[ Page 2001 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Compensation Stabilization Amendment Act, 1983 (Bill 11). Second reading.

Mr. Barnes –– 2001

Mr. Campbell –– 2003

Mr. Lauk –– 2004

Hon. Mr. Waterland –– 2007

Mr. Nicolson –– 2009

Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, 1983 (Bill 35). Hon. Mr. Smith.

Introduction and first reading –– 2013

Compensation Stabilization Amendment Act, 1983 (Bill 11). Second reading.

Hon. Mr. Hewitt –– 2013

Ms. Brown –– 2015

Mr. Mitchell –– 2019

Mr. Lea –– 2022

Mr. Rose –– 2026

Mr. Gabelmann –– 2031

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1983

The House met at 7:35 p.m.

COMPENSATION STABILIZATION
AMENDMENT ACT, 1983

(continued)

MR. BARNES: For those of you who did not catch my previous remarks, Mr. Speaker, I would refer you to Hansard of the previous sitting.

Now that I've made my vicious attack, I'm just going to relate the details that concern me with respect to Bill 11, a bill which my colleagues and I will strenuously oppose and will certainly vote against on behalf of those people who still hope there is some semblance of democracy remaining in beautiful British Columbia.

I would just like to remind the House and those members on the government side that in the election campaign the Premier promised to continue wage restraint. There is no sense in which provisions in Bill 11 are a continuation of past wage restraint practices; they represent an evolution of the program in the direction of direct control over wages in the public sector by the cabinet, and they will allow the cabinet to arbitrarily peg anyone's wages within a range of 10 percent surrounding the existing compensation rate. That is, the cabinet will be able to order at will, for any group of employees, a pay cut as great as 5 percent or a wage increase up to 5 percent. Collective bargaining, as it has been known in this province, will cease to exist. Even arbitration, a process renowned by employers and right-wing politicians as a method of resolving disputes without work stoppage, will cease to exist. Any incentive which previously existed in the entire public service sector — that is, some 240,000 employees of the province, its emanations, regions, municipalities and funded agencies— will cease to exist. Kicking people in the teeth in the way proposed by this bill and others recently tabled in the House may be an incentive to many things, but it is not an incentive to work harder or to provide better service.

What are some of the political implications? This bill affects everyone employed by the public in British Columbia. Its effect is not limited to those who have been or will be fired under the guise of restraint. Its effect is extended beyond the two-year period announced by the Premier on February 18, 1982, and reiterated by the Minister of Finance when he tabled the Compensation Stabilization Act on April 13, 1982. The Premier, during his province-wide television address, said the guidelines would be effective immediately and remain in force for a two-year period, with appropriate phase-out to ensure equitable and consistent treatment of all groups. In other words, British Columbians were asked to accept this intervention for a set period of time in the interests of achieving certain goals. At that time the Premier set the guideline at a minimum 14 percent annual increase.

Many people of good will were fooled into supporting the program on the basis of the apparent reasonableness of the Premier's position. The strict two-year limitation was reinforced by the Minister of Finance in his news release on April 13. Recent experience has shown that the government is highly selective in its application of these guidelines, however. The Premier has awarded a salary increase of some 50 percent to Mr. Mike Bailey of his office, through the convenient device of a reclassification and a change in job title. And he has awarded an 18 percent increase to communications adviser Doug Heal through a similar transparent reclassification. I understand that Mr. Peck is looking into these increases, although one has to wonder how far any public servant....

AN HON. MEMBER: He's already approved them.

MR. BARNES: He has approved them, Mr. Speaker. In any event, the cabinet will have the final say on any future increases respecting its friends, regardless of the outcome. In other words. the Premier and cabinet do decide which government employees and senior servants at all levels will be affected by the guidelines, regardless of their employee status. So we are miles and miles apart on the treatment expected for public servants and private friends of the government.

The road to economic recovery in British Columbia has been made more difficult by past failures of government economic policy; wasteful spending and non-productive debt of government and Crown corporations have crippled the ability of the province to lead economic activity. The wholesale privatization and abandonment of government functions proposed in their budget package make the situation even worse. In this atmosphere, economic recovery will require extraordinary effort and cooperation from every sector of society, including those who work for wages, as well as those who own and those who manage their private businesses.

This bill will have precisely the opposite effect. Between the public sector wage controls, the heavy-handed withdrawal of employee rights of the public and private sector and soon-to-be-released Labour Code amendments, suffering is to be imposed on every wage-earner in the province. This includes unionized and non-unionized, public and private sector — you name them; all people who work in this province will be affected. The government may have ruined any chance of close cooperation among all sectors of the economy for a generation or more. This will take more time to heal than is good for our economy. By focusing as much attention as possible on its favorite scapegoat, the public sector, the government hopes the rest of the injury inflicted by its legislative program will be less noticed. British Columbians are learning quickly that the rights of none are secure unless the rights of all are secure. The end of fair, expedient resolutions of human rights violations, landlord and tenant disputes and minimum labour standards is part of the same package as the public sector bashing contained in this bill. The government has made it clear that it is involved in a wholesale attack on the rights of all working people and that it regards each measure as a fundamental key in the entire package.

Most important is the government's insistence on inserting the public sector employer's ability to pay as a paramount consideration for determining compensation. The public sector employer's ability to pay is determined solely by the cabinet and the government. It can, in point of fact, be determined to the last dime by the provincial cabinet, which routinely approves the operating budgets of funded agencies. The government either has, is giving itself, or likely will give itself authority to order the imposition of an operating budget on any institution, The employer's ability to pay is, in this sense, an artificial concept created solely for the purpose of securing cabinet control over the pay envelope of anyone who works in the government. It should be noted that Bill 3 also

[ Page 2002 ]

gives the government separate authority to control the number of employees involved within any public sector employer by the expedient of terminating people without notice and without cause.

[7:45]

One wonders where the wisdom of Solomon is in those people over there, those people who have the great wisdom to know how much every person in the public sector should be paid. Traditionally we have used a system of bargaining which recognizes many and various factors. Certainly the ability to pay is a criterion for compensation and compensation increases. But now the cabinet can order decreases by way of this provision of the act, and, one presumes, increases for political friends of the government as well. If the cabinet can abuse this order-in-council authority to award pay increases to political friends, it can do the same to award groups of employees that support it electorally and in other ways. Similarly, it can punish those it perceives to be its enemies. This is precisely what the government has shown it is prepared to do in the last few days.

The second major principle is indefinite extension of the program. No longer is there light at the end of tunnel or hope that there will be an equal opportunity for everyone to bargain in good faith. The rewritten section 9(2) allows the government to retroactively take back previous pay increases it has awarded under this program and also to keep public sector workers under the stigma and threat of the program for as long as the government feels it necessary.

The third major principle is to remove reasonable limits which presently exist under powers of the commissioner.

HON. MR. WATERLAND: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, I've been watching and listening to the member currently addressing the Legislature, and it seems that it's very seldom that he looks up at the members. I am very suspicious that perhaps that member is reading his speech, and I understand that is not permitted in the Legislature.

MR. SPEAKER: As hon. members are aware, we are allowed to refer to notes, and it is, of course, up to the individual member how copious those notes may be. The member obviously has copious notes.

MR. BARNES: Mr. Speaker, it's kind of late in the evening but the minister should be able to determine whether or not I'm reading. Obviously I'm reading, and I'm very pleased to say that it is relevant and related to the bill. These interruptions are an affront to the people of British Columbia. I think the minister should take his place in the debate when he has an opportunity, and if he needs glasses to determine whether or not someone is reading, I would be glad to assist him. I know where he can get a pair for about $2.50.

HON. MR. WATERLAND: On that same point of order, Mr. Speaker, my apologies to the member. There is no doubt at all in my mind that he is reading his speech, because he has never made so much sense.

MR. BARNES: With that I think we've had a fair exchange, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: I think that's fair, hon. member, and I ask the member to continue.

MR. BARNES: Mr. Speaker, for the benefit of those people who are listening to me and those who read these very relevant remarks dealing with this most onerous piece of legislation, we have certainly tried in good faith to comment objectively on this and not to be given to intemperate comments, as is the case with those people on the other side.

HON. MR. WATERLAND: It's no wonder you're on team C. Go on, read it!

MR. BARNES: I enjoy those members over there. They get twitchy when you start getting to the point.

Section I I of the bill makes the commissioner's decision final. It's not subject to appeal and is necessary to achieve any compensation adjustment. Regardless of any backlog and any delay in approving compensation plans, the commissioner's final, binding determination is required before anything may be done. I would note that under section 25 (2) Mr. Peck's decisions had the effect of a supreme court order, although no appeal was allowed under that section.

[Mr. Parks in the chair.]

Under any collective bargaining situation, or any tribunal which is fair, parties should have the right to submit evidence. They should have that evidence considered, be able to argue their case and appeal an unfair decision. Section I I of this bill provides none of these fundamental rights and freedoms. It is, in this sense, a violation of the principles of fundamental justice. Employees have no procedural rights under this act as amended. Moreover, section 27 of the act already provides that no action for damages ties against the commissioner, the mediator, the registrar or any other employee of the commission.

Clearly, the attempt of this legislation is to make a major step toward the annihilation of collective bargaining in the province. It's quite obvious that the cabinet, in its lack of wisdom, but in desperation to try to crush fair collective bargaining in this province, as well as to demoralize those who would expect fair treatment and those who expect to be represented by people of their choice in a collective bargaining situation.... They find themselves scapegoats of this government that has made no pretence in the past, and I'm sure they will not in the future, to have regard for those people who are wage-earners and those people who are working for a living who do not have the opportunity to develop their own enterprises. They hire those people to work for them as enemies. It is quite clear that the creation of the Compensation Stabilization Amendment Act was well contrived before the May 5 election. When the Premier introduced the legislation a year ago, it was never intended to be a temporary device toward restraint. It was just a first step toward a revolution to the far, far right.

While we can speak in this Legislature with temperance and responsibility, I can assure you that this is a very, very sinister piece of legislation. It is part of a whole package of very dirty and very crucial legislation to the province of British Columbia. I hope that the government will listen to the opposition. I hope the government will practise what it preaches. It has on many occasions said that it wants consultation, not confrontation. It has said that it wants to listen to and be partners with the people of British Columbia, not to dictate. Clearly this is a piece of legislation that has caused concern among organized workers in this province. As well,

[ Page 2003 ]

it has caused concern in the various levels of government, the municipalities and other public sector employers. They realize that while the government has the power to dictate wages through this instrument, in the end it will not be those members in cabinet who have to work with those people and maintain some semblance of so-called productivity that they're so concerned about. That productivity can only come about where there is some respect for the person's well-being and for the person's sense of achievement. They also need to be able to feel that their efforts are appreciated. It's something, I'm sure, that the government feels is not its responsibility or concern.

But in the end we are talking about British Columbians, people who have shared in the wealth, the suffering and the building of this province, and who now find themselves, by a stroke of the pen, being denied what they have traditionally won over the years through long, patient hard work. This government is now saying that they no longer have those rights, that it is going to fire them at will and dictate their wages. If they don't like it, they are going to be dismissed. I think this is a very tragic occasion in our democratic society. It is one that we will certainly be paying for in the years to come, And I will be opposed to Bill 11, along with my colleagues on this side of the House.

MR. CAMPBELL: I rise to speak on Bill 11 and the compensation stabilization program. Mr. Speaker, the first restraint program started in February 1982. The Premier of our province was the first premier in Canada to recognize the problems this country was in. With the downturn in the economy, somebody needed to take a firm grip on the reins of government to bring down costs so that people could afford it. And, Mr. Speaker, after the Premier proposed that, the Johnny-come-lately Trudeau government of some five months later said: Yes, we'll come in with the 6-and-5 program, and then the rest of the provinces got on the bandwagon.

During the last election campaign, we all know that the Leader of the Opposition said he was going to dismantle the compensation stabilization program; that was one of his themes in the campaign. He kept saying: "We are going to dismantle the compensation stabilization program."

AN HON. MEMBER: What happened to him?

MR. CAMPBELL: That was the kiss of death in that election. If there was one single statement during the election that was devastating, it was the one about dismantling the compensation stabilization program. Our Premier said, "This government will run on the compensation stabilization program, this government will run on restraint and this government will win the election on those promises," and that is exactly what happened. For the opposition to sit across the hall today and say that there is no mandate for this....

This is exactly what the election was fought on, on both sides: the compensation stabilization program.

In 1981 we had wage increases of 15 to 17 percent, so there is no question that stabilization had to come in. Who was leading the wage increases within the province? By and large, the public sector employees — not totally, but by and large. Up until the end of August 1983 the average wage increase in B.C. has been 6.3 percent. That is what the compensation stabilization program, along with other programs and the downturn in the economy, has brought the inflation rate down to.

[8:00]

MR. BLENCOE: What about Mr. Tozer?

MR. CAMPBELL: The wages are down, the inflation rate is down.... As the opposition across the way heckle and keep on nattering, that is fine, because they went through 29 days in April and May, and they got their answer at that time.

One of the great things about the compensation stabilization program is the ability to pay. That's what the private sector has faced for the last 50 years: the ability to pay. That's what governments have faced: the ability to pay. When times were good and the government had their hands in the taxpayers' pocket, there was no limit to the ability to pay — that includes your pocket over there too, my friend.

AN HON. MEMBER: I know.

MR. CAMPBELL: I am glad you know that and you finally agree. There is one man out of 22 over there who is finally agreeing; one has seen the light. That 4.83 percent of the people has now seen the light. It may have taken three months, but eventually we have one convert, and I am pleased. It hasn't been a wasted three months.

MR. BLENCOE: Hallelujah, brother!

MR. CAMPBELL: They are getting excited over there. That's a good sign, because when they get excited they may eventually see the truth, and the truth shall make them free.

The compensation stabilization program with the increases of plus 5 or minus 5 will be based on productivity of both parties to pay. Mr. Speaker, it is essential that we have the protection of public services.

I am glad that there is one man over there that has taken up a collection. He realizes that austerity is on; he is going to do his part toward restraint. Whatever they are collecting tonight will be used for health care services, which the people of this province will appreciate. They are entitled to that. We are glad they are participating in this at last.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Perhaps the second member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk) could put down the collection pail and return to his chair. For that matter, keeping in mind the very serious matter before this House, we can all show a little more decorum and allow the hon. member for Okanagan North to continue.

MR. CAMPBELL: The NDP say yes, we agree with restraint.

MRS. JOHNSTON: When did they say that?

MR. CAMPBELL: They say that every hour on the hour. Last week they were saying it 22 times a day, every hour on the hour. "We agree with restraint," they say — restraint over here; when you point over there, it is over there. It is like quicksilver: when you reach for it, it ain't there. It is always restraint in the next man's pocket. I am pleased to say that I support the compensation stabilization program, I support

[ Page 2004 ]

Bill 11, and I am glad that there is one man over there who sees the light and supports it; hopefully the other 21 will agree.

MR. LAUK: Well, that was a spirited speech, Mr. Speaker. We all appreciate that kind of thing in the early evening. Not to reflect in any way or demean the former speaker's speech, I want to refer to the speech before the supper hour of the hon. member for Dewdney (Mr. Pelton). I thought that there was an example to all of us from the member for Dewdney in the way in which he conducted himself. He's a freshman MLA, wouldn't you agree, and obviously a man of great experience and wisdom. He reduced and focused the issues very well, I thought. He articulated them without an offensive attack on the opposition — without contempt or derision. From time to time we've all been guilty of those kinds of things.

HON. MR. BRUMMET: Not you.

MR. LAUK: Yes, I have. I know it's hard for you to believe. You haven't noticed the rare occasions when I have, but that's been the case.

I want to throw a bouquet or two to the hon. member for Dewdney for the way in which he presented that speech. It was a good speech, but I feel it was on the wrong bill. It was a spirited defence of a philosophy which we could all do well to look at seriously: that is, let's have a look at bureaucracy. Yes, it is the fundamental British parliamentary democratic right of a government elected to office to be able to control and direct its bureaucracy to achieve its goals. After all, a mandate is a mandate to that extent. But it's also the right of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition to oppose; indeed, it's the opposition's duty to oppose legislation which it feels in its judgment and wisdom is, one, not in keeping with the government's stated purpose; and two, even if it did — which this bill does not — the legislation and the purpose are wrong.

We agree with the government's purpose; we do not agree with its methods. If you look at Bill 11, Mr. Speaker, you will quickly see that the problem is not one of controlling bureaucracy. At least the solution provided in Bill 11 is not solving that problem. The solution provided in Bill 11 is not solving the compensation problem in an equitable manner. It is creating a second-class citizen out of the civil servant. The civil servant must adhere to the current government's philosophy, goals and policies. There is no question that it must. On the other hand, in order to do that you do not virtually enslave, comparative to the rest of us, a group of people who just happened to be civil servants. Ultimately the productivity question in the bill is decided by cabinet. The question of ability to pay is a question in the bill that's to be decided ultimately by cabinet.

The question of guidelines is only vaguely referred to in a negotiative way. It seems to me — it does to all members of the opposition side — that that approach to compensation control over the civil service is an approach that is designed to confront and create hostility and division, not only with the civil service but in society and with labour relations generally in the province. It seems to me that the member for Dewdney would have served us a little bit better had he focused his attention on the way in which the government tries to achieve the goals that we all agree to. You do not savage a vast group of society simply because they happen to be paid by government. There's a tremendous number of people who are paid directly or indirectly by government, through its Crown corporations. It's a fool's paradise to believe that in a democratic state power that's given to the government for its mandate, for its period of office, is the kind of power that will allow them to dictate terms without negotiation and to control even the definition of productivity, in order to decide unilaterally what the ability to pay is.

Ultimately that control must rest with the Legislature and with the government. But this Compensation Stabilization Amendment Act wrests away years of goodwill and years of labour-management stability in this province. We think it's a fatal mistake and we think it's deliberately designed by the government to bring about labour chaos and a confrontation with labour in the province generally. We think they are designing such a confrontation for their narrow partisan political purposes, and not to achieve the goals that they say they're trying to achieve. They need a confrontation with organized labour, including the BCGEU, in this province; they need that to save them from the disaster of their budget bills that they introduced on July 7.

They are relentlessly going on this move towards the edge of the precipice — to fall off the edge, if need be — to bring about that confrontation, because they feel that that confrontation will bring them up in the polls. It'll be a confrontation with the trade union movement that nobody trusts, and the government will save the public from a disaster created by the government in the first place. It is this government that has designed the chaos and that has designed confrontation, and it's this government that is not going to reap the whirlwind in the short term. They want the public to reap the whirlwind for their political purposes. They're hoping to be able to sell to the public of British Columbia the idea that a labour confrontation was caused by labour, and that they are going to save the day. They're going to come in on the white horse and save the day. That is a cynical, crass and narrow political point of view.

Now on the other hand, the Compensation Stabilization Act — they say — is designed for restraint. But is it? In a democratic society the elected leaders of this Legislature, in particular the government, must demonstrate by example that they're willing to restrain themselves.

MR. KEMPF: We can't do much more or we'd starve to death.

