[ Page 1553 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

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

On the amendment.

Mr. Kempf –– 1553

Mr. Barnes –– 1554

Mr. Nicolson –– 1558

Mr. D'Arcy –– 1561

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1983

The House met at 10:07 a.m.

MR. SKELLY: Mr. Speaker, I would like the House to join me in welcoming four constituents from Alberni. They include Levi Martin and Ben David of the Clayoquot Indian band from Meares Island, and Maureen Fraser and Harry Tieleman from the Friends of Clayoquot Sound in Tofino. They are in town to meet with representatives of various ministries to encourage the government to keep Meares Island green. I would like to pass along a burnper sticker to the Minister of Forests on their behalf. The minister is interested in keeping B.C. green, and so I am sure he would be interested in keeping this small part of it green. I would ask the House to make this group welcome.

HON. MR. WATERLAND: I would like to join the member for Alberni in welcoming his guests, but would also point out to him that introductions are the time for introductions, not for political speeches.

MR. PELTON: In the members' gallery this morning are two beautiful ladies from the wonderful riding of Dewdney: Pam Clarke-Saari, who is a member of my constituency executive, and her mother, Betty Lou Clarke. I would ask the House to welcome them here this morning.

MR. MICHAEL: There are several friends of mine in the galleries today. First, I would like to introduce, from the Shuswap constituency, residents in the Salmon Arm–Chase area: ML Jim Van and his mother Jean Van. Also in the gallery today is my wife Dilys, and with her is my daughter Colleen and her new husband as of last Friday evening, Tim Paul. I would also like to bring greetings — and I would ask the members of the House to bring greetings — to Tim's sister, Karen.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: The member for Dewdney introduced Betty Lou Clarke, somebody whom I remember as Betty Lou Scott. I would like to welcome her and her daughter, because I haven't seen her since 1954. I can't see too well. I'm sorry I'm down here and you're up there.

Orders of the Day

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

Leave granted.

HON MR. NIELSEN: Adjourned debate on second reading of Bill 6.

EDUCATION (INTERIM) FINANCE
AMENDMENT ACT, 1983

(continued)

On the amendment.

MR. KEMPF: Needless to say, I stand against this hoist motion and speak in favour of Bill 6, and I will, on behalf of those whom I represent, vote against the hoist and for the bill. I'll be very, very brief. I have no need to waste the time of this House and the money of the taxpayers of the province of British Columbia by debating the merits of the legislation before us, I know where my constituents stand on Bill 6 and also on the hoist foisted upon this Legislature by the members opposite. Those in my constituency have communicated very loudly and very clearly their feelings with regard to this and other legislation which I cannot talk about at this time before this House. They have communicated their views not only to me but to many of the other members on this side of the House, The only thing those in my constituency and many other citizens of this province are afraid of is that the government may back off from this kind of legislation that is so necessary in the province at this time. The message that I'm getting loud and clear is to get on with the job and quit wasting the time and money of the taxpayers of British Columbia; pass this legislation and do what they know must be done.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

The members opposite are marching to the wrong drummer. Once again they're marching to the wrong drummer and not listening to the people of this province. Had they been listening, and were they listening at this time, they would not have brought in the hoist motion and would not be wasting the time of this House in debating that motion. They listen only to their friends in Solidarity. They brought in the hoist motion for their friends in Solidarity. They listen to their friends in Solidarity, and we witnessed that here in this House last evening. Those friends in Solidarity are also dwindling. It was very apparent last evening when, after feverishly dialling their telephones for a couple of hours, they managed to muster maybe 30 or 40 of those Solidarity members from this great city of Victoria to attend the Legislature on their behalf and sit in the gallery last evening. They sat in that gallery and attempted to intimidate this House.

But they got a real surprise last night, and an indication of what it is that the people of this province — the real people of this province, the movers and shakers and the workers of this province — really think about this hoist motion and about that Solidarity movement. It is a clear attempt on behalf of those citizens, that minority group in this province, to intimidate this Legislature. I take grave offence at that as an elected member, as an elected representative of this Legislature. I want that firmly upon the record of this House.

[10:15]

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member will speak to the hoist.

MR. KEMPF: No, I'm going to speak against the hoist. I need not waste any more of the time of this Legislature in so doing. I have a clear mandate from my constituents, as I'm sure all members on this side of the floor have from theirs. I intend to vote against this hoist and for Bill 6.

MR. BARNES: The member who just took his seat suggested that he wouldn't waste any more of the Legislature's time, and I will agree with him in that respect — that he has.

I support the hoist motion. As you are probably aware by now, most of us on this side of the House have begun to catch on to the tactics of the government, and we realize we have to make every effort that we can to give the public time to

[ Page 1554 ]

understand the thrust of these 12 bills that we describe as dirty. In fact, the filibuster is one of the few devices of the parliamentary system in a democratic society that those members who are in the minority can use to protest a very strong majority such as we have with the Social Credit Party today. We are in a fight to try to preserve the traditions of our society, of this Legislature and of the people of this province — their values, their institutions, their right to participate in the decisions that affect their lives. They've given the government a huge mandate. One of the characteristics of our system is that you can't determine exactly how big a mandate you're giving a party at any point in time. Sometimes you inadvertently give them too great a majority. This government has 35 seats, and we in the opposition have 22. If the people had had the opportunity, had things been a little bit different, I am sure they would have had it much closer.

Nonetheless, this is why we are filibustering. We're exercising a right that is guaranteed under our system of government. We do not appreciate being told that we are wasting the time of the taxpayers — all those specious arguments about the costs of democracy that those people have been suggesting we are incurring by doing our duty. We have 45 percent of the popular vote; 45 percent of some three million people in this province. It is true that we are the opposition. We recognize that and we are opposing.

We are in favour of hoisting this interim education financing bill, which, as you know, is an inflationary bill. It is not a forward-looking piece of legislation. It is a piece of legislation that will undermine the public school system. In fact, I believe the government is attempting to dismantle the public school system, just as it is attempting to do with the Ministry of Human Resources and with consumer protection laws, as it has done with human rights in this province, and as it is doing with local planning in regional districts and human services right across the province. We have cause for alarm and cause to ask for the hoist.

I can tell you, it's not a pleasurable time for any of us, because when a government becomes so determined and so desperate that it attempts to crush the opposition by forcing us to stay debating 24 hours around the clock, sleeping in sleeping bags on the floors of our offices because we can't leave.... You say you respect democracy. You people are using heavy-handed tactics which no one could imagine that a modern civilized society or government that believes in the right of participatory democracy would ever use. That's what we are subjecting ourselves to right now: the heavy hand of the Social Credit government.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Where'd you get the clean shirt, Emery?

