[ Page 5463 ]

CONTENTS

Oral Questions

Transit fares. Mr. Williams –– 5463

Mr. Macdonald

Food Banks. Mr. MacWilliam –– 5463

Government purchasing policy. Mr. Stupich –– 5464

Ministerial Statement

Compensation for wrongful imprisonment. Hon. Mr. Smith –– 5465

Mr. Lauk

Supply Act (No.1), 1985 (Bill 29).

Committee stage –– 5466

Hon. Mrs. McCarthy

Ms. Brown

Mr. Rose

Hon. Mr. Heinrich

Mr. Lauk

Mr. Macdonald

Mr. Howard

Third Reading –– 5472

Committee of Supply: Ministry of Attorney-General estimates. (Hon. Mr. Smith).

On vote 11: minister's office –– 5472

Hon. Mr. Smith

Mr. Lauk

Hon. Mr. Gardom

Mr. Howard

Ms. Brown

Mr. Rose

Mr. Passarell

Mr. Cocke

Royal assent to bill –– 5487

TUESDAY, MARCH 26, 1985

The House met at 2:06 p.m.

MR. VEITCH: Mr. Speaker, I don't know if she's in the gallery yet or not, but I'd like you to welcome one of my constituents, Mrs. Lorena Green,

MRS. WALLACE: Harking back to my Hydro days, I have two friends visiting in the gallery today. I'd like the House to join me in welcoming Harry and Sophie Bowman.

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Mr. Speaker, in the precincts today, and perhaps in one of the galleries, are four visitors associated with the B.C. Health Association: Dr. Dugal MacGregor, who is chairman of the BCHA; Dr. Thelma Cook, a trustee of St. Paul's Hospital; Mr. Bob Smith, who is administrator of the Cancer Control Agency; and Mr. Herman Crewson, who has recently been appointed president of the BCHA. I'd like the House to welcome them.

MR. MOWAT: In the House today we have Mr. Bob Thompson, president of the Marpole-Richmond Sportsmen's Association, which does a great deal of funding of many charitable organizations in British Columbia, through their volunteering and with their lottery fund. I'd ask the House to make Mr. Thompson welcome, please.

MR. STRACHAN: Mr. Speaker, this introduction covers a few miles. On behalf of the member for Prince Rupert (Mr. Lea), the member for Skeena (Mr. Howard) and the member for Omineca (Mr. Kempf), would the House please welcome, from the Yellowhead Highway 16 Tourist Association, Ms. Lee Morris.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Could I ask all members to extend a very cordial welcome to Mr. George Ogg, consul general of the United States of America.

Oral Questions

TRANSIT FARES

MR. WILLIAMS: To the minister responsible for transit. The provincial government saved over $18 million last year with the work stoppage in the transit system. The question is: in view of those significant savings to the provincial government, wouldn't it have been more reasonable to keep the rates at last year's level rather than the new level of a dollar, and help both the riders and the merchants who were victimized by the inaction of the government last year?

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, the Chair has been most tolerant in the past of questions which have had argument and opinion. I will advise members at this time that in the future comments of that kind will be ruled out of order by the Chair.

The minister may wish to respond.

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Speaker, the member for Vancouver East must surely know that the transit fares in British Columbia — whether they be in Victoria, Vancouver or Prince George — are heavily subsidized by the government, with the most generous financial formula in the whole of this nation. Therefore, when he said that there is a saving because of a work stoppage, the saving that he mentions is indeed not a saving; it is a lesser loss to the provincial government than would have ordinarily been sustained without it.

MR. MACDONALD: A supplementary to the same minister. Does the minister know that the transit subsidy has been decreased from $91 million in 1980 to $72 million at the present time? Does the minister know that, and does she call that, the reduction of $19 million in three or four years, the most generous transit subsidy in North America, while the straphangers are going to face $1 fares?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please.

MR. MACDONALD: What's wrong with that?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please! Was the first member not listening at all to the remarks previously made? We have an obligation — all of us — to follow the rules that are set down before us. If members wish to pose questions, they must meet those guidelines. Surely that's not a lot to ask, inasmuch as the rules have just been submitted to us.

MR. MACDONALD: The minister gave her opinion, and I gave mine.

MR. SPEAKER: This is question period, hon. member, not opinion period.

FOOD BANKS

MR. MacWILLIAM: Mr. Speaker, I would like to address my question to the Premier. When asked publicly in Nanaimo yesterday if the Premier would donate to the local food bank, he declined, inferring publicly that he contributes, and I quote: "In Kelowna, sure. I always help my own community." Yet the member for Okanagan South has in fact declined written requests for help from the Kelowna food bank. In addition, the food bank has never receipted any donations from the member. I would like to ask the hon. member if he would help us to reconcile these apparent contradictory positions in order to alleviate the perception that the member says one thing but in fact does another.

HON. MR. BENNETT: This has nothing to do with public business, but my own personal donations to charity. I would advise the member that all of my life I've made substantial contributions to those in need from my own personal choice, and I will continue to do so to help people. Neither the member for Okanagan North nor anyone else will advise me on who is more worthy. I've made substantial contributions within my community each and every year, as a citizen, which is not part of the public profile nor something on which I wish to campaign — on how generous I am personally. It's not something that one wears on one's sleeve.

I resent that member's bringing personal charity into an area in which we discuss public business. But I would suppose that having done this the member will file all of the things that he has made available to help people, not only in recent years but during his lifetime, and I'm sure I could not only match it but exceed it 20 times over.

[ Page 5464 ]

MR. MacWILLIAM: I might add that the anonymous donations received by the food bank amount to $4 and $5, and I wonder if that's the member's extent.

In supplement to the original question — and I think this is the critical issue here — during the first two months of 1985 demand for the food bank has increased 104 percent in the Kelowna area and forced directors to place a ceiling on requests. My question to the member is: what has the current member for Okanagan South done to help relieve this critical situation?

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, the Chair has some difficulty in determining that this is an area, other than if it's a government responsibility.... Certainly a personal responsibility has no place in question period.

[2:15]

MR. MacWILLIAM: Perhaps I can clarify the framework of the question in expanding the fact that unemployment in the Okanagan is currently at 21 percent. I'm wondering if the member for Okanagan South would at least recognize the critical need for emergency measures to create immediate employment in the Okanagan, measures that cannot be generated through long-term tax changes. I would ask the member if he has any plans for such immediate job creation proposals.

HON. MR. BENNETT: Mr. Speaker, the member, new as he is, has been through the throne speech debate and the budget debate, in which we talked about effective ways to encourage long-term jobs — and that's in the private sector, in which people want security of employment. Because of the apparently weak representation from North Okanagan, I will personally continue to represent that area as well as South Okanagan, and continue to assist new investment that will create permanent jobs. People in all parts of that area want a broadened economy. That has been the whole thrust of the government's program and will continue to be so.

GOVERNMENT PURCHASING POLICY

MR. STUPICH: A question to the Premier. Yesterday the Premier was in Nanaimo reannouncing B.C. government purchasing policy. Is the Premier aware that this policy of using government procurement to create jobs in B.C. was announced in 1977 and again in 1982, and was not followed in either case?

HON. MR. BENNETT: The member is incorrect.

MR. STUPICH: Mr. Speaker, at the end of question period I will ask leave to file certain government documents.

Will the Premier advise, under the B.C. procurement policy, why B.C. Hydro cancelled its contract with Ferranti-Packard Transformers Ltd. in Surrey in favour of an eastern Canadian supplier, throwing 30 British Columbians out of work?

HON. MR. BENNETT: I will take that question as notice, and in elaborating on the member's first question, tell him he was incorrect in saying the government does not follow its own purchasing policy. The new purchasing policy is a substantial expansion and a change of direction in order to encourage new manufacturing within the province, assisting local people to understand what sort of supplies government requires and how they can get established in trying to contract for those supplies and services. Interestingly enough, the member for Nanaimo would know that bidding for government services is open to all British Columbians. It is not restricted to only those who belong to trade unions but is part of an open government policy allowing all people to bid, something that was not the case when that member was part of a government that restricted most British Columbians from contracting public services.

MR. STUPICH: Mr. Speaker, I think this would not be the time for me to read a letter from the Hon. Evan Wolfe dated June 16, 1977, or one from the Ministry of Industry and Small Business Development, 1982: "A procurement policy for major project developments." I think I'll table them rather than read them at this point, because they read word for word as I heard the Premier discussing the procurement policy.

Another question that the Premier may wish to take as notice: will the Premier advise why the rebar used to reinforce concrete in the ALRT project has been brought in from Alberta and the U.S. despite the fact that B.C. suppliers are available?

HON. MR. BENNETT: To the first part of the question, I would invite the member to sit in on the seminars that will be going on around the province. They'll be in Nanaimo. Although their MLA doesn't seem too concerned or excited about the opportunities, the people up there are. I invite him to sit in on the seminars and find out the expansion of the purchasing policy that is taking place.

Yes, as a government we did announce purchasing policies from time to time in trying to encourage more business.

The work Mr. Hutchings has done in the last year as head of the Purchasing Commission has substantially expanded the way in which we can encourage more British Columbia businesses, particularly new businesses. I think the member would be supportive of the government's efforts; it's something in which there is no partisanship, which I think you could support. I think there's a lot of opportunity for small business and service industries in Nanaimo, as well as in Kelowna, by having these areas identified under the expanded opportunities announced yesterday by Mr. Hutchings.

MR. STUPICH: Mr. Speaker, it's one thing to support the policy; it's another for the government to implement the policy, and that's the thrust of my question. I have to ask again: will the Premier advise why the government went outside of Canada to buy seats for B.C. Place Stadium, despite the existence of a local consortium attempting to commence manufacture here in B.C.?

HON. MR. BENNETT: I can certainly tell the member, because that item was discussed in this Legislature, and the member already has the answer. A number of years ago when seats for the stadium to the B.C. Place corporation.... You're dealing in purchasing done by Crown corporations now, in which you would expect me to be able to get the information but not have detailed knowledge.

But I do know that of all the seats that were bid, there were Canadian content.... And all of that was taken into account along with price and quality. At one time there were over 20 different models of seating under tender and under review for either quality or for that content, and the bid was

[ Page 5465 ]

awarded in the appropriate manner. I do know this because it was a matter of a lot of public discussion at the time — I think it was probably in the ministerial estimates in this House, if not in question period. I recall it, but not the details of that debate. But I can tell you that in that specific instance there was an appropriate awarding of the contract, on all criteria.

MR. STUPICH: My concern is that while the government has announced its policy, there are so many examples where it does not seem to be working. My question to the Premier is this: can he, in spite of the fact that the 1977 announcement and the 1982 announcements apparently did not bear fruit, reassure the people by demonstrating that it is really working and that it will work in the future?

HON. MR. BENNETT: I think the member is making an error in suggesting that those purchasing policies did not bear fruit. They did, obviously. But obviously there's always improvement that can be made, not only in provincial government purchasing or coordinating of Crown corporations, but in the discussions that Mr. Hutchings has had with municipalities, leading up to the development of this policy.

I throw in an additional caution to the member that one of the areas in which our former purchasing policy did offend against trade with interprovincial trade — and it's been a subject of discussion between all premiers — was the pricing preference. You will notice from yesterday's announcement that that pricing preference has changed; as we agreed to do as provinces, we deal as one country. Therefore we have changed a number of elements that did offend against interprovincial trade,

The member nods, so already he's agreeing that there is some substantial change in the purchasing policy. That is one that all governments are trying to deal with, what interprovincial trade.... And also as it may offend against any international treaty. It was brought up as a major agenda item at the last discussion of premiers as an item that we would discuss at future conferences on an urgent basis, as an extension of our discussions on the GATT agreements. And the member may know, because that was publicly televised at the last first ministers' conference, that both those areas were of prime importance.

MR. STUPICH: I ask leave to table documents that I referred to during question period.

Leave granted.

MR. ROSE: I was looking at rule 47A on oral questions, which says that questions and answers should be brief and precise. I thought that the questions in the last series were quite brief and precise, but...

Interjections.

MR. ROSE: Are you ready? Are you finished?

...I also observed that the replies by the Premier were really a series of disconnected soliloquies. I wonder if the Speaker had similar thoughts.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, the Speaker has several thoughts on question period; not all of them should be shared with the members. But I think that if we collectively try to adhere to the rules and the spirit of question period, each and every one of us, we will all benefit, as will the people accordingly.

Now, hon. members, the member for Cowichan-Malahat having asked for leave to make an introduction, may leave be granted?

Leave granted.

MRS. WALLACE: Mr. Speaker, I've just been advised that another friend is in the gallery behind me: Father Murray Thompson, along with 20 grade 11 students from St. Andrew's High School and their teacher John Harrison. I would like the House to welcome them.

COMPENSATION FOR WRONGFUL IMPRISONMENT

HON. MR. SMITH: I wish to announce today the appointment of a commissioner of inquiry under the Inquiry Act with respect to the case of Kenneth Norman Warwick, known as Norman Fox.

Mr. Fox was granted a pardon by the Governor-General-in-Council of Canada in October 1984 in respect of the conviction under the Criminal Code recorded against him on June 21, 1976. Since that pardon and his release in October 1984, attempts have been made to arrive at an agreement with the government of Canada as to what might be an appropriate amount and form of compensation. The Canadian government has been considering the matter and has set up a federal-provincial task force to work out guidelines for future similar cases should they arise. But the Minister of Justice and I have agreed that Mr. Fox's plight should not await the completion of the task force report.

Attempts to resolve the compensation issue have been made in recent months with Mr. Fox and his lawyers. On March 14, Mr. Fox's lawyer, Terrence L. Robertson, presented Mr. Fox's formal case before the Deputy Attorney-General and presented Mr. Fox's view of a settlement that was appropriate, in his opinion, which was a claim for $1.35 million. I have communicated all of that to the Minister of Justice for Canada, believing that a payment of that sum of money would be inappropriate and not in the interest of the people of the province. I have a responsibility to consider that interest. I've taken the only course that would seem appropriate in the circumstances, rather than continue negotiations or cause Mr. Fox further delays: that is, to appoint an independent commissioner of inquiry, with the following terms of reference. He will inquire into and report on the matter of compensation to be given to Kenneth Norman Warwick, otherwise known as Norman Fox, with respect to the period of imprisonment served by him consequent on the convictions made against him in Vancouver, June 21, 1976, for which he was granted a free pardon; and, in particular, report with recommendations on the method by which compensation should be calculated, the value of the compensation, and the form or forms the compensation should take.