MR. LAUK: The poor member for Omineca is starving to death. I wonder if he has to go to get his groceries at a special place. He says he can't afford the groceries, Mr. Speaker. Have you ever heard such nonsense? Certainly all MLAs think we're underpaid — in the past few weeks we certainly do — but when you see the people who are unemployed or employed by government on the lower end of the scale in the civil service, then you can see the hypocrisy and the cynicism of this government's policy through Bill 11.

In the past two or three years we've seen the expenditures for the Premier's office alone increase its costs and salaries. They've hired more political hacks and more political appointees, not fewer. They haven't restrained themselves in their own ministerial offices. Advertising alone just before the May 5 election, during the so-called year of restraint.... The millions and millions of dollars that were poured through, out of taxpayers' pockets, to do nothing more than propagate the partisan policies of the Social Credit Party — not to defend or legitimately inform the public of its

[ Page 2005 ]

policies, but to propagate its policies.... In most jurisdictions this never happens, and it certainly does not happen without criticism. Now there's again a threat by the Premier and the cabinet of the day to spend $25 million or more to defend this package of legislation. That's not restraint, that's cynicism and hypocrisy. Have they cut back on their travel budgets? No.

Have they cut back on their office space and furniture? No. These people are talking through both sides of their mouths at once. These people are arguing for the civil service to restrain themselves, for the people in education and in hospitals to restrain themselves, but what are they doing on their own? They're demonstrating an example of profligacy that's never been seen before in the history of the province. That's not the example they should be demonstrating to the people who elected them.

[8:15]

Since this government took office in 1976 — this government of restraint — the total provincial debt has increased by four times; Four times in the short period of time since 1976. It tripled itself within the first four years of their administration since 1976 — tripled the total provincial debt. Is that restraint? We heard yesterday about the VIP lounge and so on. They never learn that they have a responsibility to set an example for the people of this province. They and their political hacks and appointees are drowning in the public trough, and at the same time they stand up with self-righteousness and argue that the civil service should be cut back, should be slashed, should be this or should be that. If you are going to do that under the guise of restraint, if you are going to do that under guidelines, set an example. You haven't done that. The current advertising for the legislative package that is being prepared at great expense to the taxpayer is a travesty of democracy. How can you get up and argue that you can justify dealing out public money to create propaganda to sell your legislative package? If the legislative package is as good as you say, you doesn't need the advertising; you don't need to spend public money on that kind of thing.

AN HON. MEMBER: Where is the advertising?

MR. LAUK: The advertising, we are told, is being prepared at great public expense.

Now this government is deliberately creating confrontations with the BCGEU. Why are they doing that, Mr. Speaker? Through this bill and other legislation, why are they deliberately creating a confrontation? I can only look at two possible answers. The first is in order to create a battle to obscure the mean, political nature of the budget and its legislation. They need a recovery, but not economically. They need a recovery politically and they are going to create a confrontation — that is their deliberate design — so they can come in on a white horse and say, "We're going to save the day. We're going to order everybody back to work," and so on and so forth. They're hoping they will increase their popularity with the public as a result of this action. This government has consistently, since 1976, moved to create a problem and then comes in to solve it and to play the hero. It is the worst kind of cynical politics. And it is a very dangerous game, because they'll reap the whirlwind themselves; but in the meantime, all of us will reap the whirlwind. That kind of division and chaos in society is destructive.

That's true, Mr. Speaker: they wish to create a confrontation to obscure the nature of their legislation, to obscure the real reasons behind it and to increase their popularity. The secondary reason, but as important to them, I'm sure, is the equally cynical view that when the civil service is on strike we save money because we don't pay salaries and costs. It doesn't matter about services to the public. It doesn't matter whether people are drastically inconvenienced, either through transportation or other public services. The Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Curtis) hopes to eat away at that deficit that he's foolishly created in his budget, and if there is a strike for any length of time in any sector of the public sector, the government is going to save money.

But the primary reason is a crass and cynical political reason. What does this bill do? There is no collective bargaining. It destroys collective bargaining for the civil service. How can you say there is free collective bargaining in a democratic state only for the private sector and not for the public sector? It has been threatened that free collective bargaining will be the next target of this government in the private sector. But what do you put in its place? If this government is so adamant that they've got to destroy free collective bargaining for the civil service, what will they put in its place? This gets me back to the speech of the member for Dewdney (Mr. Pelton).

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Perhaps, hon. member, we could also get back to this bill. I believe you are discussing the principle of a totally different bill.

MR. LAUK: With respect, Mr. Speaker, I don't think so. Even in municipalities, I think compensation is traditionally, as you well know. the subject of free collective bargaining. And when it is eliminated and brought into a situation under Bill 11, then you are destroying the free collective bargaining system.

That's how I'm relating it to Bill 11.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Fair enough. Continue.

MR. LAUK: So when you take away free collective bargaining from the civil service, what do you substitute? What do you have in its place? The member for Dewdney said we have to get control over the bureaucracy, because the sinister thing about a bureaucracy is that if it has an independence of its own without control of the government, there is a danger to democracy itself. I agree with that proposition. That's absolutely true. You've got to control your bureaucracy. Any civil servant who stands up and says, "I'm not partisan and therefore I have to act independently of the government," is wrong. A civil servant cannot claim non-partisanship, especially at the actual government structural level.

MR. REE: What do you do to them then?

MR. LAUK: There is the very thing. That's the attitude that you have. I'm arguing that if you are going to throw free collective bargaining out the window. then you've got to have something in its place that fits into a democratic system.

I would argue that you don't go to extremes. You don't have a totally laissez-faire situation and you don't go to the extreme of confrontation and dictatorship on the part of the government. The government has an opportunity, in dealing with the civil service of this province, to move in a bold way towards a social contract. towards a situation where they will

[ Page 2006 ]

say: "Enough of the extremes and the confrontations. We won't play politics and create a confrontation with our civil service. We will sit down with them and create a contract between the government and the civil service on all of these matters in a realistic way." Because if you don't incorporate them into your planning and thinking in a democratic negotiated way, if you don't try to conciliate and bring the message to them that there's not enough money and here's what we have to do about it, and you leave them out, confront them, kick them in the teeth, demean them, humiliate them and treat them with contempt, you're going to have labour chaos, not just in the civil service but throughout the province. Surely everybody in this chamber must realize that this is the whirlwind you reap when you start this kind of confrontation politics.

If you want a new system, create a new system. You have the opportunity to do a grand experiment with the civil service. Don't tell me they won't be willing; you haven't tried. It's not what you do to them; it's what you do together. The average civil servant is no different than anybody else in British Columbia. They're citizens of British Columbia. They pay taxes. They have families. They have a stake in the future of this province, and they don't want to break the bank or create hardship for social services to other people in the province. They're the very ones who are standing up now trying to preserve them. These people, in their own interests ' will sit down and conciliate with the government, but the government hasn't conciliated. Has it involved them in discussions? Has it negotiated with them in any way and said: "Look, boys, we're in trouble financially. Let's work this out together. We've got to provide these kinds of social services over the next several years. We've got a deficit. We can't overtax the people, and we've got to create jobs. Now what are we going to do about it?"

I'm not saying the Manitoba experiment is perfect. There are a lot of things that can work there but perhaps can't work here because of a different context. The Premier of Manitoba sat down with the civil service, and what did he get? He got a wage freeze. He got natural attrition without any complaint from their union, and he got a $10 million contribution to a job-creation project from the civil servants' own pockets — and that's a lot of money in Manitoba. I think we could do even better with our civil service. I think we could even have more of a commitment from our civil service in this province. That's the kind of thinking I'm talking about. It's the politics of conciliation, not confrontation.

That's why I say the hon. member for Dewdney, a gracious and wise individual, gave an excellent speech, but on the wrong bill. The bill is indefensible. Any confrontational bill in 1983 is indefensible. As reasonable people in this province we've got to learn to reduce the acrimony and animosity between classes of people. If you watched the hon. member for Dewdney today, it might be nice to try it here. It may work. That kind of conciliation, compromise and understanding rises above all kinds of ideological disputes, and can bring about the kind of prosperity in the long run that we all want for the people of British Columbia.

Confrontation is a short-term and cynical view of political conduct. You can win in the short term but we all lose in the long term. We've got to diminish this idea that British Columbia is two armed enemy camps, in a vast power struggle for some obscure, ideological reason on either side. Believe me, some of those ideological reasons on either side are pretty obscure. Yes, there's a difference between this side and that side of the House. We're for compromise and conciliation. We're for sitting down and dealing with people as if they are equal human beings, not people to be treated with contempt because they happen to be paid by the taxpayer, rather than by the private sector.

You know full well, Mr. Speaker, that the key people at the upper levels of the civil service interchange all the time between private industry and the civil service. If they're so incompetent, if you like, does the private sector have the same problem in hiring these people? They're hired from the private sector into the civil service and from the civil service into the private sector.

MR. PELTON: Is there some other way?

MR. LAUK: Yes, there is another way, and that way is conciliation. Move towards a social contract that will build on goodwill, that will build a sense of confidence in one another in this province, and reduce this enemy camp situation that nobody really profits from in the end. Replace it with sensible and conciliatory politics. I urge all hon. members to either defeat this bill or to delay its passage until such time as the government can sit down and do that with the civil service, and reach an agreement that will benefit everybody. It can be done, no matter how difficult.

Once again I will draw the analogy to world affairs and this confrontational atmosphere between the United States and the Soviet Union. We can all sit down and froth at the mouth about either side, but in the final analysis we have no choice but to negotiate with one another. The people of British Columbia.... Everybody was reading that poll in the Sun in their own way. I read it my way and I was overjoyed, that 75 percent said your method is wrong, because to me the method is the essential problem. If the method is correct the result will be of benefit to us all, because if you inform people and treat them like equals, with understanding and respect, you must expect that they will do the same for you.

These elaborate threats by the unions on the one hand to strike and elaborate confrontational statements on the part of the government on the other hand will no longer be heard, because you will be sitting at a table. In international affairs this is the kind of thing we have got to start to look at. We have no choice. If we don't negotiate with the Soviet Union on a realistic and respectful basis and stop saying — I am drawing an analogy here.... You can't say forever that you don't trust the Russians; the Russians can't say forever that they don't trust us. We have to sit down and negotiate, because the alternative to negotiation is the virtual end of the human race.

Never before in the history of mankind have we had this challenge and this threat and it could be....

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Back to the bill.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Speaker, legitimate analogies are usually accepted. It is a puzzle to me how you can't understand the problem, which is human relations. We are never going to get anywhere if you don't understand the problem. You have to understand that the basic problem under the Compensation Stabilization Amendment Act is the problem of human relationships; it is a problem of mutual trust and understanding. If you don't give the other side a chance to give, to conciliate and to cooperate in a mutual solution, how are you possibly

[ Page 2007 ]

going to say that it didn't work if you don't give it a chance in the first place?

It seems very clear to me that the government is bent on this very narrow political, extremist view. They are challenging every group in society and they are calling themselves heroes. No matter what destruction they may wreak upon the economy and upon our social and political fabric, they call themselves heroes of restraint. The hon. member for North Okanagan (Mr. Campbell) said that last February the Premier of the province was the first premier in the country to recognize the need for restraint and that there was a serious problem. What the hon. member for North Okanagan failed to mention was that he was the first premier of this province to call upon the federal government to raise interest rates as a simplistic immediate solution to the inflationary problem facing us all. That is one of the difficulties: when you don't think and you make unilateral statements, you end up with a disaster. Certainly he was the first to recognize the problem; he was one of the first to create it. This government has done that consistently since they have taken office. They have created a disaster and come in and said: "We have a solution." Just think of how much energy would have been saved if they hadn't created the problem in the first place. They could get on with good government, they could get on with conciliatory politics, they could get on with building this great province instead of having us lag further and further behind the other provinces in the country.

[8:30]

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

AN HON. MEMBER: Crisis management.

MR. LAUK: My friend says "crisis management." Knee-jerk reactions, day-to-day reactions to problems, purely analyzed on a political basis instead of the longer-term situation that will be of more benefit to the greatest number of the people in the province. That kind of crisis management is what has happened since 1976. When will they learn? I am including not just the Social Credit members but all of us. When will we all learn that the short-term problems don't work and that purely political solutions are not acquitting our responsibility? Our responsibility is for the people of this province in the long term. When it all comes down to the end somewhere in our priorities, somewhere in the list of things that we have to do as politicians besides getting elected and re-elected — somewhere along the line don't we say: "Aren't we here to do something for the province of British Columbia and its future?" It seems to me that when you ask that question, the obvious answer is to move toward compromise under such a bill as Bill 11. I do hope that the hint at some moderation in this bill can be sincerely taken by all hon. members, and I hope that some of the details of those amendments are made known to us soon. In the meantime I certainly indicate that I am opposed to Bill 11 on second reading.

HON. MR. WATERLAND: Mr. Speaker, a few days ago the member for Alberni (Mr. Skelly), accused me of being "the articulate member for Yale-Lillooet." Since that time I found out what "articulate" are and, Mr. Speaker, I ain't. It won't take me long to prove the point I have just stated.

However, we've just heard a lecture from an extremely articulate member of the Legislature. The second member for Vancouver Centre is indeed a gifted speaker, trained over many years, I'm sure, in his law practice to be able to argue plausibly any side of any question and make it sound rather logical. We have just been treated to that type of exercise, and I guess if someone would listen to him they would be very, very impressed. But if you were to sit down and analyze what he said and try to take from what he said any semblance of logic whatsoever, I'm sure that it would be very clear just how shallow and how hollow his comments really were.

The member stood up and started saying that he admired the speech made by the member for Dewdney (Mr. Pelton) and what a statesmanlike speech it \was. He started off in that general vein himself. It didn't take him very long, in spite of himself, to slither somehow down to a political, partisan role and leave the statemanship and get into normal political rhetoric that we hear in this Legislature.

I remember very clearly the evening of February 18, 1982, when Premier Bennett addressed the people of British Columbia and tried to point out to them the very serious nature of the economic situation facing the people not only of British Columbia but of Canada and indeed the entire western world. I remember it well because that evening I happened to have been attending the annual Timber Club bash at the Hotel Vancouver, which, by the way. was also attended by the Leader of the Opposition. We watched the Premier that evening, and everyone who I was with and everyone who I spoke to in the ensuing days recognized the fact that the Premier of British Columbia indeed was identifying the most serious problem that we as a society have had to face for a number of decades.

After that address by the Premier, the Leader of the Opposition had an opportunity to respond to the remarks made by the Premier. What did he say? He said: "Kinsella shouldn't have bought that desk." That was his entire response to that very serious message delivered by the Premier that Patrick Kinsella of the Premier's office should not have bought a desk for his office in the Premier's wing of the Legislature. A very astute point, Mr. Speaker. A very shallow comment on a very serious situation. We have seen the same thing happening these last couple of days. Four cabinet ministers on Sunday afternoon attended the football game at B.C. Place Stadium with quite a number of people who belong to the Canadian Manufacturers' Association. In the midst of what should be a very serious debate here in the Legislature this evening and this afternoon and this morning, what do we have? We have a preoccupation with the fact that four cabinet ministers attend a football game with probably the leaders of the productive sector of our society — people who belong to the Canadian Manufacturers' Association. Those are the people who create jobs and who manage the industry of our country. We had, I think. a pretty productive couple of hours with those people. Many things can be accomplished in meetings like that which can never be accomplished in the more formal setting of a minister's office or the chief executive officer's office — some good dialogue, some good understanding of what the problems are that face this country. It happens that it was a Sunday afternoon, an afternoon when most British Columbians are having a day of rest. Yes, it was enjoyable to be able to watch the football game. It was also very productive to be able to have the dialogue with those leaders of industry of this country at the same time.

1, for one, make no apologies whatsoever for having taken part in that productive afternoon. Better that we should attend a football game in Vancouver with the industrial leaders of this country than to have our Premier act as a buffoon

[ Page 2008 ]

and go to China as a middle-aged, overweight person, and play soccer with the Chinese.

Interjection.

HON. MR. WATERLAND: Rugby, is it?

We witnessed that initial restraint presentation by the Premier in February a couple of years ago as a result of the very long and arduous weekend that the cabinet had at Schooner Cove. That, of course, was billed by the opposition as the cabinet retreating to a luxurious resort somewhere on Vancouver Island and having a good old time at taxpayers' expense. That was a productive weekend, and through a series of presentations made by the Minister of Finance and his staff, and by all the ministries, the full realization came to us of just how serious a situation we were in, and how serious it was going to become in British Columbia. Strangely, the restraint program which was announced by the Premier on February 18, 1982, almost two years ago, was soon taken up by the left-wing Liberal bedfellows of the NDP in Canada and British Columbia. They saw that the people of western Canada recognized the need for such restraint, and as soon as they saw that it was the type of thing that the people realized would have to happen, they jumped on that restraint bandwagon and brought in their 6-and-5 program.

Because of the furor raised by the misinformation cast about by the opposition and the ever-too-willing media in British Columbia, there is an image abroad that somehow the people in western Canada and British Columbia are not supportive of the type of restraint package that we are promoting in British Columbia. The Liberals, by reading the media in western Canada and British Columbia, feel that somehow it is not popular and now they are attempting to jump off the restraint bandwagon. That is why they have been sending money to certain groups in British Columbia telling them to go ahead and fight restraint and block the provincial government. In the last federal by-election they were telling people that if they voted for the Conservative Party in the British Columbian by-election they would in effect be endorsing the restraint policies of the people of British Columbia. Guess what happened? I needn't repeat it. There was probably the most massive electoral swing which has ever taken place in a general election, let alone a by-election. The NDP were literally told to go fly a kite. The people of British Columbia and Canada are saying that the responsible restraint philosophies that are practised by conservative parties are the way we have to go. That is why the conservative philosophy to which we in the Social Credit Party subscribe is the thing that will save this nation and our society in the years to come.

It's rather amusing to me that Solidarity, that political arm of the NDP — I don't know who is the arm and who is the body — is taking to the ILO of the United Nations a case that is completely against all principles of collective bargaining in the labour movement that any settlement should be based upon the ability to pay. Isn't it strange that they should go to the United Nations with a case that it is somehow wrong that a collective agreement should be based upon the ability of the employer to pay? How quaint! What an unusual approach to things that anybody should ever consider the ability of the employer to pay when collective bargaining takes place.

The second member for Vancouver East (Mr. Macdonald), who has left the chamber, was talking so much about free collective bargaining in the public sector. They say there should be no constraints whatsoever to demand whatever is demanded by the union side, because that is what is meant by free collective bargaining. There is no such thing as free collective bargaining. Whatever is bargained for and achieved has to be paid for by someone. It certainly is not free. We had a very good example of that, and I believe it took place in 1973 or 1974. I believe the name of the member of the opposition government at the time was Strachan. He was negotiating with the ferry workers of British Columbia. Because there were no constraints on the ability of the government or the Ferry Corporation to pay he said: "I had to settle with them for whatever they demanded, because they had a gun to my head." They had a gun to his head, so he had to dip into the pockets of the taxpayers of British Columbia and pay whatever was demanded by the union. That is exactly the problem with so-called free collective bargaining.

