[ Page 3151 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Oral Questions

Independent Logging Association. Mr. Howard –– 3151

Closing of Bare Point thermal generation plant. Mrs. Wallace –– 3152

Northeast coal. Mr. Howard –– 3152

School district assets. Mr. Reynolds –– 3153

Mr. Rose

Hospital user fees. Hon. Mr. Nielsen replies –– 3153

Tabling Documents –– 3154

Committee of Supply: Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources estimates.

(Hon. Mr. Rogers)

On vote 27: minister's office –– 3154

Hon. Mr. Rogers

Mr. Lockstead

Mr. Davis

Mrs. Wallace

Mr. Rose

Mr. Passarell

Committee of Supply: Ministry of Intergovernmental Relations estimates.

(Hon. Mr. Gardom)

On vote 56: minister's office –– 3166

Hon. Mr. Gardom

Mr. Howard

Mr. Cocke

Mr. Lockstead

Division

Tabling Documents –– 3170

Committee of Supply: Ministry of Universities, Science and Communications estimates. (Hon. Mr. McGeer)

On vote 85: minister's office –– 3170

Mr. Nicolson

Tabling Documents –– 3175

Appendix –– 3176

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1984

The House met at 2:03 p.m.

Prayers.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Speaker, I know it is with profound sadness that all members learned yesterday of the death of Mr. James Sinclair — or Jimmy Sinclair, as he was certainly known by his many friends in this province, in this country and, indeed, throughout the world. Throughout his very distinguished and friendly career he performed outstanding service on behalf of his country and his fellow citizens. I know that he will be sorely missed, Mr. Speaker, and we would greatly appreciate it if you would convey the expression of sympathy of the House to all members of his family and certainly his wife.

MR. HOWARD: Mr. Speaker, both personally and on behalf of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, I want to associate myself very much with the sentiments expressed by the government House Leader. I had the opportunity of meeting Jimmy Sinclair when I was first elected to the House of Commons, and had the opportunity of discussing with him at that time many issues of interest to the fisheries industry on this coast. I came to admire his abilities and determination to preserve the fisheries of this nation. It is with sadness that we express these thoughts in association with the government House Leader.

MR. REYNOLDS: I'd like to second the comments by the New Democratic Party and the government. I'd also like to say that I had the pleasure of meeting Jimmy Sinclair a number of times when I was in Ottawa and travelling back and forth with him on the airplane. I know my constituents — because I've had a chance to talk to a number of them — would like it to be on record that they all would pass on to the family the sympathies of all the people living in the constituency of West Vancouver–Howe Sound, which he served so well over many years. We would thank the rest of the House for their sympathies to the family.

MR. ROSE: I'd like today to introduce two former colleagues from the Parliament of Canada, Lyle Kristiansen, MP for Kootenay West, and Nelson Riis, MP for Kamloops-Shuswap, both members of the real opposition.

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Visiting us today from Delta, Mr. Speaker, as you know, is Mr. Ernie Bexley, publisher of the Delta Optimist, and with him is Mr. Tony Poje. On your behalf, Mr. Speaker, and on behalf of all of us in the House, I would like to welcome these two gentlemen. I'd ask the House to join me in that sincere welcome.

MR. NICOLSON: Also in the precincts today are Mayor Louis Maglio of Nelson, Mayor Chuck Lakes of Trail and Mayor Audrey Moore of Castlegar, along with aldermen Dennis Bannert, Ross Lake, John Neville and Bill Ramsden; from the city of Nelson, Doug Ormond; area representative of the regional district, Dave Pearce; members of the David Thompson University Centre Support Society, Liz Wallach, Dorothy Gomez, and Fran Horan, also of the school board; Klaus Offermann of the Labour Council; and Jack Roddis, Stephen Lauer and Bruce Meldrum. Of course, we'll also be joined by Mr. Lyle Kristiansen in a meeting later today. I wish the House would bid them welcome.

HON. MR. BENNETT: In the precincts today — hopefully in the gallery — and well known to all members of this House, particularly the federal member from Kamloops, is Bud Smith, who will be joining my office as of April 1. I know that the member from Kamloops particularly has had a lot of contact with him in the last few years. I hope the House will welcome him.

MR. REYNOLDS: Mr. Speaker, a couple of my friends are in your gallery, but before I introduce them I'd like to wish the two federal members the best of luck in their deliberations on whether they should be seeking the NDP leadership provincially, rather than lose their seats in the next federal election.

I'd like to introduce Bruce and Lynne Potvin, from the northern part of my constituency, who are sitting in your gallery.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, on your behalf the Chair will undertake the necessary messages as suggested in the earlier part of the question period.

Oral Questions

INDEPENDENT LOGGING ASSOCIATION

MR. HOWARD: I would like to direct a question to the Premier. Inasmuch as the Minister of Forests (Hon. Mr. Waterland) during his estimates engaged in insulting behaviour toward members of the British Columbia Independent Logging Association, I wonder if he would say whether he has agreed to meet representatives of the B.C. Independent Logging Association both to discuss their concerns about forestry matters in the province and to extend to them an apology on behalf of the Minister of Forests.

MR. SPEAKER: The second part of the question is in order, and the first is not.

HON. MR. BENNETT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, because I wouldn't want to allow the member to infer that the Minister of Forests is not on very good terms with most of the members of the Interior Logging Association, which both he and I are. Yes, the Minister of Forests is prepared to meet with any of the forest associations, including the Interior Logging Association. It's a standing offer that after meeting with the minister, he can bring them to my office, but I will not have a meeting in lieu of the minister nor develop policy in isolation from the minister. Also I understand these groups have been given an opportunity to meet with the whole Social Credit caucus, which I attended today but which unfortunately they were unable to attend at the last moment.

MR. HOWARD: Perhaps the Premier was too busy formulating an answer to understand what my question was.

HON. MR. BENNETT: The answer is no.

[ Page 3152 ]

CLOSING OF BARE POINT
THERMAL GENERATION PLANT

MRS. WALLACE: I have a question for the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources in connection with his responsibility for B.C. Hydro. Chemainus is a community that's still reeling under the blow of the MacMillan Bloedel mill closure. This morning members of the Bare Point thermal generation plant were advised that this station is closing permanently. Why has B.C. Hydro chosen this particular time to make this announcement, when Chemainus is in such dire straits?

[2:15]

HON. MR. ROGERS: Mr. Speaker, I don't think that Hydro's determination on how it can best manage its system is made on anything other than the best management intentions in terms of electrical load demand that they forecast and that they have to supply to the province. I wasn't aware of that particular announcement this morning; I can get some further details for the member and bring them back.

MRS. WALLACE: Mr. Speaker, the minister tells me he's not aware of the situation. When he's getting those details, would he be prepared to take two other items under consideration?

First of all, does Hydro have a prospective buyer for that very valuable piece of property? It is an oil-tank farm with all the piping and docking facilities in place. If so, is this closure influenced at all by the possibility of getting a major chunk of cash from a prospective buyer for that facility?

I don't think the minister is aware of the geography there. The end of the point is not utilized at all by the power plant, the docking facilities or the tank farm. Would the minister be prepared to find out whether or not Hydro has considered donating it as a marine park facility?

HON. MR. ROGERS: Mr. Speaker, I'm not aware of any proposal for a disposal of that real estate. That item would have been brought to the attention of the members of the board of Hydro. I attend all board meetings, and that particular subject has not come forward. I will get you the further information.

There is some machinery in other parts of the province that has been offered for sale to other power utilities, but not on Vancouver Island, and it doesn't involve any real estate that I know of.

NORTHEAST COAL

MR. HOWARD: Mr. Speaker, I have a question to the Minister of Finance. Inasmuch as the respected investment dealer firm of Midland Doherty has recently released a rather extensive report projecting losses in the neighbourhood of $1 billion in the northeast coal project over the next few years, I wonder if the minister, because of the government's interest in this particular project, can say whether he has examined that report. Does he have any comments to make about it?

HON. MR. CURTIS: No, I have not read the report. I expect that it will be available to me within a matter of a day or two or perhaps a little more. I do know, and can tell the House, that a number of representatives of other firms in the country have already expressed to me their surprise and, indeed, their disappointment with respect to the apparent contents of this report. I do not place much credence in the report, insofar as it as been relayed to me.

MR. HOWARD: Because government coffers are involved in this particular project, has the minister made any projections of expected income from the surcharge on the sale of coal, and can he tell us what those projections are?

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Speaker, I think much of the material which the member has asked for is already a matter of public record.

MR. HOWARD: It is a matter of public record, Mr. Speaker, and so confusing and contradictory that I thought if I asked the minister that simple question, we would get a truthful answer at this time.

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. member, I am sure the member was not implying in his comment that there would be any other kind of answer given. The Chair certainly would not be able to permit the remark to go unchallenged.

MR. HOWARD: I need to follow previous comments of Mr. Speaker in which Mr. Speaker has said he never errs.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. Hon. member, the Chair, in what was hopefully a very easy....

MR. HOWARD: I don't find any disagreement with what you're saying, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Thank you, hon. member.

MR. HOWARD: The Minister of Industry and Small Business Development (Hon. Mr. Phillips) has admitted in the past that sizeable losses will be experienced on the Tumbler Ridge branch line of the railway, even if all the contracted coal shipments are met. I wonder if the Minister of Finance, as another question, has made any provision to increase the subsidy to B.C. Rail to help pay the $450 million debt that exists, insofar as that Tumbler Ridge branch line is concerned.

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Speaker, without in any way suggesting to that member that indeed his premise is correct, if it is appropriate for me to comment on the British Columbia Railway and other Crown corporations, I shall be doing so when this House is ready for the 1984-85 budget address and accompanying documents.

MR. HOWARD: On a supplementary, Mr. Speaker, inasmuch as in July of this year something in the neighbourhood of $45 million to $50 million will be required by B.C. Rail to pay the interest on the borrowings that were made last July, can the minister tell us where he is going to acquire that money? Is that money that was purloined from Education, for argument's sake?

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Speaker, use of words such as purloined does not deserve an answer in this House.

[ Page 3153 ]

SCHOOL DISTRICT ASSETS

MR. REYNOLDS: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Education. There is a group forming a private school in West and North Vancouver, and this week they've been turned down by the North Vancouver School Board. The school board was offered $500,000 over the next five years for the rental of a high school that has been closed down for over two years. The North Vancouver School Board has turned down this group of people who want to form a private school on this rental. I would like to ask the Minister of Education if his department has checked into this, in view of the fact that we get so many complaints from the school boards that they are short of money from this government. Can the minister enlighten this House as to why that school board would turn down this group of citizens who want to form a private school in West and North Vancouver?

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Speaker, I can't answer today as to why the school district did turn it down. The member's question involved North Vancouver. As I recall, the enrolment in North Vancouver has declined since about 1976-77 by something in the order of 4,000 to 4,500 students. One of the big problems that we have in British Columbia, because of the increased birth rate in some areas but primarily the decline of enrolment in others, is surplus buildings. It seems to me that under these times of restraint a school district would look favourably on the opportunity to generate some revenue. I can't be any more specific than that, Mr. Speaker, but I will make the appropriate inquiries.

MR. REYNOLDS: Just one supplementary, Mr. Speaker. This same group that now has over 250 students signed up to start school next year will be approaching the West Vancouver School Board for the use of the Glenmore Elementary School, which is also empty. Could the minister assure this House that his department can contact all school boards in this province and make sure that any excess space in classrooms be used for people if there is going to be revenue generated, which helps all the citizens of this province?

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Speaker, there is a policy in existence now to encourage school boards to dispose of surplus inventory, whether it involves land which has been acquired and held vacant for a number of years — thought to be used, but as a result of certain changes within the municipality, no longer required. Now the only hedge that you place upon that particular point is that enrolments vary from time to time. If you look over a period of ten years, sometimes you'll find an increase, where in fact they have been declining. But as far as policy is concerned, a number of documents often come to the office in which we are authorizing disposition of school assets. But I will take note of your question and follow through.

MR. REYNOLDS: Could the minister have his staff, in checking out this matter, assure this House in the near future that these school boards aren't just putting blockades in front of these private citizens who want to open up private schools in this province because they're unhappy with the school system that they're getting within their communities, to assure these people that their children will get the education that they want them to get?

MR. ROSE: It's a very interesting line of questions, Mr. Speaker, and I have a supplementary. Would the minister assure the House that if a particular school district were to dispose of some property or lease some buildings to some private concern, whether it's an education system competing with the public system or not, they would receive the benefit of the extra $500,000 and not have it subtracted from their budgets by the minister, such as has usually been the case?

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Speaker, there is a rather complicated sharing formula, depending on the disposition of a capital asset. It depends primarily on the distribution of costs incurred by both the school district and the provincial government. As a matter of fact, upon the disposition of a particular asset, a certain portion is retained by the school district and some is put in a capital account, which is not spent by the provincial government and is used for the construction of schools when required. If the member would like to refresh his memory, he might look at the Vancouver School District, which in fact acquired land 50 to 75 years ago, paid for the land from funds which they had generated from their taxpayers, not the provincial government, and they are now sitting with a substantial term deposit as a result of two dispositions which I know of — and it's their property.

MR. ROSE: Is the minister declaring to the public that the Vancouver School Board, or any other school board, if it's sitting on particular assets, can use that for the benefit of the students currently in school, or are their budgets going to be limited by fiat from the central government, as has been the case for this year and will be the case for the next two years?

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Speaker, those funds are used in a number of ways. Number one, to acquire properties, if necessary. Two, under operating accounts, and they are used to acquire equipment required in the school system. Thirdly, if the expenditures are not required to be made, then they are put in the bank and retained. What the member is asking for is disposition and moving those funds right out and throwing them into the operating account so they are totally disbursed. What are we going to save for a rainy day?

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Mr. Speaker, with leave, I'd like to respond to a question taken as notice yesterday.

MR. SPEAKER: Leave is not required, hon. member.

HOSPITAL USER FEES

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Yesterday the member for Burnaby North (Mrs. Dailly) asked me a question. The question was: "Is he aware that the Nanaimo General Hospital has been forced, as a result of Social Credit government policy, to require all hospital patients to post a $60 deposit on admission?" I took the question as notice and contacted the administrator of the Nanaimo General Hospital, Mr. Gordon Frith. We provided Mr. Frith with the verbatim question of the member for Burnaby North and asked him for a response. Mr. Frith responded:

"The statement by the hon. Eileen Dailly is completely erroneous. The policy of the hospital is to ask patients to make a deposit on admission equivalent to the number of days which we estimate, in accordance with the admissions diagnosis, that would be their

[ Page 3154 ]

length of stay in hospital. For example, if we estimate a patient will be hospital for two days we ask for $17 deposit; for four days, $34; and for seven days, $59.50.

"This is nothing new. It has been policy for this hospital for some 30 years to ask for deposits on admission to cover coinsurance. It was done even for the old Nanaimo Hospital. This is good business practice and is done to hold down an accumulation of bad debts.

"However, there is absolutely no refusal of a patient's admission to the hospital because they cannot pay a deposit for whatever reason. If the patient does not make a deposit, we have to try to collect the money at the time of discharge. If the patient does not have the money available at the time of discharge, then we have to resort to normal collection procedures.

"The memo which Eileen Dailly is reported to have a copy of was a suggestion being discussed to improve the collection procedures by asking patients who cannot make a deposit on admission to have the moneys brought to the hospital during their stay in the hospital. However, this has not been implemented, and we still try to collect the money at the time of discharge from those patients who do not make a deposit on admission. In addition, if patients require a semi-private or a private room, an additional deposit of $12.50, or $25, respectively, is requested for their estimated length of stay.