MR. BARNES: Mr. Minister, I won't get into where I got the clean shirt, but I can tell you that you people are really pressing, showing us that you intend to crush if we relent. That's why we're filibustering. You have the right to close, and I know you're going to do it, but don't ask us to go along with you. We represent people who want us to resist, who do not want your centralized concepts of how to run the public service and the educational system.

Bill 6 is fundamentally a backward, retrograde step. You say that you're going to leave it to the local school boards — self-determination. You're going to leave it to them to administer their own affairs and to allow them to make decisions with respect to their basic programs, but the facts do not support the tenets within this piece of legislation. As you know, one of the most important things in a school district is the ability to be flexible and to apply those funds toward those programs that are unique to that district and that population of students. There are all kinds of factors involved. Certainly the physical factors are important. In some districts schools are spread out and students are not conveniently located for a particular school, so all kinds of devices and systems have to be put into place to accommodate their needs.

What we have in this bill is a formula that seems to encourage inflation. The Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. Heinrich) has suggested that his ministry will be concerned about the average costs, the average salary of teachers; that that will be one of the factors to determine what that school's budget will be. If the average cost is a factor, why shouldn't those teachers and those school boards encourage higher and higher salaries in order to get the most dollars? You're encouraging people to ask for more money so that they can have a higher rating in order to increase the costs of education.

You have another interesting formula to do with square metres of property within a particular school district. This works against those school districts that would close down schools which should not be functioning, in order to be more streamlined and efficient. So again you're encouraging inflation. You're encouraging the people at the top of the totempole to hold on to their power base in order to get a better share of the formula in the end. You say you're going to leave it to them to self-determine, but the fact is that you're taking part of the politics away from them and leaving them to suffer by making decisions which will not be functional and will not assist them. So we're opposed to the basic thrust of one of these "dirty dozen" bills.

I've been thinking about the overall approach of the government. I won't bother to have a fight with the Chair this morning. As you know, we're all a little short on energy. We've been trying to keep up with the heavy hand of the government. But I will suggest to you, without reflecting on the legislation, that those bills are all, in their own unique way, a heavy blow against the public. This particular bill is, in its own unique way, an offensive bill to every sector of the population. We're talking about it with respect to its impact on the schools, but the schools are made up of people: families, children, school teachers, parent-teacher organizations, associations — everyone involved with the schools. It occurred to me that the dirty dozen means a lot more than those 12 bad ex-jailbirds that the movie was made about. It has another, more sinister, historic connotation.

I recall that when I was a kid there was a game called the dirty dozens. Putting somebody in the dozens meant you were going to insult, humiliate and abuse him; you were going to talk about him to the point that he started to fight. In other words, the dirty dozens has to do with provocation. It has to do with being mean and nasty, with driving people up against the wall. It's the old game of confrontation. If you want to conquer, then you should divide. A few years ago — probably in the Hungry Thirties, during the days of the Depression — in a little place called New Orleans, Louisiana, during the days of Huey Long and some of those very oppressive administrators down in Louisiana, as you know they used to be very hard on the poor folks. They kept them economically deprived. They kept them up against the wall to the point where, like crabs in a pot, those oppressed people began trying to find relief. They could not find relief from the oppressor because it was just too powerful. They would have

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been crushed immediately. Just as this government is trying to do to the people: make them kowtow, bring them to their knees.

This government is on a crusade. I used to think it was a holy crusade, but now I think it's just a self-righteous crusade. In any event, you're on a crusade, and you've brought in these pieces of legislation that typify the principle of the dirty dozens of the south, in which those people began to insult each other in desperation. You can find it in any depressed or oppressed community anywhere in the world. The poorer the people, the more desperate they are, the more they offend themselves, the more they abuse themselves; the more they lose their self-respect and self-esteem, the more difficult it is for them to compete in a world outside the periphery of where they live. This is why we say those bills are punitive, vengeful and motivated by anger and self-righteousness.

[10:30]

These are not words that I am using for the first time, as you know; and these are not words that have been used for the first time. People all over the world are beginning to identify this legislation for what it really is, the World Council of Churches being just one. People from the United Nations, Europe, Africa, all the jurisdictions in Canada and the United States have made representations about this legislation. How can it be that this little group of people on that side of the House can believe they are beyond reproach? They say they care about democracy and people's rights. On what basis? The very fact that they would centralize control over the schools in the way they're doing flies in the face of their comments about concern for restraint. The facts are there that this is an inflationary piece of legislation, although that's only the minor point. It doesn't even stand up as an economic device to improve the economy. Forget about the sinister aspects and the ideological battle that is being waged by this government. I have made the prediction before, and I'll make it again, that the ultimate objective of this government, the final solution, is to destroy the public school system. That's what this government is really out to do. Perhaps it will be privatized and downsized and put on a cost-for-service basis so that only those students who have the economic means will be able to get an education in this province. As it now stands, the system is basically inoperative because the flexibility that is needed at the local level is no longer available.

The dirty dozen is really the thing that the public has to understand. The idea of the dozens, as I was pointing out, is to provoke; to find a foil; to identify someone or something that you would like to discredit, to turn against itself, to annihilate by embarrassment and demoralization. That's what the dozens are all about, and that's what this bill is doing. That's what all those other bills have been doing, and that's why we've been so concerned about them.

Mr. Speaker, I'll use the cleanest language I can, but I'll tell you what you can do to any human being to determine their stress point or Achilles' heel, their breaking point or level of tolerance. You can find it; all you have to do is find some cute, neat little way to expose them to public view, and challenge them. As you know, we have been talking about the sanctity of the family — the importance of keeping the family unit together. Politicians not only in this jurisdiction but all over the world talk about the value of keeping families together as the most efficient economic unit we know. It is conceptually — virtuously, perhaps, and ideally — a good idea to think in those terms, but when we consider the reality of what it is like for a family to survive in this society, then we have to start considering how that family can function and what some of the problems are — some of the stresses on members of the family, and whether those stresses ultimately result in distress for the rest of us when the system breaks down.

So the target is the family — that noble, ancient, traditional institution that we've all come to respect and speak of in such laudatory terms and with such pride. The family has been victimized by every entity in our society. Everyone uses the family; it is a symbol of something that can be attacked. It is vulnerable, and it needs due care and attention.

The object of the dozens, as it was played down in the south during the Depression, came out of oppressed people being pressed against a wall. If you've never been oppressed, never done without and never suffered, then you have no idea what can happen to you emotionally. Your stability starts to go. You become desperate. You begin attacking everybody — yourself, your friends, anyone close to you. It's very similar to a person drowning, Mr. Speaker. You know what that's like. If you're going to save someone who's drowning, you don't come face to face with him, because out of desperation that person is liable to grab you by the neck and pull you under. In order to help someone you have to find a way in which to approach them.

