[ Page 5941 ]

CONTENTS

Oral Questions

School trustee firings. Mr. Skelly –– 5941

Committee of Supply: Ministry of Human Resources estimates. (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy)

On vote 42: minister's office –– 5944

Mr. Lauk

Mr. Macdonald

Mr. Davis

Mr. Williams

Mrs. Wallace

Mr. Rose

Mr. D'Arcy

Mr. Passarell

Mr. Gabelmann

Ms. Brown

MONDAY, MAY 6, 1985

The House met at 2:06 p.m.

Prayers.

HON. MR. CURTIS: This is an important day in the history of this city and its environs and of the nation. On May 4, 1910, the Canadian naval service was established, and therefore 1985 is its seventy-fifth anniversary. Many celebrations to mark this important event are taking place throughout our country, but particularly in Victoria and in Halifax.

This afternoon the Naval Officers' Association of Vancouver Island and the Chiefs' and Petty Officers' Association presented two magnificent gifts to the people of our province. These gifts have been placed in the upper rotunda of the legislative buildings. The naval officers presented a seventy-fifth anniversary ceremonial sword; the chiefs and petty officers presented a plaque listing Canadian naval vessels lost in action in the Second World War.

In connection with these events, Mr. Speaker, and on behalf of my colleague the Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mr. Chabot), who attended the ceremony a short while ago, and on behalf of the government, it gives me great pleasure to introduce the following who are seated on the floor of the Legislature: Rear-Admiral Robert Yanow, commander, Maritime Forces Pacific; Captain Eric Dawson, president, Naval Officers' Association of Vancouver Island; and Mr. Zip Rimmet, president of the Chiefs' and Petty Officers' Association.

Also, Mr. Speaker, as you will observe and as all hon. members will note, in the galleries we have many members of these two fine associations and, in addition, a number of survivors of those Canadian naval vessels which were lost. They have come to Victoria from right across the country.

May I say, Mr. Speaker, I think it's most fitting that this sword and plaque have been placed in the upper rotunda, so that the thousands of Canadians and those from other lands who visit this building and our capital of Victoria may reflect on the fine record of the Canadian naval service, past and present.

MR. SKELLY: Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure, on behalf of our caucus and on behalf of all members of the Legislature, to join the Minister of Finance in welcoming Rear-Admiral Yanow, Eric Dawson and Mr. Rimmer to the Legislature and thanking them for the memorial which has been placed in the precincts, and also to join with the Minister of Finance and the government caucus in honouring the contribution that the naval services have made to Canadian democracy over the years, both in terms of the fighting that they've been involved in and the contribution to world peace that they are responsible for. We honour their commitment to this country now and in the future, Mr. Speaker, and we, as succeeding generations to those who fought in two wars, recognize what they have fought for and promise them that we will continue that commitment to democracy.

MR. MITCHELL: On behalf of Esquimalt, which was the base of the navy for so many years, I would like the House to make a special welcome to two groups: all those who have made this particular presentation possible.... I would like a special thought and memory to all those who, in the last 75 years, have made the Canadian navy what it is: something that all of Canada can be proud of. A special memory and welcome to all those people.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, on your behalf earlier this afternoon I accepted a plaque for the Legislative Assembly which will be displayed in the Ned DeBeck Lounge. I inform the members accordingly.

MRS. JOHNSTON: In the precincts — and I know there are some in the galleries today — are two classes of 40 students, some of them visiting from Ste-Foy, Quebec, and others from Earl Marriott Secondary School in Surrey. I would ask the House to please make them all welcome.

MR. LEA: I'd like to ask the Members of the Legislature to join with me in welcoming a businessman from Oak Bay, Geoff Stokes. It's his first time here watching these proceedings. He's here to see whether we do things in a businesslike way or whether we're here to give people the business, so we'd better watch ourselves. Would you join me in welcoming him.

MR. MOWAT: It's my pleasure to introduce to the House today a visitor from Beijing, China, from the Institute of Political Science in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Mr. Pan Shiqiang. I would ask the House to make him welcome.

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: I would like to introduce to the House today a resident of Middlesbrough in England, Mr. Ernest Wright, who is an ardent collector of Captain Cook memorabilia. He was exceptionally helpful to us during the Captain Cook Bicentennial celebrations, and he has been an admirer and good friend of our province for many years. Would the House please welcome Mr. Ernest Wright.

Oral Questions

SCHOOL TRUSTEE FIRINGS

MR. SKELLY: A question to the Minister of Education, in view of the fact that the Premier is not here today. At the same time he abruptly fired the Vancouver School Board this morning, he released a report outlining some possible budget revisions and budget reductions that the school board could have achieved in order to maintain class size. Could the minister advise if he met with the former Vancouver School Board, which he so unceremoniously dissolved, and if he discussed the contents of that report with them in an attempt to negotiate a settlement prior to firing them this morning?

[2:15]

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Speaker, I did not discuss the contents of the report with the former members of the Vancouver School Board. The position which I have taken all along is that I expect duly elected people to comply with the provisions of the law. I am sure the members of the Vancouver School Board were very much aware of the contents of the report. After all, much of the discussion and the preparation of it was done with the assistance of many of the senior officials who are on the board. I will maintain that position all along. Each school district, and there were 70 of the 75 who were capable of filing a compliance budget.... I was in no position, nor would I think it even appropriate, to negotiate

[ Page 5942 ]

with a school board who, in the process of committing an illegal act and submitting a non-compliance budget, then turned around and expected to negotiate a settlement. That, to me, is not the way you would play fairly as far as all of the other districts are concerned.

MR. SKELLY: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker, in terms of fair play. It would be interesting to know how long the minister has had this report in his hands, so that he could have negotiated the contents of that report with the Vancouver School District, had he chosen not to develop a confrontation between himself and that school board.

My question is this, Mr. Speaker. It appears that this minister seems interested only in having one board fired when they contravened this so-called law. It seems that there are a number of other school districts around the province who haven't complied or submitted to the will of this provincial government, and at the same time they haven't been unceremoniously fired by this Minister of Education. I'm asking the minister: what is the difference between the situation in Vancouver and the situation in other school districts in the province who have not yet complied? Is the minister using the Vancouver situation to generate some fear around the whole issue?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please.

MR. SKELLY: Is the minister using the Vancouver situation as a show of force to, these other school boards and to other school districts in the province? Why is the minister applying the law unequally in this....

[Mr. Speaker rose.]

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. Hon. members, question period is expressly for the asking of questions. I would ask the member to come to his question and leave the debate for another forum.

[Mr. Speaker resumed his seat.]

MR. SKELLY: Why is the minister treating school boards in this province unequally, since other school districts have not complied with the minister's budget dictates? Is the minister using the the sacking of the Vancouver School District as a show of force to those other school districts and local governments?

MR. SPEAKER: One question, hon. member.

AN HON. MEMBER: A black day for democracy.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Speaker, I hear the comment "black day for democracy." Democracy is as fragile as can be. The basis of a democracy is compliance with the rule of law. As a matter of fact, the Leader of the Opposition didn't counsel non-compliance; he encouraged people to comply with the provisions of the law.

With respect to the question of why Vancouver instead of other boards, I made it very clear in my statement this morning that I am in the process of preparing the documentation that will be required. Now the question comes in....

