1983 Legislative Session: 1st Session, 33rd Parliament
Hansard
The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.
(Hansard)
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1983
Afternoon Sitting
[ Page 1977 ]
CONTENTS
Routine Proceedings
Oral Questions.
Committee on operations of ICBC. Mr. Macdonald –– 1977
Mr. Barrett
Tenant listing service. Mr. Blencoe –– 1977
Colony Farm. Ms. Sanford –– 1978
Grouse Mountain logging. Mrs. Wallace –– 1978
Liquor store openings. Mr. D'Arcy –– 1979
Compensation Stabilization Amendment Act, 1983 (Bill 11). Second reading.
Hon. Mr. Brummet –– 1979
Mr. Skelly –– 1979
Mr. Kempf –– 1984
Mr. D'Arcy –– 1985
Mr. Mowat –– 1991
Ms. Sanford –– 1991
Mr. Michael –– 1994
Mr. Lockstead –– 1995
Mr. Pelton –– 1998
Mr. Barnes –– 1999
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1983
The House met at 2:11 p.m.
MR. NICOLSON: Mr. Speaker, in your gallery today is Edith Gorman, a local writer and teacher from Argenta, British Columbia. I wish the House to bid her welcome.
MR. PELTON: Mr. Speaker, in the gallery today are two distinguished municipal politicians. I would ask the House to give a very warm welcome to Mayor John Agnew and Alderman Ray Johnston from Mission.
MR. MITCHELL: Mr. Speaker, I would ask the House to join with me in welcoming nine girls from Dunsmuir Secondary School, which is part of the Sooke School District. They are accompanied by their teacher, Mr. Beinder.
Hon. Mr. Hewitt tabled the sixty-second annual report of the liquor control and licensing branch.
Oral Questions
COMMITTEE ON OPERATIONS OF ICBC
MR. MACDONALD: Mr. Speaker, to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. On September 19, the minister told us about the committee headed by his deputy to look into ICBC and its privatization. Has the minister now had an opportunity to review the actuarial study that was prepared for that committee, which stated that the consequences of privatization would be an increase in premium rates of about 30 percent?
HON. MR. HEWITT: Mr. Speaker, the second member for Vancouver East keeps talking about the privatization of ICBC. I've told him and this House before that that committee's function is to review the policies and programs of the Insurance Corporation, to report to myself and through myself to cabinet, and for cabinet to deal with any recommendations they wish to make. That is the role of that committee, Mr. Speaker. With regard to the actuarial report, no, I haven't had the opportunity to review it, if in fact there is one,
MR. MACDONALD: Mr. Speaker, to jog the minister's memory, I may say that the actuarial report ordered by this committee was prepared by Mr. Guy Cloutier, who was the actuary for ICBC from 1978 to March 1983. He was asked to prepare this report on what the rate consequences would be of the privatization of ICBC. Does the minister seriously tell me that he doesn't know about the Cloutier report on ICBC that predicted this horrendous increase in rates?
HON. MR. HEWITT: Mr. Speaker, I find it somewhat difficult to respond to the member from Vancouver East, because he is attempting to raise concern with regard to some statements that he is not fully aware of — the ones he made concerning massive increases, etc. I have told him before, and I shall repeat it, that the committee's role is to review the policies, programs, etc. of the Insurance Corporation, and then to report to me and through me to cabinet. Until such time as any policy change is made by cabinet, by government, it will be business as usual at ICBC. I wish the member would not try to raise concern in the public by making statements in this House such as he has done in the past several days.
MR. MACDONALD: In view of what the minister says, he should be concerned. This committee ordered an actuarial study of the results of dismantling ICBC and it came back with figures showing a 30 percent increase, which I say is horrendous. Does the minister know about the Cloutier actuarial study?
[2:15]
MR. BARRETT: Yes or no, are you going to fire them for doing what they were told?
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. The Leader of the Opposition will come to order.
MR. MACDONALD: Mr. Speaker, I take silence to mean yes, that he does know all about it. Has the minister decided to table that report so that something paid for by the taxpayers can be considered by the taxpayers?
HON. MR. HEWITT: Mr. Speaker, I enjoy the member's comments. He attempts to play Perry Mason in this House from time to time and it's rather humorous, to say the least. At the appropriate time that committee, in dealing with all aspects of its role, will come forward with recommendations. It is an internal committee working on behalf of the minister responsible for the corporation, and until such time as their job is through I have no further comment with regard to any actuarial report, any recommendations, any expressions of concern with regard to rates.
MR. MACDONALD: Does the minister not know that Perry Mason investigates crimes? I am not suggesting that.
HON. MR. HEWITT: Thank you, I was in error. It was Inspector Clouseau I was referring to.
TENANT LISTING SERVICE
MR. BLENCOE: I have a question for the same minister, in his capacity as minister responsible for the office of the rentalsman. The minister may be aware that a new business has recently been established in British Columbia called the Tenant Listing Service, which maintains a central list of so-called "undesirable tenants." For a fee of $10, landlords may screen prospective tenants to see if they are on the private blacklist. Does the minister not agree that the Tenant Listing Service is an undesirable replacement for the services of the office of the rentalsman?
HON. MR. HEWITT: I am aware of the service that the member mentions. I can advise the House that my staff have been in touch with the principals of that service and have considered, in discussions with the individual, that it's possible that that service falls under the ambit of the Credit Reporting Act. The individual involved, I am told, has advised that he will not continue the advertising. We have sent him application forms to be completed, to see whether or not he should, you might say, be licensed under that piece of legislation.
It is a new service that evidently somebody has figured is of value. I feel the member is unjust in stating that it's a
[ Page 1978 ]
"blacklist," but if it does fall within the jurisdiction of the Credit Reporting Act, he would, of course, have to file under that act. I guess, as with any other service provided to the public, the public will deem whether or not it is of value; if not, of course, the service may well fail.
MR. BLENCOE: I spoke to the manager of this Tenant Listing Service this morning, to discover the criteria by which they would place a tenant's name on the private blacklist, and I was informed that any landlord could add the name of any tenant whom he didn't like. That's a quote from the person operating that operation. That very fact has to concern the minister, I'm sure. If you don't like a tenant, you can list him. This practice is a violation of tenants' rights in the province of British Columbia — no question about that. Will the minister launch a thorough and immediate investigation of this business, or any other such business, to ensure they do not violate tenants' rights in the province of British Columbia?
HON. MR. HEWITT: Mr. Speaker, I'm not sure what statute, etc., the member refers to. However, I am sure he is as aware as I am that a service providing a "blacklist" which has names of individuals on there and which could be construed as discriminatory or inaccurate, runs the very real risk of being challenged by an individual whose name is on that list and possibly facing prosecution.
MR. BLENCOE: Mr. Speaker, when I asked the owner of this operation how a tenant would know that they are on the list, he said: "The tenant has no way of knowing they are on the list."
Mr. Minister, I ask you again: do you not consider that a violation of tenants' rights, and will you do something to correct this situation in British Columbia?
MR. SPEAKER: That seeks a legal opinion, hon. member.
MR. BLENCOE: Mr. Speaker, a supplementary: does the minister not agree that the elimination of the office of the rentalsman will endanger tenants' rights, given the situation that has currently come to the forefront? Has he now decided to reconsider the termination of the office of the rentalsman?
HON. MR. HEWITT: With regard to the office of the rentalsman, Mr. Speaker, there is a bill before the House, and the member is anticipating the outcome of the debate on that bill. There is, as I mentioned to the member, the Credit Reporting Act. My staff have been in touch with the individual involved with this service, and after receiving his application, we may be able to make some determination, if we feel that he is, in effect, in contravention of the act that we've referred to.
COLONY FARM
MS. SANFORD: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Agriculture and Food. The minister has reported to this House that the details of the future of Colony Farm have not yet been decided.
I'm wondering if the minister can now assure us that Colony Farm will remain as a viable, operating farm.
HON. MR. SCHROEDER: Mr. Speaker, some of the details of the sale of the assets of Colony Farm have now been determined. The assets will not be sold at one time or in one aggregate, but cattle will be sold on one day and machinery and equipment on another. As far as the land itself is concerned, it is in the agricultural land reserve and I'm not aware of any application to have it removed.
MS. SANFORD: The minister has not given us an assurance that that land will remain as a viable, operating farm. If the minister cannot give his assurance to keep the farm as a viable agricultural entity, will he not at least reconsider his refusal to direct the proceeds of the sale of the livestock and equipment, to which he just referred, to the B.C. Federation of Agriculture's proposed research and development corporation?
HON. MR. SCHROEDER: The first part of the question, which has to do with what a government may or may not do in the future, would be out of order in question period. Answering the second part of the question, it has not yet been determined what will happen to the funds realized by the sale of the assets.
MS. SANFORD: Mr. Speaker, the minister said that the expenditure of those funds has not yet been determined, yet he has already refused the request by the B.C. Federation of Agriculture to have those funds used for their proposed research and development corporation. If the government, which is always talking about the utilization of the private sector, has turned down the request by the B.C. Federation of Agriculture, why is the government not prepared to utilize the private sector for purposes of research through the B.C. Federation of Agriculture's research and development corporation? They've already refused it, Mr. Speaker.
MR. SPEAKER: It's a fairly open question, hon. member, which begs an open answer.
HON. MR. SCHROEDER: Mr. Speaker, I find it really difficult to answer "if" questions.
GROUSE MOUNTAIN LOGGING
MRS. WALLACE: A question for the Minister of Environment, Mr. Speaker. Some two weeks ago, on September 13, the minister confirmed that the government has refused to use its powers to prevent logging on the southern slope of Grouse Mountain and that it has also refused to provide funds and preserve the property. In view of the government's failure to take those actions, has the minister now taken steps to set up a contingency fund for disaster relief, given the inevitable result that severe flooding will follow destruction of the watershed on Grouse Mountain?
HON. MR. BRUMMET: First of all, I don't accept the concept that the government has failed. We have made a decision. Secondly, there are funds available when emergencies occur, and so we have not planned to set up a contingency fund, and there is no assurance whatsoever, with proper logging practices, that the dire consequences that member predicts will ever happen.
[ Page 1979 ]
LIQUOR STORE OPENINGS
MR. D'ARCY: To my friend from Boundary-Similkameen in his capacity as minister responsible for the promotion and sale of alcohol in British Columbia: why has the minister decided to expend in excess of $4 million in public money on new and expanded liquor marketing facilities at a time of stagnant sales growth and general government cutback?
MR. SPEAKER: Hon. member, that's a very broad question.
MR. D'ARCY: I would say it was very direct, Mr. Speaker. Why has he decided to spend $4 million on new liquor stores?
HON. MR. HEWITT: The liquor distribution branch, of course, evaluates the need for marketing outlets in areas where there is growth in population, consumer demand, etc. We attempt to provide adequate service in those areas. Decisions with regard to capital expenditure on behalf of liquor distribution are done by the management with reference to my office.
MR. HOWARD: Pursuant to the provisions of standing order 35, I ask to move the adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance: namely, the decision yesterday that only the government House Leader has the authority to have the House proceed to the item "motions and adjourned debates on motions" and the refusal so far of the government House Leader to move to have the House consider notice of Motion 32, which is a motion of censure against Mr. Speaker.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please, hon. member. May I, for the benefit of the member, read from our Votes and Proceedings yesterday: "Mr. Speaker stated that the order of business was the prerogative of the House Leader." As such, it was not in order for the member for Skeena to make such a request.
Hon. member, that was not only the decision of yesterday and, I believe, of two days before that but also, I believe, of three business days prior to that. For the member to seek the floor at this time, to do something one way which he obviously has not been able to do in another, could not, hon. member, be ruled as anything but out of order.
Orders of the Day
HON. MR. GARDOM: I ask leave to proceed to public bills and orders, Mr. Speaker.
Leave granted.
[2:30]
MR. GARDOM: Mr. Speaker, I call adjourned debate on second reading of Bill 11.
COMPENSATION STABILIZATION
AMENDMENT ACT, 1983
(continued)
HON. MR. BRUMMET: I would like to take just a few moments to sum up some of the points I was trying to make this morning with respect to Bill 11. The compensation stabilization concept has proven itself. It does work; it has worked for the past year. That concept has been picked up and has spread throughout the country, with beneficial results. The continuation of the compensation stabilization concept in Bill 11 will work, and I think the public recognizes that. The public of this province and, I think, of this country is very rapidly coming to recognize that the ability to pay is a major determining factor in our economic well-being, and the ability to pay is contained in this bill. The opposition, those socialists opposite, are afraid that this will work. They are afraid they are going to be even more wrong than they were last year, when they condemned any attempt to stabilize the amount of increases, particularly in the public sector, and the example that this gave to the private sector in order to compete. I think the socialists are afraid that some of their socialist myths that are being tested will be found badly wanting.
As I indicated this morning, if they feel this legislation is so bad, surely they would then see it as an advantage to put into effect so they could gain the support they hope to gain because it wasn't acceptable to the public. But I think they are afraid that it will be well accepted, and they are afraid that when we and they are judged by the results of the positions taken, they will again be found wanting. This morning I made the point that it has been expressed by the opposition and their Solidarity wing, or coalition of dissent.... I am reluctant to use the term " Solidarity, " because I think it has a better meaning than that for which it is being used in British Columbia.
Lately, we constantly hear that this program must not be allowed to proceed, this legislation and the direction taken by the Social Credit government, because if it succeeds it will spread across the country. So they say it must be stopped here. If you analyze that statement.... I'm surprised that those people would make that statement. In a democracy this program can only succeed if it's widely accepted by the people in that democracy. If it spreads, it will spread because it has gained acceptance first in British Columbia, and then across the nation. So it naturally follows, then, that if it succeeds it is because the majority of people in our democracy accept it. We think it will succeed; they are afraid it might succeed. Otherwise, why would they be so desperate as to try to stop it?
The concepts in Bill 11, the concepts of compensation stabilization, have worked. They have proven beneficial and they will continue to work. I think the public knows this and supports it, despite the hysterical protestations of the socialists.
[Mr. Pelton in the chair.]
MR. SKELLY: Mr. Speaker, I'll try not to make an hysterical protestation. I'm very surprised, though, at the comments of the minister who just spoke. He seems to have changed his mind from this morning. Maybe he was advised by the research staff as to just what's happening with this bill.
[ Page 1980 ]
This morning he said that the program had been a success and had been copied all across the country. This afternoon he says "it will work," and "if it succeeds, it will spread across the country." It represents the confusion not just in that member's mind but in the mind of the whole Social Credit caucus as to just what's happening with this bill and what it is designed to do.
