innovative. Of course, the very opposite has happened.

Is that my green light already? I just got started.

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: Okay, thank you.

[ Page 1213 ]

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: No, this is just Burnaby. I still have to speak about the rest of the province too. Anyway, that broke my train of thought, Mr. Speaker. What was my last word, do you remember?

Interjections.

MS. BROWN: You're taking notes? Okay, I was speaking about.... Ah! Penalizing, right. The Burnaby school board, under the new system, is being penalized, as are West Vancouver–Howe Sound and North Vancouver, I understand....

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: They are. I know they are being penalized because they have tried and succeeded in living within their budgets.

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: That's right. They have succeeded in living within their budgets. Therefore they're being penalized for that. I want to talk about the third....

Interjection.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

MS. BROWN: They work very well with their MLA.

... group, Mr. Speaker, who are a special responsibility of the Burnaby school trustees. There are a large number of institutions which cater to the needs of physically and mentally disabled children who are part of the educational catchment system in Burnaby — the children at The Maples, for example. It's just escaped me — I used to work there as a volunteer and the name.... The Donald Paterson School. The whole concept — which this government introduced and we supported — of reintroducing these children into the school system, making them a part of the school system was something which Burnaby welcomed and went out of its way to ensure would work in the best interest of these children. It wasn't simply a case of putting them in the public school system and abandoning them once they got there. Special aides were hired, special programs were introduced, and these children really fitted into the system very well. That called for some flexibility in terms of budgeting, called for inventiveness and innovative ways of designing budgets.

Now that's going to be taken away from them. Everyone is being cloned. Every school district has to be exactly the same as every other school district. That doesn't work to the best interest of those children who are not exactly the same as every other child. It doesn't work.

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: No, not really. As long as the minister is listening....

MR. REID: I'm the designated listener.

MS. BROWN: The little member from Surrey is a designated listener. That's fine.

Those three groups — the adult continuing education group, the English-as-a-second-language group and the children with special needs.... The fourth group, though not necessarily in that order, is all the other kids in Burnaby. The previous Minister of Education used to say to Burnaby: "Why is it that your budget is not the same as that of Delta" for example, or some other school district? There were always these comparisons of one school district with another one — comparing an old school district with a new school district the apples and oranges thing.

The reality of the situation is that in Burnaby the parents want the best for their kids.

MR. REID: The deserve the best, and we're giving them the best.

MS. BROWN: And they deserve the best — precisely. They also know what is the best for their kids. So they elect the school trustees, who come as close as is possible to giving these kinds of programs to their kids.

They're suffering under this. It was a rich program, a good program that the kids in Burnaby get — aside from reading, writing and arithmetic — in all of the areas of dealing with the twenty-first century, which we're embarking on. Every effort was made to ensure that the school children in Burnaby were ready and could handle the twenty-first century once they went out into the world. We didn't see any point in sending young people with a horse-and-buggy education out into a computer-age world. It didn't make any sense. So the Burnaby school trustees, aided and abetted by the parents and everyone else in the community, really enriched the program. Some of it they did through getting funding from outside. Sometimes parents had to pay additional funds for their children to enjoy these programs. They were able to do it, and no one complained, because, as with the rest of British Columbia, the parents wanted the very best education for their children. They're going to lose that now. We're into cloning. Every education system and every school district is going to give exactly the same program as every other school district. Who is going to decide what kind of program? The Minister of Education, the Deputy Minister of Education and the bureaucrats here in Victoria. That article that has again been read into the House — two articles by Crawford Kilian, who talked about the fact that school boards are now so degraded that they have no real reason to exist.... .

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: That's true. You speak to the parents in Burnaby and they will tell you that a group of them can no longer go to their school trustees and say: "We want this particular program for our kids." That's not going to happen any more.

The tragedy of the situation, as I said before, is that Burnaby really tried so hard to stay within its budget that it made the most incredible sacrifices. It was closing schools, and by the process of attrition was cutting down its staff and its FTEs — the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Curtis) likes to use his little FTEs....

Interjection.