"This policy of asking for deposits on admission has been in effect for at least 30 years."

[2:30]

Hon. Mr. Waterland tabled the annual report of the Ministry of Forests for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1983.

HON. MR. CHABOT: Yesterday during my estimates I made a commitment to the member for North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Davis) that I would reply to a written question, and I table the answer.

MRS. DAILLY: I wish permission to table the memo.

Leave granted.

Orders of the Day

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

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF ENERGY,
MINES AND PETROLEUM RESOURCES

On vote 27: minister's office, $173,868.

HON. MR. ROGERS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is the first opportunity that I have had in this House to discuss the estimates of the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources. This ministry has a vital role in stimulating the resource-based economic activity and in generating revenue for the province. It does it with a very modest staff, who are highly competent and very professional. The year 1983 was not a good year for the mining and petroleum industries because of the world market conditions. Several mines were forced to close and others to operate at reduced production. The slump in oil and gas exploration resulted in only 76 wells being drilled during 1983, and gas exports for 1983 are running at less than half what they were three years ago.

In the mining sector there is some ground for optimism. British Columbia's mineral exploration registered a dramatic 152 percent increase in 1983, with a record 106,000 claims being staked. There is also increased activity in coal.

The recovery in the gas industry will take considerably longer. In the meantime, my ministry has introduced new policies to help make the province's natural gas more attractive. Despite the chaos in the world energy markets, we have managed to make significant improvements. A recent decision to permit the medium-term sale of surplus electricity by the government has resulted in a sale of electricity in the sum of just over $200 million to the city of Los Angeles by B.C. Hydro.

We are working with the federal government on federal-provincial matters concerning the increased agreement for pricing of oil and natural gas. In spite of the severe economic downturn, my ministry has continued to operate and this year will return to the treasury $260 million in revenue. We are a small ministry. We have a very important role to play in the government. I have enjoyed this ministry so far and would be very pleased to respond to questions put forward by members of the opposition.

MR. LOCKSTEAD: First of all, Mr. Chairman, and for the benefit of the minister, I think the minister may be aware that this particular portfolio is roughly divided between three of our caucus members. During debate on these estimates at this time we expect to be relatively short, because we will be getting into an expanded debate when a new budgetary session resumes.

This is a rather new portfolio for me in terms of a critic's role, and I hope the minister will bear with me as I try to get through some of these issues that I want to talk about today.

Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources — and I'm not telling the minister anything that he doesn't know — really is a vital industry to British Columbia, particularly the mining and petroleum in terms of revenue to the province. Yet the industry receives scant media attention. You have to turn to the financial pages to see the reports coming in on mines and petroleum or what mine is making money or losing money; it's the kind of thing that rarely makes the front page of the newspapers unless there's a large spill somewhere, or that kind of thing. A lot of times it's negative publicity. But it is an industry which is extremely important to the well-being of the province of British Columbia.

I have a question that I would like to ask the minister right now, Mr. Chairman. I realize that there has been a change in ministers over the last couple of years, but we haven't received an annual report since 1979. We are debating the 1983 budget in 1984 — can you believe that? — and we haven't received an annual report since 1979. The minister is aware that section 21 of the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources Act states that there should be an annual report. I'm not making a federal issue of it, but I would like to ask the minister if he has decided to bring in an annual report prior to debate of estimates in the new session. We can get through this debate because, as I said, we are debating moneys that have already been spent, but is the minister

[ Page 3155 ]

considering bringing in an annual report so we have something to work with before we proceed into debate of his estimates during the course of the next session? I really would appreciate it if that could be done. I did attempt to get some information out of the 1979 report, but it was not of much value. I got more information from other reports than from Price Waterhouse.

I see the minister wants to reply, Mr. Chairman, so I'll take my seat for a minute.

HON. MR. ROGERS: Mr. Chairman, the member mentioned that the oil and gas industry doesn't seem to get much media attention. I think they like it that way. I think that's their choice. I would hope that within the next month or two we are going to have some front-page news from the oil and gas industry, but we'll wait and see what happens.

The member is quite correct that the last annual report filed by this ministry was for 1979. However, I'm advised by my deputy that within the next month — and certainly in time for this next go-around, which I think will happen after the next budget speech — you will have all the back reports that we are missing. We have filed a number of technical reports in the interim.

MR. LOCKSTEAD: I appreciate the minister's answer. I didn't raise the matter of media attention as a criticism, or anything of that nature. What I was attempting to say was that although this particular portfolio is so vital to the revenues and interests of the province, the public is generally unaware of what is happening in those particular agencies. It doesn't get a great deal of public attention. I can tell that by looking at the press gallery — at the moment people are not exactly falling out. We'll be lucky to get a line in the press on this whole debate. But it's extremely important.

In spite of government cutbacks, the fact is that if we didn't have revenues from the mining and petroleum industries through various taxation policies, our health and education systems would suffer a great deal more than they are at the present time.

In terms of my responsibilities as a member of the opposition dealing with mines and petroleum resources, I really don't know where to start, I guess we'll start with mining, if that's all right with the minister.

As the minister said during the course of his opening remarks, the mining industry in the province — beginning in 1981 really — is suffering. We have, I understand — I'm sure the minister will correct me if I'm wrong — approximately 9,000 fewer people actually employed in the industry than we had in 1981. The reason given for this — I have notes from the Mining Association of British Columbia — is declining world markets and that kind of thing. A number of mines in the province have closed. I know some mines have opened, but I'm excluding the two coal mines which were raised briefly in question period, although they are mentioned in the reports we get on mining activities in British Columbia. If you exclude the potential employment taking place in those mines — coal mines, not metal mines — the state of the mining industry in British Columbia is not good. Exploration is down, and the minister will admit that revenues from the industry are down. As I say, unemployment rates within the industry are very high at the present time — people who had previously worked in the industry.

I was wondering if the minister could bring us up to date at least on the exploration rates. I understand there were very few licences issued within the last year or so for exploration, with the exception of some gold-mining properties coming on stream and exploration in that regard. That seems to be about the only bright spot in the industry in British Columbia today.

Perhaps it's premature, but it would be appreciated if the minister could give us a bit of information as to the outlook for the mining industry in British Columbia. From all the information I've tried to plough through in this regard, it does look pretty bleak.

I'm not going to blame this minister for what I'm about to say, but I'm certainly going to blame the government. Between 1972 and 1975, Mr. Chairman — and I know you weren’t a member at the time — particularly starting in 1974 and 1975, our government, which in my view was a good government, took a great deal of flak from the then-opposition Social Credit Party and the mining industry of British Columbia suggesting that the collapse of the mining industry at that time — because there was a decline in the mining industry starting in 1974 and which carried over into 1975 — was solely due to a New Democratic Party government. Of course, that was not correct. The situation then was much the same as it is now. It is much, much, worse now than it was at that time, but there was a decline starting in '74. One of the reasons for that decline was, for example, that copper prices had reached the unprecedented level of $1.38 per pound. It may have been $1.42, but I'm just going from memory. The Japanese customers at that time had stockpiled and dumped huge tonnage on the world market. I believe the price of copper at one point plummeted to 42 cents per pound. Yet it was a situation that the New Democratic Party government had no control over, as the present Social Credit government has no control over world markets today.

I could easily get up here and say the decline of the mining industry and the deep recession in the industry in British Columbia is the sole responsibility of Social Credit. I'm not talking about that minister particularly; there have been a number of ministers since 1975. I could get up and make those wild allegations and charges, but I'm not going to do that. I have the July 1983 Price, Waterhouse study. I think it's the most recent. I know the minister has it. It has been very valuable to me in attempting to familiarize myself with activities in the industry and the state of the industry. I'm not going to quote extensively from it, but the fact is that if you go through this report chapter and verse, it is quite clear that world markets are the root cause of the decline and the deep recession of the mining industry in British Columbia.

[2:45]

I've always resented the fact, and I haven't raised that matter in the House before.... While we were the government, people got up on this side of the House, some of them standing right where I am at the moment, suggesting — and some of the people in the industry were very bad in this regard in my view — the whole problem was the result of an NDP government in British Columbia. Such hogwash! Nonetheless, we won't get into that.

I didn't ask too many questions but made some general statements, and before I go into the petroleum side of the minister's portfolio, perhaps the minister would care to make a few remarks about the metal-mining industry in British Columbia.

HON. MR. ROGERS: Mr. Member, the one thing you have to remember about the miners is that they are fiercely

[ Page 3156 ]

independent. They don't like anybody very much, much less governments that impose royalties. I think it was the imposition of the royalty that really angered the independent miners.

But getting back to mineral prices, copper is today approximately 67 cents a pound. Copper is our main mineral in British Columbia in terms of the volume. The difficulty with copper is that half the copper known to man right now is buried in the ground and belongs to the various telephone companies. They no longer require that. They use fibre optics and they use computers off of satellites, so the demand for copper has gone down very substantially. The demand for copper in housing is diminishing with the increased use of plastics. The demand for copper in automobiles is diminishing with lighter wiring. One of the problems with copper is that while we always recall what the Canadian dollar is.... The Canadian dollar is, relatively speaking, pegged to the American dollar, and the countries that are competing with us as copper producers are usually in currencies that have been very highly devalued. The cost of producing copper today in both Chile and Zambia is 45 cents a pound. So both of them are quite happy with copper pegged at around 67 cents; that represents a good profit for them. It's the strength of the American dollar that has really hurt the copper industry both in the U.S. and Canada. Several things could happen to change that. One started to happen yesterday, with the American dollar being knocked down a little bit on world currencies. But some of the peso countries and some of the countries in Africa that have nothing else as their basic commodity are not really concerned about how much they produce, as long as they convert it to hard currency to pay for petroleum and other things.

Exploration is down for some metals, but it is up to 106,000 claims staked. From last year that's 152 percent. There is also some pickup in placer mining staking.

Of the metals we have that are doing well, zinc is the one that is doing the best. The world zinc price continues to move up and do quite positively. Lead is fair, but it's so much pegged to automobile production. Based on what Mr. Iacocca and some of the people in Detroit have been doing, perhaps we will see more new automobiles being produced. That's the majority of our lead market; it goes into automobile batteries. The newer cars are lighter, they require smaller batteries, less steel, less rubber and less of everything. That's really very good in terms of the petroleum side of our ministry, but not very good in terms of the lead side.

Molybdenum is also in very poor shape. That the various molybdenum deposits around the province aren't being processed right now is largely a result of the world steel industry having changed to cheaper Soviet-supplied vanadium, which makes approximately the same quality of steel. If moly had stayed at about four bucks a pound, we could easily have seen the world's steel industries stick with it, but when it started to go to around $9 a pound and the various molybdenum producers got — how shall we say? — cheeky with the steel industry, the steel industry changed to vanadium. The Soviets do control the majority of the vanadium. But I think that will come back now, because the market hasn't fluctuated too much.

On other things that we produce, asbestos remains in constant rather than fluctuating demand, and we do also mine a substantial amount of jade. It's not a big statistic in terms of our mining, but the export of jade from the province continues to grow slowly. I think with the visit of Premier Zhao and some of the other people of the People's Republic of China, perhaps we can open up that market a little further. There are substantial quantities which could go towards solving their uses or their demand for it. That's a nice, very small industry which allows people to get in.

I've often asked myself and asked members of the mining industry: "What can we do to help?" There are certain things we can do, but by and large the world prices for metals are effected outside this province and not internally.

Our major lead-zinc mine is still Cominco in Kimberly. There are other properties, however, north of Noatak in northwest Alaska. Cominco has the world's largest lead-zinc deposits at a place called Red Dog, which is about 60 miles from tidewater. The natives in that part of Alaska, who own the property, by the name of the Nana Corp., have chosen Cominco, because of their record in northern British Columbia and also in the arctic, to operate their mine. A British Columbia company with British Columbia expertise is going to end up opening up an even larger mine in Alaska. Some of that material will come to British Columbia for processing, and some will go to Japan. But that's probably ten years off, if they can meet their environmental things.

If the recession continues to deepen, I see things getting tougher; if it improves, as the indications are, I can see the copper market starting to tack on a few cents. I'd like to see copper get up to around $1 a pound; that would be a little bit more realistic for a price, and that would certainly help some of our B.C. mines. But it's only wishful thinking on my part to change the price of copper. I can assure you that my statements in here won't affect what is read on the ticker-tape tomorrow in terms of those prices.

aluminum, as you know, continues to maintain its very strong position in the world market, with the energy-conservation efforts, as a supplement for steel, and we do continue to maintain a very large section of that market through Alcan's production in Kitimat.

MR. LOCKSTEAD: Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the minister's response. I suppose we could spend the rest of the afternoon just based on the information we do have — the facts and figures in mining. But I think we should save that kind of debate until we get into the real debate on estimates, hopefully later this spring.

AN HON. MEMBER: Monday.

AN HON. MEMBER: A month.

MR. LOCKSTEAD: A month? Well, maybe; I hope you're right. Excuse me, just a little cross-chatter here.

I'll turn briefly, if I may, to the petroleum side of the minister's responsibility. Rather a general question: I wonder if the minister is aware that the federal government intends to table three pieces of energy legislation in the near future. One bill will formalize the Canada–Nova Scotia offshore agreement of 1982; a second will alter the constraints placed on the Canadian ownership account to which accrue taxpayers' dollars for takeovers in the oil and gas industry to allow the government to use those funds for other purposes; a third will probably alter the wording of proposed offshore exploration agreements to reduce the liability for farmed-in oil companies. Because these measures are imminent, perhaps the minister would care to comment if he can on them.

I have to admit I don't know a great deal about this, but I understand there has been a moratorium in effect since 1972

[ Page 3157 ]

on offshore drilling and exploration. Both the federal and provincial governments have separate moratoriums, as far as I know, and apparently the federal government renews that moratorium each year through order-in-council. What I'm getting at is the recent report — which I don't seem to have in front of me here — indicating the possibility that there may be a 15-times greater volume of gas and oil off the west coast of British Columbia than previously indicated. How they arrive at that is beyond me, but that's what they get paid to find out. What I'd like to know is: is the provincial government considering, and are discussions going on, for example, with the federal government on the lifting of that moratorium to allow gas and oil exploration off the west coast of Vancouver Island, Hecate Strait, the south end of the Queen Charlottes and off the Queen Charlottes? It's of some interest: some people are for it and some people are against it, and you'll recall the environmental type of outcry we had and the court case, the jurisdictional battle with the federal government over who owns what, I do believe British Columbia now has jurisdiction over the inland waters between Vancouver Island and the mainland — the bottom. But anything above the bottom, even an inch off the bottom, is federal in terms of fish and all kinds of things like this. I'm not sure that we want to get into that debate here, but what I'm asking basically is: is the moratorium going to be lifted? These companies which still own those leases have a very strong lobby and have certainly been discussing with the federal and provincial governments the possibility of lifting the moratorium so that perhaps drilling can proceed. What kinds of studies have been done in this regard? Perhaps, with that, before I get into domestic pricing of natural gas, the minister would care to respond.

HON. MR. ROGERS: I am aware of the three pieces of legislation that are coming down. Of course, I'm not privy to the information itself, and it's kind of difficult to comment on it. I don't think it is specifically going to affect British Columbia, because those three pieces of legislation are designed to look after the east coast of Canada.