HON. A. FRASER: Tell us about the confusion in your leadership race.
MR. SKELLY: The members opposite are confused about that as well. But things will become absolutely clear. I'd hope, Mr. Speaker, that you would stop these hysterical protestations coming across the floor — remarks that are entirely irrelevant to the present debate. I'd be very pleased if Mr. Speaker would stop these hysterical protestations coming across the floor, remarks which are entirely irrelevant to the present debate.
AN HON. MEMBER: You're doing a good job....
MR. SKELLY: Thank you. That one's all right.
In any case, it's possible to make some sense out of this speech. When you read the speech from the minister who just spoke in the Blues, even you, Mr. Speaker, with your ability, will have some difficulty making sense of the previous minister's speech.
The minister did say that this bill will work. He's probably right on that score because it all depends on what the objectives of the bill are. If the objectives of the bill are to cut the wages of the public service in British Columbia, there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that this bill will achieve that objective. By its compulsory mechanisms, by forcing all collective agreements to be arbitrated by one office, and by establishing not simply guidelines but required limits on the wages of public employees in the province, there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that it will achieve that objective. In this Legislature we should be concerned about the broader objectives. That's why we're here in the first place, not to further the vendetta that Social Credit seems to be following against people who work for all of us, people who work in the public sector.
Our reason for being in the Legislature over the last several years, as I've been a legislator, is the general benefit of the people of British Columbia. How does an attack on civil service wages benefit the general public of British Columbia? Does it correct the problems of unemployment? We have hundreds of thousands of people unemployed here in the province of British Columbia. This program hasn't produced a single job for them. Has it protected jobs in the public service, as the minister originally said it might? He said that if we, collectively, as a group of public servants lower our wages, then the government will have more money and more people will be able to work.
Then he came in with a new ideological package which said that we should cut down the civil service anyway. These wage cuts and wage limitations do not create or protect a single job, either in the civil service or in the public sector. Does it help the taxpayers? We all know that the wages of the public service in British Columbia — the civil service I'm talking about, the people who work directly for the provincial government — represents only 12.7 percent of the total expenditures of the provincial government, according to last year's Ministry of Finance annual report. Depending on who you believe, Mr. Speaker, the budget this year has increased somewhere between the 12.3 percent figure given to us by the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Curtis) or the 16 to 17 percent given to us by the House Leader of the opposition. Clearly, the taxpayers haven't benefited from this attack on civil service wages or public employees' wages, because our expenditures are increasing at a tremendous rate, regardless of the cutbacks.
MR. SKELLY: If we are here as legislators....
Interjection.
MR. SKELLY: The Minister of Agriculture and Food (Hon. Mr. Schroeder) says: "Think how much the increase would be if they weren't there." This is a government that can't hold back its increases whether they're there or not. That is what we're trying to say. The government appears to have absolutely no ability to control expenditures. But they do want to control the expenditures of wage earners in this province, especially those wage earners in the public sector that they have a particular vendetta against.
It has become clear to British Columbians in the last two or three years that in a recession they do want restraint. There's no question about that. It's just a question of how restraint is to be implemented. There's no question about that on our side. Mr. Speaker, you may not recall, but other members who were in the House over the last two years do that the NDP proposed a number of changes in the estimates that would have saved the taxpayers of this province approximately $150 million over those two years.
Interjections.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. members, can we let the hon. member continue without too many interjections, please.
MR. SKELLY: Mr. Speaker, the people who need the most help always try to help those who need it least.
Everybody in this province accepts the need for restraint at this time. It's strictly a question of priorities, expressed in this way: should we send cabinet ministers to Broadway to buy expensive wines, watch expensive shows and stay in expensive hotels? Should we build a $60,000 executive VIP box in B.C. Place stadium so that cabinet ministers and Crown corporation executives who are appointed by the government can entertain their friends at public expense? This is the kind of concern that the public has about restraint, and as the member for Cowichan suggested....
AN HON. MEMBER: I thought you said that small businesses were not our friends.
MR. SKELLY: I understand he was entertaining the Canadian Manufacturers' Association — not exactly the representatives of small business in this country. I have nothing against the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, Mr. Speaker, but it's my experience that they certainly don't represent small business in this country. Even so, it seems that the CMA, representing those big manufacturers all across Canada, can at least afford to buy their own beer or their own drinks and not have them bought at government
[ Page 1981 ]
expense in a $60,000 VIP box built for the ministers and the Crown corporation executives at B.C. Place. That's not an example of restraint in government expenditure, Mr. Speaker.
As a result, in a poll that took place across this province through the offices of the Vancouver Sun and an agency that they employed, it was indicated that 69 percent of the people in this province accept the need for restraint. We don't question that. Most of our members agree that restraint is necessary at this time. Most of the government members accept that there is a need for restraint at this time. Where the division took place was in the methods of imposing restraint.
If you do away with the Human Rights Commission, which costs most of the people of this province the price of two postage stamps a year, is that restraint? Or is it doing away with effective protection of human rights in this province under the cover of restraint? And that's the method that people disagree with. When you cover an ideological position of being opposed to human rights by using the term "restraint," that's when people get concerned.
Interjections.
MR. SKELLY: Gee, these members are agitated today. What were they serving down in the dining room today? Hysterical soup. Somebody took the minister's Teddy bear away — that's it. Mr. Speaker, I am concerned about these people.
[2:45]
HON. MR. WATERLAND: On a point of order. Mr. Speaker, seeing as how no one else seems to know that my Teddy bear has been missing, the confession by that member that he knows it is missing is a confession of guilt, and I would ask him to please return it to me.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. minister, that's not really a point of order, but the Chair appreciates your concern over the Teddy bear and will ask the member to continue speaking to the Compensation Stabilization Amendment Act.
MR. SKELLY: I'm getting to that, Mr. Speaker. What I'm talking about is the method employed by this government in imposing what they call their program of restraint. According to the Vancouver Sun article, 75 percent of the people in this province oppose the methods used by this government, and this bill relates specifically to one of the methods.
Interjections.
MR. SKELLY: I realize that the minister lost his Teddy bear. Just after Perry Mason left the hall, he brought up his point of order. I just ask the minister to remain calm. I'll get through this speech in probably 40 minutes or less.
Interjections.
MR. SKELLY: You're not being a very successful Speaker, Mr. Speaker. Does this mean I'll be able to extend my time, after all these interruptions?
As I was trying to point out, 75 percent of the people are opposed to the methods used by this government under the guise of restraint, and this bill is one of the government's methods that's questionable in achieving restraint. Can people believe this government is interested in restraint, and that this bill is necessary to achieve restraint, when, as I've pointed out, they're not getting restraint from this government? The budget has gone up from 12 percent to 17 percent; taxes, sales tax and property taxes have increased; ferry rates and health user charges are going to increase; and there's going to be an increase in ministerial travel expenses. Can people believe that this government is interested in restraint and that this bill is necessary for restraint when there is virtually no limit on the amount that this government is willing to spend for the entertainment of its ministers?
There's no question that the issues of incomes and compensation in this province have to be addressed. There are people in this province who are making very low incomes and people who are making very high incomes, and that is a problem. Some people have done very well over the last few years through the current recession; and by establishing a fixed percentage increase on their incomes, they've done very well with those increases. Some people have been living very poorly. As the member for Cowichan-Malahat (Mrs. Wallace) pointed out, many of those people are women. And many are single-parent family heads, most of them women. Restraint forces them into a position of continued poverty.
There was a way out of it. There was a light at the end of the tunnel, possibly when this legislation included a sunset clause.
"And when the recession was over" — I'm quoting the member for Cowichan-Malahat — "and the sunset clause in this Compensation Stabilization Act took effect, then these people who are willing to sacrifice salary increases during the recession, when they saw that everybody else was having to sacrifice, would have been able to look at some improvement in their own position with respect to salaries and working conditions at the end of the Compensation Stabilization Program and at the end of the current recession."
What this bill does now is create those recessionary conditions forever. There is no end to this legislation now, Mr. Speaker. The sunset clause has been eliminated, and all of those people who were willing to make that sacrifice for the period of time there was a depression in this province are now going to be faced with making that sacrifice forever, ghettoized forever in a certain position with respect to wages and working conditions forever in the foreseeable future. That's one of the unfair things about this legislation and one of the reasons we, as an opposition, can't support it. Even though we support restraint, even though we join with the 69 percent of people in this province who advocate restraint, we do not accept this as a bill that is necessary for restraint, because of the way it is currently written.
Interjections.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. members, I have asked on three separate occasions now if the hon. members on the government side would practise a little restraint in interrupting the speaker. Please let the speaker continue.
MR. SKELLY: Mr. Speaker, I thank you for that.
Many people in the public service.... Over the past few years, as the depression hit, we've seen wage-earners make concessions freely in areas where free collective bargaining is an option. Although not necessarily in this province, we have seen wage-earners make concessions in
[ Page 1982 ]
wages freely. Companies like Chrysler Corp., both in Canada and the United States, have been subsidized. The bad management of that corporation was subsidized by its own wage-earners in order to improve the company's profitability and bring it back to a position in the marketplace where it could compete with other companies. And it's done that; the concessions made by wage-earners for that company have brought Chrysler back to a profitable position, to where it's now a real competitor in the marketplace and to where it's paying off the loans it obtained from various governments both here and in the United States.
It was wage-earners' concessions freely arrived at in collective bargaining negotiations that resulted in bringing that corporation back to profitability. There are many other cases throughout Canada, the United States and around the world where workers have done that. Workers in collective bargaining negotiations in this province have agreed to take zero wage increases provided there was some end, provided they could see some light at the end of the tunnel, when the recession would be over and their wages would be increased. They are doing this in spite of the fact that over the last two years, according to Statistics Canada, wages have not kept pace with consumer price index increases, not merely in the rest of Canada but also here in B.C. So even though these workers are falling behind in the purchasing power of their take-home wages, they are still willing to make concessions. It is only when we get legislation like this, Mr. Speaker, that says, "We are going to limit your right to bargain collectively," or, "We are going to limit the effectiveness of your collective bargaining procedures and impose all of your collective agreements to the scrutiny of one agency of government" — which has guidelines and even restrictions imposed upon it with respect to wage increases, and that type of thing....
While workers will accept market conditions when they are allowed to negotiate freely, when you impose these kinds of compulsory wage limits on them, then of course they get their backs up. They are treated as second-class, irresponsible citizens, and the facts have shown that they're not — the facts with Chrysler Corp., the facts of bargaining in the forest industry sector in B.C. All of those experiences have shown that workers are willing, given that the only compulsion upon them is the compulsion to bargain within the terms of reference provided under the Labour Code in British Columbia.
[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]
The minister said, when he introduced this bill, that many people are affected in this province by what he called market controls. That is the new Fraser Institute-Social Credit buzzword for bankruptcy, wage reductions, unemployment, business bankruptcies, etc. They are now given the new buzzword called market controls. He said the reason we have to have this type of legislation is that the government is not affected by market controls. Even this would be an acceptable reason for bringing down this legislation, or an acceptable reason for reducing wages without this legislation. But if employees could see that others were paying the price as well, that we were all shouldering our load during this depression, then I think they would be more willing to make concessions. They would be more willing to take pay cuts and to see limitations put on their increases if they could see that everybody in society was doing the same.
Let's look at an article in the Province for yesterday, September 26: "Bank Profits Soar Despite Economy." The article says that bank profits are up 14 percent in this quarter ending in July; profits increased by $451 million over the same quarter in the previous year. In the first nine months of this year, bank profits are up 29 percent over last year, or $1.389 billion. Can the banks be said to be limiting their profit increases? Can the banks be seen to be shouldering their load during the depression? The banks seem to be doing okay during this depression. The banks are doing all right $1.389 billion net profit in the first nine months of this year, 29 percent above the same period last year. At the same time as bank profits are soaring, according to the Province's headlines of September 26, we are saying that those workers in the British Columbia government and in the public sector, workers who, according to the Minister of Finance's own annual report, represent only 12.7 percent of the expenditures of government, have to be cut back.
[3:00]
What we are seeing here is concrete evidence of the unfairness of this program which singles out one sector of employment and attributes to them all the causes of the recession, all the causes of the government's problems with respect to expenditures, all the causes of the government's problem of debt. All of the government's problems are being focused on this one small sector — 12.7 percent of the government's expenditures, according to the Minister of Finance's annual report for the last year — and this is a Minister of Finance who talks about productivity in vague terms. He's even got it reduced to the point where he knows how much it costs to transfer payroll vouchers from employees to employees. In the beginning of the year, the office established efficiency standards for payroll voucher and personnel accounting forms of 50 cents and 24 cents respectively, based on past performance and volume forecasts. The branch bettered these standards by processing vouchers and forms at a cost of 49 cents and 21 cents respectively. This is a government that talks about productivity in terms of the cost of shovelling vouchers around in the government. They know how much it costs to pass a piece of paper from one employee to the other, but they have absolutely no understanding of the human concerns of people working for the government.
Here they are, as they're focusing their attack on one sector of the economy — on those employed by all of us to do a service to all of us — and yet those people see that the government's program doesn't apply to anyone else but them or to anything else but salaries. Bank profits are soaring: 29 percent in the first nine months of this year over last year. Corporation profits are now soaring as well, according to the same article in the Vancouver Province: 375 companies surveyed were up 38.7 percent from levels established a year earlier. A year earlier, everybody was in pretty bad shape, so 38.7 percent does not even bring corporate profits back to the level they were at during 1980 and the first part of 1981. They're still down.
On the other hand, if you accepted the government's argument that restoration of profitability would also result in an increase in jobs, that hasn't happened either, Mr. Speaker, because along with the increase in bank profits and corporate profits we've got increased unemployment. So there is no relation between what the government is saying and the reality that once private profitability has been restored, then jobs will be restored; it is absolutely false.
[ Page 1983 ]
This goes along with the government's assertion that what they're doing in the public sector is privatizing; they are taking jobs from the public sector and privatizing those functions formerly done by government into private industry. What they are actually doing, Mr. Speaker, is simply sacking government employees. The private sector is not taking up the slack that the government says they're taking up, and those people are remaining out of work.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris backs up what I'm saying. "Unemployment in Canada will remain in the range of 12 percent into 1984," says a report that was tabled on September 23, 1983. "Canada's unemployment rate stood at 11.8 percent in August, representing about two million Canadians. Economic recovery will do little to stop growing structural or institutionalized joblessness," the report said, "and although unemployment has eased up in the past year, it will generally swing up again in 1984."