[8:45]

In my constituency the economy is based basically upon the same things as the entire economy of British Columbia. The main industry is mining with forestry a very close second, slightly different from the rest of the province. Tourism is also a very important part of the economy of the riding as are cattle ranches. I spent my entire career in that mining industry until I got involved in politics, and I visit and have little rap sessions with the miners, loggers and cowboys in my riding. They have no trouble understanding that when they negotiate with their employer they can't demand any more than the employer can afford to pay. You talk to any truck driver or shovel or drill operator in any of the mines in my riding, and each and every one of them can tell you exactly what the price of copper, moly or gold is — the commodities which their employer has to sell in the marketplace.... They know that when those prices go down, the chances are reduced of their company, their employer, making a profit. Mr. Speaker, that is why over the last year or so you've seen very modest settlements made by people in the mining industry. Settlements have come in at zero or 2 percent and they are three-year agreements. The people who work for those industries understand that the ability to pay is very basic to the collective bargaining system.

That is what Bill 11, the Compensation Stabilization Amendment Act, is all about. It is saying to the public employees in the province of British Columbia that there is indeed a limit to the ability of the taxpayers to pay what you demand. The government is accepting that responsibility, saying: "We will determine, through our budgetary process, just how much the people of British Columbia can afford to pay you. Then you go and bargain up to that level, but not beyond, because there is no way that we as a government will shirk our responsibilities and allow people to put a gun to our head and put the taxpayers up to ransom to pay whatever is demanded by the union leaders, who demand ever and ever more."

That is why I think the remarks made by the second member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk) — although presented in a very articulate manner — were so naive that they're not even worthy of consideration. Free collective bargaining is not free. There has to be a limit on the amount of money available. In the case of government, this limit cannot be set by a marketplace, because we're not selling our services in a marketplace; they are set by the ability of taxpayers to pay, and by our judgment of what we can take from the taxpayers in order to pay those bills.

Interjection.

[ Page 2009 ]

HON. MR. WATERLAND: Of course he did. Mr. Speaker, there is never such a thing as free collective bargaining, because someone has to pay the bill. As long as it's within the ability of the employer to pay, fine and dandy, we can bargain collectively up to that limit. But there has to be a limit.

The members in the opposition seem to think that there is absolutely no limit to the amount of dollars that the taxpayers can come up with, and therefore the purse is wide open and we'll bargain with a gun to our head, just as Mr. Strachan did a few years ago, and give away the bank.

Interjections.

HON. MR. WATERLAND. He caved in. He sold the farm. He gave the farm away; he didn't sell it. I think it's rather shocking that the members of the opposition should even consider the fact that there should be no limits. A naive approach was taken by the second member for Vancouver East (Mr. Macdonald), who said: 'All you have to do is to sit down with the leaders of the government union, and they'll be reasonable people. They'll recognize the fact that there's a limit to what the government can pay." It's just as he said that we should sit down with the USSR and simply negotiate a settlement of the arms race. That member seems to think that all it takes is sweetness and reason, and everything shall come to pass. What a very naive approach to the very complex and complicated problem that we have in this country.

I don't intend to speak any longer, except to say that I fully endorse Bill 11, the Compensation Stabilization Amendment Act. From my travels throughout this entire province, not just from my association with greater Vancouver and with the southern end of Vancouver Island and with the rather left-leaning media in this area.... My talks with people throughout this province, including many civil servants, have been to the effect that they too agree with the policies and philosophies of this government.

Mr. Speaker, I'm sure that the members will be hollering soon again, as they have hollered up to and since May 5, and for the eight years that I've been involved in politics. Every time something controversial comes up, they say: "Call an election. Let the people decide. We don't agree, so call an election." We called an election. Immediately after the election was over, what did they say? "Call another election."

We have a mandate that was given to us by the people of British Columbia to manage their affairs in a constrained fashion, not for a couple of years but permanent constraints on the purses and pocketbooks of the taxpayers. That is why I support Bill 11, the Compensation Stabilization Amendment Act.

MR. NICOLSON: The first thing I'd like to comment upon is that it's a measure of a man when he has to attack someone who is deceased, someone who honoured this House by his very presence and his dedication in here. If Bob Strachan were here today, he'd wipe the floor with the likes of you, Mr. Member.

The minister talked in passing about the left-leaning media. Maybe the media hasn't leaned left, and maybe it hasn't leaned right; maybe it has stayed just where it has been for the last 20 years. Maybe that party has moved so far to the right, and maybe this party has moved toward the centre. That group over there find anybody who talks about a reasonable approach toward the problems that we find ourselves in today — and I will talk about ho we got into those problems and why we shouldn't be having to consider this type of legislation or a perpetuation of this type of legislation....

The media haven't moved to the left, and they didn't move to the right when we were in government; they have been in the same place all the time. Goodness gracious, I suppose the Sun, the Province and the Times-Colonist have suddenly been taken over by some kind of radical socialist publishers. Mr. Speaker, the mind boggles to think about such a thing.

I think the government really should stop and examine itself, not say that everybody else is bonkers but look at themselves and what they have done. We are in this problem because since the present Minister of Finance took office we have squandered over a billion dollars in liquid cash deposits. We used that up. This wasn't found by some secret, leaked document; it can be found by any careful perusal of Public Accounts and past budgets. It's all right in those ordinary public documents.

They also cancelled all the special purpose funds, and this year they are going to go a further billion dollars into debt. Since that minister took over in 1980, we are short about $3 billion. We have dipped into our savings and we borrowed a combined amount of S3 billion against the future. We have, roughly speaking, about an annual $7 billion budget. That's why we have problems today. What are the components that are making that up? What are the amounts in those estimates? The budget would have us believe that there is going to be over a 12 percent increase in spending in this fiscal year. That doesn't sound like restraint. If they are going to be laying off a quarter of the public servants and if they are going to be holding their wages to zero through the continuation of this piece of legislation — or, indeed, even cutting back minus 5 percent — then why isn't that reflected in a decrease in the estimates for salary expenditures?

I know, as anybody might jump up to tell me, that we have already gone halfway through this fiscal year. Even at that, with all the people that have been laid off and given notices, with the attrition that is going on and the positions that are not being filled, if you look at the estimates, you will find that they are actually projecting increases in about a quarter of the salary votes. Indeed, there are a few salary votes that would see some fairly large decreases. but in the main there is a very small reduction reflected in the estimates.

The whole business about the kinds of budgets that we have been having and the need for restraint has been unquestioned and was first proposed by the official opposition. You remember voting for huge increases in office furniture estimates two years in a row. You voted for huge increases in government advertising estimates. For two years in a row the NDP proposed millions and millions of dollars of savings in the provincial salary budget. All of this is projected by the Premier, I think, to save some $200 million, if one can believe that figure. But, Mr. Speaker, we proposed savings of $170 million. With the interest that would have earned over the last couple of years, that would have provided the $200 million right there. So why are we in this position? We're in this position because back in the days when the government was caught.... I don't know whether it was one, two or three elections ago — one rolls into another — but I do recall an election. I guess it was after the 1979 election when there was a little messy business, and a few people said a few things and a couple of executive assistants that were involved were let go from the Social Credit caucus office.

[ Page 2010 ]

[9:00]

But in its haste to take away from this tarnished image and savour the full bouquet of victory, the government started this mad bunch of announcements of various megaprojects. One or two of the megaprojects were probably okay. They all became somewhat tainted, because they all were announced within about a week of each other. I can just see the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Curtis) going to the Premier and pulling on his shirt-tails and saying: "Oh, well, Gracie has announced Pier B.C.; can't I announce a new computer building, maybe a $38 million or $40 million building out in Saanich?"

MR. PARKS: On a point of order. Mr. Speaker, I believe it's a custom in this House to refer to other hon. members by the constituency they represent, not by their first name.

MR. NICOLSON: I'm sorry, Mr. Speaker, I should have known better. It was just an affectionate term for a member of this House and I was carried away a little bit.

Interjection.

MR. NICOLSON: In a Christian sense, yes, Mr. Minister.

Mr. Speaker, we saw this huge rash of megaprojects, and many people in the interior don't even realize the true extent of them. It wasn't just in the northeast coal megaproject where we were showing leadership. Maybe the Canadian Manufacturers' Association are very pro-northeast coal; I'm not sure. I know some members of the CMA who would take a slightly different view, but the fact cannot be lost that to create 1,500 coal mining jobs, we are putting in place an infrastructure which is costing the government $1.5 billion. That's $1 million to create one coal mining job.

The Minister of Forests talked about the Canadian Manufacturers' Association and all the jobs that they produce. Well, Mr. Speaker, I want to tell you that it is still the small, independent entrepreneur who produces most of the jobs in this province. I believe that a small independent entrepreneur, given $1 million assistance from the government, would be able to produce a darned sight more than one fundamental basic job. I realize that there are the service jobs down the road — the railroad, the port facility and the other little multipliers — but there are the same multipliers if you have a small, independent entrepreneur producing — whether it be revitalizing diamond drills, as is done in one business in Vancouver, or someone doing seismic engineering work in Creston, which is something that happens. Entrepreneurs like that produce a lot more jobs. Going back to something that we do very well in this province, some small assistance to a sawmill in the order of $.5 million produced over 30 direct jobs.

So we have in this bill a reaction to a situation that is a self-made problem. Again, what we are doing with this bill is trying to deflect attention away from the real source of the problem, and the source of the problem really was in 1979. The Social Credit government went along without creating any huge mistakes, except they almost did lose the election in 1979, as the Premier has admitted and a few other people have said. Other than that mistake, they didn't make a great number of unrecoverable mistakes. Following 1979, this government embarked upon a series of really ill-thought-out projects without considering the ability to pay. This government went ahead and considered a number of megaprojects without considering the ability to pay. Now they're saying to the public servants: "Because we made this very hasty judgment, now you can't have collective bargaining. Ability to pay is going to be our defence, and we're simply not going to allow free collective bargaining." You are going to say that you believe in the free enterprise system, but you don't believe in free collective bargaining.

We are on a very dangerous road today because of this government's economic failures. This piece of legislation also has its origins in public polling the Goldfarb polls which, again, the government was paying for with public funds — another one of their budget priorities. They have been asking questions probing people about their attitudes toward all the various public sector employees: civil servants, teachers, college professors, and in other areas. If they find a group on which the public perception is soft or, even better yet, hostile, we have seen that they have gone after those groups. We saw them go after the doctors, and then we saw them go after the teachers per se. That was before the election. Since then, we have seen them taking on all public sector employees, not just those in the provincial government but also municipal workers, firefighters, police — anybody. They have a policy which has been set for them, not by careful consideration of how best to get British Columbia going but of how best to deflect attention from themselves. I guess Machiavelli has been quoted once or twice this session — and I could maybe paraphrase: when your domestic policies are failing, then find an external enemy; and if you don't have an external enemy, then create one. That is what this government has been doing, and we see that this government is performing worse, right now, than any other province in Canada.

We see, by the Premier's own admission — I heard him yesterday on a news broadcast — that one out of four people in the forest industry, one out of five people in the mining industry and one out of six in the service industry are out of work. What a ringing self-condemnation. If I had failed so badly, and if I had been so singly responsible for such a dismal performance, I would have to resign my position. This government is projected to have the worst job creation record in Canada, way below the Canadian average for the year. You have led the country in business bankruptcies per capita for about the last five years. By every economic indicator, we can see how bad things are. Look at the massive unemployment. And this government can do nothing more than preach the politics of despair. This is a despondent government, a government that would seek to lower everyone to the point of desperation in order that they would take almost any kind of a job, rather than a government that would say we have some of the best people, some of the best-educated people, the potential for having some of the best technical training, and the means of fulfilling our own needs in terms of labour shortages in specialized areas. But instead of doing that, this government is cutting back and cutting back. It's cutting back in the universities and in technological education. I heard some glowing reports about the new TRAC program and how it's training people. Well, Mr. Speaker, I've heard reports from the administrations of some of our colleges and from the people who are trying to teach these programs, and you get two different stories.

This particular piece of legislation is, of itself, not a critical wound. This particular piece of legislation, if implemented of itself, would leave some room to manoeuvre, and

[ Page 2011 ]

some room for some cooperation and partnership to be created. But taken in conjunction with the budget and the announced intention of laying off 25 percent of all civil servants, with no kind of plan — no further announcements forthcoming since the first ham-handed efforts on July 7 with the midnight, sweeping type of legislation.... This piece of legislation would, of itself, not have been critical, but combined with other moves that have been made, this becomes a very signal piece of legislation.

This thing started by the Premier saying that he was going to bring in a restraint program and implement a ceiling of 14 percent on wage increases. This was some time ago. The next thing that happened was that the member for Omineca (Mr. Kempf) announced that he would come down to the Legislature, be a maverick and really shake things up down here. But that didn't happen. The Premier announced that there would be a 14 percent ceiling. Then he was back-pedalling to about 10 percent, then 8 percent, then 6 percent. When this piece of legislation was first brought in — the act which this Compensation Stabilization Amendment Act amends — there were no floors and no ceilings; they were all flexible. The parameters of the act were called the rubber room — the room with no floor and no ceiling. Now we are hardly improving on it. We are making the act permanent, and we are really confessing that this government has failed because it cannot continue very necessary programs. This government is discontinuing programs, which is going to be a burden on future generations, not just in the sense of the moral judgment I would make in terms of the costs we are going to bear, with ruined lives and wasted lives, but even in terms of the money that this is going to cost in incarceration and institutionalization. This particular attitude is not cost-effective.

Professor Dobell has also pointed out.... He is a person who speaks as a conservative, describes himself as a conservative.

MR. R. FRASER: No possible way.

MR. NICOLSON: And you say: "No possible way." I say that you people have moved so far to the right that you don't even know what a little bit right of centre is. You have moved beyond conservative and you have left us the middle, and for that we thank you.

This government — and some of its members would seem to prove that — is really bent upon destroying the middle class in this country.

MR. R. FRASER: Where do you find that?

MR. NICOLSON: Well, I find it in the Atlantic Monthly journal, which some members on this side of the House read. I don't know if people over there read such journals. I find this in the New York Times. I find it in many different sources. I find it by reading books. I find it by talking to people who are concerned with the future, people who are pointing out the fact that jobs are disappearing for the people who formerly were given technical training.

[9:15]

We see this government talking about high technology as if it is going to be our saviour. Yet as much as I believe that there is a great deal that can be done for mankind by the proper use of what is now described as high technology, we see that there are tremendous problems being created by it. And this government is not addressing those problems. This government is simply waging war with a class of people. You are waging war with the class of professionals and technicians who have been trained and who have chosen to go into the so-called public sector. But I don't know what is a public sector and what is a private sector. When we look, for instance, at the way in which the Ministry of Forests can interact with the private sector, when we look at the symbiosis of the public and private sector.... I have had people in the private sector tell me that the government cutbacks are actually slowing down their operations, which means that they are having to lay off people, We are also going to lose world markets because of a simplistic kind of view as to where we should be cutting back in the public service.

I warned this government about the reorganization of the Ministry of Forests. I said it would become centralist; I said it would cost a lot more. In just one item alone, in a matter of two years the cost of putting a roof over the head of the Ministry of Forests went from $3.5 million to $19.5 million.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: What's that? Repeat it.

MR. NICOLSON: Are you going to get up and call me a liar about that? You can't, because you know it's the truth. The budget for putting a roof over the head of the Ministry of Forests in two years went from S3.5 million.... The first year it went up to S10.5 million and the next year to $19.5 million. What a huge increase in such a short space of time because the government made that mistake! It also resulted in a huge, wholesale bunch of job reclassifications. People moved up and got higher classifications without having to do more work. That was your Government Employee Relations Bureau that you set up and didn't keep your hand on the wheel of, when you've got hundreds of employees in that. Yet you allow that type of thing to go on as well. Mr. Speaker, this government over here has been guilty — and no one is more guilty than the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Curtis) — of runaway expenditures. And suddenly you're saying to people who have either come to British Columbia or were born and raised in British Columbia, people who have set their careers in various parts of the province, that they must be totally uprooted; their careers must be ruined and they have to just suffer like everyone else has suffered, and so on and so forth.

Mr. Speaker. what distresses me about this kind of legislation is that it doesn't end with the public servants. The Premier has said that we have to pass this piece of legislation because the people in the private sector had layoffs in the last couple of years and now it's the public sector's turn. The logic of that, if you really stop and think about it.... During the Second World War a whole bunch of young men went out and were killed or maimed. Does that mean that we then should have gone and killed and maimed a whole bunch of older men, a whole bunch of women or children? That's the kind of logic that the Premier is using. He's saying that because a whole bunch of people have suffered, we've got to make them feel better by making other people suffer. That's the kind of division, that's the kind of politics of despair that.... This side says that British Columbians deserve a better future than that. There has to be a better choice than inaction and reaction from that government. This side of the House says that British Columbia should have a future. It does have a future, if this government gets on with governing instead of trying to punish people in order to make another group feel better.

[ Page 2012 ]

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

This particular piece of legislation is just more of an enticement to the breakdown of society in this province. Having looked at it not in isolation but in connection with all the other legislation, I'm afraid that it is a premeditated move on the part of this government. This government is tempting the people of British Columbia. You can say that you've got 50.2 percent — or, as I read it from the official electoral returns, 49.8 percent — of the popular vote and we've got 44 percent. Does that make such a big difference? Does that 5 percent difference...? It makes the difference that you people are entrusted with governing the province for the next five years. I said that during the throne speech debate. I don't propose that we are here to govern; we are here to oppose. I made what I hoped to have been.... My throne speech contribution was a conciliatory speech. It was made before this legislation and budget were brought in. It was made in good faith. It was made with the hope that we could all work together to build a better British Columbia from the rubble that we have right now.

Mr. Speaker, let's not pass this bill. Let's not make things worse. Let's step back. There is still time, and there are all kinds of dramatic moves that could be taken. What would happen if the government suddenly pulled back on about three, four or five of these very contentious bills? I will give you a suggestion, and I have not talked this over with anybody.... If you made a move like that and if you coupled it by approaching somebody, who, I think, is held in great respect not just by people in the NDP but also by a lot of people in the Social Credit Party that I've talked to since the election.... If you were to ask Mr. Bill King to head some kind of investigation, that would be the way....

I should tell you things like this. I should make suggestions like this. This is the way out for you people. If you wanted to do something that was smart, conciliatory and that gave a real strong signal.... Maybe one or two of you over there are listening. It might not be to my betterment in terms of my political fortunes if you should look good over the next four years, but if you want to start doing something that is good, and if you want to get this province moving again, you've got to start thinking that way in terms of another target group. Who are you going to bully? Who are you going to beat up after you've taken on all of the public sector people?

Interjection.

MR. NICOLSON: Yes, you're going to take on the private sector people then.

HON. A. FRASER: Bill King is busy hogheading. That's what he wants to do.