[ Page 1214 ]

MS. BROWN: He didn't tell you what an FTE is?

...and they were really quite proud of themselves — so much so that the chairman of the Burnaby school board ran as a Social Credit candidate in the last election. He was sure that he was going to be rewarded, and that if he won he was going to be made Minister of Education because he had done such a good job. He thought of staying within his budget, delivering a good education system and meeting the needs of the community.

MR. REID: We have an excellent Minister of Education.

MS. BROWN: That's not what the chairman of the Burnaby School Board says now.

Interjections.

MS. BROWN: The Premier is now ridiculing his own candidate. He's laughing at Gary Begin because as chairman of the school board he had the nerve to run as a Social Credit candidate. We tried to tell him, but now he has found out for himself. For the benefit of the Premier, Gary Begin is saying at every opportunity that if he had had any idea of how anti-education this government was going to be, he would never have run.

The school trustees have tried to meet with the minister. They asked that this bill be hoisted and that its contents be put in the form of a White Paper and circulated so there could be public discussion. The school trustees, teachers and the parents could talk about it, as well as the community at large. Small businesses and everybody would have a chance to discuss it before it was actually introduced as legislation. The minister refused. They went so far as to prepare a brief, which they presented to all members of the Legislative Assembly on both sides of the House.

[5:15]

In the brief they talked about the shortcomings of this bill, and the reasons why they thought the bill should be circulated as a White Paper, so there could be some public discussion about it. They said that if this bill went through in its present form it would end up in deficiencies in the application of the funding formula and it would result in the creation of a management unit too large to be economical. You have to remember that Bill 6 is part of a restraint package. We're told that the reason for introducing this legislation is because the government is cutting back on its expenditures: cutting back on the number of staff in the school system and in the Ministry of Education; cutting back on the general cost of education; and trying to increase the pupil-teacher ratio — that kind of thing.

The school trustees prepared a brief in which they said that that was not going to happen. This piece of legislation is going to do the direct opposite of how the minister says it should be done. They said it's going to result in increased costs in administration and increased legal costs. It's going to result in increased costs resulting from court decisions. It uses a word which I've never heard before, but I guess it's okay. It says: "...diseconomics of scale from a system too large for effective administration." It also says that the one thing the minister wants to cut down.... He keeps saying he wants fewer administrators and more people in the classroom. The school trustees said that under this piece of legislation there is actually going to be an increase in the number of administrators in some school districts.

The school trustees are the people who administer, who actually have to implement the legislation. They have read the act. They asked for a meeting with the minister. They had a meeting with the minister, with the government caucus and with the opposition caucus. They submitted a brief in which they very clearly stated all the pitfalls that they recognized would happen if this bill was introduced. They said it would result in increased costs of teacher salaries because the incentive to keep the average teacher's salary high was being introduced. It would have a disincentive in it to reduce average teacher salaries by early retirement of the most expensive teachers. It said it was a disincentive for teachers to use the collective bargaining process to preserve jobs by reducing salaries. It said it would result in increased costs of operating schools. There was a disincentive to reduce fixed costs because of this new formula, a disincentive to use the schools as sources of revenue and a lack of incentive to go after energy-efficient investment.

One thing that happened in Burnaby, for example, is that a couple of elementary schools that were closed are being used by the community in other ways. The school board is actually getting revenue from renting or leasing these school buildings for other uses. Under this new formula introduced in Bill 6 by the minister, they're going to lose that revenue. They can't use that revenue to upgrade the building. They can't use it to introduce new programs for students who are physically, mentally or emotionally disabled. They can't use it to hire additional teacher aides or support staff in the schools. They can't use it to buy updated equipment, like more computers and those kinds of things, for the schools. They can't use it even to support extracurricular activities, for example. One of the things that all of the kids in Burnaby used to be able to do until quite recently was to take swimming. We live in a province in which swimming lessons is not a luxury for our children. There isn't a summer that goes by that we don't hear about young people drowning in the lakes or the ocean or whatever in this beautiful province with so many lakes, rivers and streams, as well as the ocean, so they introduced into the school system that every Tuesday and Thursday mornings the kids would go swimming. They've lost that. Okay, now you're telling me that my green light is going on. I don't want to end without being sure that I've got all of my statistics in about the ways in which this piece of legislation is going to hurt Burnaby.