The family is vulnerable; the family needs help. But when you press those people in the family they start to hurt themselves and become hurtful. That's what is happening in our society. You take away consumer protection, human rights, essential social services programs, counselling services, family support workers and programs that give these people an opportunity, and do not provide sufficient opportunity for them to work legitimately in the marketplace. All of these things are affected by this bill.

I am angry and concerned because I believe the government is totally insensitive to these realities. I wonder how you people devise your legislation. Who do you consult with? Who are you talking to? Where are you getting your statistics and facts? Who is involved besides the cabinet? What community organizations are participating? We have letters and petitions requesting that the Premier get involved and let us have some dialogue. None of those things happen. Just a few years ago, after the government was first elected in 1975, the Premier's office was stormed by a group of protesters — daycare workers in those days, I believe — requesting an audience. Do you know what he did, Mr. Speaker? He invited them into his office, he talked to them, and they all went out smiling.

That was a protest group occupying his office in Victoria just a few years ago. Why didn't he have the same latitude and respect for a group of people protesting just a few days ago when they came into his office? Times have changed; the government is tightening up. They no longer have the same confidence in democracy that they once had. They are now starting to get tough. They've got a new set of rules.

So the family, relating to Bill 6, the Education (Interim) Finance Amendment Act, which is supposed to improve the situation for the family.... But as I was telling you, those members of the family in the early 1930s down in New Orleans found themselves offending each other. Do you know how they found the stress points, the levels of tolerance? By insulting each other. Now these are people who should be loving each other, who should be caring for each other, who should be fighting and demonstrating against the

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oppressor. But what are they doing? They're fighting and demonstrating against themselves. They're fighting and demonstrating against their brothers and sisters, and calling each other names. Can you imagine that, Mr. Speaker? That's what happens from one neighbourhood to the next. Here are the people in the ghettos, the poor people who are going without clothing, who have no shoes on their feet and sores on their knees because of the flies eating them. Because of malnutrition, they don't have the strength to sit in class and listen to the lessons. Little kids are shaking and going to class without breakfast, except for those lucky ones who can get up at six in the morning and wait in the soup line.

We're talking about the Depression and about what happens when a government is negligent and doesn't respect the first thing: the morale of the population. This government is demoralizing the population of British Columbia. Now let's be fair and say that they simply don't understand that, but I would say that they know very well the tactics of confrontation. I think that they have every intention of confronting people and forcing them to react. I'm sure we're going to find them being thrown in jail if they act too much. This is the thing that bothers me.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. member, some latitude has been allowed, but Bill 6 is clearly a bill to allow the minister to supervise school board budgets. Perhaps if we can relate our remarks to the principle of that bill, or at least to the principle of hoisting such a bill, the parliament would be well served.

MR. BARNES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can appreciate your assistance. I certainly do want my remarks to relate to Bill 6, because I think that the bill itself doesn't address the concerns in the school districts. Therefore the bill should be hoisted at least for six months, in order for the minister to have input and the participation of those people who are directly concerned. Because it is definitely not a bill that is going to improve the economy. I suspect that in another year or two this bill would be more inflationary than any restraint program they have so-called introduced to try and improve the situation. If the economy ever does improve — if it does turn around — you are going to have people leapfrogging, trying to get back on the bandwagon, because you have not really set a precedent that will allow things to level out. You have disallowed the flexibility at the local level.

You know, Mr. Speaker, this is the problem with debating in detail in this Legislature, when in fact we are looking at a far greater plan by that government. This is why I sometimes find it difficult when you tell us to be in order, when we are trying to ask the public: "Do you understand the overall impact of what this government is doing?"

Let me get back to an example of what I mean by members of the family going against the family. Ultimately, out of stress, and the loss of tolerance and the ability to look outside of themselves, out of desperation they become enclosed. You have to have economic means, you have to be able to be mobile, you have to have an opportunity to experience the broader perspective in life in order to participate. But if you're hungry, if you're without means, if for you life is a desperate attempt just to stay alive, Mr. Speaker, then ultimately you are going to turn inward and become offensive toward yourself. You will lose self-respect, you will be embarrassed, and ultimately you will become a burden on and a cost to society. Basically you will be beaten. These bills do a great deal to encourage and create that kind of atmosphere in this province on every level.

This bill offends elected politicians. This bill offends trustees, who themselves have been elected and have campaigned on the basis that they would provide services locally, and this government is coming in and saying they cannot do ' it. Mr. Speaker, I tell you: as you know, there is very little that this government doesn't do to people. We could go on and on and on about how it has undermined elected representatives at the regional districts, trustees.... It's just absolutely remarkable. But when the family begins to turn upon itself, that's the breaking point in society. That's where the dirty dozens come from.

If I could be indulged for just a moment, I will suggest to you that the main institution in societies the world over is the family unit, because it is through the family unit generally that you can get the nucleus of some kind of cohesion and of people growing and learning the culture and carrying on traditions and heritage. Those are the people who make the investment, who become the consumers, who become the workforce and the subscribers to and participants in whatever venture, whether it be free enterprise or public. Those people are the ones who do it, and those are the ones we rely on. But when those institutions start falling apart, and everybody's going for themselves, they're being promoted to individualize rather than cooperate. When we break them up, then we've seen it.

[10:45]

If we can just imagine the Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy), who was doing a flashback when she suggested the family and community organizations, social service organizations, churches and interested good Samaritan organizations throughout our society will pick up the slack where the government has had to withdraw many human service programs it says that it will no longer will be involved in; but that we can put them back in the family where they belong, and that that is the best place. You know, we agree with that. So what is the problem? The families are being attacked. There are very few healthy situations. The statistics do not support that the family is on the increase. The family seems constantly to be under attack and bombarded. It doesn't have the esteem and respect it once had. So there are lots of offences.

But in the single unit, when I was a kid, I used to watch an example of what I told you about: the crabs in the pot, the oppressed people in the ghettos and how they treated their families. Now remember, the family is the ultimate. This is 30, 40 or 50 years ago, when we really didn't have government assistance, but then we did not have the kind of society we have, with the technologies we have today. Industry was a lot less efficent than it is today, so the family meant more. We didn't have the community centres and the outlets we have today. The family was the main thing. People entertained themselves in the family. The family provided a nucleus and a secure base.