Interjections.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: The report itself shows in detail the political games that were being played by the Vancouver School Board, who considered the worst possible scenario. The report is clear, the minutes are clear. Other school boards have struggled to try to reach a compliance budget; there was a genuine, honest effort. In the case of the Vancouver School Board, with all due respect, Mr. Speaker, they were going to turn around and pile up their program on the backs of the teachers, and it's the teachers we wanted to protect. It was very clear.

Mr. Speaker, it's clear that our duty is to the classroom, the students and the teachers. There is not any question as to what was going on. I have no other alternative when somebody wishes to disobey the law. There is a rule of law to comply with. The former Attorney-General when the opposition was government knows that as well as anybody does. You must comply with the law.

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. The Leader of the Opposition.

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please, hon. members. The Leader of the Opposition has the floor.

MR. SKELLY: Mr. Speaker, in no democratic society does a government have the right to put duly elected local officials into the position where they either have to ignore the mandate given to them by the electors who democratically elected them to the positions they occupy, or else have to follow the instructions of a government. That is not a position which this minister should force districts into.

Mr. Speaker, my question to the minister is this. Regardless of what those school trustees did in developing their position, they consulted with groups all over their districts in public meetings and derived their decision from the consent of people who elected them. On the other hand, the minister developed a report out of a group that was appointed to advise him. Having had the two positions, why did the minister not open negotiations with the Vancouver School District when he finally had the report in his hand? When did the minister receive the report that he published this morning in conjunction with the order-in-council firing the Vancouver School Board?

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Speaker, that's not any particular secret. I've had the report in my possession for approximately two weeks. There's no problem there at all, absolutely not. I'm wondering if we want to go back a few years in history and have a look at some of the reports that the opposition had prepared and never released. I made a commitment to release that report, and I have.

Interjections.

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

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Speaker, anyone who reads that report will see that the thrust was to reduce staff in the classroom, and I'll tell you, that is not.... When the Leader of the Opposition makes reference that there was great

[ Page 5943 ]

consultation with the public as to what they wanted, I'll bet my last dollar that the public didn't want to have the classes increase in size and teachers taken out of the classroom. That is for sure.

MR. SKELLY: Mr. Speaker, I hope that after the next election the minister will have his last dollar to spend — at least his last dollar paid for by the taxpayers in this province. The minister says he's willing to bet that last dollar to say that the citizens of Vancouver were willing to countenance class sizes and to see class sizes reduced. All we have is his opinion and his last dollar.

Mr. Speaker, what type of consultation did the minister do prior to sacking the Vancouver School Board? Did he himself consult with people in the city of Vancouver, or in the area covered by the Vancouver School District? Did he discuss the issues that were contained in the report with the Vancouver School Board? Mr. Speaker, we have no information whatsoever — hard information — from the minister as to what he did to consult with the people in Vancouver. All he did was fire their duly-elected representatives.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition makes reference to whether or not there was any dialogue, correspondence or communication with others in the city of Vancouver. Well, I tell you I've got a letter from the mayor making abundantly clear the problems that are going to occur in the city of Vancouver unless a compliance budget is submitted so they can establish the mill rate — can pass the validating bylaw and turn around and put it on the mill rate.

Interjections.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Yes, I'll table this in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to say this, and I quote from part of the letter: "In Vancouver the advances amount to...."

AN HON. MEMBER: What's the date?

HON. MR. HEINRICH: The date is May 1, 1985, in case you raise that one too.

"In Vancouver the advances amount to approximately $22 million. May I request that the government act quickly to assure everyone that the proper taxes will be levied and collected as the legislation contemplates?" I'll file this letter at the end of question period.

MR. SKELLY: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. This minister had the report from his commission two weeks before that letter came in to him. For two weeks he had an opportunity to sit down and negotiate with the Vancouver School Board to help them reach a budget. It's this minister.... I ask why this minister did not release that report in sufficient time to allow the city of Vancouver to get involved in their tax collection activities in sufficient time to negotiate a budget with the Vancouver School Board that would have satisfied both sides and allowed the city of Vancouver to proceed with its tax collections on schedule.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Speaker, I gave the Vancouver School Board every opportunity. On Thursday afternoon of last week I said: "Would you please reconsider? You've got Friday and the weekend to do so."

Interjections.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: And so the report comes.

I will tell you that the Vancouver School Board majority — five to four — who in the minutes refer to themselves as the majority party, as far back as December said: "Under no circumstances will we comply with the budget prescribed by the Ministry of Education." As a matter of fact, you go through the minutes from December 1984 right to the present time, and a constant position is taken: "Under no circumstances are we going to submit a compliance budget." Under no circumstances would the majority of the board accept any recommendations made by its officials. They were coming in.... Many of them said: "Not interested. Not interested. Not interested." And what did they do?

Interjection.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: That's exactly what they did. It was a political budget, not an education budget.

Mr. Speaker, the majority of the members of the Vancouver School Board were very much aware of what was in their budget. They were very much aware of what they were doing, and, as a matter of fact, they have literally been inviting the government to take precipitous action, which I frankly can tell you I found very difficult to do.

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. The bell terminates question period.

MR. SKELLY: Mr. Speaker, I rise pursuant to standing order 35 to ask leave to move adjournment of this House for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance: namely the need for the Social Credit government forthwith to reverse its order-in-council decision to dissolve the democratically elected Vancouver School Board and to impose a government-appointed trustee in its place; to follow up by entering into good faith negotiations with all school boards in the province; and to reach an honourable settlement with respect to differences which may exist between the government and the school boards in this province.

[2:30]

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, I will undertake to bring back an opinion on this matter at the earliest opportunity. However, I would caution that it does not appear at first blush that there is too much difference between the present 35 and the one submitted last Thursday. Nonetheless, we shall undertake to bring that back to the House at the earliest opportunity.

MR. SKELLY: On a point of order. Mr. Speaker, the issue here is one of urgency. When we were dealing with this issue on Friday, the decision made at eight o'clock this morning had not been made. There is some urgency with respect to the continuance of democracy at the local level in British Columbia, and we feel that this is an urgent issue.

MR. SPEAKER: Thank you, hon. member.

[ Page 5944 ]

Orders of the Day

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

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF HUMAN RESOURCES

(continued)

On vote 42: minister's office, $214,384.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Chairman, I rise in this debate to question the minister not only in her role as Minister of Human Resources but as a long-standing member and resident of the city of Vancouver. How can she sit idly by in these times and allow her government to demolish locally elected government in the city of Vancouver? There has not been a time....

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, order, please.

MR. LAUK: ...In the history of Vancouver...

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please.

MR. LAUK: ...when this has happened.

[Mr. Chairman rose.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: The member will come to order. Thank you.

[Mr. Chairman resumed his seat.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: I think any sort of perusal or examination of the rules of debate during Committee of Supply will advise members of the committee that the administrative responsibilities of the department whose estimates are before us is the only relevant debate that is allowed during Committee of Supply. There is no way one can delve into debate that might touch upon a member's riding — only the minister's estimates currently before us. The House has called for a debate in Committee of Supply of the Ministry of Human Resources, and I'm sure the committee will recognize that that is our duty at this point and will confine debate to the estimates and to discussion of vote 42, the salary vote of the Minister of Human Resources.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Chairman, with respect, it should be pointed out that this minister's responsibilities in her ministry have to do with a large number of people within her constituency and within the city of Vancouver who receive assistance from this ministry. A great many of those people are children. A great many of those children are from families with single parents, families whose single parents are worried sick about the future of their kids and about the future that they will have in getting off the welfare rolls. This is the point that has to be raised. I don't know of any other time in our history when this has occurred — that a locally elected government has been dissolved by a sweep of the pen...