The commissioner will be the Hon. Mr. Justice M.M. McFarlane, formerly of the British Columbia Court of Appeal, where he served for 18 years. He was called to the bar in this province in 1931, retired from the Court of Appeal in April 1983, and is now an associate counsel with the Vancouver law firm of Ladner Downs. There are no time restrictions on his work. He has been asked to carry out his assignment with all reasonable dispatch. Mr. Fox will be given full opportunity to detail the claim that he makes.

[ Page 5466 ]

The Minister of Justice for Canada is aware of this announcement, and immediately upon receipt of Mr. Justice McFarlane's report, a copy will go to him. I'm satisfied that we will be able to resolve the matter jointly and make a joint response for compensation. But we feel it's time now for an independent inquiry to give us assistance. We cannot negotiate an amount.

[2:30]

MR. LAUK: It's very frustrating for the opposition to have such an announcement, because I can find no fault whatsoever with it. Every once in a while the administration of justice fails. It's always been my feeling over the years that there are more than just Norman Foxes in jail who are innocent and convicted, but one can never really say that with confidence. The adversary system and the trial system is the best known in the world. It does make mistakes. But when it does make mistakes, we must, to support the credibility of the system, provide a full measure of compensation for those improperly imprisoned.

I compliment the Attorney-General, to the extent that the best way to establish compensation is not through an exchange of correspondence, which can go on forever, or passing the buck, but by determining that compensation in a judicial way, independent of government attitudes, which really have responsibility for the administration of justice that put the man away in the first place.

I compliment the government for its choice of Mr. Justice McFarlane, a distinguished jurist in the province.

Orders of the Day

HON. MR. GARDOM: Committee on Bill 29, Mr. Speaker.

SUPPLY ACT (No. 1), 1985
(continued)

The House in committee on Bill 29; Mr. Strachan in the chair.

On the schedule.

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, in the discussion in committee this morning, the member for North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Davis) raised questions with respect to votes 64 and 66, and I think he also touched briefly on vote 17. I am speaking now of special warrants Nos. 2 and 16 under vote 64. As he surmised, the $221.6 million is largely for the acceleration of major highway projects — the Coquihalla, Annacis crossing and significant work on the Squamish as well.

Warrant No. 5 under vote 66 for $4.8 million was for the reflective number-plate program through the motor vehicle department, and warrant No. 17, $900,000, B.C. Railway Ltd. grant for Newman Creek railway bridge.

I trust that answers the member's comments or questions. If not, I can certainly deal with him in the course of other discussion.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, I'm really pleased that the Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) is here, as well as the parliamentary secretary, so in the event that the Minister of Finance is unable to answer my question, maybe one or other of them would like to give us some information about the $154 million warrant, No. 8, which was paid out to that ministry.

At the time that it occurred, we were told that the ministry had overrun its budget by $166 million; however, the decision was made only to give $154 million. The other $12 million was to be found from some other area in the ministry. I wonder if the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Human Resources or the parliamentary secretary could tell me a couple of things. Could they explain that $166 million overrun? Also, was the other $12 million found, and, if so, in what other areas in the ministry was that $12 million found?

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Yes, I would be very pleased to give a brief response regarding the amount of money.

First of all, the member will know, particularly, that the amount of income assistance put forward each and every year is driven by the amount of requests. It is also a statutory obligation as well as a moral obligation of this government to provide for people in times of need. More people have come to us. There are a larger number of people, which has given us a larger expenditure than in the previous year. It exceeded our budget by the amount that the member has stated.

But also within our budget there are two programs which did not exceed their budgets, in fact, because of the lesser demand on those two programs. One is the seniors' program, where their amount of money has gone up. They have increased their revenue; therefore we have saved on the provincial commitment. That amount of our budget was decreased, and that amount has come off the overall budget of the Ministry of Human Resources, adding a credit.

Also, I'm pleased to tell you that the budget needed for a part of our family and children's services — not a reduction of service, but a reduction of demand — has resulted in a decrease which, again, gave us a credit which was taken from that amount of money. I think that will explain the difference in the two amounts.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, would the minister tell me what specific areas of the services to family and children were underutilized, and exactly how much was saved by that underutilization? What specific programs?

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Chairman, if the member would like to ask further questions of the Minister of Finance on this vote, I will get that information. I think I have it with me here, but it will take a minute.

MR. ROSE: I was interested in this $8 million total in the Ministry of Education, vote 17, and I wanted to ask about that. Perhaps the minister could enlighten me on the necessity for that.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Chairman, both of the amounts are the result of statutory obligation. The first item for $6.5 million was the result of an underestimation in the 1984-85 budget of the homeowner grant; in other words, there were more people claiming the amount. I suppose that when you put $6.5 million against a total amount of approximately $260 million, the percentage really is not that significant. But the fact is that there was an underestimation of the amount required, and that's the $6.5 million.

The $2.5 million is also a statutory obligation, and it's the requirement of the employer to make a contribution to the

[ Page 5467 ]

teachers' pension fund. That contribution is made by the province of British Columbia.

MR. LAUK: Why wasn't that information predictable?

HON. MR. HEINRICH: I note it must be somewhat difficult to predict, because when I see the fluctuation in the amount paid over the years to the pension fund.... In one year it's $108 million, in another it may be $98 million and in another $103 million. Why that fluctuates the way it does.... I suppose there are a number of factors. The fact is, it is a statutory obligation: government must pay.

MR. ROSE: If I might be permitted another question.... I hate to get the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Curtis) out of his chair for nothing — but perhaps he needs the exercise. I wonder, if the predictability of these matters is so difficult, whether the minister is thinking of sending the budget review advisory team or BRAT into his ministry to investigate various things. If they find that things are wrong, does he plan to fine himself as he did Delta? That's not the question; that's merely the introduction. I wonder if the minister could explain why, since the fiscal framework was implemented — to bring order out of chaos in the school districts in terms of their budgeting arrangements — that fiscal framework, if applied accurately, couldn't predict these overruns of something like $8 million.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Speaker, with respect to the opening salvo from the member for Coquitlam-Moody, I would like to make reference to the fact that I did use the chairman of the budget review management advisory team in my own ministry. I want you to know that he did a most commendable job, and it was very helpful to us in the ministry. We made a number of changes, Mr. Chairman.

Now with respect to the $1.534 billion, which is incorporated within the fiscal framework, it seemed....

Interjection.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: I love that member's comments — Franklin D. Filibuster.

Well, I can tell you that there's very little federal money in the framework.

MR. ROSE: It's half of grade 12s.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: No, it is not.

MR. ROSE: Sure it is.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. members, I think we're losing a bit of it here. To the warrant, please.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: The amount of money that we're talking about is $1.534 billion, and I think we're very close. Obviously there are going to be some discrepancies in percentages, but they will be very small.

MR. ROSE: Mr. Chairman, the minister has yet to agree that half the grade 12 costs are paid for through EPF. But his own colleague, the Minister of Universities (Hon. Mr. McGeer), claimed they are. So, you know, you can't trust either one of them, I guess.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order! First of all, that remark must be withdrawn.

MR. ROSE: I withdraw.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

Secondly, hon. members, we have allowed some latitude. We are dealing with special warrants as contained in schedule 1 of Bill 29, and if we could relate our remarks specifically to the warrants before us, the committee would be well served. Please proceed.

MR. ROSE: I would like to ask the minister whether the necessary increase in pension contributions of $2.5 million was because many teachers were encouraged to take early retirement in order to protect the jobs of a number of younger teachers who were not at the retirement point.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Chairman, I'm not sure, but I would suggest that that is highly unlikely, and with respect to.... Am I permitted, in view of the opening.... . ?

[2:45]

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Chairman, I would like to respond to the question asked earlier about the two areas which impacted on the final budget for the Ministry of Human Resources, resulting in the income assistance amount that we are discussing in this vote. First of all, the number of recipients in the services to seniors estimate has declined by 36 percent over the last five years. In December 1984 there were 46, 878 people receiving the provincial supplement. While the province has continued to increase the provincial guaranteed level, when the federal government indexed OAS and GIS the number of recipients declined. This is due to improvements in other income available to the senior citizen, such as private pensions, Canada Pension Plan and other personal income. When that increases, their income increases and they fall off the supplement which comes from the government.

So over the past five years there has been a decline of 36 percent, and that is true again. The provincial guaranteed level for singles has increased 72 percent, and for married couples 50 percent, over the past five years. So that is the reason on that particular vote.

The other vote which impacts on this is the expenditure, as I mentioned earlier, on family and children's services. There is an estimated reduction in that vote. It's due to a declining child-in-care caseload, resulting from reductions in the percentage of children in the population taken into care. It has been steadily declining, I'm glad to tell you, since 1969, and in the past five years that number of children taken into care has gone down by 18 percent, from the 8,737 of five years ago to 7,386 as of January 1985.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Speaker, to the minister: thanks very much for that information. The only thing I needed was the figures. There was a $12 million shortfall, and I wondered if you could give me, in dollars, how much of that $12 million came from seniors — who, incidentally, haven't had their supplement increased since 1976, so I'm wondering if it's adequate. But we'll discuss that under the estimates; I don't want to discuss that now. If I could just know in terms of dollars where the $12 million split. That's all.

[ Page 5468 ]

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Chairman, I don't have that information at hand, but I can give that during the estimates.

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, prior to the luncheon adjournment the member for West Vancouver–Howe Sound (Mr. Reynolds) inquired with respect to the special warrant for the office of the ombudsman. The committee will recall that earlier we had considerable discussion about an increase in expenditure in the office of the auditor-general. Mr. Chairman, the request letter to me as chairman of Treasury Board dated November 28, 1984, from the ombudsman indicated that the budget estimate would be insufficient for two reasons in particular. I think there's nothing else, as I review the material and as I recall it. A shortfall in staffing salaries and additionally to hire six more contract investigators for the last quarter of this fiscal year — that would be the first quarter of the calendar year 1985 — to clear a backlog of cases: it seems that that is the extent of the reason behind the additional expenditure.

MR. MACDONALD: I'd like to ask the Minister of Finance about warrant No. 3 for $435,000. Does the Minister of Finance not have power, by order-in-council, to cancel a warrant that has been issued when the money is not going to be spent? Why should it have to show up here and add to the horrendous amount — almost half a billion dollars — of overspending beyond the estimates that we're supposed to approve here this afternoon?

HON. MR. CURTIS: Well, Mr. Chairman, it may be that the member was not able to participate in the debate this morning when I dealt with this at great length with the member for Atlin (Mr. Passarell).

MR. MACDONALD: Why didn't you cancel it?

HON. MR. CURTIS: I'm required by statute, and that was the point that was made this morning.... The Minister of Finance is required by statute to report on the appropriation. That is what you have before you.

MR. MACDONALD: Mr. Chairman, my point is a simple one: you could also report that the warrant had been cancelled because the money was not needed, and it wouldn't then be included in this total. It would be shown to be voted so much, cancelled, not needed, and wouldn't be in this total. Then we'd have proper accounting in this province. We're voting on a fictional amount now — to approve it.

HON. MR. CURTIS: On the contrary, we're not voting on a fictional amount. I don't think the member would really want to pursue that to any great extent. On two occasions this morning the member for Atlin presented a motion which would have achieved that which the member for Vancouver East has suggested just now. I am reporting on an appropriation. The fact is that it was a conditional loan with very stringent requirements attached to it. Those conditions were not met; therefore the loan will not be paid out. It's extremely unlikely that it will be paid in the period between today and Sunday, March 31. The fact is that to do other than to report the appropriation, Mr. Chairman, would in fact be fictional accounting.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Shall schedule 1 pass?

MR. HOWARD: I thought the member for Atlin had proposed a motion to alter the amounts, and that the Chair had not ruled on that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: You're absolutely right. There was one amendment that the Chair ruled to be out of order, and there is a subsequent amendment that the Chair is also ruling out of order because of the statute that requires the schedule to be printed this way.

MR. LAUK: In order to arrive at your conclusion, Mr. Chairman, did you consider the proposition that the minister has not yet revealed to the committee under what authority this money was appropriated — the $435,000? The minister has yet to reply to the committee's inquiry as to what authority. He's referred to the Financial Administration Act. That provides for how, where a loan can be made, it is to be made and under what provisions. But under what authority are we loaning money to private mining companies?

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, the member is correct to the extent that I did not answer the question while on my feet — I think that I did indicate it across the floor. I would refer the member to two sections of the Financial Administration Act, section 37 and section 18.

MR. LAUK: I thank the hon. minister, but those sections refer to other sections and those sections refer to yet other sections. The point is: what is the ultimate authority for loaning this money from consolidated revenue under any conditions to a private mining company? That is not within the Financial Administration Act. That just sets out who requests the money and under what authority is it established. In that case, I've got a little business; can I approach the Ministry of Finance and apply for a loan?

HON. MR. CURTIS: No.

MR. LAUK: Why not?

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, in his case, most definitely not. I say that facetiously. The identification of this.... Quite clearly it was not a grant to the mining company as such...

Interjection.

HON. MR. CURTIS: ...or a loan — thank you for the correction — but rather it was a loan with respect to maintaining the access to the mine, a road access. The authority is quite clearly stated in section 21 of the Financial Administration Act — which was, after all, an act authorized by this Legislature. It wasn't a grant or a loan to the mining company per se.

MR. LAUK: Who's going to repay it?

HON. MR. CURTIS: I think I dealt with that this morning. In the event that it had been loaned — which is somewhat academic — then it would have been repaid by the continued operation of the mine.

[ Page 5469 ]

MR. LAUK: In other words, by the mining company?

HON. MR. CURTIS: No, I did not say that. Don't put words in my mouth, Mr. Member.

AN HON. MEMBER: We're trying to help you.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who's going to repay it then?

HON. MR. CURTIS: Your kind of help I don't need.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Chairman, this committee still does not know under what basis these moneys can be loaned in similar circumstances. And if it is to be loaned.... The schedule clearly says — and so does warrant 3 — the loan is to Scottie Mines. Now I assume under the normal course of commercial events that if you loan money to a corporation — named — that that's the corporate person that's going to repay the loan, Surely the minister can inform the committee as to how the loan would be repaid in this situation and in similar situations.

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, it may be that the Public Accounts committee would like to review this in greater detail at its leisure. That is not to suggest I'm not going to answer the questions to the best of my ability now.

On October 3, 1984, the executive council agreed with the proposal of the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources that funds to a maximum amount of $435,000 be provided in the form of a non-interest-bearing loan to cover this winter's cost for snow clearing on the mine access road from Stewart to Summit Lake. Upon examination it was determined that there was no appropriation to fund the loan and therefore the special warrant was executed. The reply that I provided to the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources indicated that in accordance with section 37 of the Financial Administration Act it was recommended that the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council approve the proposed loan agreement and debenture with Scottie Gold Mines on the conditions that the government is the first-placed secured creditor in the event of a business failure, that a first charge is secured against specified assets of the company having a net book value of $435,000, that a further fixed charge is secured against the company's mineral claims, and that a further floating charge is placed against the remainder of the company's assets. Then the proposal to the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources was that in the event that any or all of the above could not be met, the loan would not be forthcoming.