So when you attacked someone's family, you were attacking the very fundamental essence of that society, and that's how the dirty dozens really worked. Those people were attacking each other, because the family was the way they did it. You know what someone would do in order to provoke that family? They would say: "I think your mother is a very dishonest and irresponsible person." Saying that to someone 30 or 40 years ago, when the mother was like the chairman of the board, was an offence. Anyone in any culture would

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probably fight anyone who said something like that. But if you went on to say: "Not only your mother, but your father — and not only is your father no good, but neither are your sisters and your brothers and your aunts and your uncles and your cousins." You offend until you break those people. Now imagine people who are already deprived and who collectively came together in order to make a living for themselves being destroyed by the times in which they live.

This is the sinister thing about this legislation. It is like the government is going out and attacking those people who are the subjects of the government. Those are the people who put the government here. It was the people who elected that government. Why is that government not communicating with the people? Why is it that there are so many protests? Do you know they are talking about getting a petition with something like a million names on it in order to get this government's attention? Fifty thousand people stood out here on the lawn and could not make contact with this government. Never in the province's history have we had a protest that involved going into the Premier's office and occupying it. I hope it never happens again. Can you imagine the provocation? Can you imagine what this government is doing to make people do that? They don't even care about it. They laugh and say: "Well, those are just a bunch of pinkos, commies" — or whatever names they call them. But the point is that they are British Columbians. They are citizens of this province, and whatever you may wish to call them, you have the duty to respect their right to communication, and you're not doing it. That's the offence.

Last year the B.C. Teachers' Federation came up with the following declaration of the rights of children and the rights of teachers, and they had this to say about the rights of children. We equate the rights of children at least with the rights of the natural and material resources in our society: forests, land, water and minerals — all of those things that we claim we need in order to bring the economy to its feet so we can all have a fair share and be able to enjoy a healthy economy, providing opportunity for us all, with full employment, diversification, self-sufficiency and all of those things we talk about. But, Mr. Speaker, when it comes to human beings, we seem to say: "That's a resource that can take care of itself."

We should talk a little more and understand a little more about human beings, because they are really what it's all about. If you don't care about those people and don't have the ability to work with the people who put you in office, then I think you are being derelict in your duty.

The first children's right recommended by the B.C. Teachers' Federation is "the right to conditions in the public schools which allow for a quality education." They list several points. One is "class sizes which allow for individual attention." That may not make much sense to people who feel that they can just throw them all together and let them go for it — a common denominator — but we've found that people are unique. They have their own characteristics. They may all have the potential to develop, but only at their own pace, in their own way and in their own uniqueness. If we wanted to tap that resource and get the maximum benefit from it, I would think we would endeavour to allow for every youngster to have a sense of individuality in developing creativity to the maximum potential. That means you have to have flexibility at the local level. It cannot be done from Victoria; it cannot happen, because the cabinet has decided that it is going to dictate strictly from fiscal policy the very delicate nature of running a classroom.

The other points are "access to appropriate and necessary support services such as counselling and learning assistance; access to adequate library services; sufficient materials and facilities to support the educational process; sufficient administrative support to provide a stable and efficient learning environment."

The next point is "the right to programs which will prepare the student to participate fully in the society of the future." That's certainly something for which require a crystal ball to know about. We don't know what the future will be, but there is one thing for sure: we should all be participating in it in order to keep up. We cannot alienate large sectors of the community because of the inability to get a proper education. It can't be on a fee-for-service basis when it comes to basic public education. You simply cannot centralize the education process and expect to benefit from that resource...

MR. KEMPF: Go out and check with your constituents.

MR. BARNES: ...any more than you can export raw logs, Mr. Member for Omineca. If you don't have any other ways to develop the log than shipping the whole log, that is the. way you treat the people of this province.

Mr. Speaker, other points are "programs which provide a broad general preparation for each child; programs that take into account changes taking place in the social environment, such as the introduction of new technology...."

The third point is "the right of children with disabilities or other special needs to adequate conditions to allow for education in the public schools in their community; adequate conditions to allow students to be in regular classes without hindering the education of either the child with special needs or the other children in the class..."

How much time do I have, Mr. Speaker — three minutes? That's unfortunate, but I'll be back again. I'm sure you'll give me an opportunity to speak on this many more times as the months go on. I'm sure I'll get leave at least to finish this brief comment.

Interjection.

MR. BARNES: Please don't count my time during the interjections.

"...adequate personnel and conditions to ensure the safety of disabled and other children."

The final points are:

"4. The right to have decisions about the program needs of children made in the community in which they live.

"5. The right of children to adequate protection and services in their community to protect them from abuse and to assist them to participate fully in their education and to healthy physical, social and emotional development.

"6. The right to access to further education and training after secondary school.

"7. The right to a province free of discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion or political belief, age, place of origin or residence."

Clearly, these are virtues that all of us support, and I doubt if there is a single member of this House — even on the

[ Page 1558 ]

government side — who would disagree. But while the intention of the government is to try to streamline the education system by methods that are questionable under the guise of restraint, which seems to be more of a buzzword than a concept for which there is any evidence that it is happening. The government should check with those people who are making these statements, check with the B.C. Teachers' Federation. Ask them if there are assurances that these values will be in place, notwithstanding their new interim financing formula that they claim will be more efficient.

I'm asking all members of the House, including those on the government side, to consider the request by the opposition temporarily to withhold this bill; to table it to permit us an opportunity to go to the public and get the input that is needed to ensure that these rights respecting these children and these families are protected, and that we do not continue to confront them to force them to the point of stress, so that they lose their ability to tolerate a government that seems to disregard their very delicate dependence on their assistance.

We will be voting in favor of the hoist motion. I thank all of you for your indulgence.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: On the amendment to the bill, the Chair recognizes the hon. member for Nelson-Creston.

MR. NICOLSON: The motion before us that this bill be hoisted for six months is certainly one that I can recommend to all members of the House. The government seems to feel, on the one hand, that it has been handed a mandate to do this specific type of thing. Yet on the other hand, we've had many explanations from government members and cabinet ministers that what they have to do is sell the program better. It's funny. If you had a mandate which people supposedly knew about before May 5, how is it that you have now to turn around and sell it to them after May 5 — after they actually see what it looks like? That is the irony of this particular batch of legislation, of which Bill 6 is not one of the least invidious pieces.

It has prompted a few columns in the Vancouver Province by Crawford Kilian. I think that he puts this piece of legislation very succinctly, and I think it does suggest to us why a piece of legislation such as this should be hoisted for six months. Hopefully, after six months it might die the death of other pieces of legislation that have been left to hang around on the order paper, like the old municipal planning act, which was brought in about three or four years in a row by the former Minister of Municipal Affairs, Mr. Vander Zalm.