MR. CHAIRMAN: No, no, hon. member....

MR. LAUK: ...and not one word in response from the Minister of Human Resources.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Once again you're.... The minister may wish to enter into that argument, but that too would be inappropriate during these estimates. We were called by the House to debate in Committee of Supply the Minister of Human Resources' estimates, and that is what we will do. Please proceed.

MR. LAUK: In these votes Mr. Chairman will note that in services for families and children there are many grants to education-related facilities within the city of Vancouver. It is like robbing Peter to pay Paul. What the education system cannot provide, the Ministry of Human Resources will have to pick up the slack for. Large class sizes, a lack of teaching assistants and a lack of services for our schools will leave...

MR. CHAIRMAN: Now, hon. member....

MR. LAUK: Let me get to my point. ...a tremendous burden on families that are presently being serviced by the Ministry of Human Resources, and will increase the burden on Human Resources. This is the same issue, Mr. Chairman, that arose when the Ministry of Human Resources abolished, with a stroke of the pen again, the resource boards of the city of Vancouver. For the first time, we were able to relate local government and local representation in the delivery of these kinds of services to families. This is the same kind of attitude expressed by this dictatorial government this morning in that order-in-council which eliminated the school boards of the city of Vancouver. Why does this government not have faith...?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please, hon. member. I don't want to be difficult about this, but we all know the rules in Committee of Supply, and I'm sure you can relate your remarks to the administrative responsibilities of the Minister of Human Resources, and not another minister's estimates or administrative actions. Please proceed on vote 42.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Chairman, there was a time in this province.... And maybe the minister can inform me that there was a cabinet committee which had as part of it the Minister of Human Resources and the Minister of Education, for precisely the point that I'm raising: that is, to deal with problems before they occur and become a burden on the Ministry of Human Resources. This is what has happened. Who is best to decide that? That's what happened when we developed the community resource boards in the first place. Who can best decide this? Locally elected boards, people that are close to the issues, people that know the issues. I'm shocked indeed, Mr. Chairman, at what has happened here today. In the history of this province, this has never happened before. Neither you nor anyone in this chamber can point to a situation in our worst times — during the war, during the Depression — where Victoria, the government, has intervened locally to the extent of abolishing elected people.

It should be pointed out, Mr. Chairman, that in the city of Vancouver they had their chance during the November elections, when city councils and school boards were elected, to get people sympathetic to their government.

[ Page 5945 ]

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, it has not yet been demonstrated to me where this is relevant to the administrative responsibilities of the Minister of Human Resources, minister's office.

MR. LAUK: I'm trying to draw the analogy with the resource boards.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Analogies aren't appropriate. Relevancy is, please.

MR. NICOLSON: Do you have a prejudice against intelligence, Mr. Chairman?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. Every debate, in Committee of Supply or in committee stage of a bill, must be relevant. Please proceed.

MR. LAUK: Well, the minister should indicate what her salary is.... Why is the minister receiving a salary — for the administration of her department? But also she's receiving a salary for the administration of...or her contribution to cabinet and government generally. I would question whether or not — and there's precedent for this in Sir Erskine May, although I can't reach for it at the moment — each individual cabinet minister is responsible for their decisions in cabinet. Was this minister present when the order-in-council to abolish school boards was made, and how did she vote? Has she got the courage to stand up in this committee today and tell us and her constituents what stand she took for or against democracy? Did she vote for it? She was against democracy.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, again I would remind the committee.... The rule in debate in Committee of Supply is simple, and that is that we discuss the administrative responsibilities of the department. Discussions which may or may not have taken place in another forum are not of importance to this committee. We are here to discuss the administrative responsibilities of the department. That is clear, and I'm sure the member, who has participated in such a debate before, is well aware of the limitations during debate in Committee of Supply. Please proceed.

MR. LAUK: The situation is a grave one, and I don't believe, Mr. Chairman, with all respect, that it is completely understood by that side of the House that what has happened here today is a dangerous precedent. It will not go unanswered. It doesn't matter how you think the political stripe of the school board of Vancouver is, or any other school board. They were elected duly by the people of the city of Vancouver, and this act by this government will be the seeds of their destruction. You can bring in whatever policies or philosophy you want under any ministry, but if you flout the will of the people in a duly....

Interjection.

MR. LAUK: Are you saying it wasn't the will of the people in the last election? I'm ashamed of you. Unless it goes your way, you don't agree with it. That's all you want. That's all there is. And talk about obedience to the law: what about the Minister of Health? The Chief Justice of this province wants him to obey the law, and he ignores the Chief Justice of the province. You're talking about obeying the law, you....

[Mr. Chairman rose.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. Thank you. Maybe we need a bit more time on this.

[Mr. Chairman resumed his seat.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'll call all hon. members to order, please, and for the benefit of the committee read standing order 43, which discusses irrelevance of debate. It further states that "the Chairman of the Committee of the Whole, after having called the attention of the House or of the Committee to the conduct of a member who persists in irrelevance or tedious repetition...may direct that member to discontinue speaking and, if the member still continues to speak...the Chairman shall follow the procedures in Standing Orders 19 and 20," which I'm sure are well known to the members of this committee.

Now that we've had time to reflect on our own standing orders and also the writings of Sir Erskine May, I'm sure we can proceed with relevant debate that discusses the administrative responsibilities of the Minister of Human Resources, minister's office.

MR. HOWARD: A point of order, Mr. Chairman. You've mentioned a number of times that we need to deal with the administrative responsibility of the minister, but at no time have indicated what that is. I want to submit to you that the member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk), up until the interruptions by the gentleman across the floor, has been perfectly in order in talking about ministerial responsibilities.

[2:45]

First, the Ministry of Human Resources Act passed by this Legislature says: "The ministry shall have charge of all matters relating to social and public welfare and social assistance." All matters relating to social welfare, social well-being. Certainly children in schools are a responsibility of this ministry insofar as their social well-being is concerned, and any impingement upon the opportunity for decent and quality education is an impingement on the ministry's authorities and responsibilities. I would think the minister would be the first one to stand up and acknowledge that, and to fight for the rights of people under her jurisdiction. Secondly, under "Principles," the Family and Child Service Act points out: "In the administration and interpretation of this Act the safety and well-being of a child shall be the paramount considerations."

When you put those two together — that is, the responsibility of the ministry to have charge of all matters relating to social welfare, along with the safety and well-being of a child being the paramount considerations in the administration and interpretation of the act — we surely have to look at the question of education in terms of the well-being of a child. That's what the member for Vancouver Centre was attempting to point out: that this government, having taken the totally undemocratic position of wiping out a duly elected school board and appointing one person as an authoritarian dictator over that board's activities, is raising the question of the well-being of the children under the authority of the Ministry of Human Resources.

[ Page 5946 ]

MR. CHAIRMAN: The estimates provide clearly what the administrative responsibilities are of the Ministry of Human Resources. If the member reads that, I think he will understand, certainly and with some clarity, what can be allowed or not allowed under these particular votes in this Committee of Supply.