I just want to say that the school trustees, in one of their background papers, also pointed out that increased centralization of authority and decision-making has consistently been shown to decrease organizational effectiveness and efficiency in both the public and private sectors of the economy. They go on to quote examples of where this happens. I think I talked about some of them when I spoke about the brief which they presented to the government. They talk about top-level management, decentralization of decisions, and day-to-day administrations not being run as efficiently as they should be.

But I think the most important theme that I want to leave, Mr. Speaker, is that taking away the decision-making from the local level is a negative decision on the part of the government; that, in fact, our children are going to suffer. I don't think it is good enough for the government to say that this is a restraint move on their part, that they are trying to save money for the taxpayers, because, as you know, I think it was in 1982 that the government moved in and deprived the municipalities of the tax base which they had to finance and to

[ Page 1215 ]

fund education. They took that unto themselves and placed it in general revenue. Yet the people continued to pay the taxes. As the tax burden for education on the homeowner increased, there were slight grumblings, there were slight complaints, but people paid their taxes because they really do believe in good quality education for their children. I think it would be fair to say that that is true of all parents in British Columbia. We all recognize that this is not a world in which ignorant people, uneducated people, and people without skills, without training and without talent are going to be able to make very much of a contribution to the quality of life of the province.

So everyone has a profound respect for education, and everyone recognizes the importance of education to the children of the province. This is the reason why I fail to understand why the Minister of Education is disregarding the wishes of the parents of the province and of the school trustees that he withdraw this particular piece of legislation and introduce it as a White Paper for public discussion.

Now my red light is on, I gather, which means that my time is up. So what I would like to do is to move that the House do now adjourn.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. member, pursuant to standing order 44, I will not put that question. That is my ruling.

MR. HOWARD: Then that ruling is challenged.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The ruling of the Chair has been challenged.

[5:30]

Deputy Speaker's ruling sustained on the following division:

YEAS — 24

NAYS — 17

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

MR. D'ARCY: I was wondering, Mr. Speaker, in the interests of air safety, perhaps you could inquire, considering the inclemency of the weather today, whether the 10 or 15 government members who are away on the government jets are properly taken care of. Have they arrived at their destinations, their clubs and cocktail parties and so on — wherever they are headed for over the long weekend? Are their seatbelts fastened? This debate on Bill 6 is so tremendously important that we do want to make sure that all members of the Legislature return safely tomorrow so that we can continue this debate,

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please. The House will come to order, and the member will make his remarks relevant to Bill 6.

MR. D'ARCY: We are discussing Bill 6, which is the principle of the education....

DEPUTY SPEAKER: One moment, please. The Minister of Universities, Science and Communications rises on a point of order.

HON. MR. McGEER: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, if the members wish we could push the quorum bell — there would be no objection from this side of the House — in order to attract back all the NDP members who've left after the member who is speaking has drawn attention to how important the debate is.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order. please. That's not a point of order, because we do have a quorum.

MR. D'ARCY: Mr. Speaker, further to the point of order raised by the minister for tenured scientists and technocrats, the member for Vancouver–Point Grey, perhaps we could, on his initiative, chase down those dozen or 15 government members who not only are absent during debate, but can't even answer the division bells.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. member, the minister's point of order was not in order, and neither are the following remarks. Please continue on Bill 6.

MR. D'ARCY: I am sure the minister for tenured scientists and technocrats is only doing his best.

Interjection.

MR. D'ARCY: That's what he looks like, is it? Is that the member for Okanagan South (Hon. Mr. Bennett)? I always wondered what he looked like.