[11:00]

This bill does a couple of things. It really gives the minister the power to issue directives establishing the amount of any portion of the school board budget, and special-education programs, in a school district for any particular calendar year. It allows the minister to direct the school district not to expend during the calendar year in excess of the amount or a portion of the budget. It repeals the section of the Education (Interim) Finance Act which was a sunset clause and which would have meant that the bill expired on December 31, 1984. This would have given us all something to look forward to. But now that is taken away from us.

Mr. Kilian suggests to us, I think, the essence of the bill: it strips away from the local trustees the power to make decisions in the local area. It strips away almost every decision they can make in the local area. No, that's not totally true; I should be honest. They still have the right to hire and fire. It looks like they're going to have to be doing a lot of firing, so that's one responsibility they're still going to have to have. That is one thing the minister doesn't want to do personally; he wants the trustees to have to do the firing.

Other than that, the trustees get a stipend of approximately $4,000 a year for the many hours — for a good number of them it exceeds a 40-hour work week, in addition to holding down regular jobs and responsibilities.... For this they will now be doing the bidding, to quote Mr. Kilian, "of a new group of satraps called budget information officers," ministerial officials who will give each district its orders.

That column sent me to the dictionary. I'm a math and physics teacher, and sometimes words like "satrap" do send me to the dictionary. I think the best definition is "a subordinate ruler, often with imputation of tyranny or ostentation." That's what we're trading off against funds for programs in the schools. We're going to create more bureaucracy in Victoria to go out and try to tell all of the different parts of the province how things should be conducted. Mr. Speaker, it's about as ridiculous as getting an organizer from Toronto to come in and tell you how to run an election in Prince George South or Nelson-Creston. I think I've made a very telling analogy — one with which even the member for Omineca (Mr. Kempf) would have to agree.

We're creating these satraps to come into rural areas.... I think of the Arrow Lakes School District, which has unique problems, yet we're going to put everybody through the same sausage-grinder if we allow this bill to go through unfettered. For that reason, so that people will have time for some of these ideas to sink in, there should be a delay of at least six months. It would provide time for some face-saving; it would provide time for that famous second look which I think has been the hallmark of some politicians' careers and would be looked back upon with some fondness, as opposed to stubborn plunging ahead at the peril of people and particularly of education in this province.

I don't believe that centralized authority is the way in which education progresses. For instance, computer instruction was not introduced through the central authority of Victoria. It was sometimes introduced by a local school parent group saving up money and making a donation of a small personal computer to a school district and some teachers; in other cases a local school board took the initiative. Even to this day it isn't really part of the official curriculum. It's certainly not part of the core curriculum of this province, and it's sort of looked upon as a frill. Local school boards are leading, not following. The government is so far behind that, left to its own devices, it would still have the children using slates, with slate markers, and maybe a new technological innovation called the quill pen. Our educational system didn't progress because we had a large, central bureaucracy; indeed, our educational system in this province started with hundreds of small school boards. In my riding — what is today's riding — there might have been 50 different school boards. There was one for Procter, one for Balfour, one for Riondel, one for Ainsworth, one for Kaslo, one for Nelson, and so on. That is how things got started: through local autonomy and local initiative.

I talked to a 98-year-old woman the other day. She asked me to give her regards to the Premier, but I won't repeat what she said.

MRS. JOHNSTON: It must have been nice.

[ Page 1559 ]

MR. NICOLSON: She's a very nice lady. She lives in her apartment without anything more than maybe homemakers coming in and giving a little assistance. She's very self-sufficient. In pioneer days, when the Riondel mine was first opened, she went about building a school, and she got it opened and built within a month of moving into that community so that there would be a school for the children come September, after the harvest.

Interjection.

MR. NICOLSON: No, she's not ranching.

A lot of people did that. What I am saying is that with the kind of centralized bureaucracy that we are creating, we are impeding any kind of innovation and denying the right of local people to pass even a local initiative or referendum, if they would.

Interjection.

MR. NICOLSON: I know we don't have referenda now.

Interjection.

MR. NICOLSON: Yes, we took them away, but we left the responsibility in the hands of local trustees. Now they are taking the power away from trustees and also from the people. They're taking it away from anything at the local level by this. If they wanted to make a slightly retrogressive move, they could go back to the concept of the local referendum. They haven't even done that. No, they are setting up a system in which all decisions are going to be made in the name of the minister by a central bureaucracy — more bureaucrats in Victoria, and fewer instructors and more crowded classrooms outside or even in the Victoria School District.

Mr. Speaker, we now have a beautiful formula. What does it come up with? It takes some school districts that might have been getting more support, relatively speaking, from Victoria, and it knocks some of them down a little; others it puts back up. That is referred to as the "totem-pole philosophy," I believe, in a paper done for the B.C. School Trustees' Association by Dr. H.G. Armstrong. There is a temptation, I suppose, for some districts to look and say: "Gee whiz, we've moved up on the totem-pole." However, they might lose sight of the fact that they have lost their autonomy, their funding and the ability to provide for the needs of the students. This is a good paper, and this is the kind of thing that needs six months to be digested by the people of the province, for that filtering-down process to take place.

Sometimes when some action goes on here in the Legislature you go out to the riding and the people don't grasp all of the nuances, but given some time they certainly do get the message about a piece of legislation. That process is a very complex one that I don't pretend to understand, but I think that people will realize, given time, that just moving up on the totem-pole to the top — or whether you've moved from the top to the middle or the bottom — is not the question. That isn't how education is going to be served. But that's what this bill does, and the sooner people can realize that that is what is contained in this little three-section bill — not even half a page, but a very powerful little bill.... It makes the Education (Interim) Finance Act permanent — as permanent as legislation can be in this House.

One would wonder why, if that legislation was somewhat flawed, which it must have been if it were to be named "interim".... It must have been some extraordinary, hasty move, and the government of the day acknowledged that the bill was somewhat flawed, or one could maybe assumed that the government of the day foresaw the possibility of an election and therefore sought to amend the Education (Interim) Finance Act, which, I think, became law last year. Of course, it's very hard to say because the House didn't sit for eight months, and so what's this year and what's last year when you're comparing? I suppose about a year and a half ago this became law.

Mr. Kilian asks two questions in two of his editorial comments. He asks: "Is this the death of B.C. public education?" To that question, he urges the readers to start writing and phoning to put pressure on their MLAs, and to give support to the school boards and teachers' associations, because he believes that this will be the death of B.C. public education. Public education suggests, of itself, local autonomy. Mr. Kilianalso asks if it is worth running for the job of a school trustee. He says:

[11:15]

"Once elected, you'll not have a happy term. You will be, at best, a damage-control officer trying to protect the community's children, rather than trying to raise education standards. You'll often be blamed for Victoria's blunders and rarely praised for your own wisdom. You'll spend much of your term sick at heart over what is being done to our children despite your efforts. Better that than turning aside and letting the stooges do even worse."