So all of these efforts at privatization and cutting back in the government service appear to be doing nothing more than increasing unemployment throughout the economy and creating greater demands on government transfer programs and a greater revenue expenditure crunch in the government and will be totally counter productive to our desire for economic recovery. The minister talks about relating wage demands to the employer's ability to pay, but we've also seen, during this session, bills which allow ministers to interfere in the fine details of budgeting procedures in such local governments as school boards and municipalities. The Ministry of Health has always had that option with hospital boards.
They seem to concern themselves with the ability of public employers to pay wages demanded by their employees. As I said, they also take upon themselves, from local government, the right to manage the fine details of local government budgets. An example is Bill 6, where the Minister of Education now has the power to reach down into the authority of local school districts and to change the details of the budgets. I'm talking about the provision here for the government's ability to pay, which the minister mentioned in his introductory remarks. But he failed to mention that the government has now manipulated that whole principle of ability to pay so that the government can reach down and take money out of local budgets, reducing their ability to pay certain salaries. For example, here's what has happened in a hospital in Port Alberni in my own area. The Ministry of Health already has that right to establish the pay. They set up the budget in two ways: part of it is allocated to equipment and part is allocated to salaries. This year they cut back on the salary budget, so the hospital was forced to cut back on staff. However, they left some wiggling room for the hospital. They said it could transfer money from the salary side of its budget over to the equipment side, so it could fire people and buy more equipment. But they said it couldn't do it the other way; it couldn't sacrifice equipment to hire more people. This happened in every hospital district in the province, so the members opposite will probably be aware of that happening as well.
So it appears to me, Mr. Speaker, that this government has a vendetta going against those who work for wages in the public sector and that this bill is simply a carrying out of that vendetta. Why? I ask any government member to stand up and explain to me why, in a local hospital budget, where you're allowed to transfer the salary portion to buy equipment, which involves laying off staff, you cannot transfer the equipment part of the budget to salaries, which involves hiring more staff. Why would the government impose that on a hospital board?
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. member, you may be discussing items that might be better discussed under the estimates of a ministry or under other legislation. Bill 11 is quite specifically the Compensation Stabilization Amendment Act.
MR. SKELLY: Mr. Speaker, I'm relating this directly to the Compensation Stabilization Act. As I have been saying, this bill appears to be based not on the need for restraint but on the government's desire to follow through on its vendetta against people who work for public bodies and people who work in the public sector.
Let me restate our major objections to the bill. First of all, it doesn't appear to affect government expenditures at all. The expenditures for salaries in the government represent such a very small percentage that even by cutting back and reducing the salaries of public servants by 5 percent we're really not going to accomplish very much to reduce government expenditures, and in fact expenditures of this government would still increase beyond the rate of inflation and well beyond the rate of growth in this province. It doesn't even meet the criterion that a restraint program would demand, so it must demand it for some reason other than restraint.
The government also occasionally talks about job tenure in the public service. It was mentioned by the minister in his introductory remarks as well that public employees are protected from market forces. But that's not a fact either, because the government admits that thousands of its employees have been laid off over the past year and a half or two years as a result of declining revenues, especially from the forest industry and from the natural resource sector as a whole — also from income tax and corporate income tax, as a result of the fact that fewer people are working now than prior to the recession taking place. Also, expenditures have increased in the areas of Human Resources and Health as a result of hundreds of thousands of people being put out of work, making some government services more necessary than they had ever been in the past. So there is an argument that we actually need more government employees in certain areas than we have at any time in the past, and yet those are the very areas where the government is cutting back.
It's a question of priorities, Mr. Speaker. The Minister of Agriculture and Food (Hon. Mr. Schroeder) says we can't afford it. We can afford to entertain people in a $60,000 box in the B.C. Place stadium reserved for VIPs in the government and Crown corporations, but we can't afford services to the poor and the unemployed — those whom the government's policies have forced into that position as a result of economic mismanagement. That's the reason why, even though 69 percent of the people in this province favour restraint, 75 percent are telling this government that they don't agree with the methods or the priorities.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, one of our major objections is that we cannot accept a measure which attacks a single sector of the economy, a single sector of society, in the belief that attacking that sector will solve the economic problems of this government. What the government is doing is simply making that sector a scapegoat for all of the economic problems that this government, through its own mismanagement, has brought this province to.
[ Page 1984 ]
As I've mentioned before, this party supports restraint and we will continue to support restraint, as we always have supported restraint. If the minister will examine the restraint methods proposed by this opposition over the past two or three years, he cannot argue with this fact. What we are opposed to in this bill, as well as in a number of the other pieces of legislation brought down, is the fact that this government is covering repression with the term restraint; that they are applying restraints unfairly to one small group in society; that they are not making restraint fair by requiring it across the board, by imposing the same limits on all forms of income. They are not making the restraint program fair by imposing it on all people who receive income.
During the last depression, there were people who went to work for governments that were fighting for reconstruction. I'm thinking of the United States: people who went to work as dollar-a-year men, people from large corporations who realized that in order to change the economy of the day and in order to create employment, they would have to change the structure of the economy of the United States. The president of the day hired people from large corporations doing business in the United States for a dollar a year — not like Ed Peck, who's making $475 a day; not like Donald MacDonald, who's making $800 a day. If this legislation were fair, it would be supported by all of the people in the province, including our caucus.
[3:15]
MR. KEMPF: Mr. Speaker, it's always a pleasure to follow the member for Alberni, because it's very easy to put together any kind of speech or reply to a debate after listening to that sanctimonious socialist rhetoric that we have heard in this House so many times. Bob Williams — and I'm sure he's haunting these hallowed halls somewhere — would be very proud of that member were he here to listen to that debate today.
It's a great pleasure for me to stand in my place to support Bill 11, the Compensation Stabilization Amendment Act. In doing so, I stand to express the feelings of those workers both in industry and in business in the private sector in my constituency and in this province, workers who for more than two years now have felt the sting of world recession, have felt the effects of natural restraint on their jobs and incomes. World economic conditions have, in the last two years in the private sector, caused plant shutdowns, job losses, wage freezes and, in many cases, wage rollbacks. Those in the private sector know all about restraint. They knew about restraint long before this debate in this Legislature. They see absolutely no reason why their brothers and sisters in the public sector shouldn't share, in that respect, their plight. I agree with them: there should be no difference. Equality for all, favour for none.
Mr. Speaker, I see that the member for Alberni has left the House. With his philosophy, I don't blame him for not wanting to hear the truth about real restraint in this province, in this country and, in fact, in the whole world at this time.
As I have said on other occasions in this House, the members opposite — and in particular a member such as the one who just spoke — have missed the message. The message has passed them by completely. I guess it could be said that there are none so blind as those that cannot see. That goes for hearing as well. I don't know what it is that those members opposite are listening to, but the message from the people from the province of British Columbia is loud and clear. I heard one of the members opposite quote just a few minutes from a newspaper headline from last week, or yesterday, that made it quite clear that in a very extensive poll that was taken, 75 percent of the people polled were in favour of restraint. That's absolutely true. I don't understand how the members opposite have missed that point. I don't understand why the members opposite are not listening to the real people of this province, who have, not only while this debate has been going on — that was proven in the election of May 5 — but for some time in this province been crying out for restraint and the kind of legislation that is being brought into the House, not only through Bill 11.... I know I can't speak of the other legislation that is now before us in the House. They've been looking for this kind of action by government for a long time, and they'll be looking for this kind of action by other governments for some time to come. We have set a trend in this province — a trend that will not soon end, regardless of the pious rhetoric that comes from the members opposite.
Interjection.
MR. KEMPF: I know what's going to come out of that comer seat, Mr. Member, when you do. We've heard it so many times. Do you listen to yourselves? Don't you listen to the people of this province? Hang your head in shame, Mr. Second Member for Vancouver East (Mr. Macdonald). You profess to speak for the downtrodden. I heard that for many years, because I came from a family that spouted that kind of philosophy. It taught me one thing if it taught me anything: it taught me that that's not the philosophy to follow in this life, not for one second.
Bill 11 and legislation like it are supported by the vast majority. I know that that's hard for the members opposite to grasp, because they have never listened to the majority in their lives. They have always been in the minority, and that's what they've always listened to. That's what they will always listen to. But the vast majority of the people of this province — not only of this province, but of many other jurisdictions — at this time believe in it. They know that it's necessary. They know it's our only salvation, and that is to tighten our belts. The people out there don't take exception to that. They're willing to do that, but they recognize the use of those that the members opposite profess to support. They know the use of the downtrodden is not the way in which to act today.
I just can't understand the members opposite, Mr. Speaker. I guess the debate that we've heard for three months now in this Legislature is just a continuation of an election campaign that we saw prior to May 5. It's a continuation of that fight. They haven't recognized and they won't accept the fact that they lost that election, that prior to that election they made a deal with the union bosses of this province and they feel, by what they say in debate in this House....
MR. HANSON: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, is the member for Omineca relating any of his remarks at all to Bill 11? He doesn't appear to be at all.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: I'm sure the member knows the rules of relevancy.
MR. KEMPF: Yes, Mr. Speaker, as much as anyone who spoke from that side of the House did. They made a deal with the union bosses prior to May 5; they had it made long before
[ Page 1985 ]
that, and now they continue, regardless of what the majority of the people in British Columbia feel, think and say, to follow that view. It's a sad day for the province of British Columbia because that was once a proud opposition, and this province — and any jurisdiction, any government — needs good opposition. More than they need a lot of other things, they need good opposition.
The citizens of this province know that the cupboard is bare. They don't have to be told. They not only know that the cupboard is bare, they know that to borrow ourselves into oblivion is not the way to get out of the problems we are in today.
MR. HANSON: The cupboard is bare; the trough is full.
MR. KEMPF: To borrow our children and our children's children into debt and into oblivion is not the way, and the young first member for Victoria doesn't realize that yet. He hasn't been around this world for long enough. But he'll learn.
The members opposite are in the past. We hear them talking about the thirties and the forties when the once-proud CCF was at its best — and I say "once proud" because some of the founders of that party, were they here today, would hang their heads in shame.
I've heard members opposite say: "You're not doing what you said you were going to do in this restraint program prior to the election of May 5." Well, I don't know where they were during that time, but they sure weren't following me around in my campaign. That's exactly what I was telling the people of Omineca was going to happen should this administration be re-elected. Mr. Speaker, I want to tell you, and I would make a wager on this right here and now in this chamber, that if we went back to the people in the province of British Columbia tomorrow, half of those members over there wouldn't return to this chamber. The members over there seem to march to a different drummer, and it's an ever diminishing drummer. It's sad that they haven't awakened to that fact. The defenders of the downtrodden say they're in agreement with restraint, that they believe in restraint, merely because they have stood in this House for a couple of sessions and suggested to the government that there were areas in which budgets could be cut. That's how they believe in restraint. I remember them from 1972 to 1975, when they doubled the budget of this province in three short years. Did they believe in restraint then when they were government? I think not. Merely because they stood in this House and made some remarks across the floor about certain areas of the government's budget, they now say: "We're defenders of restraint."
[3:30]
AN HON. MEMBER: They didn't talk about it in April.
MR. KEMPF: That's right. I remember the night on the 6 o'clock news that I watched their leader in the Kootenays talk about restraint. I remember the all-candidates meeting that I attended not an hour after that announcement was made. They believe in restraint all right. They had some support prior to that, but after that remark was made in the Kootenays that he would do away with the restraint program in the province of British Columbia were he elected Premier, he lost that support.
There's a definite need for logical, straightforward and honest restraint in the province of British Columbia, and the electorate knew it prior to May 5 and know it now. We only have to look at the federal by-election in Mission-Port Moody very recently — and I won't go into the details of that, Mr. Speaker — to know exactly what the people of this province feel at this time.
I could go on and on, but I feel this chamber and the people of this province have heard enough about Bill 11. They say: "Pass it and pass the other legislation which pertains to restraint....
Interjection.
MR. KEMPF: And you, too, Mr. Member, have been listening to the wrong people and marching to the wrong drummer. Let that be on your head, because we are here as elected representatives to listen to all of the people — not just to a few small groups, not just to the labour leaders of this province, but to everyone, however they voted on May 5 or however they ever voted, or whatever their philosophy is. That is the responsibility that I took on as an elected representative, and I would hope that that was the responsibility, Mr. Member for North Island (Mr. Gabelmann), that you took on as well when you not only ran for but were elected to office.
I heard the member for Alberni (Mr. Skelly) say that there was confusion among the government members in regard to the restraint issue. Well, just maybe, Mr. Minister of Finance, that might be, from time to time. We're all human; it could be. But there's no confusion in the minds of British Columbians out there as to what it is that is needed in regard to restraint in this province — none whatsoever.
I've said enough. I say pass this bill and pass others, regardless of what methods have to be used in this House, because the government members in this party and this government have the support of the majority of the people in British Columbia. On their behalf, and particularly on behalf of those whom I represent, I support Bill 11.
MR. D'ARCY: I certainly enjoyed listening to my friend from Omineca. I want to make one brief comment about one of his remarks. I know that charge and counter-charge in this chamber often pass for political rhetoric, and I know that you, Mr. Speaker, are fairly tolerant of that sort of thing from both sides, but I want to challenge his statement that the Leader of the Opposition or any member of this party ever made a deal with the trade union movement either before or after the May 5 election — or with any other group. One of the fundamental differences between the government party and the opposition party in this chamber is that the opposition party represents all the people in the province, however they voted. And government members, when they're in their own riding, do their best to represent all the people in those ridings too, but down here in the chamber government members only look after their friends.
The member for Omineca said that the cupboard was bare. You're damned right it's bare, with Social Credit running the show, and the loss of the triple-A credit rating and the $14 billion in borrowing over the last seven or eight years, but I'll tell you, Mr. Speaker, the trough is still full for the pals of government. I doubt that the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Curtis) was very pleased to hear the member for Omineca raise the question of provincial government debt, because the member for Saanich has been a member of this chamber since
[ Page 1986 ]
1972 and he knows full well that when the present Socred administration came into office, the total accumulated debt was barely $4 billion. Now, at the end of this fiscal year, it will be approaching $18 billion under Social Credit.
Yes, there's been a lot of borrowing, and it's been Social Credit borrowing. And yes, there's a lot of debt, which has increased more than fourfold, and it's been Social Credit debt. And they did this while squandering assets of this province acquired by previous administrations — Social Credit, New Democrat, Liberal and Tory.