I am concerned about this bill because it is about education, about finance and about taxation. At one time I thought that all members of this chamber were concerned about the quality of education in this province. I know you are or were, Mr. Speaker. I hoped the government members in particular were concerned about democracy in this province. I also thought and hoped and prayed that the government members were interested in local autonomy, allowing people to make decisions for themselves. What we find as this session goes on, particularly since the re-election of the Social Credit government, is that really they do not believe in democracy or local autonomy; what they believe in is centralized authoritarian control of everything, including education. I find that disgusting and disgraceful.

Centralized control leads to inefficiencies, and to losses of very important people. I know the government members don't understand human rights, and I know they don't understand democracy and the rights of people and local autonomy.

[ Page 1216 ]

If they understand anything, I think they at least pay lipservice respect to those corporations, those large businesses, which have been and are successful. I find it interesting that in Canada one of our most successful businesses and diversified corporations over a period of perhaps 100 years now is the Canadian Pacific Railway and CP investments. Any analysis of that corporation and its history will quickly show that one way they stand out from many other corporations is in the fact that each one of their many divisions has virtually complete corporate competitive autonomy, not just within their structure — that is, within the areas where they compete with other corporations, some of which may be government.... They even compete with themselves. Each individual group has to compete with themselves. In that aspect they have rewarded their shareholders rather successfully over the last 100 or 120 years in this country.

It's also interesting that, provincially, nationally and internationally, if we look at those nations which have an inefficient economy, which are wasteful of natural resources, which have high foreign debt, high inflation, low growth rates, and low standards of living, almost invariably, whether they are of the right or the left, or whether they are a right-wing dictatorship like Brazil or a left-wing dictatorship like the Soviet Union, we find exclusively that they have centralized, bureaucratic, authoritarian control — the kind of thing that the Social Credit government is doing with this bill in as important a field as education.

Mr. Speaker, it's been said many times, and I'm going to say it again: children, our young people, our university students and our adults who wish to be retrained are, in fact, our most important and significant natural resource. I find it admirable that the school boards around this province, of which you, sir, were a chairman, I believe, have adapted in a most imaginative and understanding way to the Social Credit economic adversity which this province is being subjected to at the present time and unfortunately will be subjected to for the next year or so.

What they have done in district after district around this province.... The school boards and the trustees, whether they see themselves as Liberals, Tories, Socreds, New Democrats, or whether they have a political position at all — perhaps they simply have differing views on education.... Regardless of their points of view or the internal squabbles that they may have — as any democratically elected body will have — they have adapted admirably to the rule changes, the goalpost-moving, the cutbacks and the attacks on education made by the Social Credit government in the last few years.

They have done everything they can to save the education programs. They have increased efficiencies in the hardware expenses, they have asked schools to share supplies one with another, they have cut back on orders for new equipment. Perhaps they can get away with typewriters for their secretarial classes that are perhaps 20 years old in some cases. They can get away with that as long as they don't have to drop the class completely. They have discovered in industrial arts classes — or whatever they're called; that's what they were called when I went to school — that perhaps you can get away without that brand new expensive lathe and in that way save the program — or save the drama, music or computer programs. They have adapted admirably, Mr. Speaker.

In this bill we have the minister coming along and saying: "We are really annoyed with you people for adapting so well. We want the ability to override you on those decisions and tell you when you have to cut FTEs." In other words, when you have to reduce your body count, they don't care if it means you cut out your music and computer programs or if you cut down on your bus drivers. Whatever you have to cut down on, they are going to take the authority to tell you how and when to do it. That admirable and wonderful efficiency and imagination and quality of humanity that was shown by the collective wisdoms of elected school boards around this province are under attack by this legislation and by that minister, who sits there sleeping in his chair and not caring what's happening to the Education ministry that he's supposed to be defending. He's supposed to be defending the kids, the schools, the superintendents, the teachers and the administrators. Granted, he's dealing with a bunch of Neanderthal paranoids who don't like the school system, but he has the responsibility to defend that system against the other people in the treasury benches — those piranhas — who would devour the entire school system, spit it out and throw it away. That's the kind of minister we have. He's weak, Mr. Speaker, and he allows his treasury people to force him into bringing in this kind of legislation.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Personal reflections are unparliamentary, hon. member.