MR. LAUK: I'm getting curiouser and curiouser, Mr. Chairman. Section 37 says clearly: "A power under an enactment" — that's not the Financial Administration Act — "to make loans, advances or direct equity investments from the consolidated revenue fund shall...." That's the power under which the minister purports to ask. My first question: what is the power — under which enactment — that allows the government to proceed under the Financial Administration Act in the first place? Secondly, why Scottie Mines? Were there applications from other mines? Why was this brought to the attention of cabinet with respect to one mine only? The minister has read substantially from a document which I know, his having honourable regard for the conventions of this House, he will table.

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, when we are not in committee I will certainly consider tabling the material at the earliest possible moment. If not today, tomorrow.

Financial Administration Act, section 21 first....

Interjection.

HON. MR. CURTIS: No, section 21 first, and section 37.

MR. LAUK: We're going in circles.

HON. MR. CURTIS: No, we're not going in circles, Mr. Member. I can't assist the member further with his interpretation of legislation which was approved in this chamber.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Chairman, at the risk of sounding immodest, I don't need any assistance in interpreting a statute; I would suggest, with great respect, that the minister does. Section 21 says that if an emergency arises within the authority and power of the government, and it's not in the budget, they can pass a special warrant. That's all it says. Section 37 says:

"A power under an enactment to make loans, advances or direct equity investments from the consolidated revenue fund shall, notwithstanding any other enactment, not be exercised by the government except by order of or in accordance with directives of the Lieutenant Governor in Council on the recommendation of the Minister of Finance."

Section 37 clearly says that the power must be under an enactment. What's that enactment, and why was that not mentioned?

HON. MR. CURTIS: It may be an oversight in terms of answering all the questions. The FAA is an enactment.

MR. LAUK: What is the FAA?

HON. MR. CURTIS: The member knows, I think. He just told me that he has no difficulty with reading statutes, therefore FAA. It's not the Federal Aviation Agency.

MR. LAUK: Where in the FAA is your power to make a loan?

[3:00]

HON. MR. CURTIS: I wonder if the member would like to turn to section 18 of the act, which says: "No money shall be paid out of the consolidated revenue fund without the authority of an appropriation." That's sub (1). Sub (2): "Money required to be expended, invested or dealt with under section 11(2), 13, 16, 21, 22, 23, 24(c), 32, 33, 36, 53 or 58 may be paid out of the consolidated revenue fund without any appropriation other than this subsection." Section 21 is one of those cited, and it is 21 to which I earlier referred the member — i.e., a special warrant.

MR. LAUK: You could do anything.

HON. MR. CURTIS: If we're going to debate the possible failings of the Financial Administration Act, I think perhaps that could occur at another time.

[ Page 5470 ]

MR. CHAIRMAN: The point made by the Minister of Finance is absolutely correct. I don't want to be difficult on this, but we are dealing with Schedule 1, which makes reference to reporting, as is indicated in the printing of the schedule, Financial Administration Act, section 21(5). That is the reason we have the schedule in the bill now before us. As I said, without trying to be difficult I think we should deal specifically with the reporting of those special warrants before us, and not discuss previous legislation and the need or errors that may be contained in it.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Chairman, let me canvass briefly how far we've gotten. There's a loan to Scottie of some $400,000. Nowhere in the Financial Administration Act is there authority to grant a loan to Scottie or to any other mine. It's not a question of interpretation differing for me and the Minister of Finance. Clear legal interpretation of the Financial Administration Act does not empower the cabinet to grant a loan to any private person. There is no such authority. Section 18 says that no money shall be paid out of consolidated revenue without authority of an appropriation, except under sections 11, 13 and so on. Section 37 says that loans must be empowered by an enactment of some kind.

It's clear that no minister can make a loan except the Minister of Finance — and when we were in government, I believe my ministry, which was Economic Development, those were set out in statutes or regulations clearly setting out what we could do. Any other financial activity by the Crown was through its corporations, which were set out clearly by legislation. To interpret the legislation any other way and to concede the point trying to be made by the Minister of Finance means that the Minister of Finance can loan money to his mother, his sister, his uncle and his aunt simply by moving under the Financial Administration Act. We know that's impossible. So I say again that the loan to Scottie has to be approved of by some statute. Is it the road clearance act? Is it the mining enhancement act? Maybe no such statutes exist. What I'm trying to say is that there has to be a legislative enactment allowing for the expenditure of public funds. The Financial Administration Act only sets out the authority for procedures whereby the ministry, using consolidated revenue, can carry out the wishes of the Legislature in another enactment. That's the law.

So before we pass on, that's the law. Any other law can be struck down. This Legislature votes on supply, and supply means where it's going to go in its estimates. If you use the warrant provisions, it has to be pursuant to sections 18, 21 and 37, a power of an enactment — not the Financial Administration Act, which is a procedure, but an enactment allowing us to spend public funds loaned to a private person. Any other interpretation means that the government can loan money to whoever it wishes on any terms it wishes, as long as they proceed through the Financial Administration Act. That's an impossibility. It's an illegality. Unless the minister can support under what enactment this money was loaned to a private mining company, it's illegal, and he must reply.

Is the minister aware that part of the road the money was to be used for is in the United States of America?

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, if the member believes that the Minister of Finance has acted illegally, then there is a course of action for him to follow. It is not for me to defend or to answer his interpretation that I have acted illegally, because I have not. But if he continues to believe that, then let the member put a motion on the order paper, and it shall be called in due course.

The member somehow has difficulty understanding that the Financial Administration Act is not a "process, " it is an enactment. Again I indicate that the sections to which I have referred the member are correct for the purpose: the authorization that would have occurred but did not. Again, we are debating something which might have occurred but did not. And yes, in line with the last question that the member put to me on the basis of advice from the member for Atlin (Mr. Passarell), I was aware that the road did cross the international boundary.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Speaker, I do not doubt the sincerity of the minister. However, I am not in any way persuaded that the minister is correct in his interpretation of the Financial Administration Act. I consider it a very serious misinterpretation.

When I started asking questions, I assumed that the minister could produce the enactment. I did not in any way assume that there was no enactment or legislative authority for the loan, other than the Financial Administration Act. I am very sincerely shocked. If the minister cannot provide the authority for the loan, would he agree and undertake to refer this matter — the question of the appropriation — to the auditor-general to immediately report to the House? In all sincerity, I believe that the question, if not authorized by another statute, is illegal. Would he have the auditor-general independently review the matter and provide an opinion?

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, I would be happy to give the member an opportunity to reflect on this overnight. We could then discuss it. I do not reject his suggestion, but he is having some difficulty with respect to the authority which has been used in this particular instance. That is my view. I certainly would be prepared to canvass this with him tomorrow forthwith.

Schedule 1 approved.

On the preamble.

MR. HOWARD: Mr. Chairman, there's a reference in the second "whereas" of the preamble to the special warrant references in the schedule. As I understand it — perhaps you could give me some guidance here, Mr. Chairman — the preamble, whether approved or not, is not law. We're not enacting anything by the passage of the preamble. The enactment is contained in sections 1 and 2 of the bill. "Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, enacts as follows...." That's what we have enacted. But we've got a preamble in here having a cross-reference to the special warrants in schedule 1. I gather that there's no subsequent requirement for the Legislature or the committee to make any decision with respect to those warrants in an enacting sense. They are in fact money that has been appropriated and either spent or not spent, given this Scottie situation a moment ago. If, for argument's sake, there was a disparity between what the preamble says and what the schedule says, what would be the situation? Suppose there was a disparity, some references that were not factually correct. Where would we be with respect to the schedule?

[ Page 5471 ]

HON. MR. CURTIS: I think the member for Skeena is seeking a legal opinion from me. I have requested interim supply under the Supply Act, Bill 29, and having taken that decision and made that request, I have relied on legislative counsel to put it in the appropriate form in line with the statutes of British Columbia. He may want to expand upon it, but I cannot give him a legal reference as to what might happen in the event that it is found to be lacking.

MR. HOWARD: Can the minister assure the committee, then, that the schedule which is referred to in the preamble accurately reflects that the schedule is factually correct with the warrants? In other words, does the schedule say what the warrants say? Is that part correct? The minister should know that; it's not an opinion.

HON. MR. CURTIS: I believe that to be the case, Mr. Chairman.

MR. HOWARD: If it were not factually correct, where would we be? That's what I'm trying to get to. Let me point out to the minister what we've already done here. In schedule 1, under the item referring to Scottie that was talked about earlier, it says: "Loan to Scottie Mines Ltd." Scottie Mines Ltd. does not exist. There is no such corporation called Scottie Mines Ltd. What I'm trying to get to is, how can we have the incorporation in a statute of a reference to a loan to a company which does not exist?

HON. MR. CURTIS: As dealt with at length this morning, this is an appropriation. To say that it does not exist.... As the member for Atlin (Mr. Passarell) indicated this morning, the mine did exist; it closed. So it is skirting a little bit around some of the detail to say that it does not exist. That is correct, but it did exist. An appropriation was made for a particular activity associated with the work in that mine site. The appropriation has not been made; the money has not been spent.

With respect to the main point of the member for Skeena, as I understood his thesis, in the event that the preamble was found to be incorrect, at fault, lacking, then I assume that an amendment would have to be presented to the House and to the committee.

MR. HOWARD: The minister should listen carefully to what I said. I made no reference to the mine, whether it's in operation or not, or in existence or anything else. I said, and I'll quote what I said: "Scottie Mines Ltd. does not exist. There is no such corporation by that name." So how can there be in the schedule a reference to a loan to a corporation which does not exist?

HON. MR. CURTIS: Does the member have some other name that he would like us to have...?

[3:15]

MR. HOWARD: I'm glad the minister is seeking my advice about this matter. If he had sought it earlier he wouldn't have got into the difficulty that he's in right now. The name that I would suggest be in the schedule is the correct name of the company, if that's who you made the loan to. What's wrong with having the correct name of the company in there.?

HON. MR. CURTIS: Which one would the member suggest, Mr. Chairman?

MR. HOWARD: I'm glad again the minister is so obtuse that he's not able to identify this.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order!

MR. HOWARD: I would have in there the correct name of the company, the name of the company that appears in the order-in-council, the name of the company that appears in the Survey of Mines and Energy Resources as the proper name of that company. If the minister wants me to refresh his memory, the order-in-council that was passed pointed out that a special warrant "be prepared for the signature of the Lieutenant-Governor authorizing the payment from the consolidated revenue fund of the sum of $435,000 to cover the funding of a loan to Scottie Gold Mines Ltd." Mr. Minister, you just got the wrong company in there; that's all.

Preamble approved.

Title approved.

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, I move that the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

Bill 29, Supply Act (No. 1), 1985, reported complete without amendment.

MR. LAUK: Under standing orders a question of privilege should be raised at the earliest opportunity, and I do so now. In the committee stage of the Supply Act which is presently before the House, in answering to questions the minister has steadfastly refused, or wrongly interpreted his authority....

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please, hon. member. The Chair cannot hear a matter that was brought up in committee.

MR. LAUK: No, this is a question of privilege; it's not a matter of....

MR. SPEAKER: Nonetheless, hon. member, if the matter arose in committee, it must be dealt with in committee. As the member is well aware, the Chair can have no knowledge of what goes on in committee; therefore the point raised.... I'm sure the fact that we have risen at this stage will not preclude the member from raising it again when the committee sits. Clearly, the matter that the member is attempting to raise now must be raised and debated in the committee forum as opposed.... In fact, hon. member, it did take place in committee, and it must therefore be dealt with in that forum, not in the House.

MR. LAUK: May I state the question? The question of privilege that I'm putting to Mr. Speaker and to the House is this: it is the responsibility of the Legislature to scrutinize and to pass expenditures of public funds. That's a 600-year-old

[ Page 5472 ]

privilege of members of this House. There is no authority indicated by the minister, and none that we can find, to authorize the loan appropriation. The minister has not indicated under what authority that loan appropriation could be made. We are now moving from committee stage to third reading of a bill, and I'm suggesting that the loan — on the basis of the facts available to me — is illegal. It is a breach of the privilege of me, as an hon. member, not to know or have information about the authority of loans made with the use of public funds.

I am unable to vote aye or nay to this bill without such information, and that's the breach of privilege I'm bringing to Your Honour's attention. There is absolutely no need for the Speaker to know what went on in committee, except to the extent that — on the face of it — the loan was illegal. It's well known in the rules that members have their privileges breached if they are not provided with information that is required of the Crown to vote aye or nay on any question before the House.

MR. SPEAKER: Notwithstanding the points raised by the member, the Chair must reiterate that a matter that clearly took place in committee, which the member found to offend his particular view of how the rules should be, must be addressed in committee. The Chair is bound by that over the same 600 years that the member referred to. The matter, hon. member, must therefore be addressed in committee.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Speaker, I seek the floor on the basis that I ask leave to move that this bill be referred to the auditor-general before third reading, for an opinion to be expressed. I ask leave of the House to have this matter referred to the auditor-general for an opinion on the legality of the Scottie Mines loan before we pass on third reading.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. Hon. member, the Chair is unable to hear the motion from the member at this particular time. There is a place for motions; this is not the place. Therefore the very motion by the member, in itself, cannot be heard.

MR. LAUK: I asked for leave of the House. It's not a question of order.

MR. SPEAKER: Notwithstanding, hon. member, no person has the right at any time during the proceedings to stand up and simply ask for leave to make any motion. There is a specific place on the order paper for such activity. With all due respect, hon. member, this is not that place.

MR. LAUK: We're talking about a $435,000 appropriation. The minister has informed us it will not be expended. What I'm worried about is this: how many other loans are there that have been made without authority of the Legislature?

MR. SPEAKER: Clearly, hon. member, we are now entering into an area of debate. The Chair has made it clear, I believe, that the matter referred to by the member must be raised in committee; it cannot be raised at this particular point.

Bill 29, Supply Act (No. 1), 1985, read a third time and passed.

HON. MR. CURTIS: On a point of order, I heard quite clearly, as perhaps other members did, a few moments ago, that the member for Skeena (Mr. Howard) indicated from his seat: "Lending money to his friends." I find that offensive in the extreme, and I ask him to withdraw.