MR. NICOLSON: Bill King is busy hogheading, Mr. Minister of Highways. I'm sure that's what he wants to do and would prefer to do. But I'll tell you that if he were ever given an offer like that, it would be with a sense of responsibility that he would consider it. He would consider not what he wants to do for himself but what he might do for his province. I think that's what we should be doing instead of saying: "What can we do to perpetuate this rancour? What can we do to perpetuate this war? What can we do to continue attacking a few labour leaders and, with them, the whole province of British Columbia?" We should be looking for other solutions.

It isn't just the public sector employees who are suffering from this kind of confrontation, of which this bill is a very integral part. This bill might say that some people.... I heard a car salesman — not a used-car salesman; I think it was a brand-new car salesman — phone in to CBC from Victoria. He was one of about three people who were against the announcement made recently by the B.C. Government Employees' Union president. Surprisingly to me, about a dozen people were in favour of the statement made by the president. It was on the CBC, so we can maybe say, "Well, that's that listening audience," and dismiss it at that. But the interesting thing is that I find that in my constituency a lot of the car salespeople — and a lot of people on Baker Street or Canyon Street in Creston, or on the main street in the different municipalities in my riding — don't make the connection. They complain about business. They say that they can't sell the used cars; they're selling the new cars okay and this sort of thing. Yet on the other hand they seem.... That's where you do get some support for this kind of legislation. They don't make the connection that the reason they're having trouble selling these cars.... The reason that consumer confidence is so bad is because it is getting battered every day by this province.

The conventional wisdom that you will find on the financial pages from the Louis Rukeysers, the Don McGillivrays and others, who talk about consumer-led recovery.... This government, with this kind of legislation, is doing everything they can to stop consumer-led recovery. There is an effort being made in communities in my riding to link the relationship between retail sales and the bashing of consumer confidence that is being created by Bill 11, the other bills and the budget. People are now going into their merchants and telling them what they are not going to buy because of the lack of consumer confidence.

The cutbacks by this government in the town of Nelson are going to have a greater impact.... There are going to be more jobs lost in the town of Nelson by those cutbacks than there was by the permanent shutdown of the Kootenay Forest Products plywood plant. That had a devastating impact on the community. The layoffs and the transfers of people to other areas are going to have a devastating impact. The other devastating impact they're going to have is that there's going to be more money spent by the government on travelling allowances, because people are going to be travelling greater distances, as they already are in the Ministry of Forests. There are going to be more overnight accommodation bills and more time wasted in travel. There are going to be all kinds of ancillary expenses, but less work done in the field.

[9:30]

For instance, after all the smoke settles and the wages are cut, if there is any gas left to put into the tank of the pickup truck in the Ministry of Forests, people are going to be travelling five hours up to do an inspection, and they're probably going to have to stay overnight just to do a little bit of work. What you're going to end up getting after all these relocations and this absolute war on the....

HON. MR. WATERLAND: Dumb, dumb, dumb!

MR. NICOLSON: Yes, it is dumb. What you have done is so dumb. It was dumb to take something that was costing you $3.5 million a year and goose it up to $19.5 million in

[ Page 2013 ]

two short years. That's your bill to the B.C. Buildings Corporation.

I have made a very concrete suggestion. I know two members of the cabinet bench who did not treat this with derision, and perhaps they are listening.

HON. MR. WATERLAND: Don't count on it.

MR. NICOLSON: I won't count on you, Mr. Minister. I can count on you to be predictable and complacent.

With that one thing for them to sleep on, Mr. Speaker, I would move adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of the House.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. member, you must allow me a moment to ascertain if the motion has been made previous to my arrival in the chair.

Motion negatived on the following division:

YEAS — 9

NAYS — 25

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

Introduction of Bills

MISCELLANEOUS STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT, 1983

Hon. Mr. Smith presented a message from His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor: a bill intituled Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, 1983.

Bill 35 introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

COMPENSATION STABILIZATION
AMENDMENT ACT, 1983

(continued)

HON. MR. HEWITT: Mr. Speaker, it is nice to rise as a member of the winning team. As we noticed, the A team lost again over on the other side, like they lost on May 5 — and the B team and the C team.

I am pleased to rise to support Bill 11, the Compensation Stabilization Amendment Act. This piece of legislation identifies a change in time, because the minister has indicated in the legislation that this extends the compensation stabilization program indefinitely. And rightly so. We have to recognize that we have to live within our means in this province as public servants, as a government providing service. We have to recognize that funds that are generated out there in the economy are what pay the bills that are run up in operating a government.

The Minister of Finance, in bringing this bill in, also recognizes the ability of the employer to pay. He has identified in the bill the fact that we must live within our means as a government. We must recognize that the public employer — the government — must have the ability to pay the employees and to provide funds for programs. He also identifies the need for greater productivity as a government. He does not identify just the public servants or attack public servants, but the whole government operation must have high productivity in order to give value to taxpayers for their tax dollars.

I pose three questions to the opposition: where does the money come from to pay for government services? The opposition knows as well as we do on this side of the House — at least I hope they know as well as we do — that the funds to operate a government. any government, come from the economy of the province. the taxpayers of the province. In these days of fragile recovery, when unemployment is still high, which means that the people out there aren't earning funds in order to pay taxes and to fill the government coffers, and when our forestry industry is striving for survival, we have to recognize that we cannot increase the burden on the economy by having an ever-increasing debt load for the taxpayer to cover. We must live within our means. They talk about all our cuts, etc. Even with all those that they call harsh measures, even after our budget, even after our cuts in the various programs and the restraint bills that are before this House, we are still S1.6 billion in the red for this operating year.

[9:45]

Mr. Speaker. I pose those questions to the opposition: what would an individual in a private company do? What would an individual personally do if he was faced with the inability to pay his bills, either because he was unemployed or because his factor), or his store couldn't provide the revenue to cover the costs, and he was suffering a loss? What happens then is usually bankruptcy, but as government we have a responsibility to provide those essential services that the member for Burnaby-Edmonds (Ms. Brown) is always so concerned about — those people services. Even with all the "draconian " measures we are accused of, we ensured that our people services in the fields of education, health and human resources got increases in their budgets to attempt to meet those essential services.

I pose one last question to them: what about the long-term impact of an ever-increasing deficit? You know as well as we do that at the federal level, with the amount of accumulated deficit that they have.... About 30 percent of every tax dollar goes to service that debt. The members opposite should recognize that if you are paying for past services, if you are paying to service debt and you've used up the money, then the pressure and the load on the taxpayer today, tomorrow, two years, five years or ten years down the road get so heavy that you could actually have an economic collapse across this country and in this province if we took the same tack.

But we've identified the problem in this province. The people of this province identified the problem and accepted

[ Page 2014 ]

the need for restraint. They did it on August 29 in Mission–Port Moody when they elected a Conservative member in a safe NDP seat. They did it because the federal NDP leader came out and said: "A vote for a Conservative is an endorsement of the Social Credit restraint program." And what happened? We had the biggest turnaround, I believe, probably in the history of a by-election — from a safe NDP seat to a safe Conservative seat.

Every Monday morning when caucus meets we ask one another: "How did it go this weekend?" And without a doubt, without any reservation at all, every member — every man jack and woman of us - says that when we go home, the message we get is: "You're doing the right thing. You're doing a great job. For Heaven's sake, don't back down."

There goes one of my constituents, the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke), who has his summer home in my constituency. He knows what I'm talking about because he knows a lot of people up there.

People in communities throughout this province are not swayed by headlines, by Operation Solidarity, by statements from union leaders or the Allen Garrs and Marjorie Nichols of this world. They recognize the need for restraint and the need for government to get out of the lives of the people of our province. Operation Solidarity will spend lots of money. I don't know whether union members — and maybe the opposition members who talk about spending money on advertising — will ever identify the amount of workers' money that goes into that Operation Solidarity program. I think some day one union member is going to stand up, and then another, and another, and another, and say to those leaders: "You are out of touch with us, because we recognize the need for restraint in government, whether it's British Columbia or Canada." Those union leaders are not in tune with their membership. The people of this province, whether in the unions, the business world, senior citizens, etc., endorsed this government on May 5, and again in a by-election in Mission–Port Moody. The public aren't buying what the union leaders, the Art Kubes and the Operation Solidarity people are saying.

The second member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk), who's not in the House right now, says we should negotiate. The leader of this party, the Premier of the province, in February 1982 sent the message out loud and clear, and from 1982 to 1983 there were opportunities to negotiate. But do you know what happens in the "negotiations" that the member for Vancouver Centre is so concerned about? A lot of those union leaders are concerned about seeing their power taken away from them. They'd rather go for rallies on the legislative lawns, they'd rather go with Operation Solidarity and with taking over the courthouse in Vancouver. Mr. Speaker, we have a job to do, we have the endorsement of the people of British Columbia to do it, and by gosh, we're going to do it.

The second member for Vancouver Centre also said the role of the opposition is to oppose. I think that goes back to John Diefenbaker's famous statement, and probably beyond. I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that it's time for a change in the opposition's role in this House. We've gone through 16 weeks, I believe, of nothing but delay tactics by the opposition. They've opposed and opposed and opposed. The second member for Vancouver Centre might say, "That's our role," but I suggest they've gone beyond the role of an opposition to state its case in opposition to a government program, bill or budget. They have taken 60 hours in some cases to do a job that could be done in 6 hours. It doesn't take amendments to a bill to hoist a bill; it doesn't take reasoned amendments to get your message across. The members opposite know the reason for those amendments. The reason for the reasoned amendments is stall, stall, stall.

There are members on this side of the House, such as the member for West Vancouver–Howe Sound (Mr. Reynolds), who talked very eloquently about the possibility of closure. You know, there are those of us who could agree with the need for closure, when we look at the amount of delay tactics that are brought forward in this House by a sick and worried opposition. The tack we've taken is to provide you with longer sessions. That's why we're here tonight. We're going to let team A, team B and team C speak, whether or not they're repetitious and tedious — although we'll bring it to your attention from time to time. We'll allow them to ventilate. But I can tell you, even though we'll sit here for some time, in the end we'll succeed in bringing forward this legislation. Very simply put, we'll succeed because we were given a mandate on May 5, and we are carrying out that mandate.

If they tell us that the legislation we're bringing through has nothing to do with the mandate we were given, I'd suggest they go back to May 5, 6 and 7 newspapers and read the headlines and the stories. In there the message is loud and clear. Some of the news media were captivated by the fact that we did something they thought we couldn't do. We won an election and we got a great endorsement. As a result, the comment was made that maybe, just maybe, the people of this province agreed with the restraint program and said: "Mr. Premier and government, we recognize that it's not going to be easy, but we recognize the need for the program that you're about to embark on."

We could have taken the easy way out, as many politicians do. We could have had no cutbacks. We could have had no severe legislation. We could have been nice guys and gals on this side of the House.

AN HON. MEMBER: We could have had the summer off.

HON. MR. HEWITT: Yes, we could have had the summer off, as my colleague says. We could have done all that and probably have survived another several years. I guess we could have glossed it over by saying: "We didn't impose any heavier tax on you; we didn't take any services away." No politician likes to upset the electorate. You always like to be popular, you like to have the opportunity to get the vote. No politician likes to have a rally on the front lawn or have people take over a courthouse. I'd suggest that's irresponsible, and this government, when it got its mandate, said, "We have a job to do," and we're going to do it.

The NDP and some of those union leaders out there who are very vocal and damning in their comments have not tested the political winds and are not in tune with their members or with the population of British Columbia. As I say, the people out there recognize the reality of today and the need for restraint in this province.

We have often been accused of " the closure," the fact that there was a motion the other night by one of my colleagues that the question be now put, and the great hue and cry by the Leader of the Opposition. Let me just read the first few paragraphs of a news item from February 23, 1934:

"The first political skirmish in the legislative session occurred Thursday when the CCF fired its opening shot. It was a very mild encounter, but not lacking

[ Page 2015 ]

in sagacious political inspiration. At the termination of a short, suave and gentle speech, Rev. Robert Connell, opposition leader, moved that the debate on the address be shut off at once, in order, as he said, that the government might proceed forthwith with the implementation of its policy of work and wages. He moved formally, 'the question now be put.' "

Closure, Mr. Speaker, is what was done in 1934 by a CCF member, the party that is now known as the predecessor of the NDP.

In closing, I just want to say that it's evident to the majority in this province that restraint is needed. It's evident to the vast majority in this province that we wish to get government out of the lives of people and business in this province. The budget and the bills are needed and accepted to achieve our goal of economic recovery. Take away the party stripe, and I believe we all know that economic recovery will mean the maintenance of people services in this province. If we demand special protection as public servants, ignoring the taxpayers' ability to pay, we will fail to reach that goal of economic recovery. I think the members opposite also recognize that, Mr. Speaker, although they fail to say it in debate ' I think they recognize that the only way you can provide for people services — for health, education, human resources, police services, etc. — is by having an economy that can generate revenue for the government. We ended up with a deficit forecast in this year of $1.6 billion, but when you look at the budget — and I refer to the member for Burnaby Edmonds (Ms. Brown) — Education is up from $1.3 billion to $1.4 billion; Health, from $2.28 billion to $2.45 billion; Human Resources, from $1.2 billion to $1.37 billion. Those are substantial increases in those three areas of public service. And when the opposition says, "You aren't creating jobs," look again at that budget under the employment development account, which has $245 million identified in an area that creates employment in this province at a time when it's needed. We maintained those people services; we helped the private sector generate employment in this province. That is the reason we have the deficit we have, but we recognize that we have to be limited in the demands we put on the taxpayers.

In conclusion, I want to say that I wholeheartedly support Bill 11, as it is one of the many parts of the formula needed to achieve an economic solution to the problems facing this province.

[10:00]

MS. BROWN: I want to say first of all how pleased I am that the government members have decided to participate in the business of the House. I went home this weekend, and I had the opportunity to speak to three different groups of people. I was forced to tell them that the government members were drawing their paycheques but not doing any work — that in fact they were not participating in debate. I promised to mail out the Hansards to them to show them that for an entire week when this House sat around the clock the government members did not participate at any time in the debate except to introduce closure or to move points of order, but they were collecting their paycheques. I am glad that they have decided to change their strategy. The government members have now decided to earn their salaries rather than just sitting on their prerogatives and slurping at the public trough, which is one thing they do so efficiently and so effectively. I want to congratulate them for deciding to participate in the business of the House at this time.

I want to set the record straight for the hundreds of people in the gallery who, after listening to the last speaker, the minister, may wonder what we are talking about. We are talking about the legislation being introduced by the government to deal with the massive deficit which they ran up, not the opposition. The government itself ran up the deficit which it is now trying to deal with, and the government is introducing legislation to deal with a public sector workforce which is large, based on their increasing that public sector workforce. They are the ones who built the public sector up to the size it is, not the opposition. Now they introduce legislation that says we have got to downsize the public sector. You are the ones who upsized the public sector.

[Mr. Segarty in the chair.]

What we are dealing with is schizophrenia. We have a government going around the province introducing legislation, making speeches, talking about righting wrongs which they themselves created. If that is not schizophrenia, I don't know what it is. They built up the deficit, and now they are saying to the people of the province that we have got to do something about this deficit. They created it. This was not an opposition deficit. Everybody knows that they have been government for 27 of the last 30 years. You built up the deficit that you are now talking about and dealing with, saying everyone must tighten their belts and do something about it. You with your profligate spending, with your profligate ways, with your incompetence, your ineptitude, built up this deficit which is now a burden on the province, and you have the consummate all to stand on the floor of this Legislature and say to the people of British Columbia: "You have got to restrain yourself so that we can deal with this deficit." It is your stupidity, your profligacy, your ineptitude and your incompetence that created that deficit. The opposition didn't build that deficit up: the people of British Columbia didn't build that deficit up; you did. Instead of taking responsibility for the deficit, instead of hanging your heads in shame, instead of apologizing to the people of British Columbia for your incompetence, your ineptitude and your profligacy, you've got the consummate gall to go to them and say to them: "You have got to tighten your belt."

Do you know what you do? You say to the people of British Columbia, "Tighten your belts," but you make no effort to tighten your own belts. You still continue in your profligate ways. You are still using the government jet as your private limousine to fly home for dinner every night. You are still using a S60,000 VIP box to wine and dine your friends and your colleagues while you watch a football game. You still spend a fortune on advertising, on your offices, on your private expenses and those kinds of things. You take pretty good care of yourselves, and then you make speeches to the people of B.C. and say: "Tighten your belts. You've got to restrain yourselves." You're not restraining yourselves. You're still spending money, still slurping at the public trough. Look at those buttons you're wearing; they're probably all paid for by the taxpayers of British Columbia.

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: Oh, yes, they are. You guys don't pay for one single thing yourselves. When the vouchers come up

[ Page 2016 ]

before Public Accounts a year from now, we're going to find a voucher to cover the cost of those buttons you're wearing at the same time that you're talking to the public of British Columbia.

HON. MR. HEWITT: Who paid for your buttons? I want to know.

MS. BROWN: There is no way that the opposition can slurp at the public trough.

I think that sometimes we have to remind the government about the real.... I don't want to use the word "hypocrisy," because it's on the list of unparliamentary words so I'm not allowed to use it. But I think that every now and then the government should know that they're not fooling anybody. They're not kidding anybody over here. We know who's running up those bills. We know who is creating those deficits, for goodness' sake. And we know who continues to do so. We sit here and listen to these pious speeches: "Oh, the people of British Columbia must tighten their belts." "I am a small businessman," says the first member for Vancouver South (Mr. R. Fraser). "I know what it means not to be able to meet a payroll, sob, sob, boohoo, boohoohoo." He broke my heart. I was weeping; I was in absolute anguish and suffering listening to the tragic situation of the member for Vancouver South, until someone reminded me that five members of his cabinet sat up there in the $60,000 VIP box drinking the B.C. booze and entertaining their friends, while the rest of us couldn't even get it on TV. We had to listen to the game on the radio. That's what happened to the rest of British Columbia. And then he stands up and tells us that we've got to tighten our belts and restrain ourselves.

It's time that the people of British Columbia understood what's going on here. We have a government that has created a deficit which it can no longer handle, and instead of doing something....

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: We're talking about Bill 11, the compensation restraint legislation.

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: Stabilization — thank you. That's the bill we're dealing with.

AN HON. MEMBER: The member for Omineca (Mr. Kempf) is watching you.

MS. BROWN: Oh, I know. The ogre from Omineca has got his eye on me, so I've got to straighten up and fly right.

Goodnight. Mr. Speaker, I want the record to show that the Minister of Forests (Hon. Mr. Waterland) is leaving, with his tennis outfit.

AN HON. MEMBER: He's going out to look for a wood-nymph.

MS. BROWN: Precisely. The losing team is just leaving.

It's interesting that the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Curtis), whose bill it is, has just come in after being out of the House for an hour. Did I get that right? Were you out for an hour?

HON. MR. CURTIS: About twenty minutes.

MS. BROWN: Okay.

I've made my point that the deficit we're dealing with was run up by the government itself, and they are now asking the people of British Columbia to help them deal with it; that they should do that with courtesy and humility instead of making a big issue about it. The oversized public sector we're dealing with is one that was blown up by the government itself, and if it wants to downsize it, it should do so carefully and by introducing due process, recognizing that it created this monster that it's having to deal with.