I'd like to talk to you about the moratorium, because the decision on whether drilling is to be permitted between the Queen Charlotte Islands and the mainland — essentially between Cape Scott and Cape St. James — is in the supreme court right now. I'm advised that the decision is imminent, and we've been advised that the decision is imminent for some time, but until such time as the supreme court determines whether or not the land inland of the Queen Charlotte Islands, approximately that line between Cape Scott and Cape St. James.... Until such time as that determination comes forward, we both have moratoriums in place and no one wants to drill.

There are two companies that show tremendous interest in drilling there, Petro-Canada and Chevron. Chevron has the expertise — if you acknowledge that they have expertise in that field — and they would like to move on it. The one thing we were able to agree on, Mr. Member, is that when this moratorium is raised and when the decision does come down from the supreme court, the first thing anyone will want will be environmental hearings. We did agree that those environmental hearings under any circumstances, regardless of who owns it, will be both federal and provincial in nature. So with the concurrence of the federal ministries involved under the Environment Management Act, my colleague the Minister of Environment (Hon. Mr. Brummet) and federal people are in the process of setting up and will be entering into public hearings on this very subject. Until such time as that is done.... Even if the court case did come down tomorrow, the first thing we'd be asked to do is do environmental hearings. So I guess we're planning a little bit ahead, assuming the court will make some decision. That answers your questions.

[3:00]

MR. LOCKSTEAD: Yes, that more or less answers my questions in that regard, so I will continue to a couple other items.

I know that a number of Utilities Commission hearings on the proposed natural gas line to Vancouver Island have taken place under the chairmanship of Miss Marie Taylor. I might add that we very much appreciated the visit of the commission and Miss Taylor to Powell River. The commission sat for a whole week. The meetings were very well attended. A number of briefs were presented for and against, and I know they will be considered. We are very much appreciative that we had the opportunity to have had an input at the local level to the Utilities Commission. I am concerned that the timetable for the recommendations of the commission has been set back again and again. I guess we've been talking about this since 1972, but certainly over the last two years we've been told that we would have a report a year ago, then in six months, then by December, and now it's April.... My colleague says it will be in after the next election. I doubt it. It will be another election issue for the fifth of sixth time in my career. But we shall see.

I do have a question. I know I can't ask questions about the activities of the Utilities Commission, because they haven't tabled a report. Nothing will happen until that report is tabled. I am familiar with the remarks of the government and specifically the minister in regard to the proposed natural gas line. It is of vital importance to the area of Powell River because of the cost-added benefits of proposed fertilizer plants and that kind of thing. Particularly during the course of the last electoral campaign, we received different figures from different people. One of the reports — I don't happen to have it in front of me — indicated that about $450 million of federal government subsidy would be required even if the recommendation of the Utilities Commission was very favourable, and that energy would be required on Vancouver Island, and that a $450 million subsidy from the federal government would be required or the line would not proceed. The federal government has made no clear commitment, as far as I am aware. Perhaps one of my questions to the minister is: what kind of a commitment do we have from the federal government in terms of a subsidy? As recently as last week a source of mine in Ottawa suggested that even if the federal government and the federal Minister of Energy make a clear commitment in regard to a subsidy for the proposed natural gas line, the top figure would be $250 million. So perhaps I'm asking the minister what kind of liaison and discussions have gone on with the federal government and the federal minister. I'm not clear on the matter. I know sometimes things are said in election campaigns. People get carried away. But there are a lot of inconsistencies and different types of information coming through in this regard.

If I could continue a bit, perhaps I won't have to take up a great deal more time of the House. I have some notes on the increased domestic price of natural gas. It would appear from our calculations, based on the reports from the ministry, that

[ Page 3158 ]

it will cost the residential consumer an average of $35 a year more for the use of that particular resource; further, while the federal government reduced its federal tax on that resource to industrial use in British Columbia, the provincial government took up the slack and intends to gain approximately $50 million by not reducing the tax in conjunction....

Interjection.

MR. LOCKSTEAD: Twelve million? I never was very good at arithmetic. Still, that saving was not passed on to the users of the resource in British Columbia. Perhaps the minister would care to make a comment.

The netbacks to gas producers is to be increased to 80 percent of the Alberta level, according to the Govier report, and the wholesale price of gas is to be increased from 50 percent to 65 percent of the oil price by 1990. The retail price for consumers will jump from $4.49 in 1983 to $8.09 in 1990, according to ministry estimates. I'm asking the minister about the impact of these steep increases on residential consumers and the industry. The minister is very much aware that the Council of Forest Industries has criticized these projections and proposals, which may or may not be policy recommendations of the government. The minister may care to comment on that aspect of the increase in the price of the resource to the domestic and industrial user in British Columbia.

I do have another concern, Mr. Chairman, based on these various reports. I want to tell you that because of not having been involved in this critic's role that long, ploughing through these horrendous reports.... I don't know if they confuse you, Mr. Minister, but they certainly do confuse me. It is very difficult to come up with precise figures or a policy that may or may not be.... I get the impression, however, that the government is not going to do away with the British Columbia Petroleum Corporation. I think they would like to in a way, but it is a good source of revenue for the province. I don't think the government can afford to do away with the B.C. Petroleum Corporation at this point. But it does seem to me that the policy announced by the ministry six or seven months ago — I think we were in session last summer when this policy came down — will undermine the effectiveness and functions of the British Columbia Petroleum Corporation. We don't have details. Will the British Columbia Petroleum Corporation be allowed to compete in the policies as announced by the minister in regard to competing for the resource? I may not have put that very well. I don't know if the minister understands what I'm saying or not.

HON. MR. ROGERS: Yes.

MR. LOCKSTEAD: I'm not sure I do, quite frankly.

HON. MR. ROGERS: I get the question.

MR. LOCKSTEAD: The minister says he understands.

I'm not going to bore the House with all these pages of figures — the price of oil and natural gas per thousand cubic feet and all of those things. I really don't think that's necessary, Mr. Chairman, so I'll take my place and perhaps the minister would respond.

HON. MR. ROGERS: Vancouver Island natural gas pipeline. I had a discussion with the chairman last week just to get an idea of how much longer she felt the hearings would take, and she felt another four to six weeks. They are volume related delays. If you recall how much information was put forward in Powell River, you will recall that perhaps there was more information tabled than people had expected. My gathering of it is that whichever route is chosen, Powell River is going to end up being a beneficiary in both ways. It seems to me that they have somehow finessed that.

You asked about the shortfall of money for the Vancouver Island pipeline. When the Abercrombie report was tabled, it did say that there was a net benefit to the province of about $700 million, if everything was taken into consideration. It also said there is a shortfall of about $450 million that has to be met. In 1980 when the federal government released their national energy program, they committed to do this as part of getting Canada onto Canadian fuel. If one wonders whether they can spend that much money in British Columbia, they have already spent over half a billion dollars in the province of Quebec on the Trans-Quebec and Maritime pipeline — coincidentally into the riding of the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. Those coincidences happen in Quebec, and we run a different standard here. But if it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander. If this is one country and we are trying to be one country not dependent on one fuel source, I see no reason why the federal government shouldn't live up to their commitment to do that.

The other thing you asked about is the Govier report and some of the adaptations of that and the fact that the federal government has abandoned the NGGLT. The reason for that is quite simple: they have a commitment to keep gas at the Toronto city gate at 65 percent of the price of oil. The trouble is that the price of oil is going down and the cost of gas is going up, and they had to abandon that area of taxation that they had jumped into. Without changing the retail or the wholesale price of gas to the consumer, we picked up that tax and passed it along to the producers, who are very beleaguered and have been producing gas in British Columbia at much less than they get for it in Alberta and, secondly, to the Ministry of Finance, which needs the funding. The people in the lower mainland, for example, pay approximately 55 percent of the price of oil for their natural gas, which compares, for example, with Toronto at between 80 and 85 percent of the price of oil. So while I don't deny for one minute that we have been occupying an abandoned federal tax and not passing that one on, the moneys did go to the producer, who was not getting his fair share, and to the Treasury Board.

In fact, for the first time, domestic gas sales in the province — sold by BCPC, by the way — are not being subsidized against the American export price. Alberta has always had a subsidy. Their export volumes are dropping very substantially, and they now face pretty drastic increases at some point along the line. Unless they want to dip into that piggy bank, they have to come up with a subsidy for the gas domestically. But they have a different standard. We're trying to get 65 percent of the price of oil for natural gas, which prices it competitively, well below oil, and makes a viable return for the industry. It's important we have a healthy gas industry. We had four wells drilled last year. We should be looking at about 80 or 90 wells drilled. The way you do that is to make it attractive for them to do it.

The Petroleum Corporation has 19 employees. Occasionally those 19 can't believe how much attention is paid to them, to a company that small. It will have a role which is yet

[ Page 3159 ]

to be determined, because we've only tabled the Govier report and haven't enunciated all the decisions we have. Regardless of what happened to the Govier recommendations, BCPC will be with us for a long time to come, just administering the contracts they have. There are arguments pro and con as to what the future of the corporation will be, its role in marketing both shut-in and regular gas, and the expertise that it has. I suspect that you'll see the Petroleum Corporation around for a good deal of time to come. For sure it'll be around for at least a dozen years just looking after the contracts it has. So the rest of the determination has yet to be made, and we're still looking for input from the industry.

[3:15]

MR. LOCKSTEAD: All right. Well, I guess that's good news, but we shall see.

I have one or two short questions, Mr. Chairman — at this point, anyway. Our information seems to indicate that the export price for gas to the United States, while the current price is $4.40 per thousand cubic feet, with an incentive rate of $3.40 per thousand cubic feet now allowed on incremental sales.... We seem to think in our party at this point — and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but the information I have here is that the government and the oil industry are pressing for further cuts.... Is it correct that the price of natural gas to the United States is controlled by our federal government?

[Mr. Ree in the chair.]

I have one question relating to Cheekye-Dunsmuir. I know we've been through this, Mr. Minister, you and I, on many levels and in different portfolios for quite a number of years. But I mention again, basically in passing and just to refresh your memory, that we were told that that particular transmission line, when it was first made public, would be constructed, would cost the taxpayers — i.e., the people who use B.C. Hydro, and we're all taxpayers — about $350 million to construct. The figure then went up sometime later — through a memo that somehow found its way into our hands — to $700 million. But the memo said — this was an internal Hydro document by senior management people — not to release that figure, because they didn't want to upset the public. A question I posed, which you were good enough to answer on the order paper last year.... The anticipated final cost of that particular construction job, the Cheekeye-Dunsmuir transmission line, went up to $800 million, and that was it. But the fact is, Mr. Minister — and I wasn't being a wild-eyed radical making wild allegations.... I still maintain that the final cost, when the accounts are finally in, which won't be this year but will be next year in the public accounts — I hope — will be in excess of $1 billion, if all of the factors are taken into consideration. I'm not making a big issue of it at this point. We've made an issue of it before. We predicted the results of the costs of a line that may not have been required. But the line is in place, it is transmitting the power, and so be it — with the exception that it may well have been a bad policy decision in another way. Since we have an excess of natural gas in British Columbia today, it would have been better for the domestic user and industry to get that pipeline to Vancouver Island and use that cleaner, cheaper resource, rather than using the excess power we now have in British Columbia. What if? I don't know why I'm talking about all this, because it's a fait accompli. The only reason I mention it, I guess, Mr. Chairman, is that had the government used some foresight and constructed that natural gas line, the expenditure of what I'm still maintaining will be $1 billion of taxpayers' money may not have been necessary, and for starters we could have saved that $1 billion. But the fact that the Cheekye-Dunsmuir transmission line is now in place and operating realistically reduces the need for the natural gas line to Vancouver Island, and that's probably the reason I mentioned it.

MR. DAVIS: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to say a few words about gas for Vancouver Island. My essential purpose in getting up, however, is to request some assurance from the minister that he'll keep an open mind about the possibility, indeed the practicality, of barging natural gas south from Prince Rupert, should a major pipeline be built to Prince Rupert for the export of liquefied natural gas. There is a supposition, certainly in the remarks of the member for Mackenzie (Mr. Lockstead), and perhaps also in the remarks of the minister, that either the federal government or the provincial government, or both, are so well-heeled financially that they will happily put up half a billion dollars or more for a pipeline to Vancouver Island.

I assume that the provincial government won't move unless the federal government puts up a large sum. The rationalization is that because the federal government, foolishly or otherwise, has put large sums of money into gas pipeline extension to Quebec, it's now British Columbia's turn, and that two wrongs will make a right. I know the federal government has made some loose commitments; indeed, they sounded quite firm a few years ago when they were included in statements of the Ministers of Finance at budget time.

The situation we face on Vancouver Island is that we have a good supply of hog fuel. In other words, we have wood in a form that's highly usable as a source of energy. Our principal industries, the pulp-and-paper mills, are well supplied with hog fuel. Therefore they will not be substantial users of natural gas, unless the gas is priced at a ridiculously low level. Secondly, we have just completed a close-to-one-billion-dollar power line to Vancouver Island, and knowing that it was well launched in that project, B.C. Hydro has been less than enthusiastic about being a party to the construction of a gas line to Vancouver Island for some years. So Vancouver Island, in one sense, is well, or at least adequately, supplied with energy. The price of offshore oil is tending to come down, and I have to wonder about several of the reports which were recently prepared for the government. I know they were based on a projection of rising oil prices, not falling oil prices, and I wonder, if current oil price projections were used, whether the pipeline to Vancouver Island would be seen to be of any kind of benefit at all. The minister mentioned $750 million, and I assume that benefit is spread out over 25, 30 or 50 years; I know it is based on an assumption of much higher oil prices than now seem to be in prospect. I wonder, first, about the economics of the pipeline, and secondly, I wonder whether the federal government will in fact honour a commitment, and whether a future Conservative government in Ottawa would honour any such commitment. I have to look cynically at the so-called economics of the project.

A much more practical proposition, again assuming there was an adequate gas supply at tidewater in Prince Rupert, would be to barge natural gas down the coast. Unlike oil, natural gas evaporates if there are any spills. It's not a pollutant the way oil is, so it doesn't present anything like the same

[ Page 3160 ]

kind of environmental hazard that oil does. The amounts involved would be modest, at least in the early years because they would really only be required for the distribution systems in the principal centres of population on, Vancouver Island — residential and commercial loads, which would be contested by B.C. Hydro because they have a surplus power capacity serving the Island. I would think a careful economic analysis of the situation would say: wait and see whether we're going to have a major pipeline to Prince Rupert, whether in fact there's going to be a major LNG export project operating there, and if this happens, whether the economics of barging gas down to Vancouver Island are attractive. Certainly in the short run they are, and that is certainly what the private sector would do if they were faced with the challenge of supplying natural gas to Vancouver Island.

Mr. Chairman, I won't say that the current hearings before the B.C. Utilities Commission are a waste of time — I know that many of those who have made submissions think they are — but I would like to think that while the commission has been precluded by government fiat from looking at barging gas down from Prince Rupert, the ministry will keep an open mind on the subject, because that really is the economical thing to do.

HON. MR. ROGERS: Mr. Member, on the subject of barging compressed or liquid natural gas from Prince Rupert, we called for proposals and none have come have forward so far; in fact, none have come forward during the public hearing phase. If anyone were interested in doing it in the private sector, we would still entertain that at the public hearing presently going on.

Interjection.

HON. MR. ROGERS: The member retorts that they are specifically excluded. They are not specifically included. That's the information I have, and I'll check that for you, if you like.