The answer to the question of whether it is worth running for the job of school trustee is no — not if you're looking to be recognized for the effort you make, not if you expect to avoid being the object of displaced anger, which would more properly be vented toward the government, but inevitably will be directed toward local trustees. But having said all that, he says: "Better that than turning aside and letting the stooges do even worse." In other words, it is time to fight and to become involved as school trustees. I know that many people are looking at the challenge of running for trustee in the elections that will soon be upon us. I would hope for that reason that many new people realize this challenge. This bill should not become law until after that process has had a chance to take place.

There are many reasons why this bill is wrong. It is even argued by the paper of Dr. Armstrong that while this bill is supposed to provide a funding mechanism, it is in fact going to become a spending-control mechanism. There is a difference. Not only does it say how much they can spend, but it will say where it can be spent.

[Mr. Parks in the chair.]

I've seen this happen with other forms of education finance, in which the funding mechanism actually becomes the mechanism that dictated class size — the old education finance formula, which has just gone by the boards. Actually, it was a method of arriving at a formula for calculating the government's contribution to the local education budget, but what that became was the method of determining class size. There was a thing called the basic education program. For a certain number of students you got so many teachers. It was argued that with the number of teachers under that formula

[ Page 1560 ]

that a particular school earned toward the basic education program, that was therefore the number of teachers the school was entitled to. When they had local autonomy, control of their local tax base and commercial and industrial base of their community, whether they had a good tax base or not, some boards, depending on the priority that that community gave to education, decided to vary from that particular formula. That's what local autonomy is about, and that's one of the things that the satraps will not allow.

This formula has two major elements. One is the average teacher's salary in the district and in the province, It is rather ironic today that school boards that are loaded with teachers with higher qualifications and more years of experience are going to be funded on a different basis than school districts that have young teachers. What is even worse is that it would make impossible the kind of agreement that was reached locally last year by the Williams Lake School District, in which salaries were traded off for job security in the local collective bargaining agreement. Now there would be no incentive for the teachers or the trustees to enter into such an agreement, because it wouldn't save the district anything. If they made such an agreement, and they bargained for lower salaries, it would mean that the district would get less money. So why try to do that? Why try to do any serious collective bargaining? It takes that option away from both sides in the collective agreement.

It also reflects the number of square metres of floor space. There is not even an incentive to use your buildings judiciously. There would not be an incentive to close down schools. There would be a disincentive to close down some schools that might not be in full use. Again, this points out some of the shortcomings of the legislation.

It also raises problems about possible legal funding. It is pointed out in this paper that Seattle now has a legal department that consists of full-time lawyers in their school district. They consume resources of the education program that would be much better spent in the classroom, whether it be directly in terms of teachers or instructional aids or materials or a myriad of things, much more imaginative than setting up a kind of self-ensured legal fund. So we see that this business of moving toward centralization leads to these things in which everything becomes so top-heavy, and the last thing that becomes important is the classroom teacher and the student, in reverse order.

Just as in the private sector, the purpose of retaining a chartered accountant is not simply to keep the books, to make sure you have a profit or a loss or that no funds are being absconded with; it is to avoid paying any more income tax than you have to. It is part of responding to a very complex legalistic system. This complex new formula which we are being asked to approve is going to breed another new level of bureaucrat and create the equivalent of the chartered accountant. Indeed, many chartered accountants might find employment, putting forth all their skills in order to beat the system as well as it can possibly be beaten. Just as in the private sector you try to beat the income tax, here we will try to beat this complex education finance formula. The more complex the formula, the more money and resources are going to be spent in this adversarial system where recommendations are made to the board that here's a wrinkle, this is something you haven't thought of, isn't that clever? Then the clever people from the ministry will come in and try to shoot down this argument. There will be great delays. There will be lots of plane trips from the Castlegar airport when trustees and their experts from the Nelson School District are coming down to Victoria. There will be other government aircraft dispatching people up to Castlegar with the satraps so that they can meet with the Nelson School Board, the Arrow Lakes School Board, the Creston School Board, the Trail School Board and the Castlegar School Board. Is this what we need? I say it isn't.

The people of this province must be given enough time to digest the fact that this piece of legislation is just more unproductive bureaucracy. It is not going to lead to control, either. It's going to put control in the hands of different people. Just as we see these centralized decisions being made, it is absolutely counter to what is happening in the real world. We're going through an information revolution in North America and part of Europe. It was identified as the cybernetic revoution back in 1964 by people like Gunnar Myrdal, Linus Pauling, Robert Theobald and other forward thinking people like Toffler in The Third Wave. It has all come true 20 years later. We are in the midst of it. If anyone saw The Third Wave on CBC-TV on Sunday night — unfortunately I missed it, but I read the book — the whole move is toward decentralization. That is made possible by the information revolution. This type of centralization of decision-making powers is perhaps an adequate model for the nineteenth century, but it is certainly not the appropriate model as we approach the twenty-first century.

Education has made great strides under the decentralized approach. Probably most of our school boards have reached a fairly optimum size; there is no perfect size in this province. The funding formulas that are suggested — the ones that are in the hands of the school trustees today — are complex, and yet when it all comes down to it, it comes out with a certain number of dollars. I think the reason that probably all trustees.... I certainly don't know of any trustee in my riding who supports Bill 6. I know a lot of trustees who don't support me politically. Some do and some don't, and some I'm not so sure of. I have four school districts serving different parts of my riding, three of which serve almost the entire riding. Two of them do, and another one serves mostly a part of my riding. I have just a couple of schools in the Castlegar district in my riding. I don't know of anybody in the area who supports this move.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think it's fair to conclude that your remarks are beginning to wander beyond the true principle of the hoist amendment. I'd ask you to try to train your comments more directly upon the principle of the amendment.

MR. NICOLSON: I'll take the advice of the learned Speaker. It is the first time I've been brought to attention for being out of order in the last three speeches I've made in this House, but in deference to your expertise I will try to be more specific.

[11:30]

Perhaps if we gave this bill some time and if it were hoisted for six months, even the Premier might have a chance to talk to one of the leading educators in this province, Mr. Harry Dewar, who is a principal — I understand by reading an article by Mr. Allen Garr in Sunday's Province. Mr. Dewar is a very much admired educator. I have known of his career and followed it a little ever since I became a teacher, although he never taught in one of the districts I taught in. I know that he taught up in Dawson Creek, which was actually a crucible

[ Page 1561 ]

of inventive education. Harry Dewar came out of that crucible. Mr. Andy Soles, now a deputy minister in this government, was a product of that same stimulative environment in the Dawson Creek area, as was Dr. Walter Hardwick in the Department of Education at the University of British Columbia.