MR. SPEAKER: The Chair did not hear the remarks, hon. member. Had the Chair heard, it would have made the same request, I am sure. In the interests of parliamentary....

MR. HOWARD: Mr. Speaker, I made the remark, in case you want to hear it. And that remark was, yes: "Lending money to his friends." Is that inappropriate?

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. member, clearly it indicates an improper action. I would ask the member to withdraw.

MR. HOWARD: Sure. Scottie Gold Mines think they're his friends. Sorry to hear that they're not.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. I would ask the member to withdraw the remark.

MR. HOWARD: Mr. Speaker, I'll withdraw it. If the minister is so....

MR. SPEAKER: Thank you. The remark has been withdrawn.

HON. MR. WATERLAND: May I have leave to make an introduction?

Leave granted.

HON. MR. WATERLAND: Mr. Speaker, in the gallery today is a group of grade 11 French-immersion students from the city of Merritt, accompanied to the Legislature by their teacher, Mr. Godin. They have just completed a tour of the precincts, conducted in French. I'd ask the House to please welcome them.

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

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF ATTORNEY-GENERAL

On vote 11: minister's office, $223, 385.

HON. MR. SMITH: I'm pleased to introduce these estimates for the fiscal year. I'm just going to offer some brief assessment on the budget and touch on a few of the programs and issues that we're going to face during the fiscal year.

It will probably benefit members to be aware of some of the initiatives that we're going to continue in the next 12 months to meet the changing and demanding needs of justice services and programs for which we have responsibility. These programs that we are responsible for in my ministry and in Health and in Education — social service programs — consume, as is well known, 75 percent of the total expenditures of the province. The funding of justice-related services are an important element in the social program. It's proposed this year in the estimates that we spend $367.4 million, or approximately 4 percent of the total amount of

[ Page 5473 ]

spending by this government. It also represents an increase of approximately 6.7 percent over the $344 million that was budgeted for in the last fiscal year.

[Mr. Ree in the chair.]

As the Finance minister noted, in introducing his budget, the policy base from the budget was established, through provincial initiatives, to reduce government spending and to reallocate budgets to the highest-priority programs. As I indicated in this committee last year, our ministry took part in that process, and these estimates represent a continuation of initiatives intended to streamline our operations and also allow us to deliver our major programs.

We continued over the past year to meet our fundamental responsibilities to development of policy and management programs, and to review our entire operation, so that we think we're now leaner and more efficient than we were before.

One of the finance issues underlying our budget which I intend to speak on here — and I've spoken on it in the past — is the Young Offenders Act, one of those federal initiatives which impact so much on provincial budgeting. The additional funding requirements that this federal statute have produced are very significant, and they have been incorporated in our estimates. The Young Offenders Act will impact on spending by the British Columbia Buildings Corporation as the development of new facilities is required. British Columbia has....

MS. BROWN: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, I wonder if the minister would speak up and speak more slowly. He's mumbling, and it's very difficult.... What he's saying is very interesting, but I can't hear a word of it. He's just rolling along in his usual boring way. Speak up — and slower.

[3:30]

HON. MR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman, I take it as the highest of compliments to be accused of being boring in estimates. I was certainly always told that that was the objective of estimates, and indeed I have honed it to a fine art. As for mumbling, it's the International Year for Mumblers. You have absolutely no compassion for us.

In the past decade we have supported the need for changes in the juvenile delinquency legislation. We think that the old Juvenile Delinquents Act was a paternalistic act, and for some years in this province, despite that act, we've been moving towards more of an accountability system and providing alternative ways of dealing with young people, instead of incarceration. We recognized, therefore, that there should be some new national legislation. That legislation was finally born in April of last year and was proclaimed, all except for the compulsory age provision, which comes into force in a week's time.

We in British Columbia steadily achieved a number of reforms at the provincial level. We extended probation service. We implemented specialized residential and attendance programs. We involved community and volunteer resources in all our programs, including our youth containment programs. So as a result of these reforms, we're in a position to meet many of the requirements of the Young Offenders Act.

While we have strongly supported the principle of reform in the juvenile law, we feel that the Young Offenders Act is going to place unreasonable burdens on this province. It is going to force major capital investment in new facilities for 17-year-olds, who will now be dealt with under the juvenile justice system, many of them having already been in the adult system. There is also going to be a significant increase in demand for provision of legal services for young persons, who are now guaranteed representation by legal counsel at public expense in virtually all circumstances. There will also be, under the Young Offenders Act, additional bureaucratic process, particularly in record-keeping and destruction of documents, which is going to prove very costly, with little benefit to juveniles in conflict with the law or to the administration of the justice system.

I'll give you one example of how the record-destruction provision is apparently going to work. There was a case in Ontario last week of a young offender who was tried in youth court for murdering his sister and another young person. He was a 13-year-old lad. He was adjudged not guilty by reason of insanity. Under the record-destruction provisions of the Young Offenders Act, the judge was of the opinion that the record of this proceeding would have to be expunged and all records destroyed. That, of course, would be an absurd result, because it would mean that this young man, going to a containment facility of some kind.... When his case came up for review or for treatment, the officials would not have the benefit of the transcript or the record.

So it appears that some modification will have to be made to the Young Offenders Act. I have argued with two solicitors-general in two governments over the past year that some features of the Young Offenders Act should be modified. I led a group of attorneys-general in January who met with the Solicitor-General and persuaded him that there was merit to at least deferring the age provision, because, as you know, different ages have prevailed in different provinces. For instance, Manitoba and Quebec both had 18 as their age. Ontario and several other provinces had 16. We had 17. So for Ontario it's a major expense to duplicate facilities at the youth level that they already had at the adult level. For us it's a major expense. We estimate that it will be an additional $20 million in this year's budget. We also estimate that we're looking at an increase of between $40 million and $50 million in this province of provincial money only, during the next three years, to comply with the age provision. If you double that amount of money by adding in the federal contribution, you're looking at at least $80 million spent on reproducing containment facilities in British Columbia. Think of what $80 million could do in programs of a preventive and educational nature for young people who are in difficulty with the law.

I thought that I had been successful in persuading the federal government to modify or delay the age provisions, but they announced two weeks ago that they were going ahead. The age provision is going to go ahead on April I unless there is some divine intervention. We have an obligation, therefore, to do our best to ensure that the Young Offenders Act is implemented smoothly and effectively in British Columbia. It will not be as smooth and effective as it would have been if we'd had several more years to do so, but we will do our best.

The major operating impact of the Young Offenders Act, then, is based on age. We'll have to accommodate over 100 additional young offenders in new and renovated facilities in the coming year. To meet the young offenders provisions we established Holly Cottage, a new open-custody facility in Burnaby. We also renovated Magnolia Cottage at Willingdon

[ Page 5474 ]

to provide additional secure beds as well as psychiatric assessment space. That facility will be operational within the next month. Seventeen-year-olds as well will be placed in facilities in Victoria, in Centre Creek Camp in Chilliwack, in Lakeview Camp in Campbell River and in Boulder Bay Camp.

The ministry has been developing, through the course of the fiscal year, plans for the construction of new replacement facilities in the northern interior regions. Construction costs of all new facilities required for the Young Offenders Act will come close to $20 million this year, as I said before.

Corrections programs, at approximately $115 million in the coming fiscal year, represent the largest part of the spending in this ministry. The major budget elements relate to the operation of adult correction centres and attendant probation services. One of the major problems we face during the coming year is the need to contend with high levels of intake in the adult system. We have a phenomenon in British Columbia that's occurring across Canada and in other parts of North America: that is, there's an increased demand being placed on correctional facilities to house numbers of inmates well in excess of design capacity. While it's the objective of government to ensure that the appropriate type and number of facilities are available, there must be a more fundamental question asked with respect to the purpose of incarcerating individuals and the need for more effective alternative programming.

The government has indicated its commitment to the upgrading of correctional facilities. We've made major strides in that regard: the Vancouver pre-trial centre last year, and this year the completion of the Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre project. I've viewed that project and so has my opposite number, the member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk), and I think that it is a first-class facility. It's not a facility that is particularly frilly, I didn't think, but it's particularly efficient, secure, safe and not draconian. Planning is underway for upgrading and replacing facilities located throughout the province.

In addition I might add, Mr. Chairman, that we have not departed from our original policy of gradually phasing out Oakalla. The first step in that plan was the opening of the Vancouver pre-trial centre, to handle the remand prisoners in the lower mainland. We will, through planning in the next year, go further down the road of that commitment. We only delayed doing so as part of the capital freeze during the restraint program on capital construction. But we remain committed to the policy of phasing out Oakalla.

We have to assess, I guess, whether we're representing society's best interests through merely developing correctional facilities — holding facilities — or whether alternate forms of sanction are not as appropriate as well. We have a significant investment in preventive programs, and I think that we will spend more effort in that area of the corrections branch.

It's essential that we develop strategies to deal with the pressure points in the justice system. As an example, alcohol-related driving offences continue to drive disproportionately larger numbers of admissions to provincial institutions and also load our courts with these types of cases. In Corrections in fiscal 1983-84 we had almost 17,000 admissions to our facilities, with alcohol-related driving offences accounting for 4,511 of those almost 17,000. That is 26.5 percent of people coming into our jails for alcohol-related offences. Development of a legislative and program framework to more effectively combat drinking and driving can have major benefits for the justice system and society generally, because our objective, of course, is not to load the jails but to get them off the road. I intend to present some new initiatives in the current session with regard to drinking and driving.

I will also continue to support the ministry's continuing program for traffic safety. It is comprised of senior officials from the Ministries of Attorney-General, Transportation and Highways, Health and from the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, the RCMP and the police departments of Victoria and Vancouver. This committee, now in its second year of operation, has ensured improved coordination of police traffic law enforcement and is identifying, and coordinating implementation of, traffic safety program initiatives.

Critical to continuing the initiatives in this regard are the ongoing funding of essential activities that community agencies perform. The work of the ministry is significantly advanced by the initiatives of groups like those which run the sexual assault centres, the Native Courtworkers and Counselling Association of B.C., the Elizabeth Fry Society, the John Howard Society and the other community agencies that provide generously of time and volunteer help in support of initiatives in the justice system. I had the honour to address one of those last week, the B.C. Borstal Association. I met with them to recognize the very fine work that they do and have done for some years in this province for young people.

Over the past year I've had the opportunity of meeting a number of other community groups, as well as police and justice officials. I think that we're very well served by both our professionals and volunteers.

My colleague the Finance minister announced in the budget the family support program jointly operated by myself and the Ministry of Human Resources. This program continues as a pilot project in the next fiscal year and should provide very real support to single parents not in receipt of regular and adequate support payments.

Additionally, the Task Force on Legal Aid reported as a dominant theme the need to improve the delivery of family law services. I certainly accept this recommendation as a major priority for the provincial funding of legal services in the coming year. I've directed that additional effort be made through other ministry programs, including family law services and legal services to government and in the probation and family service corrections to assisting in the provision of family and children's services throughout the Ministry of Attorney-General programs.

I am impressed over the past year with the sensitivity in the justice system that has arisen in the last few years for the needs of victims of crime. A very much lost constituency in the justice system has been the victim. Those of us who have practised criminal law in the courts will probably testify to that. Victims spend their days endlessly waiting outside courtrooms, waiting for word as to what's going on, waiting to be called, excluded as they are as witnesses, often excluded from information, and they feel very frustrated and alienated from the system that we've been operating. I'm going to try to make more effort in all branches of my ministry to deal in a responsive way with victims of crime and to integrate them into the justice system.

We have participated in federal-provincial task forces on victims of crime and undertook, as well, the appointment in the police services branch of a victim services coordinator with the objective of developing and coordinating improved services to victims in British Columbia. I have also structured

[ Page 5475 ]

an internal victim services steering committee of all the major components of the system to review and develop new victims' initiatives, so that will be one of our objectives in the coming year.

In other program areas we have taken the initial step in the development and implementation of a new policy to deal with contemporary problems in the justice system. We have our spousal assault program, which I think has been commended across the country. We have a new policy which recognizes the criminal nature of wife assault, with a view to affording the highest level of protection to persons in need of assistance. The police have been most cooperative in this new approach, which is quite innovative because formerly they were treated as domestic matters.

We've undertaken a total review, as well, of child sexual abuse, and in concert with the Ministry of Human Resources we should have improvements and new developments in that area.

[3:45]

1 have also tried to place some emphasis on law reform and to modernizing some of our statutes and paying attention to the work and recommendations of the British Columbia Law Reform Commission. We will be bringing in, on a regular basis, legislation that will incorporate their recommendations. I think the House will welcome these legislative initiatives as really being bipartisan and based on recommendations that have stood the test of public scrutiny from the Law Reform Commission.

We'll have some new legislative reforms as well in the field of family law, which I think the House will be very pleased with. There will be legislation introduced on a form of video regulation to try to stop the flow of some of the very vile material that is available in video outlets.

We will be introducing, quite shortly, our proposals for Charter of Rights amendments so that we can meet the obvious deficiencies that are there in a number of our statutes and will be apparent when the equality sections of the Charter of Rights come into force in mid-April. So I expect that we'll have a bill before the House to examine which will meet the most glaring requirements of the charter. I cannot pretend, though, that we will address all the concerns that may be raised under the charter. I don't think that the mind of man is capable of doing that in any event. There will be some issues that will require specific debate and address under the charter, but we're going to deal with a number of the more obvious discriminations that are apparent by reason of the equality section.

In concluding, Mr. Chairman, I will be pleased to respond during estimates to a range of members' concerns, and I hope members also will feel free, as they have in the past, to bring matters directly to me during the year.

MR. LAUK: In listening to the Attorney-General it becomes clear that the government is once more focusing upon those matters that are easy to handle under the administration of justice, and not those matters that are difficult to handle.

At a time when we're cutting back or holding the line on legal aid, when legal aid lawyers are allowed a tariff fee that's half of the Ontario legal aid tariff, at a time when other matters involving legal counsel and the direct administration of justice are being cut back, such as court services, sheriff's services and extra police, this minister, through the government, is expending money on jails. We are getting more and more jails. We are getting jails for young people; we're getting jails for adults. And the minister is not directing his mind to how he could save money when it comes to the corrections branch budget of $115 million a year.

I do not want to suggest that the Attorney-General has a myopic view of his responsibilities, and with great respect I want to put out to the committee for discussion a modest proposal. In the corrections branch we have prison institutions. Since the war, and increasingly in the past 15 to 20 years, the discipline and structure of those institutions in many cases has collapsed, and it's still in great danger and great risk of further collapse. We've had trouble at the penitentiaries across Canada, but we've also had trouble in our provincial penal institutions. We've had hostage-takings and riots, at great expense to the public purse. In fact, the whole Canadian criminal judicial system is proving to be very costly. I think one of the focuses is on the prison institutions.