Directly related to Bill 11, Mr. Speaker, the minister and other members across the way know full well that in real terms, the present Socred administration, going back to December 1975, has done more to increase the size of government than any previous administration. They can yack all they want about 72 to 75, or any previous government, but the fact is that they are the ones who have increased the size of government relative to the gross provincial product in British Columbia; they have increased the size of debt relative to gross provincial product in British Columbia. They are the people who have created this necessity for cutting back on public spending, because, yes indeed, with their maladministration, the cupboard is bare. And we agree with restraint.
I think the member for Omineca (Mr. Kempf) earlier talked about some straw poll done over the weekend. I don't know how subjective or objective or scientific it was, but he talked about some straw poll that said that 75 percent of the population were in favour of restraint. Mr. Speaker, I'm surprised that it's not 100 percent. In fact, I would wonder at the accuracy of that poll, because I don't know anybody who isn't in favour of restraint. It's like saying: "Are you in favour of motherhood," or "Are you in favour of not being cruel to animals?" Of course, everybody is in favour of restraint and everybody is in favour of motherhood.
Mr. Speaker, it's quite interesting that what normally is a positive, up-tempo term like restraint has been given a bad name in British Columbia. According to this poll.... A poll is just a poll; we don't know its accuracy, and I would agree with those who do not take polls very seriously. And I'm quite surprised that Social Credit, by its actions, has given the word "restraint" a bad name with 25 percent of the population in the province of B.C., because I can't believe that that 25 percent are not philosophically in favour of restraint.
Every time the Social Credit party decides that they want to savage some sector of society, they say: "Oh, it's restraint." You know, we're about to shoot somebody, so we'll give him a blindfold and a priest and we'll call it restraint. I don't think everybody is agreeing with that any more.
I know that most of the press and most of the rhetoric surrounding Bill 11 has related to the provincial government service and the 16 percent of the people affected by Bill 11 coming under the compensation stabilization program at this date, not because of the bill, but already by the previous program.
I want to talk for a minute about some of the agencies, public corporations and government authorities that employ the other 84 percent. How do we continue to have in this province — we'll just take ICBC, as I see the minister's in the House — an effective Insurance Corporation of B.C.? The minister is very proud that that corporation is tremendously productive; its workforce is very productive relative to other insurance companies. I don't question that; I think that's probably true. We also know that many people get rather exasperated when they have to deal with ICBC, in part due to circumstances beyond anybody's control and in part due to some insensitive policies that the minister had laid down over the years. However, will that corporation function as effectively if its employees — and I'm going from top management right down to the most recently hired insurance adjuster or stenographer — in terms of their morale, efficiency and productivity are not competitive with private sector companies in similar financial agencies? We do have other insurance companies in B.C. Maybe they're not selling this general car insurance, but certainly we do have a private insurance industry in this province selling general insurance, life insurance and so forth; of course, a small part of ICBC does compete with the private sector in general insurance.
There are a few questions which have not been addressed by any of the speakers on the other side of the House: will effectiveness be lost, will productivity go down, and will the good people be lost? A senior official — actually he was on the board — of one of the large, semi-independent government agencies operating under legislation passed by this House.... We were discussing the extent and nature of the cutbacks in that agency — and, by the way, this is an agency the demand for whose services have not gone down at all; if anything, they've gone up — and he said to me: "The tragedy, Chris, is that we're going to have to be canning some of the best people." If that applies at that agency, does it also apply to the British Columbia Railway? How much downsizing is B.C. Rail going to go through, both in numbers of people and in wage and salary scales? Is that operation going to become more or less productive? Is it going to become less efficient? Is it going to have a competitive advantage over private sector carriers or the national railways, CP Rail and CN? Are good people going to leave for greener pastures where they have job security, where they have some indication...?
[3:45]
Interjection.
MR. D'ARCY: The member for Boundary-Similkameen (Hon. Mr. Hewitt) said: "What's that?" Job security means that when the company you work for cuts back, they will take some interest in their employees and how they are redeployed. The minister might be interested: when I was still a teenager in the early 1960s, I went to work for a major multinational corporation based in New York. It was a chemical company, although I was not in a chemical plant — they had a large, diverse interest. They were one of those so-called insensitive multinationals, and it was company policy in Canada, in the United States and in all of the other nations that that corporation operates in that beyond any common law, any union agreement or any individual agreement they may have had with an employee to have plant seniority, job seniority, departmental seniority and company, seniority, when they closed a department or a division, they found jobs for people. It may have been driving a truck in Alabama or something — they might offer a chartered accountant a job like that — but they found that person a job; they did not simply can people. When they had to cut back, they cut back the bottom 20 people and redeployed the rest throughout that company, nationally or internationally.
So, Mr. Speaker, everybody knows that when a cutback has to be made due to lack of business, junior employees are going to be let go. That's been the policy of responsible
[ Page 1987 ]
employers, both public and private, for years and years — as I mentioned, going beyond common law and beyond any collective agreement that may be in place. But the government has sought, with this bill and others, to abrogate that principle.
What about other corporations such as B.C. Ferries? Are they to be at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to retaining skilled personnel with other companies? What about B.C. Hydro, the largest Crown corporation — perhaps one of the largest agencies, outside of the provincial government, directly affected by Bill 11? Is the Finance minister going to tell the House that through some mechanism the collective bargaining process relative to Hydro employees hasn't worked, that their wages and salary levels are far too high, and that even though there have been negotiations on both sides and signed contracts....
I don't think that there has been a strike too often, but occasionally there has been binding arbitration — agreed to, incidentally, by both sides in advance.... Is the government to tell us that all of that due process, negotiated in good faith, has been such a failure, and that wages, salaries and working conditions of that corporation are unfair relative to the private sector? I know somebody could say: "Who competes with B.C. Hydro?" Well, I would agree; because it's a utility in its market area, nobody competes with it any more than somebody competes with B.C. Tel.
But the fact is that we do have private sector utilities in this province marketing — retailing and wholesaling — electrical power: West Kootenay Power and Light is an example. We also have privately owned retailers of natural gas: Pacific Northern, Columbia and Inland are but three, and there are a couple of others whose names escape me at the moment. Are we to assume that B.C. Hydro has somehow had a competitive advantage relative to these companies and needs its management and employees to be forced backward by decisions from on high? I haven't heard — and I haven't heard the government people claim this — these private companies saying: "You've got to do something about the collective bargaining process. Is this bargaining in good faith?" After all, these corporations operate under the same Labour Code and the same laws, and they presumably in many cases use the same negotiators and possibly even the same arbitrators, because someone who is acceptable as an arbitrator, because of knowledge in the field in one area, for one company and one union is usually acceptable to others. But no government spokesman has got up and argued that that is necessary.
Are we to assume that this bill on the compensation stabilization program is necessary to abrogate due process — once again, private sector negotiators, private sector arbitrators? Are we to assume that the government feels that all these agencies and all these areas of due process have failed?
It's strange, Mr. Speaker, when we talk about due process in downsizing government. I mentioned earlier that the present government has been responsible for unprecedented growth in government, and it's rather interesting. The government says: "When it comes to landlord and tenant disputes we're not interested in any sort of agency, either to help landlords or tenants, or to cut comers or to save money or time in settling disputes. We think it should all be left to the due process of the courts." Regardless of the expense to the litigants, regardless of the fairness, regardless of whether the landlord sees a lot of damage being done to his apartment while he goes through the process of getting an eviction notice — one that he could have gotten, perhaps, in a matter of hours through the old process — the government has said: "We don't need assistance for consumers or businesses through the consumer protection agencies; let due process and the courts look after that."
[Mr. Ree in the chair.]
Of course, we know what has happened to the human rights branch and the Human Rights Commission. Maybe the Human Rights Commission.... Well, that was an interesting body. But the human rights branch only investigated cases that they were ordered to by the minister, and it's interesting that some of the ones that government apologists found most objectionable, such as the Hunky Bill case, they did not want to take up, but were ordered to by the Social Credit minister in charge at the time.
In any event, while the government believes in expensive due process of the courts for these agencies, when it comes to the collective bargaining process they say: "Oh, to heck with due process. We're not interested in quasi-judicial decisions, in private sector arbitrators; in free, in-good-faith agreements; in collective bargaining. We're going to take all that power unto ourselves. We're going to centralize it under our authoritarian control in Victoria." That is a double standard, Mr. Speaker, because that's what Bill 11 does: it takes that power under control in Victoria.
Under the argument that the minister made steadily for 20 minutes — or perhaps it was 25 — when he opened debate on Bill 11 the other day, he said that the reason this bill was needed was because of the government's inability to pay. Of course, under the auspices of that argument we know that the government has done away with motor vehicle testing even though the management of the motor vehicle testing station said that for an increase of 50 cents on the $5 fee, those operations would have met their costs.
MR. MOWAT: Not true. It's $15 a car, if you take into account the capitalization.
MR. D'ARCY: Mr. Speaker, the members are attacking their own senior management — people that their government appointed — again.
One of the fundamental reasons the opposition objects to this bill is because it's a companion piece of legislation with others that make a large number of people in this province second-class citizens with less rights and privileges than a non-unionized employee would have under common law. Thank goodness we do have common law in this province. I'm not a legal expert, but I do know that common law has been built up as a series of precedents and court decisions over a long period of time — perhaps centuries — and has nothing to do with the legislative or parliamentary process. Employers and employees have certain rights, responsibilities and privileges under common law. The fundamental objections that I have to the compensation stabilization program is that it removes those rights, protections and responsibilities that employers and employees have under common law in the province of British Columbia. Sure, if public sector employees — either in the provincial government or working for one of the other agencies employing the 84 percent outside of the provincial government service — have, through agreements or legislation, some sort of special privilege that private sector employees don't have, I don't believe you'd
[ Page 1988 ]
find any objection on this side of the House to removing those special privileges. But when you make those employees less than equal under the common law of the province, then you find a lot of objection from this side of the House, and you find a lot of objection from people all across the province.
I want to talk some more about the minister's remarks on the ability to pay. I want to give the minister and the government credit — and the Premier, I suppose.... I don't like to give the government credit for anything at this time, but I suppose we have to recognize some things that they do successfully. One of the things that they've done successfully is to sell the word "restraint" as a justification for any discretionary cabinet decision that they might decide to make, or any discretionary legislative decision. That may or may not catch up with them; I've no idea. But for one thing, it is a sanctimonious thing to constantly use the word "restraint" whenever you do something mean-spirited, whenever you do something to a singular segment of society. This bill relates to that.
It's interesting that what the government doesn't tell us, of course, is that ability to pay and the ability to borrow money has to do with the government's own set of priorities, which they make as a political decision. The public, at least in terms of the public's perception of that political decision, was prepared to endorse that on May 5 last — or at least 49 percent were, which was the largest minority, I suppose. Fifty-one percent didn't like the government's ideas, but the government, nonetheless, in a parliamentary democracy has acted as though it had a much bigger endorsation than that. But again, one thing about a democracy is that those kinds of decisions can come back to haunt you.
Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about the ability to pay and the ability to borrow. The government has had no problem in borrowing for the light rapid transit system. Now again, along with restraint, I think you would find very few people who would disagree that the lower mainland area needs a light rapid transit system. Historically, I'm told, the lower mainland had a rapid transit system 75 or 80 years ago. I can barely remember riding on some of those vehicles in my youth, and they went a good deal faster, as I recall, than the existing express buses today. That was 1900 technology. I'm not suggesting we go back to that, but obviously light rapid transit worked and was practical even 80 or 85 years ago. The government has had no problem finding money for ALRT even though — and again, I don't want to get into a debate on the issue here — many people say that a more comprehensive, more productive — and the government likes the word "productivity" in justifying this bill and others — system could have been built for hundreds of millions of dollars less. That has been stated by a number of people. I don't know whether that's true or not. All I would like the government to know is that perhaps at some point, in justifying the borrowing of large amounts of money and thereby affecting the government's ability to pay for other things, it should give some justification other than political opinions as to why it was necessary to go the route that they're going.
The government certainly has had discretion to use up a tremendous amount of the dwindling borrowing power of the province of B.C. to build rail lines into the Tumbler Ridge coal fields. Again, that's a discretionary decision on the part of government. We are finding now that the contracts for delivery were open-ended contracts which require us to be able to deliver but don't require the Japanese to take from those mines, and that the contracts are negotiated between the Japanese private interests and coal mining private interests. That's fair enough. The only thing is that there is a large amount of public money involved in our commitment to get that coal to Tokyo or wherever it's going to be unloaded, and we find out that really, when you come right down to it, there's no legally binding commitment for the Japanese to take any of that coal at the price that was negotiated originally. Again, that affects the province's ability to pay. That was a discretionary decision.
[4:00]
We talked earlier in question period.... The Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs himself made a discretionary decision to take $4 million — which, Mr. Speaker, would very nearly pay for the human rights branch and the rentalsman's offices — simply for a capital expansion of liquor marketing. That has nothing to do with maintenance, by the way, Mr. Speaker, or running the existing stores; it's just for expansion. Now all of these decisions affect the government's ability to pay.
Over the last two fiscal years prior to this one — and you would remember this, Mr. Speaker — the opposition from time to time moved restraint reductions in certain ministerial discretionary spending, such as in travel, new office furniture and the renting of new space for the expansion of government, which Social Credit was going through at that time, as they had done under every year that they've been in office. Those reductions were only to the previous year's level. They weren't to limit the ministers' ability to travel to New York or wherever they wanted to go. It wasn't to eliminate their ability to do that, only to limit it to the previous level. Those reductions totalled $80 million in each of two years. We all know that none of the government members was interested in that kind of restraint in those two fiscal years. That spending, which went ahead willy-nilly, Mr. Speaker, affected the government's ability to pay profoundly, added substantially to the billion-dollar deficit in current account in '82-83, and added fundamentally to the deficit that we will see in '83-84.
Now, Mr. Speaker, having made these stupid spending decisions, we find that the government is going to severely affect the productivity capacity not only of its own employees but of many people within those agencies outside government — the Crown corporations, the government agencies.