Interjection.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'll ask the member for Skeena to come to order, please. I'm about to recognize another member who has taken his place in debate.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Chairman, the problem that I'm having is to direct my mind to the obedience of the law and the attitude and the example expressed by the government of British Columbia, today and on other days. It's not a question of interpretation of an act that would be presented, let's say, to a court for interpretation. It's a question of how they interpret their role as government in this province under the constitution, and under the conventions of democracy that have been passed down to us through generations. The effort of this government in the last little while has demonstrated to me that they will obey the laws that they choose to obey, and demand that we all do so, and they will disobey the laws that they choose not to obey. By contrast, the Minister of Health has virtually and contemptuously ignored a judgment of the Supreme Court of British Columbia. And on the same breath...

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member....

MR. LAUK: ...this self-righteous Minister of Education stands up here today and says: "I'm for the rule of law."

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please.

MR. LAUK: Obviously his colleagues are not.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Let me just recap again, and from Sir Erskine May, the correct quotation this time. I paraphrased previously. Sir Erskine May advises us that in Committee of Supply the administrative action of a department is open to debate, but the necessity for legislation and matters involving legislation cannot be discussed in Committee of Supply. Clearly, members are now discussing actions and legislation involving other ministries, which is totally inappropriate, irrelevant and out of order. I will ask all members of the committee to limit their debate to the administrative actions of the Minister of Human Resources. We have been called upon by the House to do that, and that is all we can do.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Chairman, I will leave the point on this basis, that I ask the minister to state her views with respect to her solemn responsibility to the people of the city of Vancouver. I leave it with her conscience that she should be making a public statement, and she might as well, with leave, say so in front of the committee right now.

MR. MACDONALD: Mr. Chairman, speaking to vote 42, I want to specifically ask this minister.... I know the Ministry of Human Resources has many agreements with societies, neighbourhood houses, and things of the kind. If, to save public money, the minister had ordered an audit team to go in and see whether economies could be effected by an organization in this way or that, even if it was done legally, having had that report in her hands two weeks before, would it be the policy of that minister to cancel the contract or fire the association or the neighbourhood house or whatever it was that was delivering the service, without showing them a copy of the report? That's a specific question, and I would like an answer from the minister.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The first member for Vancouver East continues.

MR. MACDONALD: I ask the minister, who is responsible for a very large department, whether in the circumstances I described — where she had some disquiet on what she considered public grounds about the operation of one of the programs that she contracts out in her department — she would meet with the organization or neighbourhood house concerned before firing them or cancelling the contract. I ask that specific question of the Minister of Human Resources.

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Chairman, that's the first question that's probably been in order, and that is to do with my responsibilities in dealing with societies that we deal with within the Ministry of Human Resources. Therefore I feel it is in order for me to respond.

I think that the first member for Vancouver East would well know that our Ministry of Human Resources does not appoint the members of the societies we deal with. They are private societies, and it is up to the membership, of course, to deal with any problems they would have. No doubt there are boards who dissolve or ask their members to leave, but that certainly isn't under our jurisdiction. We have no mandate, legislative or moral. We would never have that hypothetical question brought to us, because we simply do not have the responsibility legislatively or morally to do so.

MR. MACDONALD: The minister seems to be agreeing that something like this shouldn't happen without meeting the people concerned. Suppose you had in one of your homes allegations of child abuse, and you had an inquiry into that. In fairness to the operator of that home, before withdrawing support from Human Resources for the particular home, would the minister make available to the operator a copy of the report that she had ordered? Would you do this before cancelling out the contract with the home?

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Chairman, the hypothetical case which the member brings to this House is one which would, under our legislation, call upon us to investigate the safety and the protection of the child. We would then, if the allegations warranted, remove the child or children from the danger. If there were any proof that there were some misdemeanour or some problem with the children, we would no longer contract with that society. What that society does with its membership and with its ability under the law to form as a society.... I would think the learned member from Vancouver East would know full well what their opportunity is in that case. However, it would not be under the mandate of the Ministry of Human Resources. We would protect the child. That is the mandate we have, and we would continue to uphold that mandate.

[ Page 5947 ]

MR. MACDONALD: The minister says they wouldn't cancel the contract; they'd just withdraw the children from the home. Then the home doesn't receive any money from the department, and they go broke and they can't pay the mortgage on the home. You cancel the placement of the children. Is this what the whole Social Credit government is doing in all the departments? Without showing the report, or even meeting with the people operating the home, would you take the children and whisk them out of there? We're living in a kind of tyrannical regime under this government, which fires duly elected school boards without showing them a report.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please.

MR. MACDONALD: That's an analogy, Mr. Chairman. It fires duly elected school boards without showing them a report, and the minister is saying: "I refuse to meet with them." Obviously in that case it's political confrontation that minister was seeking. He has been all along, for political reasons.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please.

MR. MACDONALD: But in the case of the Minister of Human Resources, that's a different thing. It's simply a denial of natural justice to take the children away from a home without at least letting the operators see the report or meeting with them. I hope the Minister of Human Resources didn't mean she'd do that, because that's the kind of 1984 society that we don't want to see in this province.

MR. DAVIS: I want to talk briefly about group homes; more particularly, group homes for the mentally retarded. I think the government is to be congratulated, certainly the Ministry of Human Resources is to be congratulated, with respect to Tranquille and the decentralization of what had for literally decades been a major institution in which large numbers of mentally handicapped British Columbians were maintained.

As I understand it, there were some 400 mentally retarded residents in Tranquille up until last fall. Over the last six months, and substantially in the latter months of last year, the residents of Tranquille were distributed across the province in great majority to the communities they had originally come from. A very large percentage, of the order of 75 or 80 percent of those people — more than 300 — are now in homes in varying numbers — three, four, five, perhaps as many as six — and are back in the areas from which they came, closer to their relatives. Many of them had been in Tranquille for a long time. But still, they are back into communities from which they had originally come.

The entire operation, to put it in loose but summary terms, has been privatized. These people who are now in group homes are in homes run by organizations — for instance, in North Vancouver the North Shore Association for the Mentally Handicapped. It was a challenge. It's still a challenge, but it was an incredible challenge for those organizations which, while they had cared for people who were mentally handicapped, had not faced operations on the scale which suddenly confronted them. In North Vancouver there were several homes for the mentally handicapped. Suddenly there was a requirement to create four or five more.

[3:00]

With one exception, the operation has proceeded smoothly. I know only of one case where the local neighbourhood was upset; I'm talking about people who were residents there before the home was established. I think the ministry should look closely at certain guidelines as to the kind of home. I'm talking about the physical layout of the home, its relationship to close neighbours and the amenities available in the home. But generally speaking this operation has been carried out successfully. The North Shore association was concerned that it might receive some residents which it was ill-equipped to look after; concerned about some violent activity; concerned, of course, about unpredictable activity by people who were at a disadvantage from a mental point of view, So far things have proceeded quite smoothly.

In the one location in which there is a problem the situation is understandable, from both points of view. The North Shore society had been in a hurry to acquire a number of homes. It sought residences. It found that in order to qualify for the money, in order to conform with building codes, in order to meet the requirements of the Ministry of Human Resources and other ministries, it could really only buy a new home, because older homes would have to be virtually rebuilt to meet many of the code, financial and other requirements. The North Shore association — and I'm certain this has been true of others which took on this assignment — had to buy new homes as opposed to older homes; expensive homes as opposed to homes which might not have been as expensive to the typical buyer of a residential property. New homes are not only expensive but generally speaking, at least on the North Shore, they're on smaller lots; they're crowded close to neighbours.