Canada imprisons more of its citizens than any other country in the free world, approximately one in 1,000. In 1980 about 25,000 people, or more than two-thirds of all Canadians convicted of indictable offences, were sentenced to prison. Almost 50 percent of people in our provincial prisons are there for non-payment of fines, and 80 percent of those inmates in our federal prisons are there for crimes against property: that is, they are thieves and have non-violent records.

I'm saying there are too many Canadians in prison. Our prisons are overcrowded, and the prisons have had a collapse in discipline. What I want to know is.... I'll wait until the minister's through consulting so we can get on with these estimates.

I wonder if the Attorney-General will consider this proposal. It's a proposal based on only the findings that I have been able to get by my interviews with guards and inmates, also relying on part of my experience as criminal defence counsel in years past. Why has the discipline in our penal institutions collapsed? I'm suggesting that one possibility — and I'm convinced personally that it's a probability — is that in society's desire to rehabilitate the criminal mind, particularly since the Second World War.... We have inserted into our penal institutions armies of padres, psychiatrists and social workers, and dozens of rehabilitative programs like KEY and STEP, and a whole variety of EST-like programs. I don't mean to be too facetious about this, but I want to contrast what occurs there. I'm not here to argue the position of prison rights activists; I want to argue from the position of the real prisoner, and what's in his best interest.

To me, as a society, we are psychologically deficient if we think that we can love the criminal mind into rehabilitation without first demanding that each person in our society pays the price. What should be the price? In a democratic society, the price should be even-handed and fair. Everybody who is found guilty of a particular offence should face pretty well the same penalty, barring differences in record.

What does this do psychologically to a prisoner? The lines are clear to a convict. He knows that if he's convicted and his appeals are exhausted, he will face the penalty. Let's not discuss for the moment whether that penalty is for the protection of the public, for his rehabilitation or whatever. It's the penalty; it's the responsibility for his actions.

What happens to his responsibility as a convict when he reaches the prison system, and he finds that there are avenues to get around the regulations that have, before that time,

[ Page 5476 ]

established the relationship between prisoners and the relationship between the prison population and the administration, represented by the guards? What has occurred? What has occurred is that through psychiatry programs, rehabilitation and a variety of other programs in the prison setting, there are various classes of prisoner. That creates animosity and ill-feeling between prisoners in the prison population. It creates total confusion in the prison administration's enforcement of the rules. That in turn has created anger and hostility.

I have had long-term convicts inform me — these are 30-year people who swear they're not going back now; they're too old — that there's more violence in our prison system in Canada today than there was 30 years ago. We've got better rooms, we've got better facilities, we've got better programs and whatever, but there's more violence. There's more violence between prisoners; there's more violence between guards and prisoners. I say that one of the probabilities of that breakdown in discipline is the uneven administration of regulations within the institution.

Is the Attorney-General protesting what I've just said, or shall we move that the committee rise? Should the committee rise, Mr. Chairman?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would the member for Vancouver Centre continue.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Chairman, I'll wait for a moment for the Attorney-General to return. But the point that should be raised is that we're spending millions and millions of dollars on institutions and millions and millions of dollars on rehabilitation, and it's not working. Any guard, any prisoner in an honest moment, and anybody involved in the administration of justice will tell you: there is no rehabilitation in our prison system. It's just not working.

I'm not suggesting that all of a sudden we're going to reform the prison system in Canada because of my speech today. But I am suggesting that the Attorney-General look carefully at appointing an inquiry which will save, I'm convinced, the province millions of dollars. If not, it will save the province the hundreds of thousands of dollars that we have to expend from time to time to clear up riot-torn prisons, violence to guards and violence to the other staff in the prisons, caused, I think, primarily by this breakdown in discipline.

We're also letting down 70 percent of the prison population that accepts responsibility for their actions, will serve their time and, without a carrot or a stick on parole or supervision, will leave the institution and enter a rehabilitation mode.

If you join the two, the two will fail. The two have failed. Let me give you an example. A prisoner, let's say pretty hard-bitten — we might even say, without benefit of psychiatric advice, that he looks psychopathic to us — has committed a series of crimes. He's sentenced to prison, and he finds that in prison he can opt for one or more of these programs. By opting for these programs, one of two things — usually both — happens. One is that if he can convince them, with whatever skill, stealth — and occasionally sincerity, let's say for the moment — he can that he should get out earlier, he can tie up an army of psychiatrists, social workers and benevolent-thinking people, and twist them to the point where he can obtain his early leaving of the prison institution.

That's great for him. Where does the harm come? The harm comes, first, in our deceiving ourselves that there is any rehabilitation in the prison setting, because there isn't. Secondly, the harm comes because he's using the system within the prison structure to obtain special status as a prisoner. The animosity that that creates between prisoners and through the guards has become immense. The other prisoners do not know where they stand. They see the injustices of this confusion, and that is the underlying psychology, I put it to the committee, for a lot of the animosity between guards and prisoners and between the prisoners themselves.

[4:00]

If there's a breakdown in the enforcement of regulations, or an uneven enforcement of regulations in prisons, it allows guards and the prison administration too much discretion in the enforcement of regulations. It must be predictable, clear, certain and swift, and it will avoid the increasing brutality and violence in our prisons. It will certainly diminish it, if not avoid it altogether. If the prison guard is trained to know that woe betide him if he ever applies the regulations unevenly, and if the administration backs the prison guards and the prison population knows clearly where it stands, discipline can be reinstituted.

I do not argue against better conditions for our prison population; I call for them. I do not argue for more people in prisons; I argue for fewer people in prisons. There are too many non-violent convicts in prison. They don't belong there. We can spend $3,000 a year to house them in the community, but we spend $50,000 a year to keep them in penal institutions. That's where the money can come from for legal aid, for rape relief centres, and to fund the other programs in the administration of justice. If the rehabilitation mode is required, it will be required after the prison institution setting has dealt with the convict.

Mr. Chairman, I'm going to ask that the member for Skeena (Mr. Howard) elaborate on some of the points that I have raised in terms of provincial penal institutions, and as they apply to federal ones as well. Then I would ask whether the Attorney-General has any comments on that.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I would like to make an observation concerning what I consider to be a very distressing situation that recently occurred in our country, and that is the judgment of the Federal Court of Appeal pronounced on March 14, just a couple of weeks ago. From the perspective of the general public of Canada, Mr. Chairman, it is indeed a very unfortunate judgment. I'm not questioning that the court had its duty to do, and indeed it did its duty — and perhaps correctly so. But I'm very concerned about the consequences. There appears to be almost complete freedom, save and except the Criminal Code, to import filth into our country with impunity, at least for the present. I'd say that is very bad. The court in the case of Luscher v. Deputy Minister of National Revenue considered the following facts at issue. This dealt with narratives — and I'm referring now to the judgment — in grossly vulgar language. There were extremely explicit photographs. The court summed up the findings of the trial judge with these words: "These actions are in no way unnatural or unlawful and, indeed, they are a common part of the lives of Canadian men and women."

This is not the point that I am going to make during the course of my remarks — that it was something within the common part of the lives of Canadian men and women. The court dealt with tariff item 99201-1 — and I'm reading from the judgment — and this tariff item in the customs regulations reads: "Books, printed paper, drawings, paintings,

[ Page 5477 ]

prints, photographs, or representations of any kind of a treasonable or seditious, or of an immoral or indecent character." "Section 2(b) of the charter enshrines and protects as 'fundamental' freedoms: 'freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication."' The court said this: "No freedom, however, can be absolute, and those guaranteed by the charter are no exception. They are, by section 1, subject to, such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."' That text, said the court in its turn, "makes it clear enough that the task of demonstrating the justification for a limitation of a protected freedom falls upon government," which I think is indeed a correct articulation of the law.

The court continues:

"A reasonable limit prescribed by law is that it should be expressed in terms sufficiently clear to permit a determination of where and what the limit is. A limit which is vague, ambiguous, uncertain, or subject to discretionary determination is, by that fact alone, an unreasonable limit. Uncertainty and vagueness are constitutional vices when they are used to restrain constitutionally protected rights and freedoms."

Then we find this statement, Mr. Chairman:

"The first observation" — dealing with the legislation the court was considering — "to be made in this regard is that the words 'immoral' and 'indecent' are nowhere defined in the legislation. This at once serves to distinguish the provisions of tariff item 99201-1 from the obscenity provisions of the Criminal Code, which contains in subsection 159(8) words which might be thought to give to those provisions sufficient certainty and particularity."

Then the court found, towards the end of the judgment: "I conclude that, insofar as it prohibits the importation of matters of immoral or indecent character, tariff item 99201-1 is not a reasonable limitation upon the freedoms guaranteed by section 2(b) of the charter and is of no force or effect." Well, with all respect to the learned judges, I tend to disagree with their conclusion. Some may well say, as did Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist, that the law is an ass. Others may say that the judgment is wrong, and it should be appealed. Others may say that the judgment is indeed correct and that the act should be amended.

Mr. Chairman, I spoke to a senior customs official on the weekend and, regretfully, I gather it is not business as usual. They are following the decision, with the result that material heretofore prohibited, and which I would say pretty well every layman in the country would consider highly immoral, is coming into the country. I would rather not give a specific, because it's filthy; it is objectionable; it is obscene, and, in my view, it's manifestly disgraceful. It's rather rottenly described as "kiddie porn." It's pictures of adults and literally babies in disgusting poses and performing disgusting acts. This material is usually produced by organized crime.

I would like to ask my colleague the Attorney-General whether he has urged his counterparts in Ottawa to immediately appeal the case, or to ask for a stay so that the current and well-accepted practice of customs authorities may continue, or that they immediately introduce remedial legislation in the House of Commons.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

MR. HOWARD: Mr. Chairman, the subject matter raised by the Minister of Intergovernmental Relations is an extremely important one and is of concern to members on this side of the House. It will be dealt with, not by me initially, not to detract from the value and the importance of it. I think it's a subject matter that lends itself to a continued debate, so that all views can be expressed with respect to it and come to some consensus, rather than have it sort of mixed up with a variety of other subjects that come under the Attorney-General's ministry. As the member for Vancouver Centre indicated earlier, we want initially to deal with corrections as a segment of the ministry and put forward some points in what we hope is a cohesive way. We hope to get some response from the Attorney-General with respect to those matters.

I want to follow along the line of the subject under his domain referred to as corrections. During the time that I was in the federal House, I spent a considerable amount of time along with some of my other colleagues in paying attention to the matter of corrections in the federal scene. I gained a fair amount of experience in visiting various institutions and talking with people in them, both custodial and administrative, inmates, and the like. Probably one thing in prisons we may want to try and think about in a rather uncomplicated way is that there are basically two groups in the prison system: one of the groups has the keys and the other doesn't. It falls into those two basic groups. The people who don't have the keys have an obligation to themselves, they say, to get out as quickly and as early as possible by whatever means possible. The group that has the keys says no, you've got to stay here for the stated period of time until some other authority says you can go. But who has the keys, who the custodial groups are and what their responsibility and authority are, oftentimes becomes very confused, because into the scene has come — over quite a period of time now — a group that we loosely refer to as the social scientists: psychologists, psychiatrists, penologists, social workers and so on. They have been fitted into this prison system presumably to assist in identifying the emotional characteristics of the prisoner, and to use that information in some way to see that the inmate becomes a rehabilitated human being and learns his or her lesson, as the saying goes.

The theory was that if this psychological identification took place it would add to rehabilitation and cut down on recidivism and so on. I think the theory has failed. I don't think it has worked as anticipated by those who promoted and advanced it as the panacea for the situations that exist in prisons, both federally and provincially. I'm quick to say that some years ago I was one of those who felt that psychological help from trained personnel was necessary; I still do, but in a different setting.

The custodial officer in this system, whose function is to keep custody of the inmates — keep them locked up and so on — is associated with the social scientists in terms of relating to the inmate. We've basically got three groups now: the custodial group, the social scientist group, and the inmates. Because of this interplay between those three groups, and internally sometimes within them, the lines of discipline, authority and clarity of purpose are blurred and confused, not only in the minds of the inmate, who may be unsure what is expected of him in terms of a rule system, but also in the minds of the custodial officers, many times in the minds of the administration, who are also in a custodial officer capacity, and in the minds of the social scientists and the psychologists as well. All of this confusion arises because of the

[ Page 5478 ]

importation into what otherwise should be a rigid and structured system with clear rules as to what should occur within it. There's a breakdown of discipline as a result of the confusion. There's a breakdown of what the historical authority-inmate relationship should be. There should be one, and everybody should know what it is.

The purpose, it would seem to me, not only in prisons but in our whole society — it should be the same way with parents bringing up children — is to instil individual recognition of that person accepting responsibility for his or her own actions. That primary objective has been lost sight of in our prison system in the last three or four decades. It has been pushed to one side, and that contributes to the confusion and the difficulties.

[4:15]

One of the problems arising out of this three-group interplay — and the internal interplay between them, for argument's sake — is that some inmates are looked upon as favourites in the system. Some inmate, because of the psychologist or the psychiatrist or whoever the social scientist might be in the system, is identified as a person worthy of having psychiatric or psychological treatment. Maybe it will arise out of a decision or a statement in court, or maybe there will be a plea in court that the person did this because they were unsure of what they were doing at the moment, or were emotionally disturbed, or whatever reason; it's very hard to say. Maybe an inmate will be chosen by the social scientists to fit into the psychiatrist's sort of activities, or maybe the inmate will opt to try to do it himself. That creates inmate-versus-inmate jealousies, hostilities and fights, attacks one upon the other, riots and destruction of public property. If those kinds of animosities boil up and are given support, it's one of the contributing factors to riots.

The playing of favourites can also operate in terms of the custodial staff picking and playing favourites, if the lines are blurred. A case in point is the terrible and infamous riot in St. Vincent de Paul federal penitentiary a number of years ago. After, when there was an internal inquiry into the causes of that riot, one of the reasons for the riot taking place was the discovery that one of the chief keepers on a particular shift was playing favourites with inmates for homosexual purposes. That was discovered to be the rationale. That created the animosities and the hard feelings, and a raging riot took place in St. Vincent de Paul, all as a result of a lack of or a slackening off of the disciplinary structure.

Guards feel somewhat threatened in all of this. They're not sure of what their role or function is, in a disciplinary sense. There's animosity sometimes between guards and social scientists that come up. In one instance the padre in a particular prison spent more time giving advice and counsel to the guards who felt threatened by this system than he did to inmates — and he was hired for the purpose of giving advice and counsel to inmates. He spent his time with the custodial officers.