Given six months, and if the government were to take some time to reflect on some of the other legislation.... Perhaps if we were to move on to the estimates of the House and maybe get out of here in due course, we would have that opportunity to sit down and really listen. I know the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. Heinrich) is somewhat.... Anybody in the business of being a minister, anyone who has ever seen the British series "Yes, Mr. Minister", I think it was called, knows that bureaucrats are often pushing legislation onto you. The Minister of Education himself might even have a second look at this particular legislation. What's it doing? It's creating more of that kind of bureaucracy which this government is trying to dismantle. So it's really creating massive confusion. It's laying off people in proven services which are absolutely vital, while on the other hand it is going to hire more people, and probably at prices for which they could hire three or four young beginning teachers who have not had an opportunity, who graduated two or three years ago and still don't have jobs simply because there aren't any, because we're cutting back instead of holding our own. If we had the opportunity to talk to respected educational leaders, like Mr. Dewar, who was quoted in the Allen Garr article the other day....

Interjection.

MR. NICOLSON: I don't have the article in front of me, but he said.... Again, I guess like many others he's wondering how much longer he can carry on. Last year he had to deal with about four different cuts, and this year they're facing more cuts. They've had to cut some very vital programs in the school. I believe other schools are being shut down. More students than they expected are showing up, and they have fewer staff for dealing with the modern problems.

One of the main things Harry Dewar brought out was that we are looking to the old days. Certainly this government is looking back to the good old days. Mr. Dewar pointed out that today — and it is a change that has taken place since I left the schools only 11 years ago — about 50 percent of the children in his school are from single-parent homes. Things are not identical with what they were 20 years ago, and I don't think they're identical with or even close to what they were 10 years ago. There is a totally different challenge, and yet the government is not providing that kind of leadership in recognizing a total change in society.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

The family is changing. Communications are changing. We are in an information age. And instead of changing and moving toward decentralization, which is the way to deal with these individual problems — dealing with people more as individuals — this government is taking the exact wrong approach. Before we write this thing in tablets of stone I hope we will take six months to look at this legislation, and hopefully we'll take this legislation, scrap it, and look for a more appropriate model, one that recognizes that all the genius in this province is not in the 20-some-odd cabinet benches. In fact, some would suggest that there is a paucity of genius in those 20-some-odd cabinet benches. If we do this, and doD't bring in another bill into this House for the next two years, we might be governing better for the people of British Columbia. I don't know if we should be bringing in bills. Maybe we should be repealing a few bills as a legislative program for this year. I know that a few bills are very regressive. I could suggest some statutes that could be repealed.

We are here juggling things around, creating massive dislocation. I don't think we have any idea of the economic implications of the kinds of things we're doing here. This is a move that is meant absolutely to stifle any kind of imagination or creativity, and yet we are going through a cultural revolution; the last one lasted 200 years, and we're passing through this one in ten years. If this is the best we can do, then I say we should do nothing.

MR. D'ARCY: I'm sorry to see that the minister is leaving the chamber. I felt he was holding up rather well under the debate here. While he has very good intentions, it is difficult to tell whether he is awake or asleep. He looks the same all the time. I know that he had a very relaxing, delightful and encouraging weekend up in Penticton; that's why he applied to the government to have his bills debated all night and all day. We know he's a good-natured fellow who can stand up under all kinds of strain.

On Bill 6 and the opposition's recommendation to this chamber that we reconsider this six months hence, I'd like to allude briefly to something my very competent friend from Nelson-Creston said in his remarks. He said he doesn't know a single trustee who endorses this legislation. That is quite true. I would challenge the government to produce a single trustee anywhere who endorses this legislation. We've heard a great deal from government benches about their mandate — what they call their mandate. Perhaps the government apologists could explain why it is that so few duly elected school trustees.... I know you know they are duly elected, Mr. Speaker, because you were once a chairman of a school board, I believe. They too are duly elected; they also have a mandate. Why is it so clear, if the government has such a good mandate for this, that so few of them have that sort of a mandate from their electorate? Why is it not people who have the same point of view on education as the minister? That's why he brought in this bill which we want him to reconsider. We have some hopes, in spite of all he has shown in this debate, that he is a reasonable person. Why is it that not more of the people elected at the local level feel the same way as he does? After all, Mr. Speaker, when you and I and all the rest of us run for office, we run on many issues — local, provincial, economic, social. We don't run specifically on education issues. But the people who run for school board run on financial and educational issues only, and of course that's the bill we're debating: the Education (Interim) Finance Amendment Act. That's why we think the minister and the government members should reconsider this.

Listening to the apologists for authoritarian centralism on the government benches, I believe the government has a fear of people who would be critical of them, especially if those people have anything to do with education: if they're considered by their peers to be intellectuals, if they're students or teachers, if elected as school trustees, or elected or appointed even to college councils by the government, by the existing minister. The government has a fear of these people. They

[ Page 1562 ]

seem terribly afraid that the farm teams, as they're often called, won't do the minister's bidding.

I'm not one of those who thinks that everything that went on in the previous century, or in the one before that, is all bad, or that we can't take positive lessons from it. But it has been stated that one of the watchwords of the present government is that they believe the government that governs least governs best. I believe that; a surprising number of people on this side of the House believes that; but the government members don't believe that. They believe that the more government, the more authoritarian centralism, the less local autonomy and the less elbow room that people at the local level have to make decisions regarding their own tax dollars, then that serves the economy best. In this case, that serves education best.

Education is a tremendously important part of the economy. We know that next to health, education takes the largest part of the provincial budget. We also know that education, especially under Social Credit, takes an increasingly large amount of the local tax dollar collected from property owners, industries and businessmen at the local level. So we know that even at the K to 12 level, forgetting post-secondary, education is a tremendously large part of the economy. Yet the government wants to govern more and more in this area.

As I said, I'm prepared to have an open mind. Perhaps the minister really is a decent sort of fellow. How could he possibly know, coming from the Prince George North constituency, what is best for the educational needs in Victoria, Quesnel, Castlegar or Port Hardy? It's impossible. The people who know best about those educational needs are the people who are elected and responsible to the local property owners and the local tenants — the people who live in those areas, Mr. Speaker.