I would hope that future purchases — essentially they're purchases by the provincial taxpayer, although the homes are in the names of the societies — would have to adhere to additional requirements: namely, that the land area which the home occupied was sizeable; that there was a good-sized, I'll call it, back yard, certainly more room for the residents; that it was reasonably shaded, separated, divided from the neighbours — the residents in these homes from the neighbours and the neighbours from the arrival of these residents. I think that single-level homes are obviously preferable where residents have not only mental but also physical problems. The homes that have been purchased on the North Shore are typically three-storey, brand-new and on tiny lots. I think that that is undesirable, and I would hope that in future ministry guidelines prevent that happening.

As to process or procedure, the homes were purchased without reference to or without any knowledge of the neighbours. Suddenly the neighbours were confronted with the information that five or six mentally handicapped people would be housed right next door to them.

Interjection.

MR. DAVIS: Well, it may be shocking, but the problem in the neighbourhood is that the neighbours have a mental picture, which may not be realistic, may not be reasonable. But as hon. members know, when you're going to do something that's unusual — build a rapid transit line, for example — you should talk to the neighbours.

Interjection.

[ Page 5948 ]

MR. DAVIS: No, that's the reasonable thing to do. I think the neighbours should have some consideration.

We only had one problem area on the North Shore. I believe that the procedural sequence should be.... As I understand it, the association which had the exclusive responsibility to buy where it wanted, except for the financial and physical requirements, in one instance chose a cul-de-sac where there were families with a number of young children, where the interface was negligible, where tempers immediately flared, where there was little come and go, and where, indeed, there was little rapport between the two sides. The municipality has moved in. The municipality has no direct jurisdiction in these matters, I find. It has appointed an individual who will act as a go-between for the society and the neighbours, and hopefully the difficulties which existed....

MR. WILLIAMS: Meanwhile, back at the food bank....

MR. DAVIS: No, meanwhile the residents are there; they arrived around Christmastime.

I've been in those homes, particularly in the home where there were difficulties. The residents are certainly well cared for. I'm told that their situation is better than it was at Tranquille. I personally have some concern. I know that at Tranquille the residents were able to roam more freely than they are around these individual homes in otherwise quiet neighbourhoods. I know that the residents, in particular in this one area, are not allowed out. They are not as free to move about as they were at Tranquille. I'm also sure that it's difficult for them to get to the same kind of communal facilities that existed at Tranquille, but there is some hope — and of course these are severe cases of mental retardation — that there will be some possible employment; that they'll be able to join others in the area who have been given tuition and quite a few now who go to woodworking establishments, or others who are able to do certain jobs, to perform certain assignments and to feel useful — certainly to feel that they're a part of the whole community.

But there is inevitably a problem, especially when a group home is located in an area with no prior consultation with the neighbours and where the rights of both the residents of the group home and the residents in the area who were established there before the group home was established should be considered. I'm not pointing any fingers. I'm not trying to say that anyone is at fault, but it's a difficult process. In this case the Tranquille — I won't call it "experiment" — transition to group homes from a large single establishment was accomplished over a very short period of time. I would like to think that the neighbours in the area would take a particular interest in the residents who live in these group homes and in their progress, and that they would, insofar as it is possible, become part of that tiny neighbourhood in a larger community.

In conclusion, I tried to make the point that the group home experiment — and I know the group home concept has been employed with respect to others, especially the physically handicapped — has been succeeding. I think it's a success in respect to the seriously mentally handicapped, who have so far gone to North Vancouver. But I would make a plea for the ministry to establish certain guidelines as to the physical characteristics of the properties in which these people are to be housed: particularly that the homes be on a sizeable lot, that they be reasonably separated by hedges and otherwise from the neighbours to protect both the residents and the neighbours, and that the process of their arrival be arranged in such a way that they are fully accepted in the neighbourhood from the outset. That's my main point, Mr. Chairman.

MR. WILLIAMS: Today, when a school board has been cut off at the top, when democracy has ended for Vancouver schools, when we have this kind of experiment or change toward community facilities going on, what do we get from the back bench of Social Credit on issues like this? They're saying: "If they're mentally retarded, we want hedges around the building." That kind of smarmy upper-middle class nonsense is nothing short of disgusting in this day and age, and I just don't want it to go unrecorded. It's that kind of phony upper-middle class line about people with mental problems and difficulties being integrated into the community. They should be integrated without hedges — open to the full neighbourhood. It's just nonsense to hear that kind of stuff.

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Chairman, I think the record of our government in regard to the mentally handicapped is clear. It's been humane. As a matter of fact, it has led all of the groups and the decision-making in North America — this province of British Columbia. I'm proud of what we've accomplished for the mentally handicapped in this province.

I want you to know that besides all of the other services that we have had and besides having led this country in regard to services to the mentally handicapped, the closure of Tranquille probably stands out as the most significant step forward for the mentally handicapped, if not in this past decade, certainly.... I just don't have the superlatives that come to mind. It is a breakthrough which I am proud to say has been accomplished by this government, not in haste but with a great deal of effort by my staff and the staff of the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Housing, and a good cooperative effort of government, which has accomplished this achievement. And it is an achievement. It's an achievement for the young adults whom we serve — the mentally handicapped adults; it is an achievement for the staff; it's an achievement for the associations, who, with government funding, are accomplishing what would have been thought impossible some years ago.

The member for North Vancouver raises questions which have been raised over and over again. I want you to know that of all of the places in this province which now boast group living in group homes and an individual living experience for the mentally handicapped, none has been done better than that on the north shore of the lower mainland. I would like to pay tribute to the president of that association and his board of directors, who have in all cases, in terms of where they have made decisions, gone the extra mile to let the public, who will, for the first time perhaps, receive a group home into their community.... They have been excellent in terms of communication.

Mr. Chairman, I think it's time and I think it's appropriate that we perhaps discuss the system. We have gone through a lot of changes in our ministry in terms of how we introduce a group home to a community. It was always really under the responsibility of an organization, and it still remains that way today. Some organizations have been much better at that kind of communication. They have gone to their city council, they

[ Page 5949 ]

have worked with the surrounding community, and they have done a very good job, in many cases, of alerting the residents as to what they intended to do.

I think the worst element, and the worst thing that we get in this whole business of moving the mentally handicapped into the community, is the surprise element. I think that the member for North Vancouver–Seymour perhaps points out that in the past there have been some surprises along the way, with communities who have not been aware of what we were trying to do. I have found, almost every single time, that when a community finally understands what we are trying to do, there is absolutely no problem at all. They come forward, and they become good neighbours. They become socially good neighbours and they become helpful, and I have to say that we should give great credit to our fellow British Columbians, who have done that in a very warm and human way. They have embraced the mentally handicapped better, I would say, in this province, in terms of what we call normalization or deinstitutionalization, than anywhere else in this nation. We can be proud of that.

[3:15]

So with those few words, may I just please say that where there are some problems and where there is, if I may say so, ignorance of what we are trying to do, our ministry along with the members of the handicapped associations and the various people who take contracts for these kinds of responsibilities will work with the community in every way possible. It does need the support of the members of this House, of community councils and of the people in general.