It creates animosities between guards and inmates, resulting in one visiting attacks upon the other, depending on who has the opportunity first to do it. Inmates against guards, yes. Guards against inmates, yes. That contributes to riots and the demoralization.

There are two groups, I think, in this kind of system, Mr. Chairman, who really like it. One is the group of social scientists, and the other group is the inmates who happen to fit into the social scientists' interplay. Those who play the game; those who participate in the game. In many cases it's looked upon just simply as that — a game. There are inmates who will deliberately and consciously go out of their way to try to establish an association with the psychiatrist or the psychologist, and who will admit to almost anything put to them in the hopes that by satisfying the inquiry of the psychiatrist or psychologist they'll find a way out of jail. They're playing the game. "This person wants me to admit that I hate my mother; I'll admit that I'll hate my mother." Or whatever it might be. But it's a game participated in by the inmate to find his way out of the system earlier than might otherwise be the case. So those are the two that like it.

When a criminal act takes place, I think the first thing apart from apprehension and charges and a court decision to do something with the person who commits that act — that we must look at is how we can get that person to accept the responsibility for his or her own actions. It might not be possible. But how can we do it? Because if we can do it, and if that person will accept that responsibility and say, "Yes, I am the master of my own indignities and my own fate," and if that person will say, "Yes, I have never met anybody in the world that's caused me more difficulty than I have," and recognize that as a fact of life, then that person is on the way to rehabilitation. That's the solution, and the key to it — if the person can do that. That's got to be our primary responsibility, after the person has gone through the courts and regardless of what the judge says about it.

If there's an emotional or psychiatric problem that that person has, yes, treat that. But treat that as a separate ailment. Don't mix the two of them up. Don't mix the social scientist, with his treatment aspects or his profession, up in the prison system, to try to lead, either inadvertently or directly or by carelessness, the inmate to deny the acceptance of responsibility for that inmate's own activity. Don't let him avoid that. We need, in a prison system, very clear and precise rules. We need discipline. We need an adherence to the rules. We need a system within the prison of some kind of punishment if those rules are violated. I don't mean punishment of a brutalizing nature, but clear, precise and expected, and put out even-handedly.

I think that our prison system has failed because of our misguided intentions. For years governments abandoned their responsibilities, and this government is no different than the one in Ottawa in the regard of operating a proper prison system. It has abandoned it to a group of loosely identified social scientists, as I call them — psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists, penologists, whatever.

The two fundamental components of a prison operation which should never be lost sight of, and which must be reinstituted — and I think we can reinstitute them by getting the social scientists out of the jails — are clearly a defined set of rules of behaviour called discipline, and punishment for violators of that discipline. We also need an identification of some process, and that will be the process of doing it, the process of accepting responsibility for your own behaviour.

Mr. Chairman, I think if we abandon and get rid of social scientists in the prison system and put them someplace else, we will then be getting to the point of what is true and acceptable rehabilitation. If we can get true and acceptable rehabilitation, it will mean fewer inmates in our prisons and fewer recidivists and a lower cost to the taxpayer for keeping our correction system in operation.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. members, before recognizing the next speaker, whomever that might be, I'd like to have all

[ Page 5479 ]

members of the committee refer to page 18 of our Standing Orders, schedule 5. For time limits on Committee of Supply, it says:

"Committee of Supply, All Proceedings (i) Leaders of recognized parties or designated member thereof: one opening statement not exceeding 30 minutes, thereafter 15 minutes, and (ii) Any other member, including a leader when another member has been designated under (i): 15 minutes."

Further, practice recommendation No. 9 advises us: "A member who wishes to speak as designated member should advise the Chair as early as possible after the commencement of his or her speech."

Following the opening remarks in the estimates of the Attorney-General, the Attorney-General did speak over the 15 minutes, as would be afforded to him under our new standing orders. However, through the inadvertence of the Chair, the second member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk) was given a green light at 13 minutes and therefore probably given the impression that his time was up. That was not the case.

Clearly our standing orders state that the official opposition will be allowed one 30-minute speech during these estimates, and that can be accepted at any time, although I would suspect in further estimates it will be the opening statement, as is stated in our estimates.

HON. MR. SMITH: I want to respond briefly to the two topics that have taken up most of the last half hour. First of all, to respond to the excellent points made by the member for Vancouver Centre and the member for Skeena. I think that they are probably not an unfair characterization of the problems in the federal penitentiary system even today, where you have your more-than-two-year servers, and where you have a constant clash between the people in those institutions who have custodial duties and those who have treatment duties. Who could quarrel with your theme that the armies of people involved in the treatment end do not seem to have produced the desired result?

But you know, our system, as you're aware, is a two-year-less-a-day-maximum system and the average sentence for our prisoners is 93 days. So that's what they're sentenced to, and what they serve on the average is around 50 to 55 days. So we don't have a layer of social scientists. They're just not in our system. Ours is a penalty-serving practically oriented system.

First of all, you serve your penalty. You're eligible for provincial parole; you get that. The only opportunities that we provide are, firstly, work, because we don't want people being idle; and, secondly, educational opportunities, if they can benefit from those. But we don't have a rehabilitative, bureaucratic, social-service layer in our system. Ours is very much pay your dues, serve your sentences, do some work and then move out. But I don't quarrel with your basic themes — very conservative themes, I might say — many of which I share.

Interjection.

HON. MR. SMITH: I agree. I'm not in any way putting them down. I think that they're....

Interjection.

HON. MR. SMITH: Well, there's a conservatism in social democratic themes too. I'm speaking philosophically, not from a party standpoint. No, I think they're good comments.

If I could just say one thing about the case that my colleague mentioned, the case of Luscher v. Deputy Minister of National Revenue. That is the kind of case that we're going to get under the charter dealing with legislation that the court deems obscure and vague. The reason that case was decided as it was is because the test was for a customs officer to deal with something on the basis of it being obscene and immoral, whereas the Criminal Code spells out some sort of framework of prohibited activity. The courts are going to move right in, under the charter, as they did with our roadside suspension legislation, which wasn't as bad as the customs tariff, and they're going to strike it down.

MR. LAUK: Do you think the customs tariff was a bad decision of law?

[4:30]

[Mr. Ree in the chair.]

HON. MR. SMITH: No, I don't think it was a bad decision in law. I think it's a bad piece of drafting. The customs tariff needs amendment. I wouldn't urge the government of Canada to appeal that decision at all but to get on with drafting that amendment. That's what I said last week. But the result of the decision is just open sesame, open floodgates, and the charter is going to be giving the impression to Canadians that it's causing a great flourish of organized crime and activity that Canadians don't like. So the response of legislators, I think, has to be that when we have a piece of legislation that's obviously bad, let's correct it and change it quickly, and speed up our system.

I have never seen anything more cumbersome and bureaucratic than the legislative process in Ottawa. It takes about 17 months — going the old course — to get these changes. They're drafted and redrafted, sent to committees and recycled back to committees, and then ultimately they're debated by a committee that calls witnesses from all over the western world. Finally they get into the House, and all they're doing is changing some comma in the schedule to the Food and Drugs Act.

MR. LAUK: Oh, come on!

HON. MR. SMITH: No, I tell you that's right. You were there. Don't you remember that...?

Interjection.

HON. MR. SMITH: No. You remember that fundamental change in the law they made so that they could get the salt of a drug instead of the drug itself in a pipe, and get a conviction? It took them about four years to work that through their cumbersome system. They couldn't amend anything in a week to save their life. But that's what they're going to have to do. They're going to have to have new processes. So I say to them: "Go to it, boys. Amend it."

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, I want to offer a different perspective on the question of corrections, because I agree with my two colleagues that in fact there are too many people in jails in Canada, but I think I disagree with the reasons for

[ Page 5480 ]

it. I believe that if there are too many people in jails it's because we have too many laws that offer incarceration as the way of dealing with the offence. That's really where we should start — by looking at the laws that incarcerate people rather than offering alternatives as a means of dealing with a particular offence.

I believe that the prisons have three functions. They are to protect society from the guilty person and to punish the person who has broken the law. But I believe that the third function they have is a rehabilitative one and that if any of those three functions don't work, they should be improved, not discarded. If the prisons are not protecting society from guilty people, you don't just say: "Let's not have prisons." If in fact they're not carrying out the job of punishing, you don't say: "Let's not have prisons and let's not have punishment." What sense does it make, then, if rehabilitation is not as successful as we want it to be, to say: "Let us not have rehabilitation"? I think that is not the correct way of looking at it.

When you look at the prison population, Mr. Chairman, you find some very interesting things about them. For the most part they are poor — it's always poor people who end up in prisons; in Canada, for the most part, they are native Indian — or a very large percentage of them are native Indian; and a study done by one of our judges in British Columbia also tells us that for the most part they are undereducated and, in many instances, have learning and reading disabilities.

I don't think locking these people up and saying, "You are there to be punished," and not doing anything to help them deal with the reason they are there is going to benefit society in any way. I think that punishment has to go hand in hand with every effort that can be made to ensure that when those people leave jail they either have a skill or at least have an understanding of why they were there, and will be on their way to trying to do things differently.

I've never been into the male jails, but I certainly have visited the women's prisons. I notice something very interesting about Lakeside. I made it my business to check again today the population there, to be sure that the breakdown hadn't changed. Again, it turns out that most of the women in that prison — or 25 percent of the women in that prison — are native women. Fifty percent of the women in that prison have never been to high school; as a matter of fact, more than 10 percent of the women in that prison are supposed to be functionally illiterate, with a grade 5 education or less.

That's the statistic that I got today, Mr. Chairman, about the people in Lakeside Correctional. I don't know whether the men are different. I don't know whether most of the men in the male prisons are PhDs or not. But I certainly do know that in the women's prisons, and in particular in Lakeside, which I have visited on more than one occasion, most of those women are poor. As I have said, an inordinate percentage of them are native, and as this latest figure shows, 10 percent of them are functionally illiterate. I am not convinced that society is well served by locking those women up and not doing everything in its power to help rehabilitate them — help them to get an education, to develop some skills, to learn a trade if that is possible — so that when they leave the prison they can at least make an attempt to put their lives together.

Mr. Chairman, I am also not convinced that.... I guess I have a conflict of interest. I cannot speak about the job that social service workers do in institutions, because I am myself a social scientist, as you know. I am a social worker, and I do believe very strongly that one way of helping people take responsibility for their actions is to ensure that they understand why they did whatever it was that caused them to end up in jail in the first place. That certainly is one of the responsibilities of whatever social service worker one comes in contact with in the institution.

I think it's a little bit too easy to say that the reason why things don't work out in jail is that there are too many social workers and too many psychiatrists in the system. We need to take a more in-depth analysis, a more serious look at the reasons why people end up in jail anyway — in particular, to question why so many of the people who are in jail are poor. That's the question. Let's look at our laws and find out why there are so many laws that result in incarceration rather than in an alternative way of dealing with whatever the crime is. Look at why there are so many native people in jails. Look at why there are so many functionally illiterate people and uneducated people in jail. Those are the kinds of things that I would like the Attorney-General to look at, rather than grabbing a simple answer and saying that what we need to do with our jails is get rid of our social workers and our psychiatrists.

As I said, Mr. Chairman, I'm trying not to respond in a conflict-of-interest fashion to this, but I am very much concerned that because the function of rehabilitation in the system isn't working, the Attorney-General is agreeing that the way to deal with it is to move rehabilitation out of the system. That is not the way to deal with it. When Mrs. Justice Proudfoot looked at the system as it affected women, in particular Lakeside, she recommended the establishment of a library in that facility, that there should be a budget for the establishment of schoolrooms and education, that there should be teachers in that institution, and that every effort should be made to ensure that women who enter that institution without an education and without any skills should not leave that institution without education and without skills. That's the kind of thing that certainly has to be done.

I want to repeat: I don't know what goes on in the men's jails. I've never been inside a man's jail. I'm speaking specifically from the point of view of the women's institution because that's what I have been inside.

I notice that the Attorney-General recently visited the municipality of Surrey, where there was some question about the behaviour of young people on the streets — the gangs — and agreed that the solution was to employ more police officers. That's not the solution to kids on the streets. We have to go back, Mr. Chairman, and look at what those kids are doing and why they are on the streets. They're on the streets because the school system, to begin with, couldn't handle them; because there are no other resources; because Human Resources cut out the street worker program that used to work with those kids. Those are the reasons those kids are on the street. To say that the money should be spent on hiring 56 police officers to deal with those kids — that is not the solution.

I am concerned that we are dealing more and more with people who break the law by saying, let's build more prisons, let's lock more people up, let's be more punitive rather than trying to find out the reason why people are coming into conflict with the law, and trying to modify both the law and people so that there will be a better relationship between the two.

[ Page 5481 ]

HON. MR. SMITH: Lakeside, Mr. Chairman, does offer education programs through Douglas College. My information is that we have from time to time had difficulty in getting inmates at Lakeside to avail themselves of those programs. I can assure her that they're encouraged to do so and that we wish them to do so. I don't think that anyone was suggesting that we shouldn't have rehabilitation. I'm saying that in our short-stay system it is not one of our primary objects while they're in custody. But useful educational and work experience, yes.

As for her comments on Surrey, I quite agree with her that the answer is not to add 50 new police officers to the force. They're going to be adding eight more. That's what we've requested from the Solicitor-General. The council have voted for eight. But one of the main problems there is that you have no central core, a number of local cores, very fast-growing, a lot of young families, a lot of single-family situations as well, according to what I heard on Saturday from the people who presented briefs to me, There are a lot of kids around who don't have anything to do.

Youth work and volunteer community work is always the best and most productive way of reaching those young people. In Gordon Head, part of my constituency, my office organized a series of dances. We've had about five or six of them now. The motif of those dances is that they're clean dances. You can't come if you're on drugs or taking booze; you're thrown out. They're run and monitored by the kids and supported by the police, who come to them in plain clothes, and the parents are behind them. Last time we had 500 at the dance. We just can't look after them all. It's now become a peer thing in Gordon Head not to do drugs and booze and to go to these things. They're organizing other events now.

That sort of approach in Surrey or any other community, I believe, is more helpful than adding platoons of policemen. But Surrey is trying to sort out its problems, and I think it is making some progress.

MR. LAUK: We're not disturbing that crowd over there in the corner, are we, Mr. Chairman?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Member, with the number of them with their chairs turned to the back of us, it looks like a preponderance of back-benchers there.

MR. LAUK: Are they having a crap game or just a discussion?