I would just like to talk about the Vancouver Island pipeline, because in the Abercrombie report Robin Abercrombie does point out that there are net benefits to both the province and the federal government, if they were to go ahead, which is not the case in Quebec and has not been the case in the Trans-Quebec and Maritime pipeline. So there is some justification for it. Also, when we made calculations on the Vancouver Island gas pipeline, they were based not on supplanting hog fuel but on supplanting imported residual fuel oil that comes from California — which, by the way, gets a subsidy from the federal government because it's imported oil. It's really an industrial waste product in California, and it's brought here by barge. That's what the natural gas calculations were based upon, and not on supplanting hog fuel. At today's oil price, which will not be with us forever, it is still economical — and both federal and provincial officials agree to continue with the natural gas pipeline.

We do not think that the world energy price will stay the same as it is, and I think one of the overriding considerations for giving this pipeline serious consideration is that this is a fuel which we, as Canadians, control. We certainly don't control our internal supplies of oil, nor do we have security in that particular regard. So if the federal government's national energy program is to mean anything, it can easily economically justify the completion of their portion of this pipeline.

The member for Mackenzie (Mr. Lockstead) asked the question about gas at $4.40, and at $3.40 we are not making any incremental sales. None of the customers on the American side of the line are interested in purchasing gas at the incremental level of $3.40 per MCF, so those sales aren't continuing. The existing one-border price for Canada is based on the Duncan-Lalonde formula — it's between Secretary Duncan and the former Energy minister, Mr. Lalonde — based on the 65 percent of Chicago city gate price for oil. It is unrealistic. At the present time the federal government, British Columbia and Alberta are looking at consideration of whether that thing should be changed. No decision has been made.

I did table the answer on your Cheekye-Dunsmuir question. However, you're quite right, and I think probably $800 million will even be shy. I recall hearing numbers in the 330 or 340 range, and being a bit from Missouri on this.... I recall you and I discussing it when I held another portfolio. One of the things to note, though, is that the second 500 kV line was added to that circuit from a safety point of view in case there is a break in the line — and sometimes they are by nature and sometimes they are not by nature, as we all know. I think you also should remember that that's the first powerline completed from the mainland to Vancouver Island since 1956, and I am convinced that the circuit did need the additional load. Whether the future increased demand is there that was there at the time the decision was made to build that line.... I'm not sure it will materialize quite as quickly as we once thought it would.

[3:30]

MRS. WALLACE: Mr. Chairman, I want to deal with the minister in line with his responsibilities for B.C. Hydro. One of the first things I would like to discuss is the question of intervener funding. The minister and I have discussed this previously, and he has led me to believe that there will be no intervener funding for presentations in the Alcan-Kemano situation. I don't think we resolved any intervener funding in relation to the hearings relative to the export of power by B.C. Hydro. I'm wondering where the minister gets his authority. Under the Utilities Commission's terms of reference it states quite specifically that the costs incidental to proceedings before the commission are in the discretion of the commission, and it may order by whom and to whom and in what amount the costs are to be paid. How is the minister able to come up with the statement that there will be no funding for interveners, when this is really not his prerogative? As I read the legislation, that is the prerogative of the Utilities Commission, not of the minister.

HON. MR. ROGERS: The decision on intervener funding is a policy taken by cabinet. We have decided that this will be the situation. There may be an amendment to the Utilities Commission Act to confirm it. However, it remains as government policy that interveners may find their own funding from whatever sources they want; it will not come from the government. The commission may, under section 3, determine to do it. It's discretionary, and they've said no.

MRS. WALLACE: Yes, it's discretionary, but under section 133, not section 3. I am somewhat surprised that the minister saw fit, as of August 10 last year, to write to the chairman of the Utilities Commission, in effect telling him to break the law — not to abide by the act, but to abide by

[ Page 3161 ]

cabinet decision, which has a different policy. If the minister intends to amend legislation in the future, that's fine; it's up to him and cabinet. But I do object to his intimidating the commission, in effect, by saying that this is government policy, they've talked about this and they want to discuss it further — telling them that he's going to amend the legislation, incidentally, which hasn't seen the light of day yet — then standing up in the House and saying: "No, there will be no funding for interveners," when the legislation leaves that up to the Utilities Commission. It is not in the hands of the minister. If he's going to change government policy, he had better change the legislation and not try to do it outside the law, which seems to be what is happening in this instance.

While I'm talking about intervener funding, I would certainly urge the minister to change his thinking on it. Look at the results of the Site C hearing, where intervener funding was made available at the discretion of the commission. If it hadn't been for the briefs presented by people who could afford to come due to intervener funding, we would have been hooked into a long-term, high-cost debt for power that we do not need. The commission has indicated that those presentations had a great influence on their decision not to allow that Site C dam to go ahead. I would urge the minister to reconsider. We have the same situation coming up at Alcan. We have the same situation coming up much sooner relative to firm export of power, where some people who are on the other side want that funding for the other side to present so that there is a fair balance in the information that the commission has. They don't want a kangaroo court; they want it to be a fair hearing. I would urge the minister to reconsider his decision, and the cabinet's decision, to change the law, and to change it before the fact to prevent those funds being made available to interveners at public hearings of this nature.

I have some real concerns about this. A great number of people have done a tremendous amount of research and would like to do more, and they had some good ideas. You talk about public consultation, that you want consultation. If the government really wants that, it will not cut off the opportunity to do it. That funding has to be there if you're going to have meaningful consultation, because it is impossible for small independent organizations and associations — even individuals — to do the research necessary to prepare the material required to make a formal presentation to a semi judicial hearing. It's very difficult to do that unless you have some resources. As I pointed out, it is important that we hear all sides before we make decisions, because not to do that, simply to allow someone who has the money to come in and present their side, and not make sure those other people are heard, does not represent a fair hearing and does not give the Utilities Commission all the information it should have to come up with a fair decision. If the commission is forced not to provide funds for interveners, it certainly leads to speculation that Hydro and this cabinet have a predetermined plan to build more dams for export purposes. It's the Columbia River Treaty all over again, or it could well be.

I would urge the minister to reconsider his position on those particular aspects.

Firm export power: Hydro has signed an agreement before the hearings are even held. Mind you, they've said in the small print that it's subject to the decision of the Utilities Commission. But it seems strange to me that Hydro is going ahead and signing an agreement when those hearings still aren't held. Is the decision a foregone conclusion? Is that Utilities Commission so much under the thumb of this minister that he makes the decisions for them? Is that the kind of free, independent commission that we've established in this province to review our energy needs? I'm extremely concerned about that particular point, Mr. Minister. I don't know if you want to comment on that at this point or if you want me to carry on with another issue.

HON. MR. ROGERS: Let's talk about the export of power. We're in a position now where we can spill it or we can sell it. The treasury needs the money. The water doesn't need to go over the top of the dam. We have a market for it in the United States on a short-term basis. Yes, there is a hearing under the Utilities Commission and also under the National Energy Board. It is not our policy to build for export, but I'm going to export everything I can that we've already built because that's the best use of the investment on the short term, Any revenues that we can get to this province right now, in this year; not for spending by this ministry but for spending for the social service ministries — any revenue we can get is vitally important. So any time that I can facilitate those arrangements, I'm going to go ahead and do that. That's what we intend to do. There is a hearing under the National Energy Board. However, since other provinces in Canada are able to export electricity on a very simple basis, I expect that we will get an (EL) export licence, which is what we require. I think that answers your question.

MRS. WALLACE: Mr. Chairman, we on this side of the House certainly have no objection to selling power on an interruptible, basis but once you start entering into three-year and six-year renewable contracts, that's a bit different. When you have the chairman of Hydro talking about building a transmission line to get that power down to California, how interruptible is that? How short term is that? When you are selling firm power for three to six years — or that's what you're proposing — for something like 2 cents Canadian a kilowatt-hour, when other firms are offering to provide that power and their price is something like 5 cents interruptible, why are you taking such a low price and why are you making it firm? Those are the kinds of questions that we're concerned about, Mr. Chairman. You haven't answered that at all, and you haven't given me any assurance on that point.

HON. MR. ROGERS: I'll try to answer that question. First of all, while the sale of power is to the city of Los Angeles, the power doesn't go to the city of Los Angeles; it goes into the Bonneville grid at the Nevada-California border. Mr. Bonner, the chairman of Hydro, can talk about anything he likes. There haven't been discussions at the board level that I know of, and I've attended every board meeting of B.C. Hydro concerning constructing any facilities in either Washington state or in the State of Oregon to facilitate the transfer of power. There have been some short-term spot sales of power in other areas at different prices. We've sold power in this province for as much as 40 mills, on a short-term basis, to people who have been in a jam. Quite frankly, it is almost electrical usury. Then we've turned around and sold power sometimes at very, very low rates. Right now, in our competitive market, almost everyone has surplus power. If the Bonneville Power Administration had the legal authority in the United States to sell that power, they would have done it. The legislative impediment in the United States has allowed us to steal some of their market. That's

[ Page 3162 ]

how it's happened. We have no reason to be the first one through the gate to be able to sell that power at all, but because of their complicated regulatory system that their federal government imposed upon them at the time of the construction of Bonneville, they're not allowed to sell that power and we've got it. Bonneville, quite frankly, is quite annoyed about the whole project because they're spilling water and we're not spilling water. It's a three-and-a-half-year term, and in fact that three-and-a-half-year contract is going to eat up a lot of the surplus out of Revelstoke.

I think we're doing extremely well based on what we've produced in terms of power in this province. Compared to the nightmare that almost every other electrical utility has, we are in very good shape. We haven't quite got the whole thing done, but if we can do one more export power surplus sale, on a short-term basis — three or maybe five years, depending on the size of it — we're going to have disposed of most of our surplus and have the revenue coming into the province. These are not contracts that are necessarily renewable. It is going to depend very much on the strength of our economy. If our economy starts to pick up, we need that power and California knows we need that power. They have a whole host of other sources of power trying to get in there to supply that market. I'm just trying to run it the best way I can, as if it was the family business. Assuming that this is the family business, because we're all parts of it, this is the best way to run it from a strictly commercial point of view.

We have tried to negotiate the best rate for power. Quite frankly, I think we're doing a good job.

MRS. WALLACE: I think I can be forgiven for being a bit suspicious when I recognize the situation that Hydro is in where they're facing a layoff of some 1,700 people in their engineering and construction branches. It would be very nice if suddenly we could sell a lot of power out of this province and have a good excuse to proceed with more dams, more engineering, more designs and more construction so we could sell that power. I am certainly opposed to that concept, because I think we should be ensuring that we're providing power to make jobs in British Columbia, not in California. There's no concern about the sale of surplus power. If we have surplus power at this point, fine. Interruptible, that is great. But let's not get ourselves into the position where that becomes the excuse or the reason to build more dams, to have more engineering studies, to have more environmental problems and further concerns in that direction. Let's be sure that we keep any future bills and any of the present need.... You know, why are we even talking about allowing Kemano to go ahead in that particular area when we have this surplus power going into the States? They're saying they'll buy some of it from us. Why can't we provide them with the power and make the jobs here? Why can't we have that smelter and some secondary industry using that power here rather than exporting it?

[3:45]

I want to go on to another item, Mr. Chairman, and it has to do with a question that I asked the minister last session relative to B.C. Hydro's office space. How much was rented? How much was unoccupied? I think it was August 24 that he replied to the question. He said that B.C. Hydro was leasing something in excess of 462,000 square feet of office space in greater Vancouver. Of that amount 58,200 square feet were unoccupied and another nearly 28,000 square feet were subleased to other companies, which certainly doesn't leave that much being used by Hydro. He went on to say that the cost of the subleased space could not be determined. There was a net cost of $160,000 on one of the sites, with a benefit of $900 a month at one of the others. That's a pretty big deficit on your rentals. I'm wondering whether that situation still exists, whether you have cleaned house there at all, whether you have gotten rid of any of that unnecessary office lease space, whether it is now occupied or what has become of that.

HON. MR. ROGERS: I'd like to just address the export power situation again. If you want to look at the long term, the big problem is that even if we wanted to go ahead and build Site C right now to air condition every house in California, we can't get the power down there through the Oregon inter-tie. That's the weak link in the chain, and I think we're almost at the maximum that we can push through right now. So I think you can dismiss the fears that we're going to go ahead and do that. That's not our intention and I've stated so publicly. However, I'd certainly like to be able to see some increased economic activity in British Columbia so we could get going again.

At the present time B.C. Hydro has an engineering staff that has been building dams and transmission systems since 1956 or 1957 and they're going through a very awkward, tough process, the kind of process that the private sector and the government sector has gone through, and so they have been reducing staff and will be continuing to reduce staff. Some of the people they're losing are pretty valuable because they have expertise that you just can't pick up off the street or from Canada Manpower the next day when you need it again. So there's a problem there. In the process of doing that, they naturally are going to have some vacant office space because they're downsizing their operations. Hydro gets ridiculously low rents offered to them for space because they're a triple net tenant and people like to have them in their buildings. I couldn't tell you today what the vacancy rate is, and I can inquire for you. I will do so and bring the answer back and table it in the House.

However, the thing changes — it's like taking a snapshot — depending on what they have on any particular day. They have been downsizing. As they consolidate and move various divisions down, they're going to have space and they're going to have to let those leases run out. So I think their engineering staff would certainly like to see a boom in the economy so they'd pick up in the requirements. We'd all like to see that, but if that doesn't happen, I don't see us having any reason to go ahead and maintain those people. We will continue to have to reduce the staff, because that's what's in the best interests of both the company and the taxpayer.

MRS. WALLACE: I have in my hands here B.C. Hydro's annual report for 1982-83, and there are some interesting figures that come out of that. According to my calculations, at least 33 percent of Hydro's expenses are interest, and 40.2 percent of its electric-service expenses consist of interest. The total long-term debt is approximately $7 billion. The actual annual interest expenses are in excess of $800 million. The total debt is approximately 80 percent of the total assets. This doesn't paint a very healthy economic picture for any organization. That was for 1982-83. Hydro was very recently authorized to borrow another $600 million, is it? I don't have that figure before me at the moment.

Where are we going? We're going deeper in debt all the time. What are you proposing? I know you're thinking this

[ Page 3163 ]

sale of power is going to help. I don't know if you're going to pay off any of the deficit or if you're only going to be able to meet those interest costs. You're borrowing money. As I understand it, that most recent borrowing was to pay the interest on the Revelstoke installations. Where are you going? When are we going to realize that these high capital cost projects and high transmission costs — it's estimated that 90 percent of the total cost of installation is the transmission costs — over those long distances have to go? We have to start looking in other directions. We have to start looking at smaller, more localized things — the sort of thing the member for North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Davis) was talking about; the sort of thing my colleague from Alberni has advocated many times in this Legislature. When is Hydro going to start taking a serious look at that kind of low-capital, high-labour project instead of this tremendous expansion at high cost, where we're digging ourselves further into debt all the time?

HON. MR. ROGERS: The financial situation at Hydro is not dissimilar to that of Hydro-Quebec, Ontario Hydro or most other state-owned public utilities in this country. Their debt to equity ratio is approximately in line with the others. The horror stories in the electric utility business, in terms of New York and the borrowing of money, are all related to nuclear power installations. I think we can all collectively congratulate ourselves for having the wisdom not to entertain that in the first place. That's the one that has really cost the money. The Washington State Public Power System and others have gone through nightmares over funding. Any public utility that's involved in generating and transmitting power is going to capitalize those dams over a long period of time. The facilities that were built 15, 16 and 17 years ago and are still generating cash today, they have been paid for, depreciated and written off, and they're still working. The Revelstoke Dam will probably be written off over 30 or 35 years and will be good for 100 or 150 years, when it will still be kicking out power. When the demand for power stops growing and we can pay off our debt, then we're going to be there. It's just an investment that you make. It's like taking out a mortgage on a house.