I think. the government should show a little more confidence in people out there. People are prepared to work; they are prepared to increase the productivity in their working places. The Premier and other government apologists have talked about a consumer- and production-led recovery in this province. They've said that that is what we're going to see. I wish they were right. Certainly Social Credit is not going to lead us out of the difficulties that we're in. But we saw, in the latter part of August, a 16 percent reduction in the number of people going to the PNE. Mr. Speaker, you might say that's a subjective statistic. Unfortunately it's not. While we saw an increase in consumer spending, mostly in other parts of Canada in the first half this year, but not so much in B.C. — but we did see some increase in B.C. — as noted by Stats Canada, most of that was a reduction in savings. But what we have going on now, unfortunately — I wish this were not true, but it is — as we near the end of the third calendar quarter in British Columbia is consumer apprehension. People are saving again. They're putting their money into credit unions, into banks, into trust companies, even into insurance policies. They're not investing, and that's one of the factors — only one — affecting the record lows on the Vancouver Stock
[ Page 1989 ]
Exchange right now. People are not investing and they're not spending. Discretionary spending is down drastically. One of the problems you have in any depression or recession — a structural problem, I suppose an economist would call it — is that the people who have money to buy the goods and services that the economy needs to sell to get moving again either don't need those goods and services or they don't want to buy them; they want to sit on their money, they want to sit on their income. The people who desperately need to buy those goods and services, which, if they could afford them would help to get the economy moving, don't have the money.
Unless that velocity of money is increased, unless government takes some initiative, we are in for a long period of depression in this province. It's one thing that big companies understand. All of this affects the government's ability to pay, and why they felt persuaded to bring in a bill like Bill 11. One thing large companies understand is that if consumers can't afford to buy their product, they don't sell any. A company like the major corporate citizen in my riding — Cominco — understands that if they don't directly sell manufactured goods.... The major buyers of their refined non-ferrous metal are the automobile industry and other North American manufacturing, and manufacturing in Europe and Japan. They know that if people cannot afford to and do not buy let's just take automobiles — they don't do very well.
The government doesn't seem to be concerned about that, though, Mr. Speaker. They do not seem to be concerned about consumer confidence. They do not seem to be concerned about the 250,000 public sector people who right now, even though they may not be individually directly threatened as far as they know, are being very careful how they spend and how they invest. They're not investing and they're not spending. And many private sector people, even private sector small businessmen who are in a good revenue and cash flow situation, also are wondering what's going to happen to their retail sales level. They're wondering about consumers, whether they are going to continue to be able to spend. So they're not expanding or spending. They're just hanging on and surviving, even if they're in a profit situation.
Yes, we on this side oppose borrowing, we oppose deficits, and we are in favour of restraint; but there are a great many ways of alleviating this situation which Social Credit has led us into in the province of B.C., other than the methods of the government.
Mr. Speaker, we have seen a real drop in consumer spending; a real loss of 3 percent since 1981. I know in dollars it's up slightly, but we have still seen a real drop. The government is going to have to recognize that it cannot encourage recovery by simply bashing the public sector. Removing any preferences, yes, but not simply by bashing it. I would like to see the government take some initiative to increase revenues, to improve its ability to pay; some initiative, especially with our export industries — all of which are privately owned, I think — so that they can become more competitive in international markets. More production by our industries, especially more exports by our export industries, would unquestionably increase the government's ability to pay.
To say there are no markets out there for certain of our products is foolish. Obviously there are markets for all products that we produce; it's just that in many cases the price is too low for people to be competitive. I haven't heard of any initiative by the government to help any industry become more competitive. They agreed not to increase the water licence royalty as much — not to not increase it at all, or to cut it back, but not to increase it as much as they were going to. And they call that an initiative to help our export industries. The minister knows full well that the B.C. gross provincial product fell by 8 percent in 1982 and we'll be lucky if it goes up or recovers a quarter of that — 2 percent — in 1983.
Mr. Speaker, why do we need these kinds of powers that put our public sector corporations at both a productivity and a competitive disadvantage with companies in the private sector? It makes no sense. I suppose we could read into the record here long sociological and labour-relations tomes by people with PhDs after their names, or long experience in negotiation, saying that when people live under a cloud of apprehension and insecurity, when their morale is low, they are not nearly as productive. The Minister of Forests likes to say that smaller isn't necessarily better. I agree with him. But what is important in any corporation, any organization, and in any government agency, is that people have some faith in what they're doing; that they know the government believes in them. To tell those people they have to be second-class citizens in wages — arbitrarily enforced by the cabinet — to tell those people they have to be second-class citizens in working conditions, is not conducive to productivity within the public sector area. I'm especially concerned with outside the provincial service.
I have an analogy I would like to use. A few years ago — only four or five years ago, as a matter of fact — the United States government, in an attempt to cut deficits, cut maintenance programs on their highway system. The interstate system — a very good system, as I'm sure you know — cost billions of dollars, but it returned billions of dollars in economic activity; it generated wealth. After only a few years' lack of maintenance, that system has deteriorated to the point where bridges are unsafe. Special taxes are needed on gasoline and the sale of trucking and automotive equipment — and even then it barely scratches the surface — to bring that system back to where it is equal to the productive capacity of the United States transportation system.
Mr. Speaker, because we are in a short-term economic hiatus, are we to make our entire public service, including Crown corporations like B.C. Rail and B.C. Hydro, less productive, less efficient? Are we to disregard the capital resource, which is the human capital? Once again, one could read very scholarly, philosophical discussions into the record here about how, when we think of capital and development and resources, we always think of the hardware, and neglect our human capital. Let's keep what we have, and let's keep those tens of thousands of very fine people in the public service in British Columbia. When I say "public service, " I'm referring to transit and rail and ICBC and Hydro — all of those agencies that are never talked about when we get into this so-called restraint legislation.
I hope the minister has been listening, because the compensation stabilization program, while it has a nice, high sounding name, in fact is part of a cutback program that gives people in the public sector in this province — the entire quarter of a million of them — and their families fewer rights than they would have if they had no union but worked in the private sector. That's not the direction that the rest of North America is going; that's not the direction that the rest of the free world is going.
I leave the minister with one thought. I think his counterpart, the Treasurer in Ontario, which is a Conservative province, was recently asked what he thought about the legislative package. He said: "It scares the hell out of me."
[ Page 1990 ]
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The second member for Vancouver Centre.
[4:15]
MR. MOWAT: Little Mountain.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Excuse me, hon. member.
MR. MOWAT: I know why you said that, Mr. Speaker: because the members for Vancouver Centre are not often in the House.
Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to support Bill 11. I'll be very brief, because I don't think it takes very long for one to see the value of this bill that deals with the stabilization of compensation in the provincial public sector.,
DEPUTY SPEAKER: On a point of order, the first member for Vancouver Centre.
MR. BARNES: Mr. Speaker, for clarification, I believe the member who is speaking now should be suspect with respect to the relevance and accuracy of his remarks. I think he just suggested that the members for Vancouver Centre are not in the House. Certainly I am here, and if I am here then that member's comments from now on have to be suspect.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, hon. member. I think that was a facetious point of order at this time.
MR. MOWAT: I was talking about 5 o'clock in the morning when the vote was taken. They were both missing, Mr. Speaker.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Would the member carry on with Bill 11.
MR. MOWAT: On February 18, 1982, the Premier announced that a compensation stabilization program that would encourage productivity and restraint would come into being. This program takes into consideration the public sector employer's ability to pay, but above all it considers the ability of the taxpayer to pay and pay and pay and pay. On May 5 the voters said they wanted no more open-ended increases year after year.
It is interesting to note that 93 percent of all the plans referred to the commissioner's office came within the guidelines. The compensation stabilization program has averaged increases of 3.63 percent, down from 17 percent. The program is working now, and working well.
It should also be noted that not one of the plans that came before the commission was referred to the mandatory regulations section of the act. The regulations that we see now before us will regulate the compensation range from a plus 5 to a minus 5. Because the compensation stabilization program is working, it will be extended indefinitely, to the benefit of the taxpayers of this province, who continue having to pay their taxes.
It should be noted that the annual yearly increments that are often given automatically to many public sector employees will now be included in the annual allowable yearly increase. I believe the public often does not realize that when a public sector employee is granted an increase in his wages, it is on top of what he is receiving yearly as an automatic salary increment.
The compensation stabilization program has been most effective. With the amendments that we see in front of us, the program will be more effective, to the benefit of the taxpayers and the ability of the taxpayers to pay. We have now been sitting in this House for over three months at a cost — or, as some people in the community are saying now, a waste — of approximately $100,000 per day. The majority of the voters in this province said yes to the restraint programs of this government on May 5. If the government were doing wrong in bringing forward these programs — I am sure in my own mind, and I feel very strongly that they are not; I repeat, they are not bringing forward the wrong programs — I'm sure that the voters will decide in the next election.
The money being wasted by the opposition in stalling, filibustering and obstructionist tactics could greatly assist many persons in need. The cost of running this House for the past three months is coming close to $9 million. The net cost is at least $2 million a month that could be given to the needed treasury dollars of the province. This sum that we could save could assist the government in reinstating a number of the grants that have been cut, a number of the programs that have had to be eliminated because of lack of funds. We could stop the continued increasing deficit. We have listened long enough to the opposition, and now I believe it is time for action.
Taxpayers who are contacting me daily are saying: "Get on with it. Save that money you are wasting in Victoria and put it back into programs for the people of this province." We are now hearing from many of the public sector employees who understand the fragile economic condition that British Columbia is in. At this time they want to cooperate with the government restraint programs and request for increased productivity. We hear from them more and more each day. I must say that they are now willing to tighten their belts, like the private sector employer and employee have done for the past years.
I am very proud to speak in support of Bill 11, because we have the support of the majority of the voters and the taxpayers of the province. It is the government's mandate to pass this bill and the other bills that are in front of this House today.
MS. SANFORD: Mr. Speaker, we again hear from the members on the government side about the costs of operating this chamber for any given day, yet the members fail to mention that we have, in this province, a government that is the most expensive and most costly for the taxpayers that this province has ever seen. They have been wastrels from day one. We know about the profligate spending that they have undertaken, and Broadway trips, and expensive wines, and entertaining the Canadian Manufacturers' Association to a little treat — seeing the Lions and the Eskimos play in the new stadium. We have seen them fail in terms of any attempt to diversify the economy, to develop any sort of secondary industry in this province. We have seen them rely entirely on shipping out raw materials in order to bring in revenues to government. They are now allowing the shipment of raw logs at an unprecedented rate, while our people go unemployed, while the budget must have a huge increase to pay for Human Resources expenditures because so many of our people have to turn to welfare. These people get up and talk about the expenditures involved in allowing debate on what is the most repressive package of legislation the province has seen. Not only that, it is a very costly package of legislation, and it is going to cost the taxpayers dearly.
[ Page 1991 ]
If we on this side of the House can make the government change its mind on any of these issues, on any of these bills, then the taxpayers' money will have been well spent in terms of the democratic process and allowing the opposition to bring their views before this government. But the government seems to have taken leave of its senses. It listens to no one. It is determined to centralize, to control, to operate like a banana republic. It has the same kind of leadership and the same kind of deaf ears. Fortunately there is a chamber and there is an opportunity for those of us who are elected to this side of the House to oppose the direction that the government is taking. It is centralist, it is dictatorial, and it's very expensive for the taxpayers of British Columbia.
[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]
We lost our credit rating, which is costing the people of the province a good deal of money — there again because the government has failed to show any leadership or any direction in terms of the development of the economy, the development of secondary industry and the diversification of the economy. They failed, and the people in New York who make the decisions concerning the credit ratings of governments have made that clear to us.
We've never even heard from the Minister of Labour (Hon. Mr. McClelland), who, when he was Minister of Health, undertook a program that failed: namely, the heroin treatment program. We told them then that that program would fail and that it would cost the taxpayers of this province dearly. And it did. It was a complete failure. Has he ever admitted it? Has he ever apologized to the taxpayers of this province?
AN HON. MEMBER: He gave us a gas pipeline to Vancouver Island instead.
AN HON. MEMBER: Or did he?
MS. SANFORD: Well, that's a good question.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. member, we are straying a bit from the principle of Bill 11.
MS. SANFORD: Mr. Speaker, we've just heard about the costs of operating this chamber from the member for Vancouver–Little Mountain (Mr. Mowat). He's talking about the costs, and I'm telling you about the costs of this government to the taxpayers of this province. It's unprecedented. They have incurred $14 billion in debt and they're staying up here talking about the money it costs to operate this chamber for one day. They're a disgrace.
But this bill, along with so many of the other bills that are designed to make government employees feel like second-class citizens and to ensure that they become second-class citizens, is one that we certainly cannot support. There is no doubt that Bill 11 denies the people in the public service the right to collective bargaining. That's very clear, and it doesn't matter what this government says about it; that's what it does. On the one hand we have some people on the government side saying, "Oh, yes, we support collective bargaining; in a free society that should be allowed," and then on the other hand they have a bill that takes away the right of free collective bargaining in this province. There's no doubt about it; that's the outcome of this piece of legislation. Just as on the one hand they're saying, "We will allow locally elected school boards to make decisions about education," they then bring in a bill that says that they won't be making any decisions because they will be making them all here in Victoria. "We in the cabinet will make those decisions with respect to public servants in this province. We will say that we support collective bargaining, but we are the ones who are going to be making these decisions." They are not even going to allow the proper arbitration process to take place. That is interfered with through this piece of legislation as well. So they go through the sham of collective bargaining, the thing ends up in arbitration, and then you bring in rules regarding arbitration, just to ensure that this government will have its way.
I don't know what kind of incentive there will be for the public servants of this province to do the best job they can for government, when time after time this government treats them in the way they do. It's being done in the name of restraint, but we know that government doesn't even know what the word restraint means. We are the ones on this side of the House who led the fight for restraint. Did they listen then? Did they listen two years ago? Did they listen last year? We made all those motions to try to save the taxpayers some money and to try to ensure at the same time that the valuable services to people would not be eliminated. We are the ones who led the fight on restraint in here. Did the government listen? Did they pay any attention? Did they accept even one motion to reduce the cost of ministerial travel or the purchase of office furniture? I tell you, Mr. Speaker, they don't know what restraint means.
[4:30]
The other thing we heard from the member for Vancouver–Little Mountain was: "It depends on the ability to pay." Who determines the ability to pay? The school boards don't determine that. The government, through their centralized legislation, are the ones who are going to determine what those budgets are going to be. They are assuming this authority so they can direct every last thing in this province, and that's why everybody should be worried.
Were the taxpayers approached when some $29 million or $17 million — I can't remember the figure — was awarded to bail out the Whistler developers? What about the taxpayers' ability to pay for the developers up there? Was there any consultation on that? Oh, no, we'll hand over the money to develop Whistler and to ensure that they're okay, but it's okay if the other people of this province are put under the guidelines and legislation of this particular government.