But let me just leave you with this. In any place where we have had a mentally handicapped residence, where they have for the first time been able to be part of the community and part of the recreational services, to go to the store, wake up and have a home to have breakfast in, come home in the evening from maybe a workshop and have a dinner that's cooked in a small area and with no institutional flavor.... In all of those areas where that has happened, I have seen people who, yes, at the beginning were not too excited about perhaps that service being moved into their neighbourhood.... But I can honestly say that with the experience comes an understanding. With the knowledge and with the experience of being with the mentally handicapped, we have found that the mentally handicapped have taught those neighbours a great deal. And they do live in harmony. So I am proud of what's been accomplished in that regard. I'm quite sure that the few problems....

I have visited the North Vancouver situation which the member for North Vancouver–Seymour brings to our attention. It is a very attractive home; it is well run. I think, in its first month and a half or two months in operation — very few months — it's doing a very good job for the mentally handicapped whom we serve.

MRS. WALLACE: Following along with what the minister has been saying, I am sure that she is aware of Skeleem Village, which is operating a very good institution for the mentally handicapped. The residential boarding facility in connection with that, under Cedar Lodge Centre, of course has been into some difficulties — the licence has been returned — and along with that is a school which is operated by the Cowichan School District at Cedar Lodge, and towards which the minister contributes a great deal of funding because of the students who attend that school.

The minister will also be familiar with Charles Hoey School, which is a school that involves a great many young people who have difficulties and learning problems. Out of the minister's funding, under one of her votes dealing with child and family services, are some very definite funds being made available to assist those children in that school situation.

We also have in Cowichan something like 14,000 in receipt of social assistance allowances. Our average family size in that area is 3.8, so we're looking at something between 4,000 and 5,000 children who are attending school in Cowichan and being supported by this ministry's finances.

The Chairman has indicated that there's a difference between what we discuss in estimates and what is covered by the Ministry of Human Resources administration act. But I submit, Mr. Chairman, and I think you will agree, that when you have a minimum of 4,000 children supported by Human Resources in a school system, and two of those schools are specifically for people with mental and emotional difficulties, we are talking about a ministry that relates very closely to what happens in the education system. We're talking about a ministry that has to be concerned about those children who attend those schools. We are finding in Cowichan a situation where the school board has declared that the minister's compliance budget will be approved by a vote of six to three against it, because that's the kind of legislation that that minister has come up with.

The Chairman has said that there's something different about the budget discussions in Human Resources and the ministerial act. What we're facing in the educational facility is exactly the same. We're facing a situation where we have one piece of legislation which says that the school districts have the opportunity to vote on a budget, and in another piece of legislation we're having a statement made which says that no matter how they vote, that is what's going to happen; that is going to be passed. We're having absolute dictatorial, authoritarian decisions made that override any democratic decision.

I don't think that that's the way this minister would have the decisions made relative to the children under direct care of the Human Resources ministry, nor would she have those that she gives grants to for other organizations to deal with those children.... There is no way that she would want those kinds of decisions being made under an authoritarian type of direction, as has been done with the educational system in Cowichan.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. As your debate relates to the Ministry of Human Resources it is in order; as it relates to other ministries it is not in order. We are discussing a vote that has been passed. I'm sure the member is well aware of that.

MRS. WALLACE: Education is an extremely important part of every child's life. It begins, as far as the public system goes....

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, the committee has been advised many times today that we are discussing the salary vote of the Minister of Human Resources. The Education estimates have been discussed by this Legislative Assembly, and we cannot permit ourselves to reflect on a vote that has already been passed. Please, to the administrative

[ Page 5950 ]

responsibilities of the Minister of Human Resources; no other estimate.

MRS. WALLACE: Mr. Chairman, I am not aware that there is anything in the estimates of the Minister of Education relative to the legislation of the Ministry of Education. What I am concerned about is the fact that this minister is responsible for funding for some 4,000 children, at a minimum, who attend schools in my constituency. I'm concerned that she be concerned about the quality of education those children are receiving; that she be concerned about what's happening and what has happened in that particular school district where the majority — two to one — representing public opinion in that constituency are opposed to cutting back on our children's education, much of which is paid for by this minister.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, once again, we are to discuss the administrative actions of a department. That is all that is open to debate. The member is well aware of that; the member has debated many times in the Committee of Supply and is aware of all our standing orders with respect to relevancy. I'm sure the hon. member for Cowichan-Malahat can relate her remarks to the vote before us now.

MRS. WALLACE: Mr. Chairman, I'm trying to relate it to that. Under the minister's responsibilities, under services for children and families, this minister is responsible for residential resources for children in care. I would suggest that there are a great many children in care under the responsibility of this minister in the Cowichan-Malahat constituency. She is responsible for the support for children and families in their own homes, and grants to funded agencies and to ministry-operated services for children and families. Whether the Chairman agrees or not, children do go to school. When they go to school, what happens in the school system affects those children in care under the Ministry of Human Resources. That's her administrative responsibility. I am concerned. I would like that minister to tell this House that she is prepared to stand up and fight for those children to ensure that they have a fair and equal opportunity to education. When you have that many people in receipt....

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, please, you're taxing the Chair. The item you state in the estimates is quite appropriate, but it does not extend to educational services. I have the details in the notes before me now. I don't want to be difficult about this, but I'm going to have to be. We are discussing the vote of the Minister of Human Resources. I cannot let it stray any further than it already has.

MRS. WALLACE: I take it that the Minister of Human Resources is not concerned about the quality of education that the children in her care receive. Is it your ruling, Mr. Chairman, that she is not to have any concern about those children?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, if the minister has that concern, the minister can bring that argument to the estimates of the Minister of Education. At this point we are discussing the administrative responsibilities of the Ministry of Human Resources.

MRS. WALLACE: I'm not concerned about the Minister of Education. What I am concerned about are the children who live in my constituency who are under that minister's care, and I would like to know whether or not she is concerned as to whether they will have an opportunity to a fair and just system of education, whether they will be able to fit themselves....

Interjections.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. Please proceed on vote 42 — with some relevancy, please, to the Ministry of Human Resources.

MRS. WALLACE: Well, I would ask the Minister of Human Resources whether or not she is concerned about the quality of education those children under care will receive.

MR. CHAIRMAN: That is not appropriate, hon. member.

HON. MR. SCHROEDER: Point of order. It appears that the member who has the floor is attempting to do indirectly what she is not permitted under the rules to do directly, and as a result I'm offended. I'm sure the House is offended by the willingness of any member of the House to have that degree of disregard for the rules of this House. I think lawlessness is inexcusable in any form.

MR. ROSE: On the same point of order, I know there's been a lot said here about repetition and relevancy, but I would cite a book that has probably not as much relevance here as May or our own rules; but it certainly has a great deal of stature in the federal House, and this is what it has to say about relevance and repetition: "1. Relevancy is not easy to define." I understand the Chair is having a great deal of difficulty with it right now.

There is an attempt by the member to relate back to the interdependence of human services, whether they be in Human Resources or Education. One impacts upon the other, and I don't think there's any getting away from that. What is relevant is a matter of judgment. It goes on to say: "In borderline cases the member should be given the benefit of the doubt." Now with a great deal of respect, Mr. Chairman, it is a matter of judgment, and it is a matter of judgment for the Chair. I'm not attempting to repudiate the Chair. What I'm asking the Chair to do is give as much leeway as possible to the member, and be understanding as she attempts to relate her remarks to the relevancy of the issue.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Could the member cite the source?