Let's remember that if we want to talk about financial responsibility, the people at the local level have to take more and more each and every year. In each and every budget during the time that the present Social Credit regime has been in office, the local people have had to dig deeper into their pockets in order to meet the education costs. So if there were going to be a — what shall we call it? — sort of a Proposition 13 type of taxpayers' revolt at the local level, that's where it would have shown up first. The local people are the ones who have seen their property taxes for education increasing far faster than the school board budgets. They're increasing far faster than the provincial government contributions.

[11:45]

So we have a case where the provincial government wishes to take less and less responsibility for taxation but more and more authority unto itself. The government wants to govern more, not less. The government appears to have no systems or planning in place. It has been noted, I think, by other speakers, that the word "planning" isn't popular any more, so we're to use the word "system" or some other sort of newspeak. I don't really care too much what the trendy words are, but the fact is that the government seems to have absolutely no way of communicating with the local level — with the students, educators or administrators — in providing education services. It's simply assuming that it knows best.

Mr. Speaker, we all know — you know, because you don't come from Victoria; you come from the northern central part of the province — that every community is different. Prince George is fundamentally different from Kamloops in its needs and desires, which is again different from Vancouver or Chilliwack or some other area. A person would have to have the wisdom of Solomon or think he's God to be able to sit in the cabinet chambers in Victoria, know what is good for the local level and deliver those services efficiently.

Mr. Speaker, this is the kind of authoritarian centralism that we see in this bill and in many other bills. It's very significant in this bill, because the cost of education is such a large part of the economy that it consumes dollars that would otherwise be spent in other ways. Perhaps they would be saved, invested or go into retail sales. But we all know that education is an excellent investment from the point of view of not just our young people but people who wish to train and prepare themselves to become more readily employable and to get ahead.

It's been stated in here that the Socred regime that we have in office today wants to emulate Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Well, if that were true, it would be an improvement on the present situation. We all know that the economies of the United States and Britain under those leaders have been shrinking. There has been a growth of megadebt that wasn't there before. There has been high inflation, high unemployment, high bankruptcy rates and a shrinking gross national product. But the point is that neither of those countries is in imminent danger of collapse. What concerns me is that government over there taking orders from the Chicago boys in the Fraser Institute. They are taking orders from the same people who have been the economic advisers to Pinochet in Chili, to Galtieri in Argentina, to the colonels in Brazil, to the recently resigned Israeli Premier and to the governments of Mexico and Paraguay. What has happened is that many, if not all, of those countries are in danger of collapsing, perhaps bringing down the banking system of the western world and certainly imposing a major depression upon the western world.

That government over there is taking financial, political and economic advice from those same people. Mr. Speaker, that is a tremendous worry to me as a British Columbian, that we are seeing more and more centralized authoritarian control, more megadebt, more inflation, more unemployment, more shrinking gross national product and more bankruptcy while the government insists upon taking these doctrinaire, dogmatic authoritarian advisers to their bosom.

We have, on the part of the government, a sort of bunker mentality. It has been suggested to many of them, including their friends, or people who were once their friends, that if on bills such as Bill 6 the government would merely communicate and consult with some people who wish the government well.... They don't wish to see a change in government, but they fundamentally disagree with what the government is doing on this particular bill. They should consult with them without fear that there would be a proper transition on some of these policies.

There is nobody on this side of the House who disagrees with restraint. There is nobody on this side of the House who does not recognize that the economy of B.C. Is a mixed economy and that the people who provide the goods and services that we need most for growth are the private sector. We recognize that. That's not a philosophical point; that's an obvious point. Crown corporations in government deliver the sort of necessary services that don't produce goods, such as ferries and hydro. We don't buy our hula-hoops and lumber and so on from Crown corporations or the public sector. Everyone recognizes that the private sector economy must be healthier if we are to have a healthy B.C. But with bills like

[ Page 1563 ]

this, you cannot have a confident retail sector or investment sector, and you cannot and will not have a confident education sector.

Mr. Speaker, a year ago the enfant terrible was your predecessor. He was the person who was striking fear into the hearts of trustees and taxpayers all around the province. One of the reasons that they were concerned about him was because the former member for Surrey actually consulted. People didn't like what they heard in their discussions with him, but at least he went out there and talked to people and visited people. He went out to school boards and he went to conventions. He wasn't afraid to put forth his policies, and what he hoped would be government policy. He even issued White Papers and draft legislation. We don't see that now.

Now that the minister is back, I want to say a few more words to him directly, because I know that he is such a goodhumoured fellow, who really enjoys being in the Legislature here day after day and night after night. While I would never be party to this sort of thing, I have a feeling that there are some of my colleagues who want to keep him here day after day and night after night. However kindly and caring in his heart he might be about the educational system in this province, the fact is that he is unlikely to be a benevolent despot. Now a despot he is going to be. It is the fundamental principle of this bill that control and authority, which were out there with the electorate in the school districts — the people who raise the money.... As I mentioned earlier, an increasing amount of the proportion of the money for schools is raised out there by people who are directly responsible to the people they elect. He is taking that authority unto himself.

Mr. Speaker, it is quite clear that the government is taking the same authority unto themselves in an educational service such as the kindergarten to grade 12 program that the government has long had in other areas of resource development. I don't wish to depersonalize education and treat students, teachers and the children in this province as units, but the fact is that that tremendously important human resource, our own children — and many of us in the House have children within the school system — is a resource. It will add immeasurably not only to this province but to this country.

The government has always had, and still does have, total authority in the protection and enhancement of other resources such as the forest resource, and in participation with the federal government in such projects as salmonid enhancement. They have had the responsibility to protect and enhance our land resources and water resources, and our fossil fuel and mineral resources. Their track record in these areas has been one of total neglect. If they have total authority when they neglect the reforestation of our most important resource industry, when they neglect our salmonid enhancement programs which have been initiated by the private sector and the federal government, when they neglect our land and water resources and when they give away our fossil fuel resources, what kind of confidence can the people of B.C. have in that government to protect and enhance the human resource in the school system? When they grab authority from the duly elected people at the local level, who also have a mandate in this regard, and take it unto themselves.... However nice a fellow the minister may be, the track record of the government he is part of is very, very bad in this regard.

I know that eventually the minister or some of the apologists around him in the government benches will get up and tell the people of B.C. exactly what areas he, in playing God, is going decide are not important in what school districts. Is he going to decide that music is important in Castlegar but not in Quesnel, for instance?

Interjection.

MR. D'ARCY: Mr. Speaker, I'm being advised by the member for Skeena (Mr. Howard). As long as he is not a member of Solidarity I am prepared to....

Mr. Speaker, I move adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of this august body.

Motion approved.

Hon. Mr. Nielsen moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 11:56 a.m.