We were told a year ago, prior to an election — very handy, Mr. Speaker — that the government was so concerned about the taxpayer that they were going to put a limit on the amount of increase that Hydro could apply for. But now, suddenly, it's okay for Hydro to have that 6 percent limitation lifted. What about the ability of the taxpayer to pay those increases? Is that of concern to these people? Of course not; the only thing they want to do is attack the working people of the province and promote confrontation. We've seen it time after time. They're hoping for confrontation. They don't want cooperation out of their public service. If they wanted cooperation out of their public service, they wouldn't be treating them in this way: removing collective bargaining, destroying the arbitration process, and telling them at the same time not that this is for a two-year period, as we were told by the Premier a couple of years ago, but that this is forever — the same way as the Minister of Education will
[ Page 1992 ]
forever set the budgets for school boards. There's no sunset clause; it's forever.
MR. HOWARD: They might lift it just before the next election.
MS. SANFORD: We know what they're up to. They applied the 6 percent limitation on Hydro just before the last election, but now that the election's over that has been removed.
Have the taxpayers been asked: "Can you afford the ads we are going to be putting on the television and on radio in order to sell this package that no one has accepted at this stage"? What about the taxpayers' ability to pay for those ads? Is it not better that we ensure that the services of the province are retained — they've all been removed in the name of restraint — that people are not made second-class citizens, and that we eliminate that kind of expenditure? How can those back-benchers sit there and accept money being spent on advertising while we're discussing so-called restraint legislation?
It's not very often that we hear any opposition whatsoever from those back-benchers; they were trained very quickly by the Premier. We know how quickly the Premier trains his dogs. It doesn't take him long to train back-benchers, either, because not one of them is speaking out and saying, on behalf of their constituents, that it's better to provide services to their constituents than it is to advertise on TV a package of unpalatable pieces of legislation.
The lands branch in my constituency is going to be closed. I want to pose a question to the government members over there. Many of the people who utilize the services of the lands branch in Courtenay — and there are many of them; they're a very busy office in the courthouse in Courtenay — do not have the ability to pay for a trip to Victoria and to stay overnight in a hotel room in order to meet with lands branch people down here and have problems resolved. They talk about ability to pay and restraint and compensation stabilization, but at the same time they are placing — on my constituents, at least, and I think on every other MLA's constituents, because the lands branches are closing down all over the province.... They say — and it's typical of Social Credit — that if you have lots of money, if you're quite wealthy, then it won't hurt you too much to travel to Victoria; in fact, it might make a nice outing to come down to Victoria, stay overnight and meet with lands branch officials in order to resolve whatever problems you may have with the lands branch. But those people who don't have the money, who have already had removed many of the services that they relied on such as legal aid, are given no opportunity. What about their ability to pay? That's not considered by this government at all. The moves that they are making are very costly to everyone, but those who can afford to pay don't feel the pressure nearly as much as those people who don't have the funds in order to make up for the services that this government has removed.
[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]
Mr. Speaker, one of the things that the government keeps talking about in relation to this particular piece of legislation is productivity, yet I have not heard one of the members on the other side define productivity in so many areas of the public service. For instance, what does the Minister of Finance mean in terms of productivity in the school system? I'm confused about that. Is there increased productivity in the school system if the teachers have classes of 40 or more? Is that how you increase productivity in the school system? Or is there increased productivity if the teacher marks more papers than he marked last year? Is that increased productivity? Or is it if the teacher gives out more A's than he did last year? Maybe that's what the government means by increased productivity. The government has failed to define what they mean by increased productivity, and they are certainly not going to receive the best possible service from the public service when they introduce legislation of this type. What kind of incentive do the public employees have when they are kicked in the teeth time and time again by a government that wants to make them second-class citizens, by a government that invites confrontation and by a government that is a very costly government for everybody in the province including those working in the public service.
The public servants of this province were very concerned about the downturn in the economy and the drop in the revenues that were coming in to government. They accepted a three-year contract that gave them a 6 percent increase for each of the three years. Yet at the same time those members were facing increases in their mortgage rates going up as high as 18 percent, 19 percent and higher. They were facing increased costs in hydro, bills, in fuel bills and in every other avenue — every expenditure that those employees had to make was going well above the 6 percent level. Yet they accepted that contract in the interests of the province, because they were assured that this was a temporary aberration. When the compensation stabilization program was introduced, they were also assured by the Premier that it was only for two years. They expect, on that side of the House, to have cooperation and good service provided by those employees. What's happening at the same time? They are asking us in the name of restraint to accept this unpalatable package of legislation. They say we can't provide services to the disabled because we don't have the money. They say we can't have a human rights branch because we don't have the money. We can't have a human rights commission because we don't have the money. We can't have a rentalsman's office because we don't have the money. We can't have legal aid services because we don't have the money. We can't continue to fund transition houses because we don't have the money. We can't improve day-care services, we can't provide counsellors who assist in keeping families together, we can't provide a child-abuse team because we don't have the money.
At the same time we find this government entertaining those people of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, and we read in the paper that the Canadian Manufacturers' Association at the moment is doing quite nicely. The profits are up considerably, according to the business section of theVancouver Province of Monday, September 26. We can afford to entertain those in the Canadian Manufacturers' Association at a football game in a facility that's built at a cost of $60,000 to the taxpayers, but we can't afford the $50 a month that would go to the disabled under the work incentive program.
MR. SPEAKER: Hon. member, with all due respect, I would suggest that simply to relate expenditures throughout other avenues of government does not make those discussions in order while referring them to the bill at hand. I'm sure if the member extended that argument she would realize that
[ Page 1993 ]
every conceivable aspect of government could be covered under any specific bill. I would therefore ask, hon. member, that remarks be made relevant to the bill before us.
[4:45]
MS. SANFORD: Thank you for your guidance, Mr. Speaker.
I'm trying to give the Minister of Finance a bit of assistance, because he's talking about the taxpayers and the ability to pay. I'm trying to suggest that there are ways that he could save money, and there are also ways where more money could be collected to help provide the services which this government says it can't afford. They don't have to turn the people working in the public service into second-class employees.
We see that the banks are doing quite well. It seems to me that if the Minister of Finance is concerned about not getting enough revenues, there is an area that I should bring to his attention. In the first nine months of last year the banks showed a 29 percent increase of $1,389 million in their profits. With all of those profits and assets there is an ability to pay. Surely the minister can come up with some system, when people who are disabled can't get $50 a month and the bankers of the world and those involved in the banking system are making a profit in nine months of $1,389 million. If the Minister of Finance were to consider that kind of increase and look at their ability to pay, perhaps he would reduce the number of cuts that he's had to make to people like the disabled, the seniors and children who are being abused in our society, and who must now all go without services because he says the taxpayer doesn't have the ability to pay. That's one of the reasons that we have this bill — its ability to pay.
It seems to me that there are lots of people with the ability to pay, and there are a lot without. You're the ones who are charging those who don't more than you're charging those who do. Just look at these bank profits. How much are we getting out of those banks to help finance our programs? The only thing they want to do, Mr. Speaker, is to ensure that their friends are taken care of, that they're royally entertained by the Canadian Manufacturers' Association and that the banking system is left untouched. The banking system has lots of assets — no problems there. They have lots of ability to pay. At least that's what the Province says.
It turns out that one of the reports issued by the banks had a mistake in it, and this mistake was a mere $3 billion, less than 1 percent of the assets of the banks, which now total $364 billion.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. Hon. member, again....
MS. SANFORD: I'm trying to assist the Minister of Finance.
MR. SPEAKER: I appreciate that, hon. member, and I'm sure the minister appreciates it. But, hon. member, the Compensation Stabilization Amendment Act, 1983, does not give an hon. member licence, I would suggest, to go into a discussion on the merits or otherwise of the banking system. While touching on a matter briefly in an argument, it would not allow the member — again with due respect — to continue in that particular vein. I would ask the member to bring her remarks more to bear on the second reading.
MR. HOWARD: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, one of the principal points of Bill 11 is that it seeks to put into the act something called the purpose of the act. That is pretty fundamental when you outline what the purposes are. One of them is to ensure that the paramount consideration for determining compensation is the public sector employer's ability to pay. My colleague for Comox is saying that here we have a group of institutions called banks, which last year the government felt disposed to impose a tax upon, but they have not done so this year. I think she is arguing that it may not be necessary to embrace the full principle of the bill if you could find sources of revenue elsewhere. She is using that argument as a countering force to what the principle of this bill states.
MR. SPEAKER: The points made by the member for Skeena have some merit. Nonetheless, I must again advise that to carry the discussion to a full-fledged discussion of the banking system and taxation thereof would allow us to canvass the entire spectrum. I appreciate that from the hon. member.
MS. SANFORD: Mr. Speaker, I accept your advice. I have only one more comment to make.
One of the reasons the assets of those banks are as high as they are is that the Premier of this province went to Ottawa to urge that the interest rates be raised. He didn't think then about the ability of the taxpayer to pay those huge interest rates. That is one of the reasons those kinds of assets and profits are being revealed at this time. The government has said we must all be in favour of restraint. We have said over and over again that of course we are in favour of restraint; we are the ones that urged it three years ago, and they didn't listen. If only they would exercise some restraint, then I think the government might obtain some credibility with us on this side. But they have no restraint; they have no idea what the word means. Look at the fact that they would appoint Tony Tozer to a position as government agent, at a huge increase in his salary. That is not restraint.
AN HON. MEMBER: Come on now!
MS. SANFORD: Listen, we are talking about compensation stabilization, we are talking about the public sector, and it should have been the public sector, the civil service commission of this province, that made that choice. It should not be the government or the Premier that makes that kind of choice. We have provisions under the civil service for employees who are dedicated, who have worked hard for this government, who have tried to obtain a position, such as a government agent and are being shunted aside. At the same time, they are told they have to go under this compensation stabilization program.
MR. SPEAKER: Hon. member, the Chair has requested on two occasions that the member return to the principle of the bill. The Chair has advised that the debate currently engaged upon by the member does not fall within the confines of second reading of the bill before us. I again advise the member of the same situation. Hon. member, you have been a member of this House for a sufficient time to recognize yourself that the admonishments of the Chair are actually due in this case to the member's own remarks, and at this point I would ask the member to return to the Compensation Stabilization Amendment Act.
[ Page 1994 ]
MS. SANFORD: I have to disagree with you, although I have to accept what you are telling me. If you are not going to allow me to advise the Minister of Finance about finances, when this whole bill is based on finances, then, Mr. Speaker, I shall take my seat.
MR. KEMPF: On a point of order, I stand on standing order 42, which says in part that no member may speak twice to a question except in explanation of a material part of his speech which may have been misquoted or misunderstood. I feel that the member for Rossland-Trail (Mr. D'Arcy) misunderstood what I was saying when replying to what I said in debate this afternoon. He said: "At no time did the NDP make a deal with labour." I have in my hand a document — in fact it is a newsletter — called On The Level, from a building trades union of the province of British Columbia, that was mailed on April 14, 1983, to all of the membership....
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. Hon. member, clearly at this time the Chair must advise the member that to seek the floor under standing order 42 for the purpose of admitting what is in fact new information.... Also, the time to raise any such objection is at the conclusion of the member's speech. Inasmuch as there has been an intervening speaker — namely, the member for Comox (Ms. Sanford) — the Chair would find it difficult at this time to admit the argument of the member.
MR. KEMPF: Mr. Speaker, on the same point of order, it's certainly new information. Although I realize that you won't let me read the document in the House — I'll table it with the House — it certainly points out that the NDP did make a deal with labour prior to the 1983 election.
MR. MICHAEL: Mr. Speaker, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to take my place in the debate on this bill. The continued obstruction that we're receiving from the opposition is disappointing to me, holding up the process of democracy in this House and putting forward a tremendous number of fabrications regarding the things that happened in this province in the last year or two.
I look back in the records and think of the policies and programs put forward by this party prior to and during the election campaign, and I wonder where the opposition get the evidence, the facts, to cause them to say that we didn't level with the people, that we didn't give the people all the facts about the type of legislation we're now seeing brought forward in British Columbia. Just going over the record for a few minutes and thinking back over the last couple of years, mainly over the last nine or ten months, the kinds of decisions that this party, this government, told the people of British Columbia about and announced prior to election day on May 5.... It's quite an impressive list.
I see that the government announced the cancellation of the recreation facilities fund for the time being. There would be no more funds spent under that program. It was a substantive announcement, one that no doubt could have brought this party some backlash from the people who are interested in those types of facilities. Nonetheless, we knew that times were tough, and that restraint was necessary, so we made the announcement. We further announced that the renter's tax credit would be discontinued for the time being. Also, the tax credit to seniors was withdrawn. The dental care plan, as announced at one time, was put on the back burner. We announced and took a very strong position, one well known to all citizens in British Columbia, regarding the compensation stabilization program. It's interesting that the Leader of the Opposition, at a very famous meeting in the Kootenays, announced he was going to scrap that program. If any single event during that election campaign put the nail in the coffin of the opposition, it was that announcement by the Leader of the Opposition. I believe it was about the second Thursday of the campaign.
[5:00]
We went on to say, and representatives of this party throughout the province went on to say, that there would be significant reductions in the public service. There would be more downsizing of government. Those are the kinds of promises we made to the people of British Columbia. We further told them that a lot of tough decisions that would have to be made once this government was returned to power on May 5.
Mr. Speaker, I think of all those things that we announced prior to May 5, and then I come down to the Legislature and sit in this parliament and listen to the members of the opposition talking about the surprises, about how we didn't tell the people this and we didn't tell the people that. What I'm hearing amazes me.
A lot has been made in the last couple of days about the newspaper survey over the past weekend — the fact that restraint was very strong in the minds of the people of British Columbia but that they didn't like the method. Perhaps the simplest analogy I could use would be to compare what the provincial government is doing, in paring down its expenses, to what a family would do, a family that hasn't got enough income to meet the outflow. Perhaps a family, in discussing that type of problem, might say: "Well now, look, we've got to put the vacation aside this year. We've got to cut down on the kids' allowance." Maybe the wife of the breadwinner may have to say: "I'll cut down on my hairdresser's expenses." I could well imagine a survey being taken later among that family saying, "What did you think of the restraint program," and all the members saying: "We think it was necessary, it's great, and it has really worked." "What do you think about the method?" The wife would say: "I think the idea was good, but this business of cutting down on the hairdresser once a week.... I don't like that very well, so I vote against the method." The kid, who used to get $5 a week and was cut down to $3, would vote that he didn't like the method very well, but the restraint program was sure necessary. When it came to the father, who used to be in the habit of going down after work on Friday and picking up a box of beer for the weekend, and watching his television football games and what have you, maybe he had to cut that down to a sixpack to meet the restraint program, and he didn't particularly like the method either.