MR. ROSE: Page 98, chapter 7, paragraph 299.

MR. CHAIRMAN: What authority, please?

MR. ROSE: Beauchesne.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'll cite to the member standing order 1 in our standing orders, Standing Orders of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, which says: "In all cases not provided for hereafter or by sessional or other orders, the usages, customs and precedents, firstly, of this House and, secondly, of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland shall be followed as far as they may be applicable to this House."

[ Page 5951 ]

Secondly, as far as the rule of judgment and what may or may not be permitted in Committee of Supply is concerned, I am bound by Sir Erskine May, who states that the administrative action of a department is open to debate, and that it must be the administrative action of that department.

MR. ROSE: Do you have a citation?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Page 739, paragraph 3, of Sir Erskine May's sixteenth edition.

MS. BROWN: I just want to clarify for the Chairman the responsibilities of the Minister of Human Resources. The Minister of Human Resources, according to the Family and Child Service Act of 1979, as amended at one time or another, is responsible for the well-being.... It says that the well-being of a child shall be the paramount consideration. Under "Interpretation" it says that a child is a person under the age of 19, and it designates that the minister, or someone appointed by the minister, is a guardian. That can be the superintendent of child welfare, who is the deputy minister sitting beside her, and who has been designated the guardian of children in her care.

[3:30]

According to the Family Relations Act, the superintendent of child welfare has the power and duties for everything respecting the person of that child. That means the health, education, culture and human resources of the child, and the laws that affect the child. Under the minister's estimates it is quite in order for me to question her about children and health in this province, because either she or her deputy has that responsibility under this act. By the same token, it is quite within my responsibility to question her about the education available to children under her care, in the same way as I question her about the quality of day care and foster homes, child abuse, and every other thing that happens to the children under her care.

The act is absolutely clear that she has to answer for everything respecting the person of the children under her care. It does not make sense, Mr. Chairman, to say that one cannot question the quality of education, or that minister's concern for the quality of education, which the children under her responsibility, and under the responsibility of the superintendent of welfare, are receiving at this time.

HON. MR. SCHROEDER: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, I wouldn't want the House to be swayed too strongly by the opinions of some members of this House regarding interdependence. If you'll pardon an agricultural phrase, interdependence could be milked to a faretheewell, so much so that if you stretched your imagination far enough, you could debate anything you wished under any minister's vote. It seems to me that there are several references, both in Beauchesne and Sir Erskine May, which talk not just about relevance but about strict relevance. I think it should go without saying, Mr. Chairman, that those things which relate to agriculture ought best to be debated under the Minister of Agriculture, despite the fact that children eat food. I think matters regarding education ought best to be debated under the Ministry of Education, despite the fact that they are children who have other concerns under the Ministry of Human Resources.

I think the matter of strict relevance needs some attention in this House.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Just to respond to all of the arguments so far, I think a careful perusal of the statutes will indicate that responsibility for the education of children ages 7 to 15 is a responsibility of the Minister of Education. Currently, we are debating the estimates of the Ministry of Human Resources, and therefore discussion about education would be most inappropriate and not relevant. If the member wishes to continue on vote 42, and with some relevancy to the Minister of Human Resources, that would be appropriate; but that would be all.

MR. ROSE: What our side has been attempting to do, Mr. Chairman, is to tie in the implications for the welfare of children as a result of the action that the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. Heinrich) took today.

MR. CHAIRMAN: And that's not appropriate or relevant.

MR. ROSE: Well, Mr. Chairman, if I asked a question....

[Mr. Chairman rose.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: Just a moment, please. We have had, hon. members, well over an hour's discussion on this subject. I think the ruling of the Chair is clear.

[Mr. Chairman resumed his seat.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: I think all members are now aware of standing order 43, which I have cited on a few occasions today and on other occasions, and which states that the chairman of the committee shall call to the attention of the committee the conduct of a member who persists in irrelevance or tedious repetition. The chairman may direct that member to discontinue speaking, and if the member still continues to speak, Mr. Speaker or the Chairman shall follow the procedures in standing orders 19 or 20.

Maybe while we're just catching our breath, I'll read standing order 19: "Mr. Speaker or the Chairman of the Committee of the Whole shall order a member whose conduct is grossly disorderly to withdraw immediately from the House or Committee of the Whole for the remainder of that day." Such action, I think, may soon be appropriate unless we can return with some relevancy to the debate and the estimates of the Minister of Human Resources. I think that's perfectly clear.

To vote 42, please.

MS. BROWN: Is the Chairman ruling that it is not possible to discuss under the estimates of the Minister of Human Resources the quality of education which children under her responsibility get?

MR. CHAIRMAN: That's correct.

MS. BROWN: I challenge that ruling.

MR. CHAIRMAN: There's no challenge to the Chair.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, it is not possible to discuss the care of the children of....

[ Page 5952 ]

[Interruption.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: I will cite to the member standing order 61(3) on page 22:

"The Chairman shall preserve order and decorum in the Committee of the Whole and shall decide questions of order and practice. In deciding a point of order or practice, the Chairman shall state his reasons for the decision and shall cite any standing order or other applicable authority. Mr. Chairman may invite submissions from members but no debate shall be permitted on any decision. No decisions shall be subject to an appeal to the House."

I think the last sentence is the applicable phrase.

If the member for Burnaby-Edmonds wishes to continue on vote 42, we will continue discussing the estimates of the Ministry of Human Resources.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, I am very distressed that a precedent has been established during the debates of this estimate that should not be permitted to stand. It is not possible to discharge our responsibility to scrutinize the responsibilities of this ministry if we cannot ask questions about the children who are in her care. We have to have the right to question the quality of care which these children are having, whether it's health care or educational care, foster homes, day care or anything else. This ministry and this minister are responsible for the well-being of too many children for a precedent to be established saying that we cannot question her either about the way in which she discharges her responsibility or the way in which she fails to discharge her responsibility.

I'm not challenging the Chairman's ruling....

MR. CHAIRMAN: I accept that point.

MS. BROWN: I'm merely saying that I am very, very concerned about a very dangerous precedent which may be established, and I would like the Chairman to reconsider that. I can understand your impatience with the debate around the whole area of education. But please think carefully. You cannot expose the children who are under the responsibility of this minister to not being protected by the kinds of questions which must, and often have to be, raised by the opposition members concerning their well-being.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, that point is well taken. However, where another authority is applicable, particularly another authority that's responsible to the Legislative Assembly or to Committee of Supply in respect of a ministry, then it is only during that minister's estimates that we may discuss the responsibilities for children that the member has already mentioned. In this case, or in the case of Education, Health, Transportation and Highways, or in fact anything that the member might want to touch on, there clearly is another authority and another minister responsible to the committee. At this point we are discussing the estimates of the Minister of Human Resources; clearly only where that minister has authority, which she does not have for dealing with education, is the debate relevant.

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Chairman, perhaps I can assist the members, although it's interesting that the official critic for the opposition would not be aware that the Family and Child Service Act clearly refers only to children in need of protection and to those, of which.... We have some 7,000 children in care in this province. She ignores, as have all the other speakers in this debate on this particular question of whether or not this debate on education should be imposed upon this ministry's estimates.... They ignore completely that there is a body of people who are totally responsible and have the responsibility for children in this province: that is, the parents. It is not the responsibility of the Ministry of Human Resources. We do not take on the responsibility for all of the children in the province.