However, that's not the reason I'm on my feet. What I really want to talk about, in speaking against this piece of legislation, is the people who are mostly going to be affected by it. The Minister of Finance talks about FTEs: full-time equivalents. The best way to deal with a person, whether it is in war or any other time, is to depersonalize him. We're not talking about human beings when we talk about firing 6,000 people; we're talking about some strange thing known as an FTE. We're not talking about living, breathing people. The government tells us that nobody's going to lose his job; positions are going to disappear. Presumably that's supposed to make us not care. The reality of the situation is that we are talking about human beings. We are talking about people who are going to lose their jobs and suffer as a direct result of this piece of legislation introduced by the government.

The original Compensation Stabilization Act was introduced in April 1982, and at that time the Premier said: "This is a temporary measure, so everyone who has been fired, don't worry. Go on UIC and when that runs out go on welfare, and by then things will be better and we will rehire you again. You will be redeployed in the government's employ." Now, a year and some months later, we find another piece of legislation which says that the stabilization program, or "restraint" as it is called, is to be extended indefinitely. In other words, those people who were fired last year are not going to be rehired now that their UIC has run out and they have been on welfare for a while. But in addition, more people are going to be fired and laid off. We've heard all these pious statements like: "Now the public sector worker is going to be treated exactly the same as the private sector worker has always been treated."

I would like to give you a couple of statistics, Mr. Speaker. Of the people employed by the government, in all of its jobs, 51.1 percent are women. That's what we're talking about. What we were talking about under Bill 28 last spring and what we're talking about under Bill 11 this year is this government's unrelenting onslaught on the working women of this province. That's what we're talking about. We're not talking about positions and FTEs, and all those other euphemistic statements, initials, alphabet soup and that kind of thing. This government is the largest employer of women in British Columbia. That, unfortunately, is the reality that we have to live with. The government has also been, despite all of the things you may have heard to the contrary, one of the most ungenerous employers in the province. Do you want to know something, Mr. Speaker?

MR. KEMPF: No, not really.

MS. BROWN: Well, you may not want to know it, and if I were in your position I probably wouldn't want to know it either, but I want to tell you that the women who work for this

[ Page 2017 ]

government need to have the government know these facts, and that is that most of the women who work for this government make less than $1,500 a month. They can't afford to sit in a VIP box to watch a football game; they can't even afford to go to the football game. The working conditions of the women who work for this government are disgraceful. The so-called FTEs and positions which the Minister of Finance talks about are a disgrace in the affluent and wealthy province that we live in, a province where the government can use a private jet to take its ministers home for supper every night, and can spend $250,000 on a poll prior to the election to find out what women think and what they want to hear from the government, so that the government could turn out brochures promising them the moon and the stars, and then deliver nothing. If that money had been spent on giving even a 1 percent increase to the large number of women, most of whom are in the clerical ghetto, they would have been better off than having that money spent on that poll.

[10:15]

Now we have before us a piece of legislation which says that the government wants to extend indefinitely, forever if possible, the right to continue this attack on the working women of this province.

These are the statistics. As I said before, Mr. Speaker, 80 percent of the workers involved in the hospital services of the government are women, and 84.7 percent of the health sciences employees are women.

MR. CAMPBELL: How come the men are being discriminated against?

MS. BROWN: That member for Okanagan North, who took the place of Mrs. Jordan, says: "How come the men are being discriminated against?" I find it impossible to deal with the total lack of education of government members in the 40 minutes allotted to me, because if that member knew anything he would know that for every dollar that a man earns in this province a women earns 59 cents. That's the kind of discrimination men are suffering in this province.

Look at the public sector worker. Look at the information put out by the Ministry of Labour and by the Public Service Commission of this government itself. It says that 51.1 percent of the employees are women, and most of them are locked and closeted in the clerical ghetto. Their average income is less than $1,500 a month. That's the reason I am not fighting on behalf of the men in the public sector but on behalf of the women. Any time the men are in the position that the women are now in, then I'll fight for them too. I'll fight for them too. I like men. I don't see anything wrong with them. But I think it is so patently unfair that for every dollar that is paid to a man in the public sector and any other employ in this province, a woman is paid 59 cents. You should consider that unfair too and you should be standing on your feet and fighting against that too.

Do you know what we have? We have Mr. Walter Block of the Fraser Institute — that great institute that advises the Minister of Finance and tells him what to put in his budget — addressing the chamber of commerce in Victoria and saying: "The women of B.C. should not be upset with the Premier because their wages are not as high as men's wages are. They should be upset with their husbands. Do you know why? Because their husbands insist that they have babies and that they stay home and do the washing and the cooking."

MR. KEMPF: It's about time they did.

MS. BROWN: The member for Omineca thinks that's wonderful. I believe that it is great that women should be the ones responsible for having babies, because if that was something that was left to the men, God knows what would happen to that job — they'd mess that one up too, as they've messed up everything else they've done. But that's not reason enough to penalize them. and that's what this piece of legislation does. This legislation penalizes working women. When we come around to debate Bill 26, which wipes out the basic employment standards which protect women.... I'm not reflecting on another piece of legislation. I'll deal with that when the time comes, but you put that in the same package as this legislation and Bill 3 and all the other pieces of legislation, and what you see is an unrelenting onslaught against working women in this province. Do you know what the end result of that is? The statistics that go back to the beginning of time on poverty in this country show that the poorest people in this country are women and they are never, ever going to break out of that poverty cycle as long as we have to deal with this kind of legislation. Until government members like that member for Okanagan North and that member for Omineca and that Minister of Finance and the Minister of Education and that member for Mission–Port Moody, Mr. Speaker, who are the only government members sitting in the House aside from yourself and the little member for Surrey....

AN HON. MEMBER: Point of order.

MS. BROWN: Oh, sorry — the member for Shuswap-Revelstoke (Mr. Michael) is included. Until those members get into their government caucuses and start fighting on behalf of changing these injustices, we are always going to have those kinds of statistics.

Do you know what happens? One of the things that women have been fighting for is equal pay, because they've decided that they don't want to live on welfare. they don't want to live on UIC, they don't want to be dependent on handouts from spouses or governments or anywhere else. They want true value for their work. They just want to be paid true value for the work they do. That's not going to be possible any more under this kind of legislation. It is not possible under Bill 11 or Bill 28. When the trade unions are fighting for their very survival, they haven't got the energy to put into the battle supporting women in their fight for equal pay. As long as you have poverty you are going to have a drain on the public purse. That is so obvious to everybody. When people work and have an income, they pay taxes, they buy the goods and they buy the services of the small business sector, of the medium business sector, of industry and commerce — they can pay rent, they can buy houses, they can afford mortgages. they can make an economic contribution to the common wealth of the community in which they live. You can't do that when you are poor.

Poverty is a drain on the public purse. If we are interested in doing something about the public purse, we should be committed to the elimination of poverty. We should be wiping it out. Even if we don't care about the emotional and psychological ravages of poverty, even if we have a government that says: my interest is only in the bottom line; just talk to me about dollars and cents; don't talk to me about emotions, about psychology, about compassion and feelings and those kinds of bleeding-heart things that you social workers

[ Page 2018 ]

are always talking about.... Even if you put those things aside and only talk about dollars and cents, poverty still ends up being a drain on the public purse. It is a drain on the common wealth. It is a burden on every single one of us, not just the people who are poor.

You would think that the Fraser Institute, which is supposed to be the embodiment of brilliance and intelligence, would have been able to recognize that fact and that in advising the Minister of Finance and the government it would be talking about ways in which we could create jobs and generate economic independence for all of the people in the community instead of introducing this kind of legislation which locks people into low-paying jobs, into low-paying work ghettos and into poverty. Do you realize that we have people working for the provincial government whose income is so low that they are eligible for day-care subsidy'? They were eligible for the renter's grant when it existed. They were eligible for the provincial tax credit when it was still in existence. That's how low their salary was. They were putting in a full day's work, and their full day's pay was so low that they were eligible for welfare handouts. This piece of legislation entrenches that; this piece of legislation says that that can go on indefinitely.

When the bill was first introduced in April of last year as Bill 28, I spoke in opposition to it, I was opposed to it and I gave the very same arguments then that I am giving now. I said that the bill penalizes and hurts 51.1 percent of the number of people employed in the public sector and that we the government, as the largest employer of women in the province, have a responsibility to set an example. We have got to establish standards that the private sector should be aiming to meet. Instead of ' that we are doing the very opposite. By introducing the stabilization bill, which downgrades the increase in income that a person can have who works in the public sector,, we are not establishing those standards.

Do you know what happened during that period of time, Mr. Speaker? I have here a comparison of food prices. Between 1979 and 1982 there was an increase in the price of milk of 31 percent, in bread of 40 percent and in meat of 17 percent; energy costs went from 79 cents a gallon for gas to $2 a gallon. During that same period of time we are talking about an increase in the income of those workers of something in the neighbourhood of 8 percent.

There is no way that these people were ripping off the province. Because they weren't getting an adequate income the government and the taxpayers were being forced to subsidize them in other ways such as rental, day-care costs and income tax credits. They were being subsidized in all kinds of different ways. Wouldn't it have made more sense, when we are talking about stabilization, to talk about helping to close the gap, helping to create a situation in which people can earn a living wage? Wouldn't that have made more sense so that they could in turn contribute to the common wealth through their taxes and their labour, and by getting off the public payroll through not needing the day-care subsidy, the renter's tax and the provincial income tax any more, and not draining other services such as health care and those other services which people on or below the poverty line income tend to use more than others? Wouldn't that have made more sense? But here we find ourselves a year and some months later dealing with a piece of legislation which is going to extend that travesty indefinitely. So what we're going to find is that the 5, 631 who work in the two areas of office assistant I and office assistant 2 not only are going to have to deal with their low incomes but also are going to have to deal with the insecurity of not knowing whether they have been targeted as a position which is slated to disappear.

[10:30]

All of the reports, whether it's the poll done by the Vancouver Sun on the weekend, which says that everyone agrees that restraint is needed, but certainly not by the method it is being introduced, or the reports that tell us that whereas in the rest of Canada unemployment is going down, in British Columbia it is on the increase, or the reports that tell us that in the rest of Canada bankruptcies are going down, but in British Columbia they are on the increase.... Whatever marker or yardstick you use, the message seems to be the same: that the path the government has embarked upon is clearly not operating in the best interest of the people of British Columbia. Clearly that's not what is happening, and yet we hear government member after government member rising to their feet and defending this. How can they? How can you defend a program that's increasing unemployment? How can you defend a program that's increasing bankruptcies? What do you do when you throw people out of work? You increase your welfare rolls, so you can stand up and brag, as the minister who just took his seat did, about the increase in the Human Resources budget.

That is something that the government should be hiding. They should be ashamed of the increase in the Human Resources budget. What that increase shows is that this government is budgeting for poverty. The increase is in one section of the budget and one section only, and that's in the welfare payments. That's the only section of the budget that's increased. There is a decrease in services to children, services to seniors, services to families, services such as post-partum counselling, community grants and all those services to the mentally retarded. The only section of the budget that was increased was a section dealing with welfare payments. It is a clear statement on the part of this government that they would rather have people on welfare than have people working. That is nothing to brag about.

If this were a Third World country or a disadvantaged community it would make sense. People would be sympathetic and understand. But we're not. We're talking about $30 million buildings on the north end of False Creek. Our government members have a government jet to fly them home for dinner every night. Our government has a $60,000 box at the football stadium so that people can sit around and watch football in luxury. The Minister of Finance doesn't even bother to stay in the House when his bill is being debated. No one has seen the Premier for two days. We spend millions of dollars on advertising, office furniture and travel expenses. We give generous pensions to people who work for the government, but we say to the very poorest people in the province, the ones who try to live on $265 a month, that we can't afford the $50 a month extra that you used to get for putting in 100 hours of volunteer time. What does that work out to? Is that 50 cents an hour, or is my arithmetic wrong? We can no longer afford the 50 cents an hour that disabled people and people living on welfare used to get for putting in 100 hours of volunteer time a month, and we've taken that away from them. The government said: "We can't afford that any more." Do you know what the government said? That we can no longer afford the counsellors, psychologists and doctors to take care of the children in this province who are the victims of incest and rape. They're on their own. Too bad. If

[ Page 2019 ]

they've been raped or they're the victims of incest, tough beans. "We need our money to pay for a box at a football stadium, to change the colour of the bus stops and buses, and to run polls to find out what women think so we can issue press releases that say that the government will protect services to women." Those are the kinds of priorities that we're dealing with here with this government.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

And then we have legislation like Bill 11, which says that the government should have permission to continue on this path indefinitely. I don't think it matters what political party you belong to or what religion, sex, race, creed or whatever you are: if you've got any sense of responsibility at all for your fellow human beings — your sisters and brothers — and if you see yourself as being part of the family of mankind, then you can't support the kind of legislation this bill represents or the kind of priorities that this government is embarked on.

So I don't think it should surprise anybody that the members of the opposition are not going to support Bill 11, just as they did not support Bill 28. This bill, as I said in the very beginning, is part of the unrelenting onslaught on working people in this province. And since most of the public sector workers are women and a large number of them single parents, what we're talking about are the most defenceless workers in this province — single parents and their children, the people who can least deal with the insecurity this bill embodies and who certainly cannot handle the poverty this bill entrenches. For that reason, there is absolutely no way that this opposition is going to be willing to support this piece of legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I'm not going to move adjournment. My caucus chairperson has indicated that we're not going to move adjournment.

In closing, I just want to express some regret that I have not had an opportunity to deal with my notes. Maybe next time around.

MR. MITCHELL: It's always interesting to reflect on some of the background to why the government brought in this particular piece of legislation at this time. After going through the estimates and various pieces of correspondence and literature that come along with them, I couldn't help but realize the serious financial mess this province has got into. In fact, when I was reading it, I was quite convinced that the government was really hoping that they would be defeated in 1983 so they wouldn't have to try to straighten out the mess which they had got themselves and the province of British Columbia into.

Bill 11 really is not a bill to regulate public service personnel. It is a smokescreen to confuse the public about the mess that we're in. I have to agree with the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (Hon. Mr. Hewitt) when he says that the massive payments for debt coming out of our taxes cannot continue. I think it's only fair that we shouldn't use Bill 11, which basically is an attack on the public section of our workforce, as a smokescreen without looking into the facts of where we're at and why we should give serious consideration to identifying the problems of British Columbia and what we're going to do with them.

[Mr. Segarty in the chair.]

I know there have been a lot of personal attacks on the second member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk). I remember back in 1979 when he stated that the economy of this province was going to have serious problems. He was attacked in the 1979 and 1980 sessions because he predicted that there was going to be need for restraint in this province. He predicted then that there was going to be a time of depression. We told the public in 1979 that B.C. was in for hard times. We told this House in 1980 that this province was in for hard times. In 1981 it was this party that moved resolution after resolution, on every estimate, to take the fat out of the budget, to take out the expensive consulting fees, the high amount for advertising, the fancy furniture that was being purchased by everyone who worked in a ministry office. In 1981 we talked about an amount of S83 million.... In 1982 we talked restraint. We said that it was time to take out the waste, the fat, that was in our budgets and becoming a millstone around the necks of every one of us in this province who pays taxes. Every one of our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be paying taxes to get this province out of the mess that this Social Credit government has gotten us into. And what do they do? They bring in a bill — Bill 11 — which is going to cut back on the civil servants of this province, What it is really going to do is turn the clock back to prior to 1972.

[10:45]

I remember those days — 1969, 1970, 1971 — when there was a large group throughout the province classed as civil servants. They can be in municipalities, police departments, fire departments and provincial civil service. When it came to negotiations. especially in the provincial civil service, they always knew what kind of increase they were going to get once a year. Once a year a retirement party was held for those in the civil service who were retiring, or those who had completed 30 years' service. The then Premier, W.A.C. Bennett, would attend those ceremonies and present the gold watches. At that time he would announce that the economy was such that the province would be getting a 3 or 5 percent increase in wages — one time it went up to 8 percent. Some years the Premier would say that there was no increase. What actually happened was that the wages of the civil servants kept sliding farther and farther behind the private sector.

In all fairness, the employees that we hire — and I say "we" as the public — should be given the same.... I don't say they should be given better rights, but they should be given the same rights as those in the private sector. They should be given the same opportunity to establish their wage scale based on the same rates that were granted in the private sector. If you study the wage rates over the last 10 or 11 years, since the civil servants of this province have been given the right to negotiate.... It’s a right that is shared by a great majority of the democratic governments of the western world, a right to sit down with their employer, to present arguments to substantiate their production, the qualifications they must have to hold that job and the upgrading programs that are needed to assume greater responsibility. They are allowed to sit down with the public commission to establish a wage level. Over the last ten years, you will find that the public servants are traditionally one year behind the wages that are granted in the private sector.

It was no surprise to this side of the House when Mr. Peck reported that nearly 93 percent of the awards settled between employees and employers in the public sector were around 3 percent. That 3 percent directly reflects settlements that were

[ Page 2020 ]

arrived at in private sector negotiations. When you bring in a piece of legislation such as this that establishes a mechanism that really is not related to the rates that are settled in the private sector, I say it is wrong.

When MLAs were getting an increase in salary, our wages at that time were directly related to the percentage increase in the industrial sector of the private sector. I don't think the public were opposed to that reasoning. It did allow the employer to make a reasonable gauge of the increase that should be granted, or the decrease. I was quite shocked to find that the bill centralizes power into the cabinet via the Minister of Finance to negotiate and to set limits on every section of the public sector in this province. It gives a guideline of minus 5, plus 5 that they are going to entrench forever. I say "forever," because this is what the previous speaker in the government has said: "This bill is not for two years, although we campaigned prior to May 5 on a restraint bill that had a two-year life-span." Although the Social Credit government campaigned on that bill, after the election they brought in amendments to that bill, and they now say that this bill is going to be entrenched and they are going to have the power to hold the wages of the public service to a minus 5 or a plus 5.

I was quite shocked when I heard the Minister of Finance during his introduction to this bill state that the yearly increments that were built into wages negotiated in the public sector were going to be considered within the context of this minus 5 plus 5. I think this takes something away from collective bargaining that has been established over many years. When you have any position, it is assumed by most employers, both in the private and public sectors, that with more experience the value of the particular employee increases. It's standard practice that as that productivity increases, he should get an increase, commonly called a yearly increment, for a period of one, two or three years.

I know that in my particular profession prior to getting elected you do have various levels built into contracts. When a person joins the police force he goes in as a probationer. After a year he's a third-class, then second-class and then first-class. After ten years he has another increment based on his experience, merit and ability. That increase is normal practice in those contracts. I was looking through some of those contracts, and I happened to notice one rate wherein a constable would be getting $1,900 a month, and when he moved up one particular grade he would go to $2,200. That means an increase of over 10 percent. It's based on his ability, training and a built-in scale that has been freely negotiated.