Mr. Chairman, I want to make it clear for the record that the proposition of discipline in penal institutions does not preclude the concept of rehabilitation, but rather that rehabilitation should be separated from a penal institution because of its deleterious effect on discipline, causing hardship for the inmates and the custodian alike.

[4:45]

We agree wholeheartedly with the fact that poor people, native Indians and illiterates — quite often all three in the one person — are the types incarcerated. I would argue that that problem is not resolved in the prison setting. Social scientists can't make poor people wealthier. They can't make illiterate people literate. They can't make native Indians not native Indians. They're in prison. The way you stop the influx of prisoners who are in these groups is by increasing legal aid so that good counsel will represent these people.

There is absolutely no excuse for 4 percent of British Columbia's population — maybe less now — the native Indian, comprising over 40 percent of our prison population. That is a social issue. It is a problem within society, and it must be dealt with. It's also a problem of the administration of justice.

Mr. Speaker, I find myself unable to continue my debate in the present mood of the House. I wonder if you could ask them either to leave or to remain quiet.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would all the members contribute to silence so that the member for Vancouver Centre can continue.

MR. LAUK: I have the greatest respect for the member for Burnaby-Edmonds (Ms. Brown). I know of her years of experience in dealing with these issues on a front-line basis. Her profile of social conditions that create prison populations is indisputable. Everyone knows that that's an indisputable profile of our prison population. Those social conditions are reprehensible. They're a black mark on our society, and they should be addressed. What the member for Skeena (Mr. Howard) and I propose is that they cannot be practically addressed within the prison setting, and that's not where the solution lies.

I want to deal with the other point that was raised. I find it astounding that there's been a 600 percent increase in breaking and entering in the Surrey constituency, and one member for Surrey is not here, while the other member for Surrey is carrying on chit-chat in the comer while the issue involving her constituency is being addressed in this chamber. I find it more astounding, Mr. Chairman, that the hon. Attorney-General would stand up in this House and answer here and in Surrey.... When people are desperately seeking some kind of solution to the crime problem they have in their jurisdiction, he says: "Let's have a dance." Does he realize what people he's dealing with in Surrey, what kind of elements are terrorizing merchants and people in that jurisdiction?

MRS. JOHNSTON: You don't know what you're talking about.

MR. LAUK: I do know what I'm talking about. Trotting out these issues.... What is the hon. member for Surrey arguing, that there is no crime problem in Surrey?

Interjection.

MR. LAUK: You said I didn't know what I was talking about.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. All members will have their opportunity to participate in debate. Would the member for Vancouver Centre please address the Chair.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Chairman, it's clear to me that this problem is not being seriously addressed by the two MLAs in Surrey; they're trotting out the Attorney-General as a little bit of a circus out there, hoping that they'll be able to salvage the votes that they're losing because of their inability to address the problem. Clearly, it's demonstrated in this House by the attitude of the hon. first member for Surrey (Mrs. Johnston),

[ Page 5482 ]

and the late arrival of the second member for Surrey (Mr. Reid).

Let me address the way the minister addressed the problem. This sort of defeatist look at the administration of justice.... These citizens want answers in Surrey. The answer is not that we have more police; the answer is not that we have a dance. You go out and talk to the kids who are supposed to be responsible for these crimes, and you will find out that a lot of them are unemployed, a lot of them have been kicked out of school and a lot of them need to be dealt with on a social basis. A lot of them haven't committed crimes in a risk area. You won't need eight police; you're going to need 150 more police next year, unless you deal with the social problems, raised by the member for Burnaby-Edmonds, in a practical way and not in this sort of tongue-in-cheek approach by the two hon. members for Surrey, and this circus created by the Attorney-General. You don't say: "Let's hold a dance." You address the problems. You say: "There's nothing I can do." If it's a social question, then say so.

MR. REID: You don't know what you're talking about. You lawyers are all the same.

MR. LAUK: Do you see what I mean, Mr. Chairman? What is the concentrated, rational response from the members of Surrey? "You don't know what you're talking about. You lawyers are all the same."

Interjection.

MR. LAUK: We've had reports. We've done our investigation of the situation in Surrey. We know what the spoken problems are. We've seen what the issues are.

Interjection.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Chairman, does the hon. member for Surrey suggest that the hon. Attorney-General's suggestion that we have a dance is the solution in Surrey? Is that what the hon. member is suggesting?

Interjection.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. All members will have an opportunity to participate in the debate on vote 11. Will the member for Vancouver Centre continue to address the Chair on the vote.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Chairman, I've stated that I don't think the Attorney-General has addressed the problem. It's not a question of the administration of justice; it's a question of the social difficulties in Surrey. It's nothing but a smokescreen to invite the Attorney-General out there. The members for Surrey should have invited the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Curtis), the Minister of Industry (Hon. Mr. McClelland) and the Premier to answer why their economic policies have failed in such a disastrous way that we've got reservoirs of unemployed teenagers and youths roaming in every jurisdiction, not just in Surrey. They're not employed; they're not being educated. This government is moving into the Dark Ages on those programs, and that's why there's a crime problem in Surrey.

Do you want to talk about unemployment? It's an absolutely irrefutable proposition that as unemployment moves up, crime and violence moves up with it almost double. When unemployment moves up, violence in the family, suicides and murder increase in the same proportion. Now I'm not going to blame all of the crime on the economic policies of the provincial government. But it would be a refreshing response indeed if the government would admit that that's where the problems are coming from and address those problems from a provincial point of view by trying to solve some of them, or ameliorate the impact of them.

MR. ROSE: I have a couple of brief questions, Mr. Chairman. They are highly polemical, but, I think, relatively important — at least to some people. Can the Attorney-General tell us how many women convicted in British Columbia are serving in federal prisons for women?

HON. MR. HEWITT: Two years plus a day.

MR. ROSE: I'm aware of that. I wondered what the number was, and I understand that the minister's bureaucrats are providing him with the answer.

HON. MR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman, I'll do my best.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is the member for Coquitlam-Moody still participating in debate? I understand that one has to sit before there's an opportunity for others to speak.

HON. MR. SMITH: I'm advised that at any given time there are between 15 and 20 who are convicted in British Columbia, sentenced to imprisonment of more than two years and serving that in Kingston. Then there are about 10 or 12 who are serving their sentence in a British Columbia institution, under a federal-provincial agreement, having been convicted of a crime and sentenced to more than two years.

MR. ROSE: I'd like to ask him what determines whether an inmate serves at Twin Maples, for instance, up in Maple Ridge, or in some prison miles away from home and family. The Attorney-General mentioned that there are 20 in Kingston.

HON. MR. SMITH: Security, mainly. If we can meet the security requirements, we try to keep them here — under the federal-provincial agreement. But if we can't, the only secure facility for women is in Kingston. There should be a federal women's institution in British Columbia. I have urged upon the Solicitor-General the establishment of such an institution. I believe that we can look forward to that in the future. But I think that's the answer. It's not desirable having all your prisoners from across Canada, even the more severe security problems, concentrated in Kingston. They should stay in their regions.

MR. ROSE: I'm glad the minister said that, because it seems to me that punishment or incarceration for a long term is pretty severe punishment. If the punishment is even added to in the case of women, as opposed to men, by their being denied, because of distance and economics, reasonable family visits.... Until such a program develops, it would seem to me not impractical that from time to time some kind of assistance be provided to the relatives of those inmates, because jails are certainly pretty expensive. I don't know

[ Page 5483 ]

what the budget is for federal prisons right now, but the last time I looked there were roughly 9,000 inmates and 9,000 guards or corrections workers. It led to my suggestion one time that they could close all the prisons down if each one took one home. That's a facetious remark, but I think it's important to know that there is a lot of money being spent federally on prisoners. And the fact that some people, because they are women, are denied even the modicum of visits by relatives is an additional punishment.

MS. BROWN: Just a very short question on Lakeside. I know that the Ministry of Education used to put $3 of every $4 into the educational process at Lakeside, and corrections used to put in $1. This year Education has withdrawn its entire funding. I gather that corrections is now putting up half of the money, which means that there's still a drop of about 50 percent in the funding for that educational facility.

In view of the fact I pointed out earlier, that education is really necessary at that institution, what is the ministry going to do about this? They can't make do with 50 percent of the funding they had last time, not with the kinds of statistics we are getting about how poorly educated the inmates are.

HON. MR. SMITH: It's certainly correct that it was a casualty of education cuts, and we're reviewing it now to see how much of it we can pick up in addition to the 50 percent. Some of it was planned to be scaled down because of lack of demand and use, I can tell you that. But if the demand and use is there I guess we'll have to try to find some way of continuing it. But the education funding was withdrawn, you're right.

[5:00]

MR. HOWARD: Mr. Speaker, I am intrigued by the suggestion of the Attorney-General that the federal prison for women — I think that's what it's called — should be in British Columbia. It was here at one time, or there was an attempt to move it, and, for what reason I don't know, it failed. But perhaps what the Attorney-General is saying is that British Columbians who are women and who are sentenced to a federal penitentiary should be located in the province so they'd be closer to their families. That would be the reasonable purpose of doing such a thing. If that's the case, the same situation prevails with respect to every province or every region. It's a valid thought.

I wonder if the Attorney-General has looked at the question of the numbers of people who might be involved. The prison for women in Kingston didn't accommodate a great number of women. There weren't that many over the years who entered the criminal world and ended up being sentenced to a federal sentence. I don't know what the number is now — would it be 60?

HON. MR. SMITH: In total?

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

MR. HOWARD: Yes, total, Do you know? I don't know either.

But if the idea is to break up the federal prison for women and relocate it in sections in each of the provinces or regions in Canada, we've got a tremendous cost factor of duplication in building a prison for women, say, in a province where there may be three or four or five or a dozen people involved, depending on the population of the province. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to try to work out some arrangement with the federal government whereby we could use a provincial institution to accommodate women from British Columbia who are given federal sentences, so that they could live in an institution within the province of B.C. It seems that would be much more cost-satisfactory than the idea that the Attorney-General is advancing.

Also, I understood him to say that the average number of days that an inmate serves in the prison system in the province.... Was it 93 days or 53 days? It was something of that nature, anyway. Now some of them obviously were less and others were obviously greater — 18 months, two years less a day, and so on. The minister also said that rehabilitation was not an objective in the provincial system. That's what I took him to say. Those are the words as I took them down. He's shaking his head that I've got them wrong. I hope I have got them wrong, because rehabilitation has got to be a goal. I don't know what he meant by what he did say. Admittedly, if someone is sentenced to seven days — for argument's sake — the process leading to rehabilitation, whatever that might mean in a given set of circumstances, might have a lesser chance of meeting success than if one were dealing with a person who, say, had an 18-month period, where there were required to be some further questions involved.

But the fundamental thing about rehabilitation is that the individual accept the responsibility for his own actions and recognize that and do it consciously and deliberately. That's the fundamental question of rehabilitation and that has to be addressed. That can be addressed in the prison system within the province regardless of what the average stay of inmates is. I hope I got inaccurately what the minister said about the rehabilitative goals within the provincial system. Maybe he could....

HON. MR. SMITH: I think that you've got me a little bit off on that, because I said that we don't have rehabilitative resources in our provincial system except insofar as we provide work experience and educational opportunities. But we don't have the layer of resources and personnel in our provincial system. We do believe that for people serving an average sentence of 53 days the work and the educational approach to that is what is appropriate.

Let me just mention also, on your comments on a women's institution here, that we're not even seeking to have built a separate federal facility. What we would be doing is having a new Lakeside as part of our Oakalla decentralization program, and then, as part of the new Lakeside, we would have a federal-provincial sharing in that new facility so it could accommodate female prisoners both in the provincial system and in the federal system. We're not looking at building something separate or duplicating. But I still believe it is an objective, and a worthy objective, to decentralize the federal female prison population from Kingston into the regions. We may find that federal restraint is a delay to that, but we think it's a desirable goal. We've already had some preliminary discussions at the staff level, and I've talked directly to Elmer MacKay about that. But I'm talking about something we do together, not two separate institutions.

MR. HOWARD: That's all I was advancing. I think that's the thing to do. I'm glad to see we're of one mind about that.

[ Page 5484 ]

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, I'm wondering about the drug and alcohol treatment programs then. Is the minister indicating that these are not going to be enriched and enhanced and allowed to do a very good job in all of the provincial jails?

The other question is about education. I noticed in one of my clippings here from the Prince George system where the services supervisor said that this program cases jail tensions and may prevent costly, in both material and human terms, riots. Also there was a comment: "The only thing that appears constant is that these young people have grade 10 or less in terms of their education." Are those programs in any jeopardy, or are they going to be improved, enhanced and enriched so that they can really do the job?

My final question: when are we going to see that study of Willingdon that the ombudsman was doing? When it is going to be tabled?

HON. MR. SMITH: Well, I guess you'll see the study when he presents it to the Legislature. It's not concluded, anyway. What happens is that it goes to us for comment and response. We've had a preliminary draft of it, and we've responded to it. In some cases, you know, we agree with things that he says; in some cases things that he recommends have already been done. Then, when we've made all those responses, he makes up his mind as to what he will do with his final report. He may report here or he may not. He may decide that the matter is resolved. We had an immense draft report from him, and our response was very full.

No, the programs that you're talking about are not being curtailed. They're programs that are provided by agencies for us, and they will continue to be. For instance, Elizabeth Fry will continue to provide the services that it has, as will AA and other programs of an alcoholic treatment nature.

I was making my remarks about resources in the provincial prison system, as compared to the resources that are in the federal system, in response to your two members' points, to simply point out that we're really not in the business of having a major social service echelon there, as they have in federal institutions where they have long-serving prisoners. It's not that we don't believe that educational and alcoholic treatment programs are important; we do, but they're provided by agencies.

MR. LAUK: To round off on corrections and detentions, I have two questions of the minister. With respect to the Wilkinson Road hostage-taking and damage, could he advise what the final cost to the taxpayer was for that escapade? Secondly, would the Attorney-General not agree that part of the problem was caused by inexperienced people on the corrections staff being assigned posts that they hadn't been trained for? What measures have been taken by the Attorney-General and Corrections to ensure that only well-trained people are placed in custodial positions at these penal institutions? Perhaps he could deal with those two points.

HON. MR. SMITH: We don't agree that the hostage-taking situation in October, which is the first one he mentioned, was caused by inadequate training. The situation was caused by three very formidable people — or at least one of them anyway was a very formidable individual — who were awaiting trial. I don't think that even in the Legislature I should comment further on that because of the fact that those three have not yet gone to a jury; their trial is continuing. It's been a long-standing trial.