So I think, when we look at that survey done by the major newspaper in the province of British Columbia, I really believe that this government and this party are on the right track. I think that the moves we have made are necessary. I think they're being more than welcomed by the province of British Columbia. I think we've been elected to do a job. I think we should get on with the job of doing that job, and I would call upon the opposition to please have a look in the mirror and think twice about this continued filibustering and this obstruction that you're putting forth in this parliament, with speaker after speaker from the opposition taking up their full 40 minutes until the light comes on. Members on this side
[ Page 1995 ]
of of the House are taking 5, 10 or 15 minutes to make their point. Let's get on with the job of building British Columbia.
MR. LOCKSTEAD: My poor microphone is trembling in terror here as I get up to speak, but I do want to speak on this bill.
I want to make a couple of observations about the remarks of the two previous speakers. The member for Shuswap-Revelstoke referred to this debate as a filibuster, but it is my understanding that every member of this House has the right to get up and speak on any bill or any section or any amendment thereto. That's democracy. Closure is not democracy. Closure is a suspension of the parliamentary right. Our members do have the right, as does every member on the government benches, whether it be treasury or back bench, to get up and voice their views and thoughts on behalf of their constituents on any piece of legislation.
While I'm on this topic — I do want to get to Bill 11, and I will get to it eventually, but you've allowed a great deal of latitude to other speakers in discussing what is happening here in the Legislature and remarking about the last election — the Social Credit members are in fact, speaker after speaker, refighting the last provincial election. That's what they're doing in this House under this bill. I can't believe it. I've said this before, but I'll say it again, looking the Minister of Finance right in the eye: the Social Credit Party did not tell the people of this province the truth in that last election campaign. In fact, they denied....
Interjection.
MR. LOCKSTEAD: No, Mr. Minister, hear me out for a second. I can think of two specific items offhand: at one point during that election campaign your party denied the charge that there would be increased user fees for health care. You were elected to power, and user fees for health services were, in fact, increased.
AN HON. MEMBER: You're on another bill.
MR. LOCKSTEAD: I know, Mr. Minister, but I'm taking the same — and in fact a great deal less than the same latitude that was allowed some of your members.
Another specific item was tax increases. The documentation has been read out.... This does relate to the bill, because this is where the money's going, believe it or not; this is where some of the funds have gone or didn't come from, etc., and why this anti-labour legislation is before us today. But I'll get to that in a minute. That government — and we have the documentation, which I'm sure you've heard a number of times in this House — said during and prior to that last election campaign that there would be no tax increases in this province if they were re-elected.
Interjection.
MR. LOCKSTEAD: Well, just look over the treasury benches. Pick a name; it doesn't matter which.
The fact is that they did say this, and the fact is that we had an increase in the sales tax very quickly — as of July 5, the day the budget was brought down. There were also increases in tobacco and alcohol taxes, user fee increased and increases in other areas. I don't have a list in front of me because I'm not talking about those things this afternoon.
One last item, dealing with this chamber: I resent the fact that Social Credit member after Social Credit member gets up in this House and says that we are costing the taxpayers of this province hundreds of thousands of dollars — in fact I heard one member say "millions of dollars" — by debating legislation in this House. I resent that. First of all, it is not true. This House is in operation, Mr. Speaker, as you well know, whether the House is in session or not. Extra staff have to be hired and there are costs involved, but it's not millions of dollars, and that money could be going into Bill 11, which we are discussing in a minute. But I did want to get that on the record.
MR. SEGARTY: How much is it?
MR. LOCKSTEAD: The member for somewhere — East Kootenay, right — keeps asking how much it is. I don't know how much it is. Is it $20,000? Is it $30,000 a day? But I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, if it was $100,000 a day or if it was in the millions — one of the members over there, I forget which one, used that figure during the course of a speech over there — what price democracy? Are they telling us that we should let all of this oppressive, restrictive legislation through this House without debate, and pervert the democratic system? Is that what they are telling us? I'm afraid it is. That's what they're telling us.
On Bill 11, what I am suggesting to you is that you can't put a price on democracy. If it wasn't for the parliamentary system, which is abused here from time to time by closure and these kinds of things, we would have anarchy in the streets. We could have a totalitarian state — a fascist state. I'm afraid we're heading toward a fascist state now. I seriously think we are under this government.
MR. SEGARTY: That's why you're on the A team.
MR. LOCKSTEAD: They are trying to figure out what team I'm on. I'll tell those members what team I'm on: the team of the New Democratic Party of British Columbia and Canada.
MR. REID: Is that the losing team?
MR. LOCKSTEAD: That's a winning team, my friend.
Bill 11 is part of a package. It is difficult to discuss this bill without referring to other pieces of anti-people, antilabour legislation before us, some of which we have discussed at some length and are going to discuss some more. But this bill cannot be debated in isolation. The government quite obviously had its mind made up after it won the last election, and on the advice of Mr. Walker and company from the Fraser Institute, cleverly and fiendishly designed a program to take on the working people — in effect, the unemployed people — of this province.
Why? Through a series of bills — not just this one bill, which in effect takes away the bargaining rights of a whole group of public sector employees working for the people of this province and our society.... Why would the government intentionally set out to provoke the total labour movement of British Columbia — the working people of this province? They must have had a strategy. Were they antilabour? During the election campaign they didn't say they were anti-labour, anti-working people. In fact they required the votes of the working people, and a lot of those unionized
[ Page 1996 ]
working people and non-unionized working people must have voted for the government or they wouldn't be sitting there today.
So why did they set out intentionally and fiendishly to undermine and take away the hard-fought-for rights of public sector employees, in this case, and all working people in the province? I suspect, as an aside, that we have not seen the end of this type of legislation. I think we will, in effect, see legislation brought before this House attacking the private sector in some ways — the private sector is being attacked by this government in many ways now — a hard-core bill taking away the hard-won rights of working people in this province.
Mr. Speaker, what worries me a bit is that I don't think that some of the government members have any idea of what it means to be an ordinary working person out on a job working in a mine or in a logging camp — experiences that I'm familiar with, like those kinds of things. I don't think they actually know what the bargaining process is or what taking an active part in the union really involves.
MR. KEMPF: I'll put my record against yours any day: day for day and hour for hour.
MR. LOCKSTEAD: It's all right, Mr. Speaker. I know that member very well, and once in a while I have a conversation with him out in the hall. He says, for the sake of Hansard, that he'll take me on woring, day for day, with anybody else and match my record. Well, I'm not here to discuss records: how many tons of iron ore or limestone I was able to put out in a day. I'm not here for that purpose; I'm here to discuss Bill 11. But I want to tell that member that if he is right in what he says, that if he was a working man and did take part in union activities and knows what the bargaining process is all about, he wouldn't make those kinds of remarks across this floor.
I want to talk a bit about the process and about how Bill 11 undermines the process. I also said the same thing about Bills 6, 20.... No, I'm just being a little funny with Mr. Speaker. He's giving me a bad time. I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, a bit about the bargaining process. Most of us in the kinds of jobs that we worked on belonged to the union. Many of us took an active part in union activities, the least active part of which you can take — as with any organization — by not going to meetings. You only go once every year or every second year to vote yes or no on your contract proposal. The majority of members go to meetings and vote once a month or every second month, whenever the meetings may be held. For the majority of members that is generally the limit of their part in union activities. Then there's another group, which will not only go to the meetings but will take part in safety committees and shop steward groups, and will go to conventions as delegates and those kinds of things. Many in that particular group take part in the bargaining process.
[5:15]
When you sit down at the table at bargaining time, once every year or once every second year, at some point you finally reach agreement with an employer. There's more than just the signing of a contract. There's a certain amount of trust that takes place between the two parties.
[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]
We're talking about the bargaining process and the lack and curtailments — just to bring you up to date, Mr. Speaker — of rights under Bill 11. So I'm on the bill. I had a little trouble with the last Speaker from time to time, but I'm okay now. Actually I shouldn't be smiling and making jokes, Mr. Speaker, because this is really serious stuff. It really is. We're talking about the curtailment of rights of the working people. Particularly under this bill, a certain class or part of the 250,000 public sector employees in this province is being affected by this legislation, and that's serious stuff.
As I was saying, a certain amount of trust has to take place. When you are sitting at the bargaining table — and bargaining is exactly that, bargaining — the union may come in, as a result of their conventions and individual union meetings, for a 10 percent wage increase — this is their original bargaining position, not the final one. They want some added benefits, depending on the nature of the job: clothing allowance, more vacations, better pensions, etc. So you bargain. The employer comes in and perhaps he'll make a counter-offer; in fact, in these trying times many employers are coming in to the bargaining table to bargain away rights that have been won in the past. Even that is fair enough. We don't like it but it's fair enough. It's called bargaining. From that point on over a period of time — sometimes weeks or months — a position is reached. But during that bargaining process the negotiators for the union may say: "All right, we're prepared to take three weeks' vacation with pay rather than four weeks' vacation with pay, providing you will give us something else in return or concede a point here." This process goes back and forth, and there's a certain amount of trust involved.
What we have in Bill 11 is what the government, the cabinet, could not resolve at the bargaining table after the public sector employees had given up certain other things over the years to reach the point that they are at today, which is not as great as some of the members over there think it is. I don't know if they've ever looked at one of the BCGEU contracts, but I can tell you that some of the pay scales are not that great for a large proportion of those public sector employees. I'm not going to discuss the individual pay rates, because I could be here all day.
What I am saying is that what the government could not achieve at the bargaining table, they are now going to attempt to achieve through Bill 11, Bill 3 and other bills which we're not discussing at the present time, in terms of side-stepping the collective bargaining agreement — signed in good faith, I presume, at that time by the government, and I hope by the members of the BCGEU and other government sector employees, ferry workers, Hydro, you name it; all the people who will be affected under this bill. The government is doing that under this bill — and this is extremely serious — it is doing it by legislation brought in arbitrarily without consultation by that government. That's what the government is doing here.
Furthermore, one large component of public sector employees will be entering into bargaining again within a few days. How in the world can any negotiator sit down with the Government Employees' Relations Bureau and bargain in good faith, with this bill and others hanging over their heads? Knowing that even if they should, by some miracle, reach agreement with the government, the employers, on certain percentage wage increases, or whatever.... How do they know that's what they've got? They simply don't know under this bill. They can't.
The principle of this bill gives the government — the cabinet, in effect, Treasury Board; or the Premier, if you want
[ Page 1997 ]
to get to a smaller group — the right, through this so-called restraint act.... And it's not restraint at all. It's an act that takes away hard-fought-for and hard-won rights. How can they possibly bargain with this bill hanging over their heads? If you were an employer in the private sector, particularly a large employer, a multinational corporation, and you have a full-time bargaining agent.... They have people who go around and bargain with components all over their huge nation-wide or even continent-wide companies. In one case in which I was involved we had a person come in from Denver to bargain with our little local. Those people make their living bargaining the best contracts they can for the company they represent. We had a name for those people; it's unparliamentary so I won't use it here. They get paid a good salary to bargain the best contract possible for their company.
If we had such a bill, and I was in the position of bargaining for a large multinational corporation, I would listen and be polite and say: "These are your initial demands and these are ours." In the final analysis, after six weeks, two months, four months, or perhaps even after arbitration I'd walk in and say: "Look, you take what we give you, because we have this government legislation, passed in Victoria, giving us the right, in effect, to do whatever we want with your contract, your working conditions — everything."
In fact, this bill is retroactive, in a sense, if you really go through it. I'm sure that will come out in section-by-section reading. When you've completed your bargaining, these 240,000 public sector employees in the province at the present time will not know what they've settled for, if anything. How can you bargain in good faith under those types of conditions? The fact is, you can't. As I said before, to put it in a nutshell, what the government could not win and agree to at the bargaining table they have taken arbitrarily by the suppressive legislation called Bill 11.
I did want to touch on a couple of other items. It may not have been necessary for the government to bring in this type of legislation in the first place. Before I say that, I just want to say this on the record — my part of Hansard — although it has been said before. While the government is bringing in this type of legislation, it is a fact that some of its own friends and political appointees have received pay increases. In one case, I have a newspaper record of an increase of over 50 percent for a person who used to work in the precincts of this building, in the Premier's office. In another case, while they call it a promotion, the gentleman was still doing the same job and he got quite a healthy pay increase. It says here: "Bennett's Aide Has Pay Trimmed." Mr. Peck did rule that Mr. Bailey's salary be reduced to — I don't know how he could survive — $43,604 from $45,000 — exclusive, of course, of perks under the executive plan. I hope he is not feeling the pinch too badly. In the meantime, while our public services are being cut back by this government, reduced, and in some cases eliminated.... I could go on about the rentalsman's office, the Human Rights Commission and all of these things. Legal aid, we find out, is being reduced by $2 million in difficult economic times; I don't know what these people are going to do. At the same time the government is centralizing power unto itself.
A minute ago I started to talk about the reason we are in this position today. When we left office in 1975 — we were defeated in that election — there was a deficit of under $4 billion; I don't recall the exact figure. Excluding the Crown corporations of this province, there was no direct debt to the government. In fact, there was a surplus in the treasury of approximately $500 million. I have the exact figure, but I don't have it here; that is close enough for these purposes. The indirect debt through the Crown corporations of this province was under $4 billion. We now have a debt in this province, as of last year, of $14.1 billion. In addition to the government's direct debt to the province, excluding the Crown corporations, there are deficits which may amount to approximately $3 billion. They probably won't. We have made charges — and I think they will be substantiated next year when the Minister of Finance brings in his budget — that he has once again underestimated revenues and overestimated expenditures to make the government look good in the next fiscal year. Nonetheless, let's say, as a rough figure, that a $17 billion to $17.5 billion debt has been put onto the people of this province by this present government. Because of this debt, the government — as any government, of course, would do — has had to look at ways of reducing that debt.