Under this bill and under the statement of the Minister of Finance, that 10 percent increase will be disallowed. This bill gives a minus 5 percent or a plus 5 percent. We can't lock any employee into a wage system that does not have some merit. It has to be tied to what is going on in private industry and based on some merit of supply and demand or the job that they perform. You can't say to one group of employees: "We are going to have one law for those who work in the public sector and another for those in the private sector." When those who are working in the public sector go to negotiate a new extension of their mortgage.... In the last two or three years when you went to get a new mortgage from the mortgage companies, the banks or the trust companies, and you had a mortgage of 10, 11 or 12 percent, if you wanted that mortgage renewed you paid the going rate of 19, 20 or 22 percent. There were no negotiations. There were no bills coming from this government which gave any protection to those who had to buy. Now they're saying: "Because we have you under our thumb we're going to squeeze you, put you down and keep you there, but we're going to allow our friends in the money industry to run roughshod over the public in general."

The Minister of Finance knows that's true, and so do every one of the members in this House who have constituents coming in by the week and saying: "They keep increasing our mortgages and our costs, but not only are we locked into inflation but as public service employees we have been locked into an 8-8-8 contract for the last three years" — until the negotiations that went on prior to the election. You're saying one thing to one group of employees, but you don't say that you're going to make any attempt to protect their purchases when they go out into the marketplace.

[11:00]

My colleague the member for Burnaby-Edmonds (Ms. Brown) mentioned that even now there are civil servants who qualify for the renter's grant. There are civil servants with low incomes who qualify for child care or income assistance. Prior to 1972, there were civil servants working for the province of British Columbia under a Social Credit government whose wages were actually subsidized by the welfare ministry of that day. Their wages were below the poverty level, and we all know that the welfare rates in this province under Social Credit have always been below the established poverty rates of this country. Was there any hue and cry from the Social Credit back-benchers that it was such a disgraceful situation that the wages of their employees were less than the welfare rates that those who were unfortunate enough to be sick, widowed or single parents were forced to live on?

It appears that the Social Credit government continually want to make attacks on the little guy. Last year it was the teachers; it was a time when we should kick teachers. A couple of years before that it was to kick single mothers on welfare. You got a lot of publicity; it made headlines. This year we're attacking all public servants. We kick the little guys and this and that group, but I don't think we as individuals, and as people who have been elected to give our input into new legislation, can continue to embark on attacks unless we take the time to look at where we are, how we got here and how we're going to get out of here.

As I said at the beginning, Mr. Speaker, Bill 11, a so-called design to hold the wages of the public sector employee, is not new. I remember that we had another bill in 1970-71 — I believe it came in as Bill 31 — that set up the Mediation Commission. I know there are a lot of people in this House that remember the Mediation Commission. This board was set up with three of our finest people, representatives appointed by the government who were going to look at every application for a wage settlement and come down with a settlement that was fair, honest and just. Besides, in that same legislation the government not only had the power they have in this bill to restrict it to public servants but also to make any employee who was deemed to be part of the economic needs of the province — anybody whose contribution to the workforce, the government said, was part of the economic need of this province.... The IWA, construction workers and public servants were ruled....

MR. MICHAEL: You forced them back to work.

MR. MITCHELL: Not in 1971 — the member knows better. He's trying to play his old bleeding-heart defence — a

[ Page 2021 ]

lawyer's trick to defuse the issue and talk about something else. What we were talking about was the Social Credit Mediation Commission that was a forerunner to Bill 11, and it was going to set wages. I remember that it was rejected at that time; it was rejected by the trade union movement; most likely it was rejected at that time by the present member for Shuswap-Revelstoke. I happen to be a member of the first union that appeared before that board; I was a public servant at that time.

Very much to the chagrin of the trade union movement, we had in this province a particular individual who was a very strong supporter of the Social Credit Party, and he was very active in the trade union movement. His name was Senator Ed Lawson. At that time he was what he still is: a power within the teamsters' union. He met with the bargaining committee at that time and he said: "With the research of my resource branch we will put together a program and a brief to present to the Mediation board." We were a little doubtful, but the teamsters' union did supply research people. They did do a study of our particular wages and job descriptions, compared to wages in comparable jobs throughout Canada and in the community, jobs performed by people of similar education and training. We appeared before the Mediation Commission. You can go back and look into the history of it, Mr. Speaker. We were the first union to appear. and we came out with absolutely nothing. Ed was quite shocked, because after he had read the brief that he'd presented, he was quite convinced that we would get at least 10 percent over what we were asking. But we got nothing. He then took one of his own locals to the Mediation Commission and they got exactly the same — nothing.

That is what happens when we try to set up groups and rules and regulations where there is no appeal. That was what happened to the Mediation Commission. It was rejected. It generated within the public throughout the province a commitment of the trade union movement and workers that if they were going to do anything, they had to change the government, and the next election after that the government was changed.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Would the member please return to the bill.

MR. MITCHELL: I am right on the bill, Mr. Speaker. I'm talking about the exact type of legislation that this bill is following. It is setting up a board of....

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. member, talk about the legislation before you.

MR. MITCHELL: I am talking about the legislation. I'm talking about the board set up by Mr. Peck — a very fine person, but it has restrictions that have no flexibility. It has nothing to do with inflation — only one thing: they must fall within the guidelines that the government sets. They must be minus 5 percent or plus 5 percent, and this government says that this legislation is going to be there forever. This legislation is setting up a smokescreen to pretend that it's the public servants of this province who have gone out and got this province into the debt, which the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (Hon. Mr. Hewitt) admits is horrendous. It's a debt that we have rushed into, to cover up one mistake after another. We sell the assets of this province, such as the ferries, and lease them back. This is money that is going out of this province, money that should have been going to continue the office of the rentalsman and to keep workers in all phases of the public service.

For year after year that I sat in this House and opposed the massive debt that Hydro is forcing on this province, all we got from that side of the House was that we wanted to turn the lights out. That debt grew year after year, and every year during the four that I was here the government said they could not afford to continue to build dam after dam. And now that we have the power we can't sell it. We haven't used that power to create the new jobs that this economy needs and to diversify our economy the way we should. We have water running over the dams, and we have the debt....

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Will the member please return to Bill 11, the Compensation Stabilization Amendment Act, 1983.

MR. MITCHELL: I'm referring to the speech that the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs made regarding the massive debt that this province is in, which this government and the Social Credit government before it got us into.

In my research I have been going through the estimates of the Minister of Finance. I keep hearing about the great 17 percent increase in our budget, and I tried to find out where all this money was going. The biggest increase was the one in rentals paid by each ministry to BCBC. I noticed in the Attorney-General's ministry that there was a $10 million increase in court rents. The courts of this province were built by the people, they were owned by the people, but for some unknown reason, out of the budget — the same budget that would be paying public service employees — there was an additional $10 million in one ministry going out for the increase in rent of the courts. So I thought I would really look into the annual report of BCBC, and I expected when I went through that report that there would be a massive amount of money going to be made available to get rid of the need for Bill 11. I know that all of the properties of BCBC were owned by the people of this province. They were turned over to! a Crown corporation under the able administration of Social Credit appointees, and they were going to administer our assets. As I read in their report, dealing with the British Columbia Buildings Corporation; it is structured similarly to a private sector enterprise. It uses private sector accounting methods and is....

DEPUTY SPEAKER: For the third time, hon. member, will you please return to the provisions of Bill 11.

MR. MITCHELL: I am. I'm referring to Bill 11. I'm referring to the lack of money to pay civil servants who are needed. I am right on, because what I'm trying to show you, Mr. Speaker....

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Please....

MR. MITCHELL: You just listen to what I'm saying, because I know you will zero in on what I am trying to get across.

They use private sector accounting, and their total revenue depended on rents. I know in the budget that would pay the civil servants, all this money was going to a Crown corporation. So I expected to see all kinds of money in that particular building.... Last year they had a 15 percent

[ Page 2022 ]

increase in rents — revenues — but when they got down to dividends, there were no dividends. Out of the budget that should have been paying civil servants, there wasn't any revenue from our own Crown corporations, though we had a 15 percent increase in rents.

[11:15]

That is why, when we are dealing with this bill, we are dealing with the debt that the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs kept referring to. We have to bring down some kind of reason. We have to listen to the second member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk), who said that if we are going to get ourselves out of the mess that we have created — this massive debt: Hydro, ferries, northeast coal.... This is money that is coming out of the economy, and this is money that is causing a very serious attack on the expectations of British Columbians.

When you destroy the expectations of the citizens of this province by having restrictions that are limited, as in Bill 11, and you take those restrictions and impose them on one group, we are not going to have the production, we are not going to have the input, we are not going to have the stimulation of our economy, because there is fear being generated because this bill, similar to other bills, is an attack on the working people of this province. It is an attack. But that attack, though it may be zeroed in on this bill on public sector employees.... In Bill 26 I believe it is an attack on those in the small private sector-unions, but that attack is causing that fear, and that fear is spilling over into private industry and the retail trade. People are afraid to make commitments; they are afraid to make purchases that will stimulate the small business community. That particular small business community, as my good friend from Nelson said, is the greatest creator of jobs.

In closing, Mr. Speaker, as I say, I would like to advise you that the member for Esquimalt–Port Renfrew will be voting against this bill.

Could I ask leave of the House to make one small introduction while I am on my feet?

Leave granted.

MR. MITCHELL: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

In 1979, just after I got elected, I received a phone call from a person who was talking to a young lady by the name of Brenda Dalglish, who happened to be a reporter in the Western Community. At that time she had come from a meeting — so the story goes — where she overheard.... She eventually published the beginning of the famous dirty tricks scandal that rocked the Social Credit government throughout 1979. At that time she exposed the dirty tricks pulled....

DEPUTY SPEAKER: You received leave, hon. member, to make an introduction. Please get on with it.

MR. MITCHELL: ...on one Gordon Townsend, the person I would like to introduce. Gordon Townsend is sitting in the gallery, and he's here to continue to watch what's happening in this government and what other dirty tricks may be pulled.

MR. LEA: One of the main themes that comes from the government in terms of restraint and the need for restraint is that they say that the thing that has ruined the country.... It is a sort of schizophrenic message that we get. They talk about what a wonderful place Canada is, what a wonderful record of achievement we have, what a wonderful place it is to live, and what a wonderful place it has been to live in. I am surprised that we condemn our past so heartily. We say it was al I wrong. Look at us in this chamber, and the kind of life that our country has provided for us, has given us the opportunity to be legislators for — most of us from humble beginnings — and yet we condemn the very life that has brought us to where we are.

The government and the conservatives of the day.... was just up in the press gallery watching Sinclair Stevens for the Conservative Party and Margaret Thatcher for the Conservative Party of Great Britain talk about getting rid of the socialism that we have been suffering over the years since the Second World War. What do they mean by socialism? I pick up that they mean that socialism is any service or product supplied by the government and that capitalism is any service or product supplied by the private sector. Therefore any service or product supplied by the government is evil and every service or product supplied by the private sector is good. What's the socialism they are talking about? What is it that has brought us to our knees, as they say? What are those terrible socialist things that have ruined our country? I have a partial list: medicare, pensions, unemployment insurance, social assistance, student loans, public education, public works — which would be roads, water, sewer systems, etc. Those are the dirty things that have done us in; those are the reasons we need Bill 1t, they say; those are the things that have made life unbearable.

Where would we be today if we didn't have medicare? Where would we be today if we didn't have pension plans, unemployment insurance, social assistance, public education, public works? If the economy had taken the downturn that it has in the productive side — and everyone knows that is true; there has been a downturn in the productive side of the economy and if we didn't have pensions in place, can you imagine how bearable life would be today for those people? How evil is it to make sure that the elderly in society are treated with respect? Do those of us who are still young and productive in society really begrudge the elderly a little solace, a little nourishment in their twilight years? Could we hold our heads up if we didn't have pension plans? Unemployment insurance — where would we be today if we didn't have that safety net? If we didn't have pensions, unemployment insurance, social assistance and public works in our society, I can guarantee you that the current downturn of our national economy would be much worse than it is. If those pension funds and the payments from them weren't happening, would not the private sector have less business? Wouldn't unemployment insurance and social assistance be the same? Those safety nets are not only there for the individual; they are there for the public good,

We talk about social assistance as being an evil in society. There are those in society who think that we should pay out social assistance because we are humanitarians, and we believe that we should be the keepers, somewhat, of our brothers, our sisters and our comrades in the world. But there is another very good reason to pay out social assistance, and it really has nothing to do with humanitarianism. It has to do with whether you are going to be safe in your bed at night. Quit paying out social assistance, Mr. Speaker, and we would have chaos. People who are hungry, with no place to sleep, will take desperate measures, and those desperate measures will be such that we would either not be safe in our beds at

[ Page 2023 ]

night or we would have to spend more money on policing, courts and incarceration than anything we might save on social assistance. So these safety nets that we've put into our system for the individual are safety nets for society as a whole.

The bill we're discussing is one that will limit the wage package of people who work in the public sector. There are other ways to do it. The government has chosen this particular way to do it. The public service itself is not the big part of the economy. It is actually one of the smaller parts, although a substantial portion of the provincial economy or the country's economy. I don't see how we can get a healthy economy going just by picking out one part of the economy, no matter where it is. It wouldn't work to pick out the industrial workers and leave out the public servants. If we're going to fight as a unit, if we're going to be a cooperative unit fighting to survive, then I think people would do it if they could only see the point of it all, if they could see that it's a fair plan, that everybody is suffering, although not to the same degree. I don't think we have that kind of society. We don't expect the person who's making $250,000 a year as the director of MacMillan Bloedel, say, to get the same as someone who's a clerk with the public service. But if the clerk in the public service could actually see that restraint was being practised throughout our society, if they didn't feel they were singled out, if they felt that they, along with their neighbours, were pulling for a common cause, I think you would find British Columbians and all Canadians willing to shoulder that kind of responsibility. I have no doubt about that.

It's no wonder that there is suspicion from working people when they hear about restraint and controls on wages. They know it's unfair if they're controlled, for instance, while bank profits are soaring during this recession. If you picked up the paper in the last couple of days, you saw that bank profits are soaring. I'd rather see the profit that's going to the banks working out in the community. Money won't do anything on its own. It's just a pile of metal or paper. The only time money will actually work is when you combine it with labour. Labour on its own isn't of very much use either in our society; you can have a great labour pool, but if you don't have the wherewithal in terms of capital to put those two together, then you're not going to have an economy at all. Labour and capital need one another. They feed on one another. When you see bank profits rising, you know that's money which is being taken out of the economy. As Canadians and as British Columbians, we have to ask ourselves where that money goes. Is it going to be used in a productive way to help the citizens of Canada? In fact, I think we have to take a look at our financial institutions and see whether part of the reason that Bill 11 is even being called for by the government is that we have been let down by the financial institutions in this country.

[11:30]

It's been my experience that you can go into an American financial institution, and if you can show them character, experience and a good idea, there's a good chance you're going to get some money. Not so in Canada. It's the old saying: in Canada you have to go into the bank and prove you don't need the money before they'll give it to you. Or if you go into the bank and want some money, even if they like your character, your idea and your experience, and you want $40,000 to start up a new small business, they will make you put up $250,000 and your house. They want so much of you in order to give you a chance to work in this community that it's unfair, and we should be looking at the financial institutions in this country and asking whether they're serving the citizens and the economy of this country. I don't think they are. They are there to serve the big corporate world, not to serve the small, indigenous business person of this province or this country. Consequently, we have had a slack, lagging economy in this province of even greater magnitude than is called for by the current downturn in the recession.

This bill we are discussing is going to do to one sector of the economy what maybe should be done to all sectors of the economy, not just to the public service. But because it is aimed at only one sector of our economy it is an unfair and inequitable piece of legislation, and it is seen as that. What is this bill, along with accompanying bills, going to produce? It is going to turn neighbour against neighbour; it is going to split families along philosophic and ideological lines; it is going to make this province one of confrontation. During the throne speech, the word I particularly liked was "cooperation." I don't see where this kind of legislation that we are taking about tonight is going to engender cooperation. Even if the government were absolutely correct that this piece of legislation should go through for some academic, economic reason, the result of it could be so devastating that the very good reasons which the government thinks they have are overshadowed by the damage the legislation will do. Then we are further behind than when we started.

I really don't see the doom and gloom that I hear coming from the other side. Yes, we aren't doing that well. We have a high unemployment rate, we have businesses going under; but after all is said and done, most people are working, most businesses are still in business, and we have the wherewithal to make it a better place for those who have been the victims of something beyond their control. It isn't as if the small business person going out of business is necessarily a bad business person. They are sometimes the best entrepreneurs in our society, those managers of small business, and they're going down the tube anyway. When the recession first hit, admittedly most of the small businesses that were going under were those that hadn't been around too long. They were either underfinanced or badly managed because of lack of experience, or a combination of the two. But we went very shortly into the recession and it started to take deeper and deeper and deeper bites, to the point where, when the hon. member for Nanaimo (Mr. Stupich) and I were going around the province about a year and half ago, we were talking to people who had been in business for 50 years in Cranbrook and who were going out of business. People with a good record of management and of supplying a service to that community.

So the cut has gone deeper. There have even been admissions from those who have been in charge of our economy, both here and in the United States. that they misjudged. The kind of measures they implemented to fight inflation have caused more damage than they imagined they would, because they did it too harshly and it carried on too long.

Mr. Speaker, it grieves me that we are here in this House not cooperating with one another in any way, and I sure don't blame one side more than the other for that. It is an historical battle that has led us to where we are today. I am becoming ever more inclined to look at the American system of government over the British parliamentary system of government, and believe me, that's coming 360 degrees for me. But when I see good people in this House from both sides who are not allowed to follow their conscience in debate or follow their

[ Page 2024 ]

conscience in voting, then I think we are in serious trouble. I'm coming very quickly around to the point where I am more and more convinced that the administration, the people who look after the purse, should maybe be separate from this House. This House could then truly look at the programs that the government brings in, and maybe we could come to a collective wisdom in this House as to whether we are going to accept the recommendations of the government in terms of spending and their priorities of spending. I look at the United States system, with all its warts.... I don't think we have to follow the U.S. system exactly the way it is. I don't think we have to follow ours exactly the way it is. Maybe we could take a look at both systems and sit down and ask: 'Are we serving the people who put us here in the most effective way?" Maybe we should be examining the structure itself. Maybe the structure is part of the problem.

I look across at the Minister of Intergovernmental Relations (Hon. Mr. Gardom), and I can't believe that he's really changed so much since he sat on this side of the House as an opposition member. If he were a member of this House and not part of the administration, I wonder if he would be saying the things he is. I doubt it. I'm not sure whether the people aren't going to change it for us anyway. I think they're getting pretty fed up with the whole process. They're feeling alienated from it.