In terms of choosing the next project for this province, it will depend on two things, and one is the size of rate of growth. If we have a large rate of growth, we might look at one of the bigger projects. If we have a small rate of growth, we might look at one of the smaller projects. But it also has to be based on cost-efficiency, on what is the most effective one; not necessarily what's the best thing to do socially but what's the best thing to do financially. That's the guidance I have from cabinet and that I take to Hydro.

MRS. WALLACE: I want to talk about one more item. It relates to the employees at Hydro. By way of introduction, I have in front of me a summary of some executive salaries. I notice that the salary of the president in 1981-82 was $114,528 and in 1982-83 it went up to $125,000.04 for some reason. That was an increase of 8.3 percent. The executive vice-president's salary went up 7.75 percent. Those increases don't make it any easier to sell an argument about good management and certainly don't make it any easier to sell the restraint to employees who are out for a very long time, and who are just back at work, as a result of the attempts that were made to cut back their salaries.

I have a report in my hand. It's a B.C. Hydro report dated October 20, 1981: "A Report on the Status of Women and Minorities in B.C. Hydro and a Review of Affirmative Action Programs in Canada." On page 20 of that report it indicates that in B.C. females in the labour force make up 39 percent. and males 61 percent. The employees of B.C. Hydro were only 22 percent women and 78 percent men, very much out of line with the overall picture. That is only the tip of the iceberg, because when you look at the types of salaries that women receive in B.C. Hydro, as compared to the salaries that men receive, I think you begin to realize why affirmative action is so necessary in an organization like B.C. Hydro.

Of the women who worked for B.C. Hydro, 89.1 percent were group 7 or below, and 67.4 percent were groups I to 5, compared with the male employees, 79.1 percent of whom were group 8 or higher — group 7 or 8 being sort of the middle break of the salary scale. All 124 executive payroll employees were men. There were 1,040 persons in the supervisory group, of whom 25, or 2.4 percent, were women. It just doesn't look good. There were 604 persons employed in the professional group, of whom only 11 or 1.8 percent were women. There were a total of 970 professional engineers at Hydro: of these, 6 or 0.6 percent were women. You might say that there aren't any women professional engineers available. That's not correct, Mr. Minister. At UBC in 1980 there were 251 graduates, of whom 16 were women, and in 1981 some 16 of 306 were women. That's a much higher percentage. Those women are available, but they are certainly not being brought into the Hydro workforce.

The conclusions drawn on page 24 of this report say that 89. I percent of the women in the salaried group are employed in typically clerical, secretarial positions. In the salaried group of men 47.3 percent are in supervisory, professional or executive positions. For salaried employees the average female salary is 50.2 percent of the average male salary, and that excludes executive salaries. So a women working for Hydro is only making half as much as a man. Now that may have been acceptable back in the dark twenties or thirties, but it's not acceptable in the 1980s, and it is not acceptable in a Crown corporation. It is not acceptable in a day and age when the greatest number of working women are heads of families. It's not fair or just as far as those children are concerned. I would hope that this minister will take some action. This report is dated 1981; it is now 1984, but I doubt that anything has changed. I would ask the minister to make it a top priority to review that situation at Hydro and to move fast and firmly on an affirmative action program that will change those statistics into something that we do not need to be ashamed of.

[4:00]

HON. MR. ROGERS: Talking about employee compensation for the chief executive officer, yes, that seems like an awful lot of money. It's the largest company in British Columbia and the sixth largest company in Canada, and compared with what people in the private sector get it's a pittance. In fact, at the executive level of Hydro their salaries are not comparable with what people get running similar-sized industries elsewhere, although both you and I would find that salary range personally very acceptable, I'm sure. In general Hydro's wage rates are higher than in the private sector — only marginally, but between 4 and 6 percent higher than comparable jobs in the private sector.

I share your concerns about the employment of women, but please remember that the company has not been hiring people. There is always some turnover, but in many cases

[ Page 3164 ]

they have been reducing the number of staff they have in individual departments. I hope that some of the women graduating from engineering school are graduating in those disciplines that Hydro requires. Engineering is a complicated subject, and many of them may not be taking those subjects that are germane to Hydro. I personally have no quarrel whatsoever with the desire to have women in the workplace at all levels. I think it is healthy and, as you say, long overdue. However, I don't want to go in and fire somebody else who may have a wife and children at home and say: "You've got to go because we shouldn't have hired you 20 years ago; we should have hired someone else." You don't want that either. But it has to be part of their hiring policy when they get back into an expansion mode.

MR. ROSE: Mr. Chairman, I don't expect I will speak at great length, and that will be to the great relief of a number of people in the House.

I would like to ask the minister a little bit about the abolition of his renewable energy branch and conservation branch. I believe it was touched on a little earlier, but I have some specific questions on it. It's of particular interest to me, since over the past four or five years there has been considerable interest in conservation and renewable energy. It seems to me that it is something worth fostering. All over Canada perhaps no more than 6 percent of all the energy needs of all the provinces is coming from the alternatives and the renewables. The non-renewables tend to be the bulk of our energy sources, if you rule out hydro. They are finite. They are going to come to an end someday — oil, at least the easily accessible oil, perhaps in as quickly as ten years. Certainly as far as the cost is concerned, energy produced by the megaprojects — whether you are talking about tar sands plants or nuclear energy projects or offshore oil in the Atlantic or in the far north — is considerably more expensive, to the extent of approximately double or triple what conventional energy is worth and certainly what renewable energy is worth.

The cancellation of this particular branch, which includes approximately 25 FTEs, is of more than passing interest. It seems to me a backward step. I know that for the moment we have stability in the energy field and that Canada is not deficient in energy. It doesn't have its own equivalent oil production that we might need, although that, I think, stems from past policies that were certainly not very far-seeing. At one time we were selling approximately a million barrels a day of crude oil to the United States, and now our imports of oil can amount to as much as $4 billion a year. However, those are statistics that don't have a particular meaning.

In the renewable and alternative energy field you can create a job for approximately $50,000 a job or less. But if you go into a nuke plant or tar sands plant or an offshore rig, the cost to create a job, aside from the fact that you are dealing with finite resources, except for Hydro, is approximately 20 or 30 times that much — up to $1,000,000 a job. So from the point of view of employment, and the point of view of economics, it makes much more sense to encourage conservation so that we don't use as much oil and renewables. We are told also that the cheapest barrel of oil Canadians can have is the barrel of oil that we do not use — or save.

I think it is a backwards step, and I regret it. Now that these conservation people and renewable people have gone, the first question is: do we have any capacity to create and foster the development of renewable energy and energy conservation in this province? That is question number one.

Question number two: is there going to be any effort on the part of the ministry, if not through its own department but any kinds of projects...? There have been many federal projects to this end, solar and a number of others. I could list them if I took the time, but it would be redundant. Is there any B.C. effort to create jobs in the alternative energy field and the conservation field? Triple-glazed windows, insulation, architectural training in how to build energy-efficient homes, heat pumps and a whole gamut of things like that are extremely important if you're short of energy or if you're not willing to squander the resources we have. So that's basically the second question.

It also has a number of social implications. As far as I'm concerned, it's far better for us to keep a welder in the community with his family working on such things as tripleglazed windows or whatever than it is to send that same welder, with the family disruption, to the far north to poke holes in the Beaufort Sea. I think that all Canadians need to be aware of the advantages of renewable energy, and I'm certain that there was a capacity in the minister's department to make us more aware of that. I know the heat's off — the OPEC nations are suffering an oil glut, and all kinds of problems are associated with the Iranian situation, the income from oil resources in Venezuela and the rest of it; I'm aware of that — but I would like to know, if we no longer have a capacity within the ministry, or certainly a reduced capacity, whether we have abandoned the whole idea. If not, what are we prepared to do to foster this industry, if not directly by government, at least by providing the atmosphere in which the private sector can proceed with the benefit of government assistance of one kind or another, including economic, but certainly the government's ability to pass judgment on such procedures and techniques and to give them some advertising support?

The final question is this. There are five energy centres throughout B.C. These were opened with great fanfare about two years ago. There was one developed in my riding, in Port Coquitlam. The member for Dewdney (Mr. Pelton) attended, representing the government — it wasn't his riding, but he was there anyway. There are four others throughout B.C. These energy centres are sources of information material for architects and consumers, paid for in a tripartite way — federal, provincial and local. What is the future of these centres? Are they to remain or are they to go the way of a lot of other things because of cutbacks and slashing, even though this move on the part of the federal and provincial governments was, I think, a very progressive and beneficial one? If you can cut your heating costs by one-tenth, you don't need as many high-level dams, and you might even have more surplus to export to the United States — if that is your policy, and I understand it is — or to the aluminum Company of Canada, if they choose to buy it.

Those are my three questions. What steps is the minister taking to foster the development of renewable energy and energy conservation in B.C.? What's he doing about jobs in the industry? Is the ministry encouraging the creation of jobs in B.C. for the things I mentioned: insulation techniques, architectural techniques and various other kinds of things, such as heat pumps? Or is he content to have some other jurisdiction ship them into British Columbia? Thirdly, what is the fate of the five energy centres in British Columbia which were opened with a great deal of fanfare some two or three years ago and which have been used by the public to some extent — I'm not prepared to say what extent?

[ Page 3165 ]

There's a fourth, which I didn't mention. When I was out here as a part of the federal task force on alternative energy, I was very impressed with what the province was doing on geothermal. I understand that up near the Pemberton Meadows area there were some efforts to do something on geothermal. We had a man attached to the ministry who was an expert in geothermal. I would like to know if that has been abandoned as well. What is the future for geothermal, in the view of the ministry?

HON. MR. ROGERS: The geothermal work was done by B.C. Hydro and not by the ministry. We didn't have an expert there. They did quite a lot of work at Meager Creek, and the results of their findings are being analyzed now.

The five energy houses. I've got to tell you that at Treasury Board we've got to go through what you need to have and what you would like to have. We have a very small ministry. We have some people who are very critical to the income of this province from the point of view of assessing gas wells and the rest of it. We are right down to a very small staff. So when it came down to saying what we would like to have and what we needed to have, this is one of the things we opted to say we'd like to have but we don't need to have. I met with the municipalities involved. I also advised the federal government. The federal government were only too delighted to take the whole package over themselves — and take over the credit. Maybe they weren't too delighted; maybe Mr. Chretien just decided he'd like to do it. So the facility remains. The taxpayers, whether it's out of their federal pocket or their provincial pocket, still have that service, and all of the information available to your constituents and others — architects and anybody else — is still available. It was a nice thing to do; it was constructive. People who were rebuilding or building houses could go and learn a lot of stuff about it. But it wasn't absolutely mandatory.

An awful lot of the things that we were doing are now being done by the private sector. The educational process for heating contractors, for insulating contractors and the rest of it is now something that's known. I've even had some complaints from the private sector in the alternate energy field competing with them. After all, they are paying taxes and employing people, and that industry is healthy in many respects. So from the point of view of what you need to do and what business government needs to be in, the public know that, and the price is the best determinator of whether they will do that. People are still heating houses with less than an efficient system, and they still know that alternate energy is available.

By the way, regarding your analogy about using a welder for making windows, the very worst thing you can do is have a metal sash in the window. It's better to have single-plane glass and a wooden sash than triple-pane glass and a metal sash. Metal is the worst source of heat loss. I've been to the house and have taken a course, and you should definitely use wood. I'd recommend B.C. lumber, because that's the best stuff to use. Does that answer your questions?

[4:15]

MR. ROSE: Well, I guess, Mr. Minister. I thank the minister for his response, but there are ways of getting around the metal sash problems, of sweating and all the rest of them — the minister will acknowledge that. Wood necessarily requires a good deal more maintenance. Sure, it's great to use the wood industry — the major industry of the province — but I think you will admit that we also have an aluminum industry, and I know he wouldn't want to say anything that would make it difficult for that industry particularly. I guess when the minister talks about the things we need as opposed to the things that are not mandatory, it really depends on your own philosophy. If you're really intent on going full-bore and using all the resources on the extractive industries, that's exactly where you're going to take it, because it's an immediate thing. This is what we need now. Some people would be much more interested in looking over the longer haul to the point that when the extractive industries do not provide us with the energy we need immediately, we help people learn that there are other ways.

Fm not sure that price is also a rationing mechanism. There are people in my own riding who have to commute from, say, a place like Mission to Vancouver every day. They've got an old clunker of a car, and it doesn't matter how much you put gas up. They're probably not going to drive much less, because the car has a certain kind of capacity and they can't afford another one. So price is not necessarily always the final arbiter. no matter how much it might work in some direction. All I'm' saying is that I would hope that if the government cannot do anything else.... I didn't ask them to compete with the industry, I asked them to provide the kind of information and support of one kind or another that the industry needs. I am pleased that the energy centres are going to be perpetuated, and I think the need for them will grow. Once we get through this session of three years of cutbacks and we need to throw money at things to get elected again, then we have saved all that money and we'll be able to get ready for the next campaign.

MR. PASSARELL: I have just a quick question to the minister. This is a problem that was brought up by a Lynne Thunderstorm from the residents of the free-flowing Stikine; it was a letter addressed to the minister last month regarding three cables being placed across the Stikine by B.C. Hydro in regard to water levels. An engineer who is involved in the project has stated publicly to the group that these cables that they are running across the Stikine are approximately $110,000 each. There are three to four of them, from the information I have received. Since the entire project of Stikine-Iskut has been placed back till the twenty-second century — or God knows when, if it ever will be built — why spend this type of money during this restraint program? Why spend almost $400,000 on cables that aren't really needed on a project that has been postponed for so long? I'd like the minister's answer to why they are putting in these cables down there, because the project has been put on the back turner. It’s not needed. There is no need for water levels for this year, next year or for whenever. It would be appropriate just to tell Hydro to spend the $400,000 somewhere else.

There was a rumour being spread that if they do build the Stikine it was going to be called the "Stephen Rogers Dam." I have tried my hardest to say: "No, no, that won't be the dam name."

HON. MR. ROGERS: Well, I am sure it will be named after the minister of the day, so you are quite correct.

The second thing is that they have done a whole host of survey work on this thing, and they are just wrapping up the last of it. But having 90 percent of the information that they want, they wanted to get the final bit of data complete before they literally pull out and, hopefully, leave the place the way

[ Page 3166 ]

they found it. I think I can give you the assurance that that will be the extent of their activities.

Vote 27 approved.

Vote 28: resource management program, $20,353,252 — approved.

Vote 29: British Columbia Utilities Commission, $1,555,257 — approved.

Vote 30: Fort Nelson Indian Band mineral revenue-sharing agreement, $3,500,000 — approved.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF
INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS

On vote 56: minister's office, $117,775.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Chairman, this is a small budget, few personnel performing now, as before, an excellent job on behalf of all of the citizens of our province and working long hours and doing good deeds and indeed performing many outstanding tasks. I'd like to pay some respects and thanks, both on my behalf and on behalf of our administration, and certainly on behalf of the people of the province, to our capable people within the ministry — firstly to the Deputy Minister of Constitutional Affairs, Mr. Mel Smith, QC, who has a very long-standing and highly respected national reputation in constitutional matters, and his industrious staff. I should also mention that today is Mr. Smith's birthday, and I'm sure that all members would like to join me in conveying the best of returns to him.