For the record, let me say that no one is against restraint. I didn't talk with anybody in the election campaign who was against restraint. I am not opposed to restraint. Restraint is one thing, but attacking working people, the poor, the people least able to defend themselves, is quite another; removing programs that have absolutely nothing to do with any restraint program is another thing. That is what I am on about at the present time. The government finds it easier to put user fees onto the heads of the working poor, the people who are unemployed. The high rate of unemployment.... B.C.'s economy is certainly not picking up as fast as the rest of Canada — all the rest of Canada. Why? Because of the government program that they have brought in and that we are debating in this House at the present time — that is part of the reason. I absolutely fail to understand why this government campaigned on one platform and is now on another platform to reduce that debt, is picking on people through bills like Bill 11. It won't be Mr. Peck; it will be cabinet, or a portion of cabinet, that will go out once again to the people in the public sector and say: "Look, you have a 3 or 4 or 5 percent wage increase coming. You have bargained that in. But we can't afford to pay you." Those people who are least able to defend themselves are the people the government chooses to pick on first. That is the part I can't understand. Where are their priorities?
[5:30]
At the same time, the government has embarked on some vast, grandiose projects. Let's talk about one that everybody talks about: northeast coal.
Interjection.
MR. LOCKSTEAD: I'm talking about Bill 11 — and where the money's going to come from to pay for some of those projects, where the government expects to get some of the money to pay for those projects. I'm not going to dwell on northeast coal. We're going to be talking about northeast coal a lot in this House, I'm afraid, between now and Christmas. But the fact is that, while the government can arbitrarily go and take away a percentage of whatever pay increase...or other benefits from its own employees under this bill, they're pumping money down the rathole of northeast coal.
Interjection.
MR. LOCKSTEAD: I understand. I'm not going to get into job creation. I just want to make this one statement in
[ Page 1998 ]
terms of northeast coal. It may be a good project, for all I know, 15 years down the road.
Interjection.
MR. LOCKSTEAD: It's good for Alberta, my friend says. But the fact is, according to the minister's own admission in this House, that we first of all have to double the export of coal out of the northeast coalfields to break even — the 7.5 million tonnes contracted for have to double to at least 15 million tonnes a year so that the project can eventually break even over a certain time-frame.
Interjection.
MR. LOCKSTEAD: Yes, you're right. This has not much to do with Bill 11; but in an indirect way it has. I just wanted to get that on the record because, you see, while the government can go and invest public money, our tax money, in these types of projects — and I won't go through the list of projects here now — they can, without consultation....
Who did they consult with on that project? That railroad's got to be paid for, the town has to be paid for — everything. It's a great deal of money. Nonetheless, at the same time, they can bring in a bill like Bill 11 to remove the hard-won rights of working people in this province.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I want to say that in my view.... Gosh, I haven't even used any of this material. This bill is unacceptable, I think, to the people of British Columbia; it's certainly unacceptable to me. But this particular bill is only the tip of the iceberg. The other anti-labour legislation before us — some of which has been debated, some of which has not — will be given good debate in this House, I'm sure. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. I think we're going to see legislation and regulations brought before this House that will attack all of the working people of this province. In the private sector, I think we'll see more restrictive and oppressive legislation brought before this House by this government. They don't care. They have no feeling for the people of this province, the people who elected them. They should be turfed out of office. I'm sure they will be.
MR. PELTON: I'm very pleased to stand and speak on Bill 11, the Compensation Stabilization Amendment Act. I would like to preface what I'm about to say by telling everyone that I'm going to try to tackle this in a completely different way than I think anyone else has done up to this point. I'm going to try to be relevant all the time. What I'm going to discuss — and it's going to take me more than two or three minutes — is bureaucracies as we know them, where they came from, the relationship between bureaucracies and the people, and relationships between governments and the people, in the hope that perhaps, with some reasoned statements, I can convince all the people of this House that they should support this bill.
I'm very much afraid that in their enthusiasm to oppose the government some members of the opposition have lost all sense of perspective on the issue of restraint. We have all heard the terms "Nazi" and "fascist" used, and while it may give vent to the frustrations of those members who use that sort of language, I would suggest it is deeply offensive to members on both sides of this House, particularly those who were around at the time when the world knew the true meaning of those words, and when thousands upon thousands of young Canadians risked and sometimes lost their lives to keep that kind of regime from running amok in the world. So let us hear no more of such hyperbole from those who really should know better. I know they believe that they are fighting for democracy, but so do we.
I have no hesitation at all in saying that elected representatives of the people have an obligation, not merely to hold the political offices to which they were elected, but to govern on behalf of and in the best interests of their electorates. The loss of control of the apparatus of government by democratically elected politicians has very ominous portents for our future. The entrenchment of bureaucracy is a fact of life in every modern government of any size whatever. Likewise, the alienation of the public from the political process grows apace. I cannot believe that these two phenomena are entirely unrelated. The public cannot feel that our democratic system is effective so long as their only choice lies in changing the personalities in government. They must have a real opportunity to change the government as well.
Bill 11, in its principle, aims to effect perhaps the greatest change to government in the history of our province, and, indeed, I would be surprised if it has many parallels in other jurisdictions. Bill 11 says, quite simply, that government must be contained by those simple realities which guide every family, every individual and every business in the private sector.
The Marxists are always very quick to talk of alienation. By that word they mean the loss of identity between workers and their products, the fruits of their labour, which occurred through the herding of large groups of people into dingy factories to perform mind-numbing tasks in a relentlessly bleak work and social atmosphere shaped around the early factory system. Enormous changes occurring in the years since the early Industrial Revolution are now culminating in a workplace revolution of automation which will, in the foreseeable future, entirely eliminate the kind of jobs which Marxists and non-Marxists alike would view as better fit for machines than for living, breathing, flesh-and-blood human beings.
While our technology has today produced better machines to alleviate the alienation created by the early factory system, in the meantime society's major response to the human problems created by urbanization and industrialization has proceeded in the form of state action to protect working people and to make positive improvements in social conditions. That state action was necessary because the structure of an agricultural society's institutions was simply incapable of dealing with the novelty of an industrial urban society. In the past century, after having tom down the edifice of the medieval state which supported but also confined men in a complex network of social classes, ranks, duties and relationships, we have largely retreated from its antithesis, which is the classical liberal laissez-faire system in which pure contract replaced privilege and duty as the basis of social order, and in which the state did not look far behind men's contracts to inquire as to the social circumstances of their formation or the justice of their results. By reacting against the excesses of pure capitalism, however, we have come increasingly to run the risk of constructing a new feudalism in which some whole sectors of society are operating according to laws and principles quite different from those which affect the others.
Too often government bureaucracies have come to resemble feudal court retinues in their seemingly absolute lack of
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accountability to the common man. While erected for noble purposes, these bureaucracies have grown cold and grey, while growing ever yet more daunting and imposing to those poor serfs and peasants who toil to pay the baron his third or more of their incomes. It is really not so much of an irony as it appears if we recall that feudalism itself grew initially as a sort of mutual defence in the anarchistic vacuum that was left by the decay of the Roman Empire. The growth of the positive state has done much to alleviate the negative symptoms of the early phase of capitalism. But insofar as it has constructed a kind of feudal or privileged status for those who operate in the public sector, it has undermined the effectiveness of our democratic system and has spawned a new kind of alienation between the people and the government. This is very dangerous, and when it combines with harsh economic circumstances, we must very seriously consider that the very fabric of our democracy may be at risk.
We have all heard the expressions to the effect that: "It doesn't matter who wins, you politicians are all the same." We know that we are not all the same; these days, perhaps the public knows it too. We certainly know that we do not try to be the same. We sit where we do on the right or on the left because of some considerable differences of opinion which go beyond the personalities of our respective parties. We may even like one another, although we are certainly not expected to admit so too freely. If it is true that the end results of government seem too often more similar than had been intended by those whom the public has chosen, perhaps some of the problem lies in the alienation of parliament from the apparatus of government and in the alienation of the public from the public sector.
Every large organization tends to become bureaucratic in the pejorative sense of that word. I am not rising in support of Bill 11 because I think the private bureaucracies are virtuous and public bureaucracies evil. I do not believe such nonsense. I am rising in support of Bill 11 because I know that historically high levels of competition have undercut the bureaucratic tendency to petrifaction in small business. Somewhat less competitive conditions have eventually caught up to most similar tendencies in large business, particularly in tough times such as those we are just turning the comer on now. Only in government, Mr. Speaker, has the bureaucratic tendency been able to thrive without effective check. Hence the resentment which the public has gradually accumulated towards the privileged position of bureaucracies and their relative insulation from real economic conditions.
Bill 11 is a very important step in breaking down the neo-feudal aspects of the public sector in our province. It aims to put ability to pay and productivity in the key positions in determining remuneration which they have always occupied in the private sector. In my view, public sector employment should be neither a position of such privilege nor of such sacrifice as to engender a sense of unfairness either in the public or among those who serve the public. Some decades ago, Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek wrote a book entitled The Road to Serfdom. The English writer Hilaire Belloc similarly penned, even earlier but on a similar line, a work entitled The Servile State. Each in his own way identified the subtle link between freedom, creativity, spontaneity and the absence of those complex formalities which are the lifeblood of bureaucracy. Each one warned of the day that we would see democracy assassinated, not by the thrust of a bayonet but by thousands of minuscule paper cuts. This bill, then, attempts to reinforce our democracy by removing from public sector bureaucracy those major elements of isolation which have so intensified the growing alienation between the people and their governments around the world.
This is my perspective on this legislation, and it is why I believe this legislation is for and not against democratic principles. It is not clear at this time how soon the tide might shift in our economic affairs sufficiently that we may once again call ourselves prosperous by our own very generous historical standards. When that moment comes, however, I hope that we will not then wind back the clock, as it were, and ignore the lessons of recent years. Bill 11 is an important step in ensuring that our democracy continues to be clearly vital and clearly equitable. I believe that we will look back on it for years to come as a turning point of considerable importance, and I urge all members of the House to support it.
[5:45]
MR. BARNES: In light of the time, I'm not sure how long we're going to go.
I must say, in reflecting on the previous speaker's comments, that he certainly has contributed a thoughtful interpretation of this damnable piece of legislation. Although I was impressed with his presentation, I don't agree that the legislation is going to further the cause of democracy in quite the way that he seems to view it. Nonetheless, it's refreshing to have someone from that side of the House put some thought into the seriousness of the Compensation Stabilization Amendment Act. We on this side of the House are suggesting that the act is anything but a stabilizing influence on the economy, the public sector or the morale of the public.
The remarks of the Finance minister some time ago.... He is hoping that the public sector will voluntarily exercise a sense of responsibility, and that through productivity and their willingness to manage their affairs prudently and do their duty on behalf of the public, keeping in mind the ability of the government to pay their salaries, the compensation stabilization program will be effective and will result in the desired objective of cutting back public sector costs. Nothing could be further from being realistic. This bill, when taken into consideration in tandem with Bill 3, the Public Sector Restraint Act, or the objectives.... The government, through Bill 3, can exercise dismissal without cause — even with cause, because it doesn't matter. In the end the government has the ability to cancel programs arbitrarily, unilaterally or in any other way.
In effect, this bill is one more attempt to demoralize organized labour, to take away rights won at the bargaining table over a long period of time; in fact, to bring those working people to heel at the beck and call of the government, specifically the cabinet. So it's a very sinister statement on the part of the Minister of Finance when he suggests that the objective is to reward productivity and to expect that people will voluntarily accept the dictates of the government through the very narrow, arbitrary reviews of Mr. Peck, who is supposed to be the mediator on behalf of the interests of the people.
Mr. Speaker, these are very hard times. Certainly the government was fortunate in coming up with a concept like restraint. For a political organization to be able to find an attractive expression or a sort of buzzword like "restraint, " and be able to get the support of the prey or victim, so to speak, that the government has as a target, ultimate objective or enemy — those people in the public sector — is, I think, a very clever manoeuvre. Unfortunately, that's what restraint
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has come to mean. I have yet to find anyone on either side of the House, in any walk of life anywhere in the public, who is opposed to restraint. The part that concerns us is that the government can talk about restraint successfully, and no on is going to stand up and say: "We're opposed to restraint." But this has nothing to do with restraint. The point is that there is no relationship between what the government is doing and what it is telling the people it is doing.
The government is making a major attack upon organized labour in this province. It is undermining the very nature of cooperation between working people and management. It is denying people their fundamental rights to bargain collectively. They are going to take away those privileges that they've won over the years, and they want them to voluntarily cooperate with a cabinet that says it will decide what increases they've earned by some kind of abstract notion of productivity. How do you measure productivity when it comes to a human rights worker, for instance — those people who were fired by the Minister of Labour? How do you determine productivity when it comes to those family support workers who were fired, working with abused children and families in need? How do you determine productivity of those people who were volunteering as community involvement workers for $50 a month? They put in something like 20 hours for $50. Are you going to say that they were unproductive? How do you determine it? We don't know how to analyze your thinking, except to say that you are calling everything you do restraint.
We ask you for documentation. We say: "Who have you consulted with?" The Minister of Finance indicates that he has been in consultation with organized labour, that these initiatives were not created unilaterally, that there was cooperation and consultation, and that all parties concerned were involved in this initiative to improve the deficits that we are presently facing in this province. But why is it that we can see no documentation? Why is it that the government has no specific examples of how those cost efficiencies will result? Where will they come from?
It's cynical because at the same time we're asking these questions, we find that certain officers who are political appointees, such as Mr. Bailey in the Premier's office, and others who are apparently going to be subjected to the compensation stabilization program review — that, in fact, has not happened but apparently will be happening at some point.... But I doubt that anyone, including Mr. Ed Peck, will be successful in overruling a decision by cabinet. Certainly the expense accounts of those cabinet ministers are, in effect, not regulated or controlled by Mr. Peck, nor are any other expenditures that they feel they may need, such as the VIP section at B.C. Place Stadium which we talked about the other day. As far as the kinds of pleasures, the kinds of opportunities the cabinet has at a time of restraint are concerned, we have people who are losing their homes. Parents are turning their children over to the welfare system as a result of their inability to pay for them. People in social housing are having to face 20 percent increases on the minimum amount that they pay for their rent. Where is the stabilization program there? Where are the increases through the GAIN act, with respect to the cost of living, which Ottawa provides? How come those are not passed on to the people on social assistance? What kinds of protection are there for those people who are living in apartment buildings that are no longer covered by rent controls, who are facing 30, 40 and 50 percent increases? These are the kinds of things that make it look cynical.
This is why we feel that the real intent of the legislation is to revolutionize relations between workers and management in this province. And this is really just part of the dirty dozen. This is just part of a long-range plan to, once and for all, put in their places those people who think they should have a fair share of the decision-making process in this province. This is not the end by any means. This is only the beginning of the great Social Credit revolution.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to move adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of the House later today.
Motion approved.
Hon. Mr. Gardom moved adjournment of the House.
Motion approved.
The House adjourned at 6:01 p.m.