MR. D'ARCY: Mr. Speaker, who was I casting personal reflections on? The piranhas on the treasury benches or the weak Minister of Education?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Either way it's a member of this House. If the member would please discontinue that type of comment, I'm sure Parliament would be well-served.

MR. D'ARCY: Restraint by the dictionary definition, whether times are good or bad — and most certainly when they're bad — is something that everybody.... I think critics of the government in particular.... I even noticed that the Bishop of Victoria, Bishop de Roo, has made the point that everyone is in favour of restraint. Certainly there is not a single person in this province whom I have met who says he's opposed to restraint. But they're thinking of the dictionary definition of restraint.

What the Social Credit autocrats have been doing for the last few months is giving restraint a bad name. We know that they have millions for their own aggrandizement purposes, but we know that they don't have a penny for the children of this province when it's needed. They already have the authority to make arbitrary cutbacks in financing, as we saw last year when contracts and budgets that had been approved by this House, the Social Credit majority and the school boards, were arbitrarily altered not once, not twice, but three times by the Social Credit government, without even reference to this chamber. So the government already has that power to cut back arbitrarily on budgets of school boards, even after the Social Credit government has approved them. So much for their acceptance of contractual obligations. But now they even want the authority to overrule those duly elected school boards in the way that they adapt those arbitrary budget changes made by Social Credit.

We know how most of the education tax is raised in this province — as you do, Mr. Speaker, It's raised at the local level from property taxes on business and industry. The formula, with minor variations, is laid down by the provincial government. The amount of elbow-room that locally

[ Page 1217 ]

elected government have to alter those formulae is very limited. What have they done with property taxes? Well, as the School Trustees' Association and the Mining Association representing those industries in this province, have said on many occasions.... They have recognized....

Interjections.

[5:45]

MR. D'ARCY: Mr. Speaker, this hurts them so they're attempting to choke off debate. They won't get up and defend their own bill, but they attempt to choke off debate by those who would do anything they could to get the government to have another look at this.

The mining industry alone last year saw school taxes increase by nearly 70 percent, and that was due to arbitrary changes made by the Social Credit government in the back rooms of the cabinet committee here in Victoria. That wasn't caused by increased costs; it was caused by arbitrary changes. As the school trustees have noted, the government seems to feel that trees, minerals and capital development don't vote. So in order to slough off the provincial responsibility for funding education, they've loaded that onto the businesses and industries of this province, especially the resource industries of British Columbia.

The member for Okanagan South (Hon. Mr. Bennett) talked about how many of our resource industries had to shut down, temporarily in some cases and permanently during the recession. A number of those industries had to shut down purely because of the Social Credit royalties and property taxation put on them in the last two years. Those aren't my words; those are words stated by the industries themselves.

The government doesn't like hearing stuff like this, but in 1970 property owners contributed 57 percent of school costs and the provincial government 42 percent out of general revenue. It's now 68 percent. It's gone up to 68 percent and the provincial government's share is down to 32 percent — less than a third. Yet they want 100 percent of control. They don't want to have to take responsibility for the taxation, but they want the arbitrary control, the authoritarian control, the autocratic control here in Victoria. This side of the House hopes that the government will reconsider because centralized, authoritarian and bureaucratic control is an inefficient way to administrate anything, as governments, corporations and private organizations have found.

I quote from a column written by a retired individual. "Everything that is produced by government, no matter how essential to civilized life — such as schools, health care, police, fire service, sanitation — is regarded as unproductive, whereas everything produced by the private sector, however frivolous — Mickey Mouse watches, pet rocks, hula hoops — is regarded as serious production and duly added to the gross national product, a curious inversion of values." He further states: "Excessive centralization leads to an examination of two similar organizations, General Motors and the Soviet Union." They are similar in the sense of their administrative structure, not necessarily in their goals, Mr. Speaker.

[Mr. Speaker in the Chair.]