That was the October hostage situation. You were interested as well in the January disturbance, which involved about 34 inmates in the west wing and 16 inmates on the other side of that wing. They did damage that we estimated at approximately $17,350, which would be the replacement value of 26 broken water closets and 45 sinks. As you know, we're not replacing any of it because we're moving them into the new facility, but that would be the value in property damage if we replaced it. The cause of that has been the subject of a detailed internal investigation. I'd be happy to talk to you about that. I don't know that I'm really in a position today to comment on it — I'm not, because I don't have the report here — but I would think that the cause of these disturbances is usually multifaceted. If you'd like me to discuss it with you, I'd be quite happy to do so.

MR. LAUK: On the question of the early release of detainees and prisoners without checking CPIC, I understand that CPIC has an international computer bank of information with respect to outstanding warrants and charges against various individuals. It can identify by name, photograph or fingerprint.

[5:15]

My understanding from city of Vancouver police is that they don't have access to CPIC, or to this arrangement whereby they can doublecheck on outstanding charges or warrants. As the Attorney-General is aware, only last week a fugitive from the United States who was facing very serious charges in that jurisdiction was prematurely released from the lockup in the city of Vancouver. About a month and a half ago a bank robber was released, it seems to me prematurely, although I don't know whether that was a warrant check or an outstanding charge check. He was probably released by a judge.

The Attorney-General will remember that in February the provincial corrections branch — I imagine it's still investigating this case — mistakenly transferred a 29-year-old murder suspect named Woroniuk to a Chilliwack forestry work camp for low-risk offenders. The news report says he was awaiting trial on a second-degree murder charge in Vancouver when he escaped about 11 a.m. Wednesday from a work gang at Mount Thurston forestry camp near Chilliwack. He was charged with shooting someone on July 17 last. It's obvious that someone in corrections failed to notice that he was awaiting trial on a murder charge before they sent him out on a trail walk. It seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that if a suspect is not granted bail under one of the most generous bail reform acts in the history of British jurisprudence, he should hardly be transferred to a country walk when he's awaiting trial for murder.

What do these cases amount to? They amount to a public....

Mr. Chairman, may I have just a little bit of order? I don't need much to be heard, but....

MR. CHAIRMAN: The point's well taken. Order, please.

MR. LAUK: I know of at least three incidents in the last year, and I know that the public is not being adequately protected when these things happen. It is a public safety

[ Page 5485 ]

issue. Our law enforcement officers are becoming increasingly frustrated that after smart police work they get an arrest and prisoners may be released when there are other outstanding warrants in other jurisdictions.

What steps has the Attorney-General taken, and what steps is he planning to take, to deal with this problem? I suggest that the Attorney-General establish a 60-day inquiry. Appoint a senior lawyer or judge to deal with that problem within 60 days. Let's find out what these procedural problems are, because it's swinging doors in those institutions, and we don't know who is getting out on the street and who isn't. That's causing the people in my community, and I'm sure in yours, serious concern. Can the Attorney-General advise whether or not he would consider the appointment of a commission of inquiry with a very short term for reply?

HON. MR. SMITH: Well, I don't think it would tell us anything we don't already know.

There certainly were a couple of goofs on the releases. The case of the extradition-immigration warrant — if I can call it that — was the case of the gentleman who was being held on a warrant of remand under the Extradition Act, under which he was charged with armed robbery in the state of Minnesota. He was also held concurrently on a warrant under the Immigration Act for being unlawfully in Canada. He was discharged under the Immigration Act hearing. That was not proceeded with, and the warrant was cancelled. That documentation having been returned, the person who was in charge of dealing with the documents believed that the one was the other, that they were from the same department of the federal government. One was Immigration and the other was Secretary of State and Justice. So when the discharge arrived for his immigration matter, it was assumed that it was a discharge from the extradition matter and he was erroneously released. An inquiry was held and the staff member was reprimanded. There was a clear problem.

I guess as long as you have human beings doing these things, it's not always going to be perfect. But we've taken corrective action to ensure that the staff are absolutely aware that each of these warrants is individual — stands on its own footing, having to be checked individually, and is completely separate — and that no one is to be released from custody until all documents are checked. If there is any outstanding warrant, they're not to be released. So we know what went wrong there. The case last year was investigated thoroughly as well, and that was another case where a record was simply not known and not available to the person who made that decision.

The third case that you mentioned — the case of Jean Beaulac, alias Pierre Marcoux — was a problem of the delays in getting the fingerprint verification. In order to access CPIC you have to have the fingerprint. Otherwise you don't get a record under the name of the alias. What happened there was that on December 22 Marcoux was arrested by Vancouver city police and charged with six indictable offences under the name of Jean Beaulac. A name check was conducted by Vancouver city police, which showed no previous record. That was done nationally as well. On December 24, 1984 — that was two days later — he appeared in remand court, and a three-day adjournment was requested by the Crown to verify the fingerprint record of this man. The police suspected that he was not who he said he was.

On December 27 the RCMP forwarded fingerprints to Ottawa via Photofax. The request was denied due to the non-completion of the correct RCMP form, if you can imagine that. That denial stood in the face of a second call from the Vancouver city police explaining the urgency of the request. On the same date as somebody in Ottawa was standing on the correct-form argument, a bail hearing was being held. Marcoux, charged as Beaulac, was released on his own recognizance, based on inaccurate information presented to the judge. No record was produced based on the name check, so the Crown could come up with nothing.

Then on the following day on December 28, when this guy was already at large, a second attempt was made by the RCMP, using the correct form, to get through the fingerprint check. That same day the same man held up a bank in Vancouver, and was chased, cornered, shot and killed by a Vancouver city police constable. As a result of that we had a coroner's inquest into it and the coroner's inquest recommended that all Crown counsel make themselves familiar with various options available for identifying accused persons and that Crown counsel ensure all options had been utilized prior to making any submissions on the accused through Photofax. Well, the errors there seemed to go further and seemed to involve a lot of silly bureaucracy with the Photofax system, so that this request couldn't get in, and, of course, the inability of Crown counsel in that case to get a longer adjournment, which was necessary to verify the suspicions that this man was using an alias and had a record. And they just couldn't get the adjournment on the bail hearing; the judge wouldn't agree to it.

I think we've learned some things from that.

AN HON. MEMBER: What?

HON. MR. SMITH: Well, we learned that you've got to have a better system on Photofax and for getting this information nationally out of the machine. It can't be based on whether you've got a correct form filled out or riot. You've got to be able to get these on an urgent basis, number one, and....

Interjection.

HON. MR. SMITH: Recommendations have been made.

Number two is, I guess, even tougher insistence in these cases for adjournment of the bail hearing. As you know, as a practitioner, under the Bail Reform Act it's pretty hard to postpone someone's prima facie entitlement to bail beyond about three days. The courts don't like to do it. Unless it's a case where the person is extremely violent or where the offence was one of violence, they don't like to adjourn it.

MR. LAUK: The Attorney-General has just given the best argument why an inquiry should be made. He has catalogued the incredible ineptitude of the Photofax system and its service to provincial and urban jurisdictions in the country.

I do not agree with the Attorney-General that you keep a guy in jail because the procedure doesn't work. This time it was Joe Marcoux; next time it may be Mr. Innocent. If the police have a suspicion that Mr. Innocent is not who he says he is, they'll keep him in jail a couple of weeks to find out and check out that he is Mr. Innocent? My point is simply this: you don't put the burden on people who are charged with offences to stay in, jail while the procedure and the administration takes its time, for whatever reason, to determine

[ Page 5486 ]

who the person is and what that person's record is, and whether there are outstanding warrants. I ask again: will the Attorney-General consider a for trial inquiry to put pressure on the federal agencies and put pressure on the RCMP to tighten up these procedures? There's a public safety issue.

I might say that the Joe Marcoux shooting took place right across from my law office when I was going out for lunch. As much as it might please the Attorney-General, it could have been me, a member of my staff or anybody else that was faced with Joe Marcoux, and Joe Marcoux might have been carrying a loaded pistol.

You have people with outstanding warrants for robbery and murder walking through the revolving door, and you throw up your hands and say: "Well, we're trying to tighten up the system. Oh, well, it's human error." This requires a formal inquiry with definite recommendations so we can put pressure on the feds and pressure on our own systems in the city and provincially to make sure it just doesn't happen. We spend all this money on investigation. Half the time we don't know who committed a crime. We're trying to use the limited resources of our police forces to find people out. The people we do know should be charged with crimes, we're letting out anyway.

I don't care if it only happens once a year. It's serious enough. It's happened three and more times a year in our own jurisdiction in this province, and it's no excuse for the Attorney-General to say: "Oh, well, it's human error." There's got to be a reason why somebody can't recognize a writ as opposed to an immigration writ or a warrant. There is a clear difference, and if they're not experienced to know about it, a supervisor should have the procedure set out where they give the okay for such releases.

As for bail reform hearings, the judges have every right to let a person out, according to the Bail Reform Act. It's not his problem that the procedures are screwed up; it's your problem, and it's the federal government's problem. You can't throw up your hands and say we'll solve our ineptitude procedurally by going to the judge and holding this guy for a week or two weeks. It's just not to be done. We're going to become the laughing-stock of the country by letting these people out of prison when there are serious warrants against them, either in Canada or in the United States.

[Mr. Ree in the chair.]

MR. PASSARELL: In regard to this debate here, I would like to bring forth some of my own personal opinions on the issue that I've heard the hon. solicitors talk about. At times, Mr. Chairman, I don't care too much about lawyers. I've quoted many times what Shakespeare said about lawyers in his plays. I think sometimes lawyers tend to make too many decisions and forget about people.

I want to make a personal statement concerning this issue. From some of the reading that I've done, we're allocating over $30,000 to $40,000 per individual we incarcerate, to keep him in jail for a year.

Interjection.

MR. PASSARELL: Up to $50,000, as my hon. friend across the street just said.

What I'd like to bring forward for debate in this House and it think it's something that we have to look at, is the use of individuals. Instead of sticking them into a room with television, and giving them three squares a day, and providing nothing to society, but society paying $30,000 to $50,000 a year, let's take some of these people up north. We have a lot of things up north that these individuals could do to benefit society. I'm not talking about taking the Clifford Olsons, the very dangerous individuals, but bringing individuals up north to provide something that's lacking in a lot of instances, and putting them to work planting trees, cutting firebreaks, and making trails for individuals to walk around, instead of having government come and say we have to give a grant of $200,000 to have a firebreak around a community. There's a situation around Atlin right now, where the community is looking for funding to have a firebreak put around Atlin. Why can't we use individuals, and come up and do some kind of benefit for society, at the same time doing something for themselves, instead of sitting in a cell for 18 hours a day; coming up and doing some work, learning something about themselves, benefiting their own bodies and their own minds, instead of stuck in a cell, and helping society by doing something beneficial for the community, instead of just sitting being a one-way street in which our tax moneys go to benefit these individuals.

[5:30]

1 think that's something that the Attorney-General and all of us can look at closely: using individuals, instead of sticking them in the prisons; putting them out to work, doing some benefit for society. That's all I've got to say. I know it's not a very popular issue to talk about, but it's something I feel.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, I notice that there are people indicating that this is a redneck position that my colleague has taken. The fact of the matter is that in some countries, but particularly in Norway and Sweden, they have utilized that idea in corrections, and they have had some very good experiences with it. People are given some productive work to do either in the fields or in the woods. I agree with the member when he says that you don't take very dangerous people into those situations. Certainly there's a price to pay, in my view, for crime; that price should be partly paid by the criminal. They can do that with that kind of community activity.

I recognize it's very difficult, when you take them to remote areas, in staffing and that sort of thing. But at the same time, I believe that we would have a far more compatible system if in fact we had people doing productive work. When they got out they would at least feel that they had made some contribution, rather than the kind of situation we have now. At one time we had them making licences in Oakalla; we don't even have them doing that any longer. I think it's about time that we started to think in terms of using people productively in our penal system.

MR. LAUK: Moving on now to another topic, now that we've canvassed corrections, I want to ask the Attorney-General about the Ming murders and the Chinatown gangs. It's extremely vital, I suggest, Mr. Chairman, to the Attorney-General, that he make it absolutely clear just how seriously the Attorney-General, in a coordinated way, is dealing with I this problem. There is a fear — fear would be an understatement — in the Chinese community in Vancouver with respect to these crimes. There is the fear, and the certain knowledge, if one analyzes the public, reported notes written in Chinese

[ Page 5487 ]

between the kidnappers and the family, that this was a message to the community — that there would be others. There is suggestion and allegation that these crimes are associated with groups of gangs, or groups involved in a gang, which have contacts in other cities. I'm instructed that until recently, until the matter was made public — I should say until the Ming murders became public — there was only one city police investigator working on the Chinatown gang problem. Now there are 8 to 12, and my strongest concern is that as soon as public attention has softened a bit, it will go back down to one again.

I've seen this process in jurisdictions throughout North America — the serial killings in Atlanta, the Clifford Olson killings in our own jurisdiction — where because of resources and because of a reluctance of police forces to look at the real probability that it was a serial murder by one person, coordinated law enforcement went on the back burner. The resources weren't used, and more murders took place. I'm not saying that the thing could have been solved perhaps earlier than it was, but it might have. Some people in law enforcement suggest that it probably could have, in those two instances.

I don't want the Ming murders to go on the back burner; I'm going to continually raise this in this chamber and elsewhere. I would ask the Attorney-General to report — without in any way jeopardizing the investigation, for the confidence of the community — that no stone is unturned, that the investigation is coordinated between Seattle, San Francisco, Vancouver and Hong Kong, that CLEU or another coordinated law enforcement organization is involved, and that all of the processes of investigating this crime are underway. Because, as I am informed, if it's one person in charge of this investigation, then the authorities in the city of Vancouver and the Attorney-General are not taking this seriously enough. If currently there are only 12, could the Attorney-General explain why he thinks that is sufficient, and can he assure the House that every effort, including manpower, will be employed to solve this crime? It's not one kidnapping and murder, which is horrendous enough. The threat is to the whole community. The threat was made. We know that if the allegation of a Chinese gang is involved, they have the means to carry it out.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Chairman, His Honour is in the precinct, and I move the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

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

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, I am informed that His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor is virtually ready to enter the chamber. Upon that we will take the appropriate action.

His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor entered the chamber and took his place in the chair.

CLERK-ASSISTANT: Supply Act (No. 1), 1985

CLERK OF THE HOUSE: In Her Majesty's name, His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor doth thank Her Majesty's loyal subjects, accept their benevolence and assent to this bill.

His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor retired from the chamber.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Speaker, I'd like to advise the House that we'll be sitting tomorrow, Wednesday. I would therefore move that the House do now adjourn.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 5:41 p.m.