I'd also like to refer to our outstanding agent-general in London, England, Mr. Alex Hart, QC, everyone in B.C. House, Ottawa, and the very, very capable and efficient secretariat within the confines of these precincts: Sue Stephen, for economic development and ELUC; Miss Debby Lovett for social services and legislation; Mr. Bert Hick, who is secretary for planning and priorities in cabinet; and lastly but certainly not leastly, Mr. Peter Heap, who is the senior analyst in federal-provincial relations.

I think it is appropriate also, Mr. Chairman, to pay my respects and reiterate my earlier thanks and extension of best wishes to those who have changed career paths since estimates were last before this House, and who are now involved in other pursuits: Norman Spector, who is deputy to the Premier; Mr. Jim Matkin, who has entered the private sector in the B.C. Employers' Council; Mr. Bob Plecas, who is now the Deputy Provincial Secretary; Miss Ann Vice, the press secretary to the Premier; and Mr. Don Axford, who has moved to the government of Alberta.

The estimates per se, Mr. Chairman. As you know, it is a small ministry and a relatively small amount of money. I'm pleased to say that within this office they're down 15 percent, in the Victoria operation down 16 percent, Ottawa down 45 percent and London down 6 percent — the overall total being down about 15 percent, with the complement of personnel being reduced.,

When I spoke in the last estimates, Mr. Chairman, I expressed some views concerning routes to improvement in our country. Unfortunately some of those have not been acted upon enough and some have not been acted upon — regretfully — at all. I'm just going to refer to them very much in a passing sense today because they are going to be considered, I'm sure, in greater depth in the coming estimates, which hopefully we will be commencing at the termination of the budget speech, by the end of this month. But we are still being beset in our country with the difficulties that have been encountered as a result of a dearth of capital and an outflow of investment, primarily by virtue of federal policies: the national energy program and FIRA and the fact that the federal administration has still, regretfully, not seen fit to come to effective grips with a tax system that is creating absolutely nothing but difficulty, I'd say, for the middle class. There is no question that the rich are essentially fireproof and, on balance, in a world sense, those who are less fortunate are very well taken care of in our country.

But we have a tax system that is literally a jungle. It should be simplified. I think the flat tax approach is one that is deserving of a great deal more attention than it has received to this point in time. We have batteries of accountants and lawyers and tax advisers on one hand writing tax laws, and we have batteries of lawyers, tax accountants and tax advisers on the other hand advising people how they can best not pay their proper and fair share of taxes. It is a far, far too complicated system, and it requires simplification.

We are also continuing to press, and unfortunately not with the degree of success that I would have liked to see, the concept that was articulated by the Premier's father that equalization payments should not be plunked into the hands of governments but should find their way to the citizens in the recipient provinces by virtue of decreased tax points or what have you. I do think that the late Mr. Bennett was miles ahead of his time, and he well saw the danger of all Canadian dollars becoming capable of provincial political manipulation.

I would like to refer to one topic this afternoon. I wish to make some observations about what I consider to be the optimum course for the economic wherewithal and standard of living of everyone in every part of our country: a free trade market with the United States. It is very interesting from a historic perspective. Going back before Confederation we found, in 1854, a rather enlightened period in our history. At that point a treaty provided for limited Canada-U.S. free trade. That unfortunately came to termination in 1866, and it's too bad that since then Canadian governments have mostly employed tariffs as one of the main ways of furthering national economic and political goals. This approach was initiated very shortly after Confederation in 1879 in what was known as the National Policy. It combined immigration and transportation policies, but most particularly protective tariffs, which were designed to foster the development of manufacturing, principally in central Canada. There is no question that it stimulated east-west trade within our country. But as time has certainly proven, it was primarily at the cost and expense of the west. In the early 1930s Canadian protectionism increased markedly, primarily in response to the swing toward protectionism throughout the whole world. In the late 1930s there was a bit of a breakthrough, and certain tariff reductions were produced. But it wasn't until the end of the Second World War that a turning-point developed, resulting in GATT. From then on the United States increasingly became Canada's most important trade partner and source of capital.

Interjections.

[ Page 3167 ]

HON. MR. GARDOM: I am glad my colleagues are all supportive of free trade, but I thought the historic analysis would be very interesting and educational for them.

Interestingly enough, complete free trade with the United States was a subject of closed-door negotiations — which is not too well-known — between the two countries in 1948, under then Prime Minister Mackenzie King, who had very strong support from C.D. Howe and was led by John Deutsch, who later became the head of the Economic Council of Canada. A 25-year treaty was proposed in 1948. There was a very favourable reception to that suggestion in Washington, D.C., but unfortunately Mr. King had a change of heart when he sensed that his perception of his personal political place in history was indeed chilling. The story — as I'm sure the hon. member from Victoria well knows — is that while Mr. King was reading Studies in Colonial Nationalism he mused over the last chapter and, being the soul of the empire, he considered that in the last act of his career he could be placed in the position of being the spearhead of furthering commercial union with the United States, which would destroy his earlier record of Commonwealth association. I think that for those of us who can remember the late Mackenzie King, his record of Commonwealth association was somewhat questionable at the best of times. I suppose anything can be looked at in hindsight, even mysticism. But we have to recall that Mr. King came very close to providing a better and more lasting standard of living and increased employment for all Canadians. If he had directed his emphasis to that course, surely it would have established a much more significant position for him in the annals of our history.

This brings me to the mid-1980s — 1984 — and a very serious concern about the Canadian economy as a whole and our capacity for complete recovery in our province. The concern is the growing tendency among the nations of the world to raise barriers against free trade by various forms of protectionism, which unfortunately appears to be on the increase. For a major trading country like ours this is damaging. It is dangerous. If extended, it is potentially disastrous, let alone being contrary to the spirit, if not always the letter, of the principles of free trade and reduction in tariffs enshrined about four decades ago in the general agreement.

[4:30]

Shortly stated, GATT liberalized international trade to a degree probably unprecedented in history. There is no question that what followed was one of the greatest periods of growth that the world has ever seen. But in recent years the GATT consensus and the underlying assumptions that made GATT an effective and nourishing instrument have come under increasing pressure. As we know, today nation after nation is resorting to subtle or not-so-subtle moves to protect their domestic industries from foreign competition. Some manufacturing sectors have been removed altogether from GATT. To revert to a state of frightened economic fiefdoms, each raising higher and higher walls to keep out the goods of other countries, would be a very sad and retrograde step, and also could bring on and prolong the collapse that protectionism struggles to avoid. We know that the grim lessons that we learned in the 1930s will attest to that. Additional evidence of the tendency to return to this more primitive global trade pattern is the rapid growth in counter trade in its various forms, which even include pure barter.

Furthermore, there is a very big issue that must arise from consideration of the Third World debt: Argentina, $35 billion; Brazil, $90 billion; Mexico, $80 billion; the Philippines, $25 billion. Those four countries themselves total $230 billion. It's absolutely staggering. Each one of them is in pro forma if not in actual default. I think all the members would agree that but for the IMF — the International Monetary Fund — propping them up, those defaults, if all acted upon at once, could produce without question another worldwide recession, far worse than the one we're now starting to show some signs of moving out of. The proposals of these kinds of countries to discharge these debts — if, indeed, they ever will be able to do so — is by increasing their exports and probably decreasing their imports from countries such as ours. Hence Canada will have to face all the more, in the world sense, the pressures of external competition. There is no question that our country is facing new trade challenges and new problems of that sort, sometimes of a type that have never been encountered in the lifetime of the majority of our citizens. Hence the economic uncertainties and difficulties, perhaps even the perils, that could face a nation make the proposal I'm referring to especially timely.

Firstly, Mr. Chairman, we all know that Canada's three largest trading partners have economies that dwarf ours: the United States and the European Economic Community, each about ten times as big, and Japan, with an economy four times larger than ours, and all of them far less dependent on trade than we are. So our greatest need is surely a big, dependable, easily accessed market, and certainly there is no better market and no better access to a dependable, generally predictable market for our country than the United States. Our first priority should be toward a complete free-trade agreement with the United States, to be followed in due course by discussions and negotiations to further remove trade barriers with Europe, Japan and the fast-growing, newly industrialized countries. But we can't repeat enough that any shrivelling of the spirit and substance of free trade can become a very sombre threat — and an oppressant, indeed — to the economic recovery in our country and certainly in our province.

I would reiterate, Mr. Chairman, that the surest and least complicated route to future prosperity should lead us next door, below the 49th parallel and across the largest and friendliest border the world has ever known, to a partner with whose language, preferences and requirements we are most familiar, both in approach to business, economic philosophy and, within our own respective jurisdictions, to the free market of goods, services and capital. We enjoy, as we all know, generally very connected economies.

Interjection.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I am happy to see the member for Vancouver Centre now joining us, and I'm more than pleased that he agrees with this premise. I'm sure that he will be advocating this in his support of his leadership candidate.

Not too long ago the federal government published a paper that was entitled "Canadian Trade Policy for the 1980s," and it recognized the crucial importance of access to U.S. markets for exports. Unfortunately it rejected the concept of total free trade. Instead, it proposed entering into selective free trade in textiles, urban mass transportation, petrochemicals and so forth. This is not the best solution in the long haul, but under the terms of GATT Canada could be

[ Page 3168 ]

permitted to engage in bilateral one-on-one free trade with the United States. This has to be a must. Total free trade with the United States is permissible and feasible, and with the necessary public and governmental support, quite achievable. Anything less in the short run lacks foresight; anything in the long run is purely and simply bad economics.

To my colleague for Surrey, Canada would far more closely track an approach to good recovery news that we're hearing from south of the line. Unemployment, 1983: Canada — 11.9 percent, U.S. — 9.6 percent; inflation, 1983: Canada — 5.8 percent, U.S. — 3.2 percent; deficit of GNP, 1983: Canada — 8.0 percent, U.S. — 5.1 percent. Our GNP could only increase; that's the only thing that could happen there.

There is an absolutely remarkable opportunity present for our country at this point in time, and I'm delighted to see that talks have been initiated and are now ongoing between the two countries, and I think they should receive encouragement from every part of Canada. Our standard of living would just take off, and we should grasp it.

At this point in time I would very much like to have a few questions from our colleagues in the House.

MR. HOWARD: Mr. Chairman, I am reluctant to ask a question. I don't think there's enough time left in this week. We may be here next week dealing with these estimates.

The second member for Vancouver East (Mr. Macdonald), who is our caucus critic with respect to this ministry, is indisposed. He is recovering from surgery and asked me if I would stand in for him. Since he asked me that, I've done a tremendous amount of research and study. I've pored over books and documents late into the night, trying to grasp the complexities of this ministry.

MR. LAUK: Have you read the minister's speeches?

MR. HOWARD: No, I have not yet had a chance to read the minister's speeches, because this is the first one he's made. I hope it's the last.

In any event, in attempting to come to an understanding about the intricacies and involvement of this ministry, and the value of it, my research has led me to believe that it isn't complex, it's simple — and its value is next to nothing.

Interjections.

MR. HOWARD: If those of you in the chamber who may have had some question in your own mind about the value of this ministry had listened to the speech the minister made, you would have found, in that extensive, desperate grasping to justify his own and his ministry's existence, the reason why it is of no value at all. His testimonials to all and sundry in the ministry: I think he named every person working in his department, and their families. You left out the names of some of the dogs and cats but you could have included those in that testimonial.

MR. LAUK: Did he ask us to pay recognition to his goldfish?

MR. HOWARD: No, but what he did do, talking about gold — Mr. Member, you'll appreciate this — is talk about international debt, something that I perceive as totally within the grasp and jurisdiction of the Ministry of Intergovernmental Relations. He talked about various countries and their billions of dollars of debt to other countries and so on, and what he was doing, I submit to those of you who didn't follow it, was making a vicious attack upon the capitalist system, the free enterprise system. How did those countries get into debt? They borrowed the money from the generous, friendly banks that are chartered and operate in Canada — some of them. The Royal Bank of Canada saw an opportunity for the free enterprise system to function, as the Royal Bank perceived it, and so did the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and the Bank of Montreal. Most of the banks in Canada said: "Here's a chance to make a buck."

I don't know how much money the members in this House would have in savings accounts in Canadian banks, but there's a chance that some members, and maybe even the Minister of Intergovernmental Relations, probably have some money in a bank account or a term deposit or something of that sort. His friendly bank, after the minister had loaned them that money by putting it in a savings account or a term deposit, took that money and said: "By golly, we can lend that to Venezuela or Chile; we can lend that money internationally." That's the reason for the tremendous increase in international debt that the minister complains about: the fact that his own bank took his money, plus the savings of a lot of other Canadians, and invested it in those countries. Now he's the first to complain about it and to condemn the chartered banks of Canada. You should be ashamed of yourself. You should get up and apologize, Mr. Minister, to the board of directors of the Bank of Nova Scotia — for argument's sake — for condemning them for engaging in ordinary, simple, free enterprise capitalistic practices. They're in business to lend money.

MR. LAUK: Apologize to the Bank of Commerce.

MR. HOWARD: Yes, the Bank of Commerce hasn't been apologized to for some time, and I think the minister should do that.

In any event, I did listen with interest to the minister's excursions into history. He started in 1854 or 1874, I think — I forget the exact date — and gave us an explanation of events ranging from then up until now. He covered a number of important historical figures in Canada and elsewhere, but he missed the most important one. This gentleman's first name I don't know, but it was shortened to Gard. I don't know his full name, but Gard Gobbledegook was whom he missed. That probably explains the full purport and intent of the minister's comments.

I really find that they were grasping desperately to justify the expenditure of some $2.5 million on something not very important, not very valuable and not very functional — just a drain on the taxpayers. In this so-called period of restraint, you will notice there aren't cutbacks in that ministry. There aren't people being laid off wholesale. He doesn't make great announcements like the Minister of Forests does. He doesn't make great announcements like the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. Heinrich), saying we've got to attack education, or anything of that sort. He's got figures out there and full-time equivalents and this sort of thing. The basic reference in terms of numbers is substantially the same as it was last year: down $400,000 or something of that sort.

But I want to draw to the minister's attention a very important fundamental fact of life about his government. The

[ Page 3169 ]

Ministry of Intergovernmental Relations came into existence in 1976-77 when the Premier — the same Premier as we have now — decided that he was going to inject into his own estimates an amount of $125,000 for executive council administration. That was the start of what we now have as the Ministry of Intergovernmental Relations. This is not a Ministry of Intergovernmental Relations, Mr. Chairman. This is a ministry that is patterned exactly and precisely after the Privy Council and regional desk structure that Prime Minister Trudean instituted in the late 1960s when he became the Prime Minister of Canada — in other words, to enlarge the bureaucracy in order to serve the Premier and to serve the cabinet. That's the function of this ministry.

Apart from B.C. House in London and, I think, B.C. House in Ottawa, which I think you can probably cancel — wipe it out, and save the taxpayers a few dollars, and just accomplish the same thing as you're accomplishing now.... But apart from that, the major activity of the ministry is to serve cabinet and the cabinet committees. It's the secretariat of cabinet. You'll notice the minister covered none of that. He went on an international excursion and an historic excursion. It's the ministry that, if it were to disappear tomorrow, everyone would be happier about. B.C. House administration in London — if we wanted to keep it, we could put it back into the Provincial Secretary's ministry, where it was in the first place. Wipe out B.C. House in Ottawa. It serves no purpose except to drain tax dollars from B.C. into Ontario. Eliminate the cabinet secretariat and function as cabinets did before this ministry came into existence, and in this year of restraint we could save the taxpayers of this province something in the neighbourhood of a couple of million dollars.