I had a conversation — and debate on Bill 11 is the best time to talk about that conversation, because I started out questioning what these terrible socialist things are that we're doing in our society. By the way, I find it peculiar that a great many of the items I read off from the list weren't brought in by socialist governments. They were brought in by Conservative and Social Credit governments, by a host of different kinds of governments. I'd just like to share with you, Mr. Speaker, the conversation that I had last weekend with what I think is a pretty observant citizen, but not one in the position to get much of the information that she would need to make up her mind on a host of issues. She was complaining to me that government isn't doing what the people want. Government is doing what they want to do, but not what the people want. It was a beautiful opportunity to find out what it was all about, so I said: "If the government were to do what you want, what would they be doing?" The answers showed a person who observes the political scene, but is confused by it. She said, "First of all, we have to get rid of socialism," so I said, "well, what is socialism?" She's the one who made my list. She talked about medicare, pensions, unemployment insurance, social assistance, and the list went on. Then I said: "What else do you think is wrong with government?" She replied: "One of the things that's wrong with government is that the big corporations tell the government what to do and they do it." I said: "Hold it, something's not making sense here. If the big corporations are telling the government what to do, why do we have medicare, pensions, unemployment insurance and all of the social services that have grown up over the years? Surely the big corporations aren't telling the government to do that." And she replied that she didn't know what that all meant.

She went on to say that one of her biggest grievances is that the government is not taking responsibility for the economic well-being of the province. She feels that the government has the obligation to make sure the economy is of such proportions that it brings prosperity; that the government is the group, along with the other sectors in the economy, that should be doing the planning for the future. She didn't feel the government should just exonerate itself from any decision-making process; rather, that the government should be taking part in the planning of the economy. Now she's talking about democratic socialism. So in the one breath she's saying she hates socialism because it is medicare, pensions, unemployment insurance, social assistance, student loans and the like, but she does want the government to interfere in the economics of the country. Somehow or other we're leaving people with a great deal of confusion as to what it's all about.

She told me that she will never vote again. She also told me that for the last 20 years she has voted NDP.

MR. REID: She's seen the light.

MR. LEA: No, she's not going to vote Social Credit. She says she is not going to vote again. She's fed up. The government is not meeting her needs as she sees them. I think that woman spoke for a great many British Columbians. I've mentioned it before, and I think it's the most dangerous aspect of the era we live in: that people feel alienated from this process that we are part of. We're not meeting their needs.

Rather than having the conservative right and the conservative left.... Because both of them are conservative; they are both groups who made up their minds 30, 40 and 50 years ago, and nothing's going to change them. To me that's conservatism. They're going to cling to the past and to the solutions of the past when they're no longer applicable. I suggest to you that we need a radical middle — not just a middle, but a radical middle — to meet the problems of today. To me a radical middle is a group of people who will sit down and ask: What are the real problems and what are our options to solve them?

I watch the way this government operates. We didn't operate any differently. What we seem to enjoy doing, as governments in our society, is coming in with the solutions to problems. We feel that only in that way will we be respected. If we can just bring in a program that seems to be the answer, then people are going to respect us for running their affairs properly. People are getting very, very fed up with that kind of government. In fact, I think we are running a great risk. Not only are we as politicians being discredited — I think that's already happened — but unless we are very careful, the process that we work in is going to be discredited also. Then, regardless of the calibre of politician, the whole thing falls apart. What do we replace it with? I hear people talking about getting rid of politicians and I really worry, because to me the only buffer from absolute chaos is the politicians — it's us. It is our obligation, and it should be our conscience, that we act as that buffer between chaos and civilized behaviour. I don't think, if we keep on the way we are going, that we are going to be able to salvage it.

The government brought in a package of legislation with no consultation with the groups that were going to be affected. Mr. Speaker, that alienates people. Why would the government do it? I think the government did it because they didn't want to appear to be uncertain. They wanted to appear to be in charge and decisive and to have the answers. I think that style of government is going out of vogue with the people. They really don't think that we should have all the answers.

To give you an example of what happened when we were government — and I think it is the same thing — we saw a need to preserve farmland. We saw farmland disappearing

[ Page 2025 ]

very quickly, and we moved to rectify the problem as we saw it. All hell broke loose. People didn't understand the program, people were afraid of the program, people were out on the lawn the same as people were out on the lawn over this program that we are debating now. People were frightened and felt alienated from the process. Wouldn't it have been much better, when we were government, if we had gone out and talked to the people about the problem of preserving farmland?

[11:45]

In other words, Mr. Speaker, you must educate before you legislate, if you are going to be a truly democratic process. We learned that the hard way and we answered for it the hard way — we were kicked out. When you learn the hard way, it is a lasting memory — a humbling one and a lasting one. But I see this government doing the same thing. They don't go out to the people and say: "Here is the problem that we're facing. How can we, together, get through it?" If they did, I think there would be wide acceptance of what the government is doing, because the government will be doing something in consultation and in concert with the people who are going to be affected.

We need more democracy, Mr. Speaker, not less. People are demanding more democracy, not less. They are demanding that they have a say in the running of the province and of the country, and they really don't feel it is enough to vote every three or four or five years. They want to be more involved in the process. We have an obligation as legislators to involve them. If we don't, we are going to be the ones who end up alienated from the people. When politicians become alienated from the people, you are looking at the beginning of a totalitarian state of one kind or the other. I don't believe there is any politician in this room who wants that to happen, because after all we are British Columbians before we are Social Crediters or New Democrats or Liberals or Conservatives. But I'm afraid the people don't see us that way. They see us strictly as partisan beings. How else could they think of it? When was the last time that someone on this side of the House voted against his caucus, and when was the last time someone on that side of the House voted against his caucus? They see us as nothing but empty-headed, dogmatic, unworthy citizens.

I'm telling you what I am finding out about what they think of all of us — not just this side of the House, Mr. Speaker, but that side of the House. What I'm saying is that this kind of legislation, along with the rest of the package, further widens that gap between politicians and the people we serve. You can't convince me that the government could not have sat down with the public service and worked out an agreement. If an agreement was not forthcoming — if the government ran into a trade union that was so pig-headed and so stupid that they wouldn't sit down and reason and come up with a compromise and help — then you could be heavy-handed, because in the final run it is up to the government to govern. But to be heavy-handed in the first instance creates that alienation and confrontation, and you have to believe one of two things: either the government is so inept that we're heading toward confrontation by accident, or they are so sinister that they are trying to provoke confrontation for political reasons. What are the other choices?

MR. REE: What are the IWA doing'?

MR. LEA: What do you mean, what are the IWA doing? The member for North Vancouver–Capilano has asked me across the floor: "What are the IWA doing?" When I asked what he meant he said: "Are they not causing confrontation?" I know of no confrontation that the IWA are even in at this point, never mind who caused it. There is collective bargaining going on; it's normal collective bargaining.

Because the member raised it, I would like to touch on the difference between collective bargaining in the private sector and collective bargaining in the public sector. There is a big difference. In the private sector when there is a lockout or a strike there are incentives to make those parties get back to the bargaining table. The workers want to get back to the bargaining table and settle, because they want to get their wages, and the private company wants to get back to the bargaining table because they want their business to be open and they want to make a profit. They want to get a yield on their investment. There is an incentive on both sides of the spectrum in the private sector to bring them back to the bargaining table to try to reach an agreement.

In the public sector. on both sides of the equation there are disincentives to get back to the bargaining table, From the employer's point of view in the public sector, it sometimes can make money on a strike. For instance, if the public service went out in this province for three months, think of the money the government would save, and it could help balance their budget at the end of the year. That's an incentive not to go back to the bargaining table, not just for this government but for municipal governments. It's been done by management in the public sector, to actually work and manipulate to get a strike so that they can have the opportunity to save some money in their budget. It doesn't always happen, but it does happen. On the employees' side in the public sector, there's always that thing in the back of their minds that the government can get more money if they'll only tax more. The private company can't force sales up to get more revenue, and the workers in the private sector know that and so they're faced with some reality.

Collective bargaining in the public sector is something that I wonder about and ponder on, and wonder whether there aren't some better answers to the way we've been going. I don't know what those answers are. I guess it's always nice to point out the problems and not have the answers. But I know Bill 11 and Bill 3 are not the answers to the problem. If we are going to have some meaningful, equitable way of finding wage rates for the public sector, maybe we should be looking in another direction than the one we've been in during the past few years. But it sure isn't the heavy hand of this kind of legislation that will bring around the climate to reach those answers that we have to find.

MR. BARRETT: It doesn't apply to Doug Heal.

MR. LEA: No. It doesn't apply to Doug Heal.

But, Mr. Speaker. the problem with this government is that they actually hate government. and everything that government is about. They're only here in government in order to preserve what they can of no government. I suggest to you that there's nothing wrong with a pension plan, with social assistance or with student loans. There's nothing wrong with the government's supplying a product or a service to the people of the province.

Interjection.

[ Page 2026 ]

MR. LEA: That's right. If the economy isn't such that you can do it, then you can't do it.

But now we get down to priorities. A government collects so much money, and they have a decision to make as to where they're going to spend it. I've said before that if we were a little bit more honest, that's the only thing that a provincial government can do in terms of the economy. We have no power to do anything else. The only power we have is to tax and to spend the money. We have no charge of interest rates, just tax and spend the money. So the only way to really judge a provincial government is within the limits of what they can or cannot do. If the only power they have is to tax and to spend money, then we have to examine where they get their tax revenue from and see whether it's a proper taxation formula, whether it's fair and equitable and whether taxation charge is killing the golden goose. All of those things have to be taken into consideration. Once the money's in, then we can only judge the government on how it spends it and what kind of priorities it sets in spending the money.

That's where I find this government really lacking. It's not that they don't have money for human rights or for a rentalsman's office or for health care. They have chosen to spend that money in another place. If the government were honest, they would stand up in the Legislature and say: "This is the decision we've made. We have decided to spend the money there, not over here. Take it or lump it. That's our decision and we'll stand or fall at the next election on the decisions we have made." Not to take credit for the decisions they've made surrounding this and the other pieces of legislation, Mr. Speaker, I believe is dishonest. Why won't the government fess up? Why won't the government level? They won't do that because they feel that if they did the people wouldn't accept the decisions they've made. But I think they should once and for all. If politicians don't begin to be honest and forthright with the people we serve, then I'm afraid that politicians aren't going to be around that long, and if that's the case, we'd better put our thinking caps on and see what we're going to replace politicians with. Computers? Robots? Whatever.

I think we're fighting a lost cause, because the government, the Social Credit Party, have been successful electorally. This particular Social Credit government has won elections in 1975, 1979 and 1983. And I suppose it's very difficult, when you've been successful in that way, to admit you have been wrong. I think that would probably be a pretty difficult mental exercise for the members on the other side to go through, but I leave them with that thought, and I move adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of the House.

[12:00]

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Motion negatived on the following division:

YEAS — 13

NAYS- 26

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

MR. ROSE: I was hoping that the applause would last long enough for those people to depart — give them a chance to get out and return to their lairs. As a matter of fact, I'm a little bit concerned about the fact that I have to speak this morning. Actually my shift is all over, and being a union man, I really consider this overtime. I find it a little bit difficult. As a matter of fact I didn't expect to have to speak at all this evening. Often when I am introduced, people will say: "We are very anxious to hear what Mr. Rose has to say tonight." Well, I would like to share with the House that since I haven't done a great deal of preparation, I am rather anxious to hear what I have to say as well.

I understand the Minister of Municipal Affairs (Hon. Mr. Ritchie) is calling out a lady's name in some sort of consternation. I don't know whether that is a particular desire on his part or whether that strikes him only after midnight or whether that is something that constantly bothers him, but I will leave him to solve his own problems. Since I won't be following him around tonight, I won't know whether he is looking for a Sophie or whomever. It really doesn't matter.

[Mr. Parks in the chair.]

In this bill, along with many others, we have an example of what appears to be, at least at the moment, an irresistible force striking an immovable object. I think in his very profound speech of just a moment ago, which will be forever memorable.... I have forgotten certain parts of it already, but the bulk of it was memorable. I felt that the member for Prince Rupert (Mr. Lea) laid the groundwork for some kind of social and political reconciliation in which we might, if we looked into the possibilities, find out that we really aren't quite as different as we frequently pretend to be and that there might be some kind of ground for compromise, for working out certain avenues of common concern. The other day even President Reagan held out the olive branch to Andropov. If two mortal enemies — two highly competitive superpowers — can do that and suggest that perhaps they can talk over things of concern, not to themselves as individuals particularly but beyond that to concerns of the world and its future, or British Columbia and its future, it isn't too much to expect that this might be a possibility here in this House.

I suggested about a month ago that one of the best things we might do would be to close the place down for a while. Everybody could go away and get off his or her high-horse and come back and try to work out a rational package that isn't going to disturb everyone. As humans I don't think we are capable of accepting radical changes in the rules; we are, though, capable of evolution in our thoughts and our thought

[ Page 2027 ]

processes. I think that is an important thing to do. What bothers me particularly about this piece of legislation is that it seems to do to the public sector what Bill 26 attempts to do to the private sector. In other words, it's really an assault on the wage gains and the civil rights that have been gained arduously over a generation.

I was reading, and I shouldn't do this. The best way to get someone not to listen to you, not that anybody cares at this time of night anyway.... I know I will have your rapt attention, Mr. Speaker, because I have seen you in the Chair before, armed with your pencil in one hand and a copy of May's sixteenth edition in the other.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: It's the nineteenth.

MR. ROSE: Oh, is it the nineteenth? I am accustomed to the earlier edition.

I have a quote here from an article called "The Declining Middle" from the Atlantic Monthly. The author is a man by the name of Bob Kuttner. He talks about wages, because that is what Bill 11 and Bill 26 deal with — that is, income that people can anticipate. If they are in the private service, then Bill 26 applies to them; if they are in the public service, then Bill 11 applies.

I am pleased the minister is here, because I read a quote to him the other night. I went through it so rapidly that I left him absolutely dizzy and confounded, and he asked me if I would translate it for him after it was over. I did that, then I had a look at my translation the next day. I wasn’t as accurate as I would liked to have been, so I am going to be very careful about this, I am going to read it deliberately, Mr. Speaker.

It deals with the problems faced by the industrial west, not just Socred administrations but administrations all over the western world — social democracies in, say, Greece, Portugal, Spain, West Germany, Sweden, Austria or other places. I am not going to make invidious comparisons. What I hope to essentially build up to is the fact that we are not alone in British Columbia facing the challenges posed by a whole new society based on the computer. Various other countries have opted for various strategies to deal with it. We could make comparisons there. But we're a little bit different because we have failed to diversify. We are totally dependent upon a resource economy.

[12:15]

I noticed on the news that the Vancouver Stock Exchange index is going down while New York and Toronto are rising. If I wanted to be highly partisan, I could say, oh, well, that's because nobody has any confidence here any more because of the 26 bills — or the dirty dozen. I'm not highly partisan in that sense — but I am really. I'm not raising that to make that point particularly. We are based on a resource economy in British Columbia. The stock exchange represents dealings in resource industries: if gold goes down, the Vancouver Stock Exchange goes down. It's as simple as that. That's too simple.

Let me read you this quote from the Atlantic Monthly which deals with the problem faced by western nations:

"The industrial west as a whole is coming under heavy pressure, both from technology and from trade, to lower its wages. If machines are available to replace most human production jobs and if unemployed women in the Orient are eager to take the remaining jobs producing for western markets at 90 cents an hour, then the postwar social contract that developed in western Europe and North America is in severe jeopardy. That social contract included high wages, job security and a costly welfare state. It enabled the west to defy Karl Marx's prediction that under capitalism the labour force could only become worse off. Now, paradoxically, one hears that in order to maintain our standard of living we must first lower it."

Isn't that the message that we're getting out of this legislation? Isn't that the message that we have gotten from the government constantly? In order to preserve our freedom, we must give up a lot of our protections. In order to preserve our standard of living, we must first lower it. It sounds a bit like Continentental Airlines, doesn't it? In order to preserve our airline.... We believe in deregulation, so when deregulation puts us into bankruptcy we can preserve our airline if workers in that industry take a cut.

That's the theme all over North America and it's going to be all over western Europe. In order to maintain our standard of living we've got to lower it, not just for a while but forever. I think that says something pretty serious about a system that we've been so fond of. Are we saying to ourselves: "Look, this system cannot produce any more. It can't maintain itself any more, so we’re going to try to preserve it as long as we can. But we can only do that at the expense of high unemployment, low wages and a lowered standard of living." We're saying: "Folks, with energy prices, the chip revolution, massive improvements in transportation, massive technological developments in the Third World — the world of the repressed — the party is over. We can't do it any more. We've got the richest continent in the world but we can't do it any more. We can't even sell to those people any more but they can sure as hell sell to us. and they're going to." Here we are in an internationalized set of corporations — business — and that business will move wherever it wishes, to where wages are cheaper, in order to sell into the market. It hasn't any particular responsibility

Some countries have made an attempt to do something about that and I'll talk about that in a little while, if I may. It's a very serious thing.

Let me continue on:

"...in order to maintain our standard of living we must first lower it: to remain competitive, the west must jettison the very large social baggage that has assured a comfortable passage. This conclusion somehow defies common sense. From the viewpoint of the entrepreneur, wages are the unfortunate cost of production. From the perspective of the entire economy, however, they are the stuff of social stability."

Now why would the author say that, Mr. Speaker? He is saying that for this reason: if you don't have wages throughout the economy, then nobody is going to buy anything. You can't have a stable society if people don't have the confidence in our society — the way it is built — to spend. The author concludes:

"The loss of purchasing power from the decline in wages brought about by automation could doom the economy to a paradoxical state of rising productivity and rising destitution."

So we're seeing a society evolving where people are redundant. You can build all the left-handed widgets you like, as rapidly as you like, but how many widgets buy anything in the supermarket? I think what we have to do is to look into how we solve that problem, and maybe the confrontation

[ Page 2028 ]

that's taking place in this chamber this evening is what might even save us. The author concludes by saying this:

"Although the government as the redistributor of income and trade unions as the defenders of wages have been declared all but extinct lately, they may be the best instruments we have to resolve an explosive dilemma. The debate about the distribution of wages and the content of work has scarcely started, but it is certain to become more urgent."

I don't think anyone can disagree with that. The minister can't.

What we've seen here in British Columbia, perhaps to an extreme extent because we don't have the diversity, is a microcosm of what's going on in the whole western world. I don't want to sound pompous, self-righteous or preachy.... If any government really knew how to solve this problem, I think there would be a lot of people copying it right away, unless, of course, you believe in the sinister forces: what we're going to do is keep people down. We're going to keep the "haves" wealthy and the "have nots" that way too.

This article got its start and its theme because its title is "The Declining Middle." Mr. Bob Kuttner, whose writings I'm not familiar with, says this: "The middle class is going to disappear, because the computer revolution...." I'm sorry the Minister of Universities, Science and Communications (Hon. Mr. McGeer) is not here, because he's going to give us the high-tech stuff. There are about 750 firms in Silicone Valley down in California. The scenario is that they're going to disappear and rationalize — and that's not Duncan either.... But what the projection is for the future in that instance is that probably the rationalization over the next 20 years, or maybe even less than that, is going to come down to approximately 50.