I want to return for a minute to the way the provincial government has been and is continuing to treat school boards, as exemplified by the principle in this bill, which is that the government will have the arbitrary power to order school boards to do their bidding in education matters — going beyond the education act and beyond the financial arrangements simply to order school boards to do their bidding. As I am sure you have noticed from your particular constituency, Mr. Speaker, some school boards are somewhat more efficient than others in delivering school services, financially at least. Their per-student costs are somewhat lower than others. We know a lot of factors go into that: the remoteness of the riding, the relative developed potential and so on. But some boards have been more efficient than others in delivering education services.

How have the efficient school boards been rewarded by this government, under this minister and the three or four previous to him since 1978 or '79? They have been rewarded for their efficiency by further cuts. That's what has happened to the efficient school boards and what has happened to the students in those areas who need every opportunity in this crazy changing economic climate that we have today — who need every opportunity both in their school life and in their post-secondary education period to adapt to the new economic realities we are facing. They see their opportunities cut back and cut back, and their parents and elected school trustees, who care, see their options for providing training in computers and in all those areas where people need to take advantage of whatever limited opportunities there are out there to earn a living — to start a business, to thrive and survive — being cut back all the time by legislation such as this and by arbitrary controls made in a back room in Victoria.

Mr. Speaker, people at the local level know where the money comes from. It's quite possible that in large, developed urban areas, which I'm not from — I perhaps should only speak here of my area, which is not really a rural area but is a constituency composed of relatively small urban areas.... The people in my area understand where the money comes from. They know how important our natural resources are; how important our ore, our electricity and our trees are; and the costs of transportation. They understand how revenue is made. They understand how small business can receive the revenue to supply the goods and services that the public needs, and they understand the costs of doing business and the costs of operating problems that major industry has in this kind of economic climate. And, Mr. Speaker, they have not — and I think I can speak for most of the province — made stupid economic or stupid taxation decisions. In fact, they've been far more clever than the provincial government.

They don't have a massive debt, Mr. Speaker. They have a triple-A credit rating; they haven't been downgraded like the provincial government. They haven't borrowed billions and billions of dollars and had New York send up a red flag. They are responsible people. Because of their responsibility, the government looked at them and said: "We're going to change all that."

I want to speak about some of the things that happen when arbitrary changes and cutbacks are made — some of the things that happen to people. Mr. Speaker, I think you and I are about the same age. I don't know how you felt about school, but when I went there I hated it. Education has improved a whole lot since then; the atmosphere in the schools....

Interjection.

[ Page 1218 ]

MR. D'ARCY: The member for Skeena (Mr. Howard) says he can't remember going to school, but I can assure the House that the schools haven't forgotten the member for Skeena.

This is perhaps a subjective observation. A few years ago a relatively new elementary school, about 15 years old, was burned to the ground due to a fire started by an arsonist. We know it was started by an arsonist because the RCMP apprehended the culprit.

Interjection.

MR. D'ARCY: For the benefit of those bigots back there it was not started by anybody of Russian heritage. The cause of the fire and the disaster — and the unfortunate nature of it — is not the point. The point here is that I went to that site early in the morning as the volunteer firemen, who had been up a good part of the night, were cooling down the remains. It was the summertime. It was not a school morning. There were a great number of elementary school students standing there, and many of them were crying because their school had burned. It may be a subjective observation, but schools are happier and more productive places than they were when I went to school. I say that's a valuable contribution to our society.

What happens when these cutbacks come is that production, productivity and morale drop in the school system; they fall right off. Last year we had some major problems in the Castlegar School District, and many of the kids came to me and said a number of things — children sometimes can put things in a far more concise way than we in this House have. They said: "We realize we have to take courses like algebra and grammar, but we don't go to school because we like algebra and grammar. We go to school because we know that there are many things there which are productive to us."

Mr. Speaker, I recognize your supreme authority, and I would not want to test your good humour as we approach the Labour Day weekend. A little voice in one of my good ears said that perhaps we should move adjournment of the debate until the next sitting of the House.

Motion approved.

Hon. Mr. Nielson moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 5:58 p.m.