[4:45]

Now like the minister said, the amount of money assigned to this ministry is not very much. I happen to think a couple of million dollars is quite a bit of money. A lot of people out in the country think that a couple of million dollars is quite a bit of money.

AN HON. MEMBER: I could sure use it.

MR. HOWARD: Somebody behind me said they could certainly use it. They could probably use even a quarter of that amount if it was distributed in that form. But it would certainly help, in this so-called period of restraint, if the minister would do one thing: that is, restrain his ministry from continuing to spend public funds and restrain himself in the volume of words that he visits upon the House in asking the House to approve these estimates.

I suppose they'll pass. I don't particularly agree with them. I don't think it serves a great, tremendous, valuable purpose. The Ministry of Intergovernmental Relations could be handled by any other minister in a double-up position. Not that I'm saying that the minister doesn't need the money as his salary as a cabinet minister, but the ministry doesn't perform any great, valuable purpose to society, to British Columbia. It just drains taxpayers' money out, spends it in other countries, and very little, if anything, comes back in return for that expenditure of $2.5 millions, roughly speaking.

But the minister will get his money; undoubtedly his colleagues will rally to his support. They'll say: "Yeah, he's a good guy. He doesn't do anything. The ministry doesn't do very much. It isn't very helpful to anything. But we'll give him the money anyhow" — mostly because there's an old buddy friendship over there that exists with all people who belong to the Liberal Party.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Well, I would just like to make one response, if I may, Mr. Chairman, and I'd like to offer a little advice to the second member for Vancouver East (Mr. Macdonald), who is still on his sickbed. I would suggest to him that if he reads my speech in Hansard, he will enjoy a very speedy and complete recovery, and should he read the hon. member for Skeena's speech in Hansard, regretfully he may experience a quick, and perhaps permanent, relapse.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, I want to bring before this House one more piece of evidence that tells the whole story of the ministry: it's in the red. In order to prove it, they have to do it every few pages.

Interjection.

MR. COCKE: Look, that's a report from the deputy minister. Overleaf you see a few printed words. This is a report from the deputy minister, constitutional affairs.

MR. HOWARD: What's on that page?

MR. COCKE: Nothing — zero, except red ink. More red ink: federal-provincial relations. You know, that's all my colleague from Skeena was saying. You're a very expensive luxury in a time of restraint — or at least you're talking about the need for restraint.

Cabinet secretariat: again, there's nothing on that page. What did this thing cost us? B.C. House, Ottawa: there's nothing on that page. This is the number of volumes on B.C. House, London: again, nothing on that page. Maybe this is a new art form that some of us over here don't understand, but I'll bet you that this expensive ministry, which has very great difficulty in justifying their existence other than announcing that Venezuela is in debt and Brazil has a high inflation rate, etc.... But other than that they haven't really told us what they're doing in terms of relations with other governments. They've told us that we should have free trade with the United States, which is following a doctrine right now that is very similar to the B.C. doctrine that is taking us down the tube: Milton Friedman and the gang. Anybody having anything to do with him can take a look at a newsletter from world-famed economists to be published very shortly by the Bank of England that says that Friedman's theories are analogous to astrology or meteorology.

AN HON. MEMBER: Numerology.

MR. COCKE: That's right. So go to your fortune-teller.

But this describes the ministry as it can best be described: a ministry that's costing us a lot, and even their report has page after page with nothing on it but red ink. So, Mr. Chairman, I honestly feel that, if my colleagues will agree, we should just vote against this vote out of conscience.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Chairman, all throughout the legislative experience of the hon. member for New Westminster we have always complimented him upon his research, his acumen and his most profound attention to detail. I'd like to do that again today, but I have a little difficulty,

[ Page 3170 ]

because the report he is referring to is the first one and not the second one. You really shouldn't be that much out of date, Mr. Member.

MR. COCKE: I'll table this report: it's called the second annual report of the Ministry of Intergovernmental Relations. We'll wonder about research in a few minutes.

HON. A. FRASER: Before you sit down, will you give us a leadership report?

MR. LOCKSTEAD: The Minister of Transportation wants a leadership report. I'd be very pleased to bring him up to date but I don't think that would be in order, would it?

Just a very quick question for the minister. I suppose it's a topic we could spend a lot of time on. It's the wrong portfolio to deal with native Indian matters, but it is the proper portfolio in terms of the negotiations and discussions that I presume will be taking place in the not too distant future regarding our native Indian people and their place in Canadian society. I wonder if the minister is familiar with the report of a special committee of the federal House dealing with Indian self-government in Canada. I mention this report because some of the bands in my riding are extremely interested in this process and took part in the process; very interesting proposals were put forward by a number of bands in my riding, including Sechelt, Bella Bella and so on. I wonder if the minister is familiar with this report and could tell us what, when they take part in that constitutional conference, will be the government position in that regard. I'm assuming the Minister Of Intergovernmental Relations will be taking a leading role in that constitutional conference.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Chairman, the hon. member is referring to the paper that was issued by the federal government not too long ago. That is one position that's been articulated by the federal government, but also, in this ongoing process, a number of items were left over from the last first ministers' meeting by way of agenda items. They're very complicated, very interwoven, and at this time we're receiving, from across the country, the positions of the various sides of the native community, and also of the various provinces. At the last meetings which we were at in Yellowknife, and the ones that will be ongoing at some time next week, I do believe in Toronto, considered, and to be considered by the native groups, the provinces and the federal government, will be the reports of working groups. They have produced some excellent reports. One deals with equality rights. The second deals with aboriginal title and aboriginal rights — treaties and treaty rights. The third deals with land and resources, and the fourth with aboriginal or self-government.

The attempt is being made to rationalize these sometimes very contradictory positions and assumptions and philosophies into some kind of a workable agenda for consideration of the first ministers when they meet in March, but it's a little early for me to inform you as to whether or not there is a definitive position taken perhaps anywhere. I did receive an amazingly long wire. I don't know if anybody's ever gotten a wire this long in their life, but I got it this morning from the Minister of Justice. Canada has started to articulate some positions a little more forcefully than before.

[5:00]

Vote 56 approved on the following division:

YEAS — 32

NAYS 14

An hon. member requested that leave be asked to record the division in the Journals of the House.

Vote 57: intergovernmental relations, $2,305,312 approved.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Chairman, I don't wish to embarrass our good friend from New Westminster, but he did file the wrong report and I'd like to file the correct one for him. But never mind, you are a quick learner, sir.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF UNIVERSITIES,
SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS

On vote 85: minister's office, $119,840.

MR. NICOLSON: Mr. Chairman, I guess that....

Interjection.

MR. NICOLSON: Yes, the record stands for itself. If you want to see the record, it's down, down, down. We lag behind the rest of the country in participation in universities. We lag behind other industrialized nations. But, Mr. Chairman, before I get into the....

Interjections.

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

MR. NICOLSON: Before I get into criticisms of the specific performance of the minister, I would like to indulge in a prediction. Mr. Chairman, for some time the Ministry of Education has suffered from the disease of schizophrenia, because there has been a division of left and right hemispheres of the brain. I don't know whether it was the right or the left hemisphere that was put in charge of universities and the other in charge of the education system, but it has not been without the very predictable and irrational kind of treatment, the uncoordinated treatment of the education system in which actions were taken in one area without realizing that it had a

[ Page 3171 ]

very serious effect in the other area of education. For instance, I think that in the area of student aid, there is a vote in the Ministry of Universities, Science and Communications, but the administration of student aid is through the Ministry of Education. Some very serious changes took place last year, very seriously hampering access....

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. members, it must be getting increasingly difficult for the member for Nelson-Creston to make his point. Perhaps we could do him the courtesy of staying a little bit quiet.

MR. NICOLSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think that a very large step has been taken in that direction: he's heading out the door.

To the detriment of education, this one sphere of concern has been divided in this province. If the minister wanted to indulge in some sort of pre-retirement activity, in terms of getting down from speed — as opposed to getting up to speed — it would have been better that he had simply taken on the communications, technology and science aspects of his portfolio.

I will indulge in a prediction. In 1977 I predicted that the day would come when there would be enough surplus energy from the Revelstoke Dam that there would be a possibility of a ten-year moratorium on hydro development in British Columbia. This past year that prediction was borne out by B.C. Hydro. In 1981 I predicted that while the Minister of Finance was saying that there was going to be an upturn in the third and fourth quarters of that fiscal year, the downturn was going to last probably into 1984 with the U.S. economy showing some signs of recovery in 1983. I was right then. Once more I will go out on a limb and predict that this is the last set of estimates that the Minister of Universities, Science and Communications will be bringing into this House. That is a prediction.

HON. MR. GARDOM: How much do you want to bet?

MR. NICOLSON: I'll put up 50 pesos, or one Yankee dollar. Nothing I don't have in my pocket.

It will be with mixed feelings that I make that prediction. In spite of what I might say about this minister and his performance, I know that there are many people in the Social Credit caucus who can do a much worse job. While one of the concerns uppermost in my mind has been the decision taken by government concerning the David Thompson University Centre — and I would hope that deliberations today with the Minister of Education might make one slightly more optimistic — I will say that each year the Minister of Universities, Science and Communications has come through with his part of that commitment, and I understand even for this year. On behalf of the people of my area and, I think, on behalf of people who would seek to have education opportunities in the interior as a whole, or even students from Vancouver and the Island who have taken advantage of that facility.... They say there is a place for smaller-sized education, a more personal approach to post-secondary education in the province. That certainly is an area in which I do not and have not faulted the minister for his participation and commitment. However, during this downturn British Columbia should be in a position to look forward and not backward in terms of post-secondary education.

[5:15]

I had a copy of a letter, prompted by the issue of the closure of the David Thompson University Centre, from a person who wrote from the perspective of somebody who grew up during the Depression and saw a period in which there were about 3,000 people privileged enough to attend the University of British Columbia. He was one of them. He counted himself among the privileged because some scholarships and advantages enabled him to attend university at that period. Then the war came along; then returning veterans had their GI Bill of Rights — I see one person who is here, but he's not on the floor of the House, who took advantage of that as well, Mr. Minister. After we had expended all kinds of our resources during a war, we still realized that this was a top priority. Overnight we just about tripled the size of the University of British Columbia; in fact, as I recall, by the time I arrived there the enrolment had then dropped back to perhaps normal, which was slightly under 5,000 students. It had been up to the area of about 9,000. We showed that we could increase that by about threefold. Mr. Chairman, look at the dividend; look how well British Columbia was rewarded by the education of those returning GI veterans, and look at the economic growth and improvement that took place when those people came out into the workforce.

What do we have in British Columbia today? In Japan some 40 percent of high school graduates go on to some form of post-secondary education; in the United States the figure is about 20 percent; in British Columbia we have the lowest rate of participation at 9 percent.

Interjection.

MR. NICOLSON: Well, if you want to look at the number of degrees that are completed, I would refer the Premier to — I think it is about a two- or three-year-old report — A Widening Gap, put out by the University of Victoria, and that will tell him about completions as well. It doesn't matter what way you look at it. If you look at the amount of money that we are spending per capita, we rank behind every other province except Prince Edward Island. If you look almost any way at what we are doing with post-secondary education in this province, it is a very dismal picture for a province that should be a leader.

We haven't carried our own weight in terms of graduating professionals. For years we lagged behind Alberta before we even created a faculty of dentistry in 1965. We graduated fewer doctors. Some people will say that there now is an oversupply of doctors — not of doctors trained in British Columbia. There are other areas in which we don't train anyone. If a young person wants to take up a profession such as optometry, that young person has to go all the way to Waterloo or has to be accepted down in the University of Oregon.

British Columbia is not carrying its weight in terms of graduating people in professions and in areas that could lead on to almost certain employment. There are many professional areas in which we have not reached any kind of a saturation point. While there are parts of this province in which we may have an oversupply of doctors and lawyers, there are certainly parts of the province in which we don't.

In terms of participation rate, it's even worse when we look at non-metropolitan vs. metropolitan areas. Again, in that story, A Widening Gap, we see the lack of participation of people who come from outside the metropolitan areas. When

[ Page 3172 ]

you look at the areas outside of the college regions of Camosun College, Douglas College, Capilano College and Vancouver Community College as opposed to non-metropolitan college regions like Malaspina, North Island, Fraser Valley, Okanagan, Selkirk, East Kootenay, Cariboo, Caledonia, Northwest and Northern Lights, you see that the participation rates are down as low as even 1.5 percent as opposed to earlier rates of as high as 7 percent.

Mr. Chairman, at a time of a downturn in the economy, government is putting the brakes on here in British Columbia, and they are diverting dollars which were once flowing into this province through a straight fifty-fifty type of block funding. In the 1977-78 fiscal year, according to the chief economist in the federal Department of Finance, that federal transfer to British Columbia under block funding under the old agreement for post-secondary education was $202 million, while in the 1983-84 fiscal year it has risen to $451 million. That means that the federal aid percentage increased by 123 percent, while inflation from 1977 to 1983 was 72.6 percent. This means that there has been a significant increase in the share of funding from the federal government in terms of real dollars. Officials at the University of Victoria, Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia will tell you that instead of it being funded fifty-fifty today, if we look at the tax-point transfer that is coming to this province and just being put into general revenue and being siphoned off into whatever area you might want to describe it as being siphoned off to, if all of that money that was coming in federal tax transfer payments were going into post-secondary education as it was intended, the federal government is now paying between 75 and 77 percent — and some people argue 80 percent — of the total post-secondary educational costs, as opposed to the provincial government's share, which would then be somewhere between 20 and 25 percent.

The federal government transfer payments led to an increase of 8 percent this past year, and there should have been a flow-through for an increase of 6 percent if the province just stayed constant and the federal moneys came through. Instead, this past September the University of British Columbia, which didn't get their budget until July, was told in September to cut $12 million. That is just no way to run university programs. It's no way to run a province. I would like to have the minister's thoughts. I would ask the minister if the projections right now for next year.... The University of British Columbia, for instance, is going to have to absorb a further $18 million shortfall. They are being told that they can expect a 6 percent decrease in actual dollars — not in constant dollars but in actual dollars for next year. They are going to have increases in their health benefits. They're going to have increases in their Hydro bills, because the government allowed increases. Other fixed costs are going up this year. There has been a 33 percent increase in tuition at the University of British Columbia this year. That will only reduce an $18 million shortfall to a $12 million shortfall. I would ask the minister what he is doing to turn this around. Is the minister still standing behind the kind of talk that we've heard in the past? Does he deny that the federal government is now paying at least 75 percent of the budget, as opposed to the provincial government's 25 percent?

HON. MR. McGEER: Just to get to the last question first, Mr. Chairman, the provinces, at the time of the Second World War, yielded personal income tax to the federal government, and ever since that time there has been a wish.... The Premier who most vigorously opposed this move, saying that the provinces would never again see that tax field, was our own Premier Duff Pattullo. Nonetheless, when the emergency of war comes along everybody gives up a little something. Our freedom was on the line at that time. No sacrifice made by anybody would have been judged too great, and no one in this House knows that better than the Chairman.