We're entertaining a Filipino over here who is going to do everything for everybody, and I hope he does. But I went through the debate in Consolidated Computer in Ottawa where that firm went belly-up for 125 million public bucks. There are going to be a lot more computer firms go belly-up. It sounds trendy. It sounds like the Candu reactor. We poured billions into that poisonous, evil, churner of filthy energy and waste and spewer of waste and poison. That was trendy. Everybody supported that in the beginning. I think that we're fooling ourselves if we suggest for one moment that somehow, if we get high-tech into British Columbia, it's going to solve our problems. Nice, clean industry. Don't forget what it takes to create those silicon chips in the first place. You can poison nearly every water stream within 20 miles. So don't look for that.

But aside from the health aspects or social responsibilities of that kind of thing, sure we all are looking for that kind of development, and for a way to get back to Bill 11 and its effect on wages and income. This is an approach by the government, because it really doesn't have any other solutions to the problem of income. Somebody suggested that you can only pay what you can afford to pay. That's a decision of government. You can afford to have workers for the disabled or you can decide not to. You can afford to spend money on the rentalsman, or you can spend more money on northeast coal. Those are all options. What is predicted for the computer revolution is the fact that high-paid skilled jobs are disappearing and there are fewer and fewer of them, but the low-paid jobs are increasing. Those low-paid wage-earners, whether they're in the private or the public sector, do not fill the coffers of governments with big bucks. They don't contribute equivalently any more than the banks do.

We have spent all our adult lives hoping that if we did this and this and this, somehow our children would be better off and have better jobs than their parents. Certainly that was the hope of a lot of people who come under the aegis of Bill 11. We've all worked very hard. A number of people right in this room have gone to school and bought the dream that we're going to somehow educate ourselves up the social ladder. But look at the kind of jobs that are available. The most frequent job openings in 1980 in the United States, in descending order, were: retail sales clerk — 750,000, nearly a million; managers — 711, but that also includes managers of departments; cashiers, secretaries, waiters, waitresses, cooks, stock handlers, janitors, sextants, bookkeepers, miscellaneous clerical workers, nurses' aides, orderlies, child-care workers, interior cleaners, typists and truckdrivers. The top 15 — there isn't any one of them that most middle-class parents would want their children to aspire to. The jobs in the technical and skilled workforce are not going to be there. Their place is going to be taken by machines. I know that anytime somebody gets up and says anything a bit futuristic, he always risks being wrong. It won't matter particularly to me, I don't think, Mr. Speaker, but it certainly matters to those people who come after me.

Bureau of Labour stats project that the U.S. will require 120,000 more computer programmers and 125,000 more electrical engineers in the next decade, but will require some three million more secretaries and office clerks. That is the direction it is going. You are going to have a lot of highly skilled people but thousands or millions more who are not highly skilled, and the middle class is going to shrink in the United States because our social structure has been developing since the 1900s as a pyramid. Then it changed shape to a diamond: there were fewer at the bottom, a big middle class with high purchasing power and a relatively small upper class. That whole sociological picture is changing. What has that got to do with Bill 11 ? Well, I think it has a great deal to do with Bill 11.

What happens to people's incomes? if people's incomes are frozen, or their protective devices, safety nets, are taken away, it seems to me that they are going to have less to spend on consumer goods and there is less opportunity for us to get ourselves out of a recession through consumer spending, which is higher in British Columbia than anywhere else — that is, the recovery is later — and it destroys the standard of living. What are you going to do if you roll back somebody's wages by statute? Does that not mean that that person's union is irrelevant in the future? What is left for the union to do if it can't bargain over wages? If wages are limited to 5 percent gain or 5 percent loss as in this bill, depending on productivity, I would be interested to know....

[12:30]

I am glad the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. Heinrich) is here tonight, because this bill is going to cover all public sector workers. I would like to return to how you judge productivity of a vice-principal? Supposing the school is very efficient and has a lot of productivity, and under normal circumstances the compensation commission would provide that school with a 5 percent increase. I am told that that may not even be possible. Even the annual increments that come to a teacher after he is finished, say the difference between his fifth and sixth year, will not necessarily be automatic any more.

[ Page 2029 ]

Interjection.

MR. ROSE: No, the districts are pretty much the same. The annual increment wouldn't vary $100 between all the districts in the province. They can't, because....

Interjection.

MR. ROSE: Yes, but I am saying it's the year to year. The total incremental pattern usually scans about 11 years. When I started teaching in Vancouver it was 22, but now it is down to 11 to get to the top of the scale. I am saying that the year-to-year incremental pattern could quite conceivably exceed the 5 percent so the contracts that the teachers have gone on in a continuing engagement could be ruled out of order, never mind the raises to keep up with inflation.

One of the problems, I think, in trying to deal wit this, any way you look at it, is the matter of fairness. I think if everybody were assured that we were all being treated equally we could tighten our belts, as the saying goes, and try to meet this thing. I am not sure that that occurs. I am not sure that while you may put a lid on public sector wages and maybe market forces will put a lid on private sector wages.... Maybe they will; it depends on who they are. Are you going to tax investment income? Are you going to put a lid on investment income to 5 percent plus or minus? What about professional fees for engineers and surveyors and the like? Are you going to put a lid on those people's incomes? What about real estate commissions, that sort of thing? Are you going to put a lid on those to 5 percent plus or minus? Of course not. Why, you would be stultifying free enterprise; you would teach people to be lazy. There would be no incentive to do anything. I have heard all that....

Interjection.

MR. ROSE: I don't know what his income is this year over last year. If you changed your job.... I certainly wouldn't want to compare my income this year over last year. As far as I am concerned it was like the Joe Clark defeat; it wasn't murder, it was suicide.

The reason that there's pressure to increase wages constantly, and the reason that the minister has to slap this cap on public servants' income, is not just that he can't afford it, but the economy is all gone and not producing the taxes. The reason we don't have the taxes is that we have systems like this: bank profits and other people who don't pay their taxes don't pay enough. They make enormous profits. Do you know what the average income tax is for the banks of this country? Ten percent. Most corporations pay 40 percent of their income, unless they can hide it some way or get a tax delay. If you're a bank or an oil company, they'll even bail you out. If you're drilling in the Arctic Ocean, they'll give you 93-cent dollars. It's all tax-free.

The reason we have to put a lid on — through Bill 11 and Bill 26, which takes away people's rights, powers and ability to bargain or to show individual initiative or collective initiative — is that they are fighting to preserve the standard of living which people tell us we can no longer afford. They're telling us: "Yes, we'd be willing to take less money if we could be assured, for instance, that our rent wouldn't go up. But how can we be sure that our rent isn't going to go up? If we have to pay more rent, and we're a civil servant, it means we need more money." If rent is going to go up — we've had recent reports that it is going to do just that. I've got a reference here somewhere in this mess of paper. We find, for instance, that the vacancy rate in controlled apartments is currently at 0. I percent. The minimum monthly rent of a new unit for rental stock has to be S600.

What protection has that poor guy you've frozen in the civil service — if he still has a job — against increases like that? That's the reason for the pressure. He's just trying to do what we do; he's trying to get ahead and maintain the standard of living he's become accustomed to, the standard of living the Canadian dream taught him to expect if he paid his dues to society — until we changed all the rules.

What are we going to say to him if he wants to buy a house? The average house price in B.C. now is S125,000. Are we going to sell some of them? I predict we're going to have a real estate slump because nobody can afford them. This is the kind of instability and legislation that's going to make anybody who is a public servant stop long before he makes a long-term commitment, especially when it's combined with a fact like buying a house and especially if it's combined with the problem he may face — I've encountered many horror stories which took place last year — that he can't control the cost of his interest rates. The average for five years is 13 percent right now, or is it.... I think it dropped a quarter of a percent. What are you going to tell that guy?

What are you going to tell him next year when Hydro rates go up? Between 1983 and 1988, B.C. Hydro has announced, it plans and needs rate hikes of at least 3 percent above the inflation rate. So what kind of savaging and hammering is that going to do to a person's income? Isn't that going to bring a great deal of pressure on the need for increased wages — the need to at least try to maintain his standard of living?

What about his car inspections? They're now going to cost him 50 bucks instead of S6 or whatever they were before. He has no control on his food. Energy is going up: oil prices are going up every six months until 1985 or 1986. There are predictions that by 1990 we'll be spending $100 for a tank of gas; it costs $30 now.

This is the guy you're going to lower wages for. Well, how are we going to do that? We can't pay it, we say. Don't forget that in spite of the fact — as my friend said — we have 85 percent of people continuing to work.... If you think that the private sector is going to be the engine of society and if we get this heavy. dead hand of government off the private sector that they're really going ahead.... It hasn't worked in the States or Britain. It didn't work in the 1930s with R.B. Bennett either. Perhaps I'm living in the past.

Natural gas is now burnped up from 40 to 65 percent of oil prices. Oil prices are going up every six months. so presumably natural gas is going up every six months. Who's kicking about natural gas prices? None other than the Council of Forest Industries.

Everything is going up in price all around us except the guy's wages. So if you freeze his wages and you put everything up, what's he going to do? He's caught in the squeeze. His standard of living suffers, and if that's the only way we can make our society survive, then perhaps it isn't worth it. Perhaps we should have another kind of society. Perhaps we need another kind of society. I don't think we're going to find it in this nostalgic, sort of reactionary dinosaur return to simpler times, because it isn't going to work. That's one thing that bothers me about many — not all — of the people across there — that they're doing this because they believe in it.

[ Page 2030 ]

That's really frightening. They're not just kidding around: they really believe in it. The problem with that, as I see it, is that they're not going to be hurt by the errors. If they make a mistake, they're probably not going to suffer individually. However, you might say it's a noble experiment, except that I don't think it's particularly noble.

Some places have sought other methods of doing what we're trying to do. New Zealand, for instance, has a higher salaries' commission. It's not unlike the Compensation Stabilization Commission. That country operates much like Britain, as a unitary state. They have a three-man tribunal, and every salary which is considered a higher salary — and it varies: university teachers, MPs, industrial engineers, people who run water districts; all the rest of them — comes under this commission. I'm sure that if the NDP government had brought in a system like this, it would be called the "dead hand of socialism." We would be mired in bureaucracy, and there would be no way for us to get out of the tanglefoot of socialism. We'd be stuck in there, right up to our knees in alligators. Anyway, they have this in New Zealand. I don't think it would work here, but it has some features that I think are worth it and that do not appear here in Bill 11.

For one thing, people can present their cases. If they don't like the response they get, they can appeal it. There is a constant monitoring of salaries and wages in that country. There is an element of fairness, in that everyone who participates in public service in one form or another is up against the same kind of rules. But there are opportunities to present your case. You can do it on an annual basis. It recognizes inflation. Things aren't cheap in New Zealand; things are very, very expensive, especially imported articles. I'm not suggesting to you that we need necessarily trade our system for that of New Zealand's; I'm suggesting that under the higher salaries' commission there is provision for more equity and fairness, because those people who are going to be affected by a particular piece of legislation have an opportunity to present their case, and if they don't like the answer they can appeal it. And it applies to everyone involved in the whole system.

So there are safety nets in that system. I think that's particularly worthwhile. We don't need to feel that the way we've operated until now is going to operate in perpetuity. A lot of people really regret the idea of what they call socialism. They think it's because of socialism that we've got all these problems. It's because of what they regard as socialism that we have the various things that other people have mentioned: social assistance, welfare, hospitalization, public education, the post office, public liquor stores.... Government hasn't decided to privatize those yet, have they? It must be too good a business.

Mr. Speaker, I'd like you to consider for a moment that those people who are employed in public enterprise pay taxes too. That's something we forget. We think they are the net sort of negative charges on the public purse. We fail to realize that they pay back in taxes approximately 40 percent of every cent they earn — in income taxes and taxes of various other kinds. I would like to ask all those people who are in private business, who feel that somehow the world would be better off without all these leeches known as public servants of various kinds on the public payroll, what would happen to the enterprising entrepreneur in a small town or in a shopping centre if all of a sudden we took all the teachers' salaries away from him as customers? What we took all the social workers' salaries out and said: "We're not going to spend money with that person; we're not going to spend it at all. We don't believe in it anyway, so therefore we don't want their money."

Interjection.

MR. ROSE: The doctors? Do you think they're public servants? The member for Vancouver East has certain comments about whether or not they are.

[12:45]

All the municipal workers' salaries from the local community — let's take all those out. They're going to spend money at the local stores. The health inspectors, the hydro workers, the nurses. I'd like to know how much individual initiative would save any of those businesses if those publicly administered funds were suddenly withdrawn.

Interjection.

MR. ROSE: Yes, we could talk about Nanaimo. However, those funds have disappeared because of the shopping centres around Nanaimo, rather than because of the absence or presence of certain kinds of salaries. I forgot to mention members of the Pacific Vocational Institute who presumably spend their money with the local merchants — unless, of course, they go down to Bellingham and spend it down there. I wouldn't think the member would do that.

I would like to close by saying....

Interjection.

MR. ROSE: Someone suggested that I shouldn't close? You want me to keep going? Okay.

I was reading an excellent little article called "Sweden: Toward Economic Democracy," in a journal called Dissent — imagine! One of the big things going on now is the possession of workers' funds, which is a little bit like our Canada Pension Plan. Who should get those? Should it be the state, as is the case here, where they are given to the provinces to reinvest, or should they be put in the hands of the worker for him to invest? So it's another form of investment fund. The workers are kind of selfish. They'd like to get their hands on it themselves, and of course the employers' council doesn't like that idea. They think that's a bad idea. They say it will lead to dictatorship, that if the workers have their own money to invest, that's a sure road to dictatorship. They have this to say, and I'd like to close with this particular quote. This is probably a kind of rhetoric that we don't use here:

"The bourgeois parties and the employers...."

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Excuse me, hon. member, your time under the standing orders has elapsed.

MR. ROSE: I wonder if I could ask unanimous consent to read this very short quote, Mr. Speaker. It really puts a climax on my speech.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Is there unanimous consent?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Agreed.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Go ahead, hon. member.

MR. ROSE: Thank you, and I thank all hon. members.

[ Page 2031 ]

By the way, Mr. Speaker, once you've given unanimous....

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Please do it.

MR. ROSE: I'm reading, I'm reading.

"The bourgeois parties and the Employers' Confederation have waged a violent campaign against wage earners' funds. They say that such funds bring about a concentration of power and that they threaten our democracy. So if one director rules over many workers, that is democracy; but if many workers rule over one director, that is dictatorship...."

MR. GABELMANN: Mr. Speaker, on February 18, 1982 I was driving down the Island Highway to attend a meeting in Ladysmith. Prior to going to that meeting to talk about the political issues of that day, I took the opportunity to watch the Premier as he introduced the first of a series of so-called restraint measures by his government. Even without going back and looking at the transcript of those comments, I can remember that a number of pledges were made by the Premier. First of all, in order to attempt to restrain what he perceived as excessive wage increases in the public sector in this province, he was going to limit them to 14 percent or thereabouts. He was going to do this because public service workers, if not public sector workers, were guaranteed their jobs and, because of that guaranteed job security, could afford or would be willing to accept some limitations on their wages in exchange for the kind of security that they were apparently sure of. The other thing the Premier said during that television address was that this was just a temporary program.

We've seen the falseness of those comments over the year and a half since February 18, 1982. The basic premise upon which wage controls in the public service were introduced, that there was job security, has obviously been violated by another bill that is under debate in this Legislature. The promise that it was just a temporary program has also been violated — not by other legislation but by Bill 11, the bill that is under debate at the present time.

In watching the amounts that have been suggested over the year and a half as appropriate public sector and public service wage guidelines, it's been interesting to me to notice that, in fact, the guidelines have not led prevailing wage settlements but have followed them. At the time of the television address and the subsequent legislation the guideline figures were in the ballpark with the prevailing settlement pattern in the province at that time, both in the public and the private sector. Obviously there were variations up and down from those numbers, but in terms of the prevailing rates, they were close. Then, as time went on, the numbers decreased. In other words, when the amount of compensation that would be allowed was decreased.... When you watched how that developed, how those numbers were picked out of the air, it was clear, again, that that was in response to trends that were going on in collective bargaining in this province.

We now have in front of us a bill which is, in effect, the third stage of the development of this program, in which the government is saying that wage controls in the public sector will be plus or minus 5 percent. If you saw that off at zero, you come close to what is clearly the developing trend in some of the significant settlements that are being reached around this province. I'm not talking about settlements that have yet to be reached in some yet-inconclusive bargaining, but rather about settlements that have been reached in certain smaller sectors of our economy, both public and private. What we're seeing in those areas is that there is a recognition on the part of the employer and the employees, as represented by their bargaining agents, that there isn't much money around, there isn't much room for wage increases at the present time, and in fact this is a time for trade unions to bargain, basically, to hang on to what they've got. We find that by the time this particular legislation is in place, the prevailing community standards, if you will, or the prevailing contract settlements being reached out there in the hurlyburly and freedom of collective bargaining are similar to those being proposed in the legislation.

I make those comments to illustrate the point that I believe is historically provable, and that is that when government programs which impose wage controls impact only upon one small group in our society — and I don't mean small in the sense that 300,000 workers are small. but rather that it's not a majority of the workers in this province — are brought in, they are reactive. So when I listen to arguments being made by various people, including some of my colleagues, about the fact that these limitations on wages will hold down the wages of public sector employees, I don't think that it's necessarily so.

Unless the government is determined that its "plus or minus 5" is, in fact, going to be minus 5, and if they go into their negotiations with the government employees, among others in this province that are coming up, with that goal in mind, they will find they are in for real trouble, because that particular settlement range isn’t, at the present time, part of the prevailing rate that's going in the community. Whether we have these kinds of controls imposed or not, I believe that the public, as represented by organized workers, by employers and by unorganized workers, manage through good sense and traditional instruments to find the appropriate settlement ranges.

Starting from that basic premise — and I would concede if others were to argue that I might be out by a point or two; and there will undoubtedly be evidence available to demonstrate that that's the case — I want to deal with this issue in a philosophical way rather than in a way dealing with whether or not schoolteachers or B.C. Rail employees have enough money to spend in the neighbourhood shopping centre.

When a society such as ours in North America decides to impose controls — of whatever kind — it is flying in the face of the basic premises which, whether we or I agree with them or not, underpin this society: that is, that we operate here in North America in a free market with the ability of employers, based on supply and demand, to set prices, the ability of all people in our society to, through the dog-eat-dog mechanisms that exist, gain whatever remuneration they can, without any limitations, as long as they're over a certain level. When governments who profess to believe in free enterprise interfere in the free enterprise system, they shouldn't be surprised when others in the community say: "Okay, you're prepared to deny free enterprise when it comes to setting the price of labour; why should free enterprise exist when it comes to setting the price of goods or services?"

[1:00]

That's a valid question, and one which I think, in the privacy of their innermost thoughts, honest conservatives and those people who honestly believe in the market system, who profess to be capitalists by any other name, do worry about.

[ Page 2032 ]

That's why you have organizations like the Canadian Manufacturers' Association and many other employer groups arguing against wage controls. They don't do it in the specific and they're not doing it in this particular case, but they do in general. In a philosophical sense they argue — and they're consistent — that wage controls are not consistent with a free market system.

Mr. Speaker, I would move adjournment of the debate until later today.

Motion approved.

Hon. Mr. Gardom moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 1:01 a.m.