After the war the constitutional responsibilities of the provinces in the field of health, education and welfare continued as established under the BNA Act. But the federal government was unwilling to return to the provinces the major tax field to support those activities. The expenditures of health, education and welfare occupy more than 70 percent of our total provincial budget, but still the federal government, which does not have constitutional responsibilities in that area, continues to dominate the most important tax field in Canada. This is why you have double-tracking on virtually everything in this country,

The federal government moved into areas of provincial jurisdiction simply by hanging on to the tax field and then saying: "We will offer you your own money back, in order that you do what we want in your field of constitutional responsibility." As my colleague the Minister of Industry and Small Business Development (Hon. Mr. Phillips) says we crawled 3,000 miles over broken glass to go back to Ottawa to get some of the money that our own British Columbia citizens pay in income taxes to the federal government. Once it gets there, disproportionately distributed in almost every field.... It isn't just the principle of equalization that results in our British Columbia taxes subsidizing the Maritimes and other parts of Canada for their responsibilities in this area of health, education and welfare; it's this disproportion that comes in all of the other programs as well.

The member for Coquitlam-Moody (Mr. Rose) sat for many years in parliament and knows how projects that are invented by the federal bureaucracy, like DREE, go in disproportionate measure to those provinces which have the largest contingent of civil servants and the largest contingent of members in Ottawa. At one time I looked at the total DREE distribution, and there was something like $600 million of that fund spent in the province of Quebec and $500,000 in the province of British Columbia. So, you see, you get it in field after field. If we here in British Columbia, who are spending over 70 percent of our total budget in the fields of health, education and welfare, at times seem just a little bit cynical about our federal taxes in the income tax field that manage to get back to British Columbia and say that these are things that we have to handle as an overall provincial resource.... It isn't that we're unsympathetic to the fields that are to be supported by these taxes, we're just a little bit cynical out here as a result of many years of experience in how the cards get stacked with respect to taxes that are paid in Canada.

[5:30]

Mr. Chairman, I wish that I could say to you, to the members opposite and to the public of British Columbia that we had unlimited funds to spend in the ways that we would all like to have them spent. But the unfortunate truth, as the member who just took his seat has said, is that we simply have not got the revenue in this province or in this country to live in the style of the late seventies in terms of public service. What we need to do in this country is to reassess all of this in terms of what we can earn by primary production. If we turn our backs now on that fundamental principle upon which our

[ Page 3173 ]

country must be built, and say, "We will spend because we liked the style of the late seventies, whether the productive wealth is there to support it or not," what we will soon find is that the borrowings we incur in order to support that style of public sector living will soon cost us, in terms of taxes, not just future benefits in these areas but will impair the very ability of the industries we require to become established in our province.

If you are going to have a new industry which is forced to carry the baggage of the past and forced to pay a share of profligate spending from the years before that business attempted to establish itself, then it will not come here, because the handicaps that have been built in against that industry will encourage it to go elsewhere, and we will find ourselves permanently at the bottom of the economic list. So the only way we can build our future health and restore that style of public sector living, which means spending in health, education and welfare, is to put productive economy first and to restrain our spending until that takes place.

It's unpleasant. Those of us who are responsible for the universities or the health system or the welfare system wish it could be some other way, but surely it should now be obvious to everyone that this must come first in our country, Regardless of political philosophy, regardless of whatever station in life the citizen happens to be in, there is just a little bit that they have to put first for the country — recognizing that primary production is the handicap that we must overcome before anybody can be secure. That is not unreasonable, Mr. Chairman, and provided that people can get that insight, then we are going to come back again and fulfil the dream of Sir Wilfrid Laurier that the twentieth century would belong to Canada. Many of us have begun to see evidence of that already in the past few months. We are beginning to see, standing on the sidelines of the investment community, the vigour that can fuel a tremendous economic recovery in this country, be it in the traditional resource industries or in the high technology industries that this ministry and this government are trying to promote.

We have become more dependent over the years on our ability to export and be competitive in world markets. Per capita we are by far the largest trading nation in the world, if you compare us with Japan, which many regard as the exporting terror of the world: far ahead of other nations in technology; the most modern nation in the world in terms of research; the flow of products coming in an unending stream. For all of that, Japan has only 13 percent of its gross production in exports. The wealthiest country in the world, the United States, has only 7 percent of its production in exports. Canada, limping under the current duress of international markets, depends on over 30 percent of its production, and it is going up every single year. If we had to compete and were having difficulty last year, that pressure is even greater this year, because as we demand a share of the world's new goods — be they computers, be they satellite receiving stations or whatever we might wish to have — those things, in large part, are going to come from other nations, and in order to participate and maintain our relative standard of living we must sell more and more to get that flow of goods. That's why of all nations in the world ours is rising most rapidly in terms of its export requirements to survive economically. This is the reality. So it means that all of us — more than Japan, more than the United States, more than any other trading nation in the world — must recognize our obligation to be competitive and to produce for world markets successfully. If we can grasp that as a fundamental principle, everything else will follow.

The universities are not recession-proof. They too must recognize their responsibility in this overall endeavour. We would like very much to provide the richest possible spectrum of educational opportunities to people in the rural areas of British Columbia, because it's a huge province — bigger than California, Washington, Oregon and Idaho combined; and think of the population in that region, much larger than Canada as a whole — sparsely populated, tough geography, and therefore people living in the rural areas are truly disadvantaged when it comes to human services like education. To the extent that we can provide these with reasonable cost benefit, we will do so — Our problem is that we cannot provide every professional course; we cannot provide every service course in every small community. It is why we set up the Knowledge Network; it is why we set up the Open Learning Institute: it is why we do the best we possibly can with the college programs that my colleague the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. Heinrich) supports.

I feel very badly about the difficulties in the member's own riding with the David Thompson University Centre. As the Minister of Education said, it was the costliest program per capita that we had, and I suppose if something has to go one always looks at the highest cost per capita. If there were some way in which this problem could be addressed, I can assure you it would have my full support and cooperation. But if you're in a recession, if everybody has to sacrifice, if the belt has to be tightened, then cost-benefit must be looked at. If it had been my choice as an individual seeing the recession coming, it would be to say: "Let's keep everybody working; let's do what we had been doing right along, and with less money; we'll each take a little bit less." I would gladly have accepted a share less; indeed, the cabinet and the members have restricted their salaries, and there have been no increases. If everybody in the educational system had been prepared to do that, we wouldn't have the financing problem with education today. If everybody in the health system, including the doctors, had been prepared to do that, we wouldn't be closing beds and laying people off. It's only when some demand more and the total income is less that others get disproportionately hurt. It's not the best way, and perhaps in a way I'm suggesting some weird form of socialism to my colleagues. But I can assure you that had the people on that side of the House been able to persuade their close friends in the labour movement and in Solidarity that everybody should take less —  and if everybody did take less — the money would be there, and there would be no necessity of laying anybody off. We would be a happier and healthier province today. It hasn't worked out that way, because some people have made extreme demands. Some have gone on strike. Some have demonstrated on the legislative lawns. Their message has been quite plain: "More for me." It's not possible, because the economy isn't supporting things at that high living level today. It will come back, and it will come back faster if everybody recognizes the necessity of making a sacrifice and pulling together until we become competitive internationally.

MR. NICOLSON: The minister says that there should have been some belt-tightening. I quite agree. If there had been a little bit of belt-tightening around this government back in the years when this group moved reductions in all kinds of wasteful spending.... Things have come home

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to roost. Certainly we needn't have got into this. Also, if they had looked at the future with a little bit of reality, instead of through rose-coloured glasses, we wouldn't have the problems we have today. The minister is saying that we want to spend more. There is also a matter of priorities. This government has already committed us.... They say that revenues have gone down. But revenues have not kept up with this government's spending, this government's new programs and new priorities. When someone like Mr. E.C. Hurd, former chairman of the board of Trans Mountain Pipe Line, comes up and tells me that he doesn't understand the exporting of a non-renewable resource and subsidizing that export, that's where we have to look to see where our problems are in education today. This government has created all kinds of programs for spending that have not kept up with the growth in government revenues.

The minister said something absolutely astounding. He talked about supporting a style of public sector living — as if university education and post-secondary education were some kind of a lifestyle luxury and not an investment. Indeed, he equated it with social assistance. Everyone knows that social assistance is necessary but not very productive, although it would certainly, you know.... There's a story that was related to me by the Minister of Transportation (Hon. A. Fraser) the other day about a former mayor of Nelson. Even social assistance can become very much a part of an economy in a certain local area, very important to the merchants and the whole economy of an area. But, Mr. Chairman, the minister equated university spending with something like welfare. I think that that is incredible from a man with his background, the man who wrote Politics in Paradise and talked about the way to realize that dream of Sir Wilfred Laurier being through education.

Here in this province we are really mortgaging our future. We are cutting our young people out of participation in any kind of a rosy future that the minister might like to see at this point. He's talked about a few encouraging signs in some of the economic indicators. For a moment there he started to wax somewhat eloquent. It means that we are going to have to import the trained professionals to participate in that boom, but our children here in this province are going to be cut out of that action. Unless they go out of this province, or even out of this country, they are going to be cut out of any sort of participation in that hoped-for recovery that everyone wants.

This phrase, "the style of public sector living," as if going to university should be some kind of privilege once again, only for those who can afford it.... I think that that ignores our experience here in British Columbia. Our most productive and buoyant years were part and parcel of the realization of that boost to post-secondary education which took place immediately following the Second World War.

[5:45]

The minister has talked about exports — and I don't know whether that's really getting pretty far off the topic — but the export into Canada of highly finished articles, like Toyota cars, television sets, computers and printers and so on, is a heck of a lot different than the export from this country of things like coal, cants, raw logs and other things, into which there is very little labour input. Yes, we can rack up a pretty great balance-of-payments deficit, I guess, in our favour in terms of exports when one looks at exporting wheat, coal and all of those things we export to countries like Japan and the Pacific Rim countries. That really is comparing two very dissimilar things, and how that translates into jobs, the vitality of the community, and participating in keeping up with the rest of the world in order that we can remain competitive shows that the minister really does misunderstand or.... I don't believe he does misunderstand, but he certainly did take quite a tightrope.... I'd like to ask the minister: do we rank in the area of eighth or ninth in respect to students leaving high school and going on to post-secondary education?

HON. MR. McGEER: First of all, Mr. Chairman, I find myself arguing what my friends opposite here should be arguing. The people who are the politicians, the professional people, the doctors and the professors live off those who are primary producers. You can go to a country like Israel, where a physician who does every bit as good and as valuable work for the people of that country makes about 5 percent of what a doctor makes in British Columbia. How come the doctor makes more? He makes more because he's living off the primary wealth of the province, that's what he's doing. So is the professor. I made an offer to any esteemed member of the press who could find for me professors in any outstanding university in the world who were paid better than our professors here in British Columbia. I discovered from the work of our own ministry that our professors were paid above those at Harvard University, including the exchange rate. That's how generous we were able to be compared with all those Nobel prize-winners who give Harvard its esteemed reputation. Why is that possible? It's possible because people in those fields — and that includes all of us — are living off the primary producers of the province. When those people can't carry all of us on their backs, it's time for us to reduce the load a little bit. That's all I said. I would have thought my friends opposite would have been the first to make that point. I'm delighted to make it for them.

Mr. Chairman, the universities are staffed with highly intelligent people who know how to manipulate statistics with the best of them. I admire them and respect them for all of that, but I do not believe it should cause us to alter our fundamental course of getting behind the economy first. After all, if the things that some of our academics told us in the 1960s about spending on university education were true — that the more we spend, the more we'll make — Canada never would have had this recession. The rhetoric of the early sixties, notwithstanding experience since then, has scarcely altered. But I can give the member opposite some comfort if he does believe the rhetoric of the sixties. That is that with this recession and the high level of unemployment, people have gone back to educational institutions in record numbers. We have never had more people going through our universities and other educational systems than we have today, and if the predictions of the early sixties, not yet home out by experience, are nonetheless true in the eighties, we'll be in wonderful shape, because the recession has all these people back into the universities. But I suspect, and maybe I'm just a little cynical in this, that it isn't the whole story. Somewhere along the line we've got to begin seeding in the necessary investment, the necessary high industrial skills, remembering that even in primary production, upon whose backs all of us ride, there are very few people in that company who are truly responsible for sparking the investment or directing the economy that will lead us into new enterprises and will truly bring, as a result of their efforts, the wealth upon which our future depends.

[ Page 3175 ]

If you trace it back, there are very few giants who are responsible for this. We need of have our share of them in British Columbia, and we need to recognize their importance.

MR. NICOLSON: The minister didn't answer the question. It is British Columbia's shame that we have — for instance, in terms of professional degrees per capita or people participating in university, almost anything you want to look at.... If you look at the Maritimes, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia, we have the lowest number of professional degrees per capita. That's one little indicator. Taking British Columbia as 100, the Canadian average is 161. That's not something that's thrown together at one of our universities, that's according to population projections by Statistics Canada in a study that they did not too long ago. You know, every way we look at it....

The minister talks about the salaries of university professors. Okay, if we want to get into a debate, then you start a debate. You people are government; lead a debate in terms of a fair distribution of income and guaranteed annual wage. With guaranteed annual wage you'll also get guaranteed consumer spending. That's something worth getting into in terms of a debate. But lead in that debate; don't just use it as something to hide behind. In fact, Mr. Chairman, because of belt-tightening, some disciplines cannot attract quality people away from the private sector. For instance, in computer science, I happen to know there are a few warm bodies occupying a few of the positions, particularly sometimes in lab assistants and that type of thing, which is a very important part of computer science education. These are people who can't hack it in the private sector, and they're put in there. We really have to get some of the top people to help our young students if we're going to produce the kind of people that we really need, and if they're going to achieve, having passed through the courses, their full potential. You can't do that by being way behind the private sector in an area like that. You've got to have people who can hack it in either the public or the private sector.

The minister might like to reconsider that new phrase of his: "the style of public sector living," equating investments in university education with the straight payment of subsistence to people in need. Since he might like to reconsider that statement, I would move that the committee rise.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

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

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

MR. BLENCOE: Mr. Speaker, I rise to ask leave of the House to table the first report of the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts and Economic Affairs.

Leave granted.

MR. BLENCOE: I have a motion calling on ancient practice then, Mr. Speaker. I move we go into Committee of the Whole House to introduce the report.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. member, the report having been put forward with leave, the next motion is that it be read and received. That would be the motion that would be in order at this time. Would the member care to make the motion that the report be now read and received? That would be the appropriate motion, hon. member.

MR. BLENCOE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Then I move that the report be read and received.

On the motion.

MR. REYNOLDS: I want to speak specifically on the motion, which is the reading and receiving of this report. I'm a member of this committee and I think the actions of the Chairman of this committee are most immature in showing careless disregard for parliament. It's one of the most contemptuous things that I've ever seen in all of my years in parliament, and because of that, Mr. Speaker, I would like to move adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of the House.

Motion approved.

Hon. Mr. Nielsen tabled the annual report of the Ministry of Health for 1982.

Hon. Mr. Smith tabled the annual report of the B.C. Police Commission for 1982-83, the annual report of the B.C. Board of Parole for the period ending March 31, 1983, the annual report of the corrections branch, 1982-83, and the annual report of the Legal Services Society for the period ending March 31, 1983.

Hon. Mr. Nielsen moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 6:00 p.m.

[ Page 3176 ]

Appendix

WRITTEN ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS

48 The Hon. J. Davis asked the Hon. the Provincial Secretary and Minister of Government Services the following questions:

For each of the fiscal years ended March 31, 1976 to March 31, 1983 —

1. How many people were employed, full time and part time (or full time equivalent) in the various Provincial ministries?

2. How many people were employed, full time and part time (or full time equivalent) in the Provincial Crown corporations?

The Hon. the Provincial Secretary and Minister of Government Services stated that, in his opinion, the reply should be in the form of a Return and that he had no objection to laying such Return upon the table of the House, and thereupon presented such Return.