There are some children who, because of the circumstances, because of protection, because of abuse, because of some concern that they must be removed from their home, do become the responsibility of the Minister of Human Resources, through the superintendent of child welfare. But please don't allow the contents of the Family and Child Service Act and the responsibilities of the Ministry of Human Resources to be taken out of context, because then this ministry, through its estimates, would have to be responsible for every single minister in this House. The Minister of Highways (Hon. Mr. Fraser) has children in cars, in automobiles on the highway; the Minister of Agriculture (Hon. Mr. Schroeder) has children on farms, in his responsibilities for agriculture. So any kind of debate around this subject is, frankly, unbelievably naive; however, I suspect that it is being done on purpose.

Mr. Chairman, I think your ruling should be upheld.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The ruling will be upheld, hon. member. Thank you.

MR. ROSE: I hope you won't regard me, Mr. Chairman, as tedious and repetitious before I even get started, because I haven't spoken in this debate before. I spoke on a point of order. I think I can put my questions pretty succinctly. Are there, under the Minister of Human Resources, any child prostitutes? Are there any native Indian youngsters, orphans, or handicapped youngsters? Are there any youngsters that have been convicted of juvenile crimes? Are there any immigrant children who do not speak the language or have been abandoned by their parents? Are there any abused children among the 7,000 children under Human Resources?

Question two: do they go to school? Question three: if there are cutbacks in counselling and English as a second language and dirtier and colder schools, will that throw an extra load on the Ministry of Human Resources?

[3:45]

MR. CHAIRMAN: I would remind the member, who should be aware of the rules, that irrelevance and repetition in debate applies to the member's own arguments or arguments used by others. The minister may wish to respond with respect to what is appropriate to that department.

Hearing none, I will ask the member to continue on vote 42.

MR. ROSE: I would like to ask the minister whether or not she encounters a lot of problems with child suicide threats and other serious social problems due to broken homes, unemployment, lack of food and a great number of other things. Does she believe that counselling supplied in any form by the school, privately or through her ministry, can help to overcome some of these problems? If counselling is

[ Page 5953 ]

being denied by cutbacks in the school, will it impact on her ministry negatively?

MR. CHAIRMAN: The question, with respect to administrative services or any services supplied by that ministry, is in order. As it reflects services provided by another ministry, it is not in order.

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Chairman, to assist the member who has asked the question, those who come under that category of children in care are referred and do have reference to some 900 social workers in this province, do have special counselling paid for by the Ministry of Human Resources, and are assisted in very many special avenues. The answer to that is yes, they are assisted, and we will continue to assist. There will be no change in that.

MR. ROSE: In view of recent developments, which I shall not specify but which are well known to this House, does the minister expect her ministry to assume an extra load?

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Chairman, I can't answer a purely hypothetical question. If the member wishes to bring some specifics to this House, I will be glad to find the answer for him.

MR. ROSE: Mr. Chairman, I was told a month ago that it takes about a month to get a counselling appointment with the Vancouver School Board....

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please.

MR. ROSE: She asked for specifics. The report of the ministry suggests cutting counselling and special services. Now if the counselling is already very slight in a system that shall remain nameless, and that's going to be cut back even further, how will that impact on the minister's department?

MR. CHAIRMAN: If that is a decision made by an authority that falls under another ministry, then it would not be appropriate for the Minister of Human Resources to answer that question.

MR. ROSE: Suppose a Crown corporation such as B.C. Hydro decided to fire 3,000 of its employees. Would it be inappropriate to ask the Minister of Human Resources or some outfit in the federal government such as Canada Manpower or Unemployment Insurance about the implications of that firing from one ministry — that is, Energy — into another ministry called Human Resources or Housing? I think we're being unduly restrictive here. I've done my best to stay in order.

MR. D'ARCY: I have already discussed with the minister and her deputy, both today and in the past, the subject of my questions today. I have two basic ones, Mr. Chairman.

I don't like to name names, so I won't, but there is a constituent of mine in care in Creston whose care is presently being funded by the Ministry of Human Resources, who have stated their intention to turn her over to the care of the Ministry of Health. I would like, first of all, to register my objection to that procedure. I also want to ask the minister this. In my discussions with her and with senior people in her ministry, they have indicated that there is primarily a medical reason, a series of medical opinions which I did not see but they assured me they had, as to why this patient should be receiving extended care from the Ministry of Health. They also said that a secondary consideration, although certainly not the primary one, was that they felt there would be a cost saving to the government in general — certainly a cost to their ministry, but a cost saving in general — but they emphasized that that was not the key thing. The key thing was that in the medical advice they had it was in the patient's best interest to be moved into extended care. And I accepted those opinions at the time, because I'm not a doctor and neither is the minister and neither are senior staff; we're all governed in all these things by medical opinion.

[Mr. R. Fraser in the chair.]

In any event, since that time I have been given a medical opinion by a doctor in Creston. I have already made this available to the minister. I'm not going to read the entire statement, except to note the closing sentence, where the doctor, Dr. Paterson, says: "In my opinion it would be a gross detriment to her condition for her to be placed in an extended-care unit. I sincerely hope such a step is not contemplated."

Further, in a conversation with a practitioner in Trail, who looked after this particular patient when she was a resident of Trail three years ago, he expressed the opinion that, while he has not examined this patient recently, he is satisfied that her condition has improved markedly since he last saw her, and in his view this in itself is proof that she is being well served at her present location of residence.

I'd also like to point out, and I'm sure the minister is well aware of this, that extended-care costs — depending on who you talk to — are somewhere between $70 and S200 a day per patient, depending on whether you only talk about the staffing or whether you consider all of the fixed costs. I understand — and the minister may wish to correct me — that the costs to her ministry and the Health ministry are somewhere in the neighbourhood of $50 to $75 a day in the present circumstance. Clearly there is a grey area here, and that's really my second question regarding this particular situation. I would like the minister and her deputy, hopefully in consultation with the Ministry of Health, to determine the actual relative costs between extended care and care in the Endicott Centre for this patient. Compare the actual costs to government, rather than being concerned with costs to one ministry or to another, because even though the minister and her staff have indicated that this is not the primary consideration, naturally everyone is concerned about the cost to the public purse of every government service these days.

I also want to point out that I understand as a laymen, from information that's been given to me, that it's important for patients with severe disorders — which this one has — to be in an atmosphere where there is in fact a mix of other residents and other patients. I suppose the best analogy could be drawn to playing an individual sport. If you were playing tennis or bridge — which is a mental sport — with someone, it's greatly beneficial to be playing against someone who is somewhat better than you are. Someone who is a great deal better isn't much help; someone who is equal or worse is not much help; but if you can play tennis or bridge — I use those two examples — it's a great help to have an adversary who is somewhat superior to you but not a great deal. I think this is true in this particular case. It's important for a patient with a severe disorder to have that kind of a mix. I'm certainly not

[ Page 5954 ]

putting any knocks on the extended-care health system, whether it be in Creston or in Trail, or anywhere else, but that kind of atmosphere would appear — and I only say this as a layman — to prevail in the Endicott Centre for this particular patient.

I also fully realize that it's difficult to make new rules, to apply province-wide, only because of the needs of one patient. The fact is, though, that as the elected representative of the area I have to be concerned with each and every constituent, and I have to be concerned with this constituent's family and this one particular patient. I would like to have intimate knowledge of other patients with similar needs around the province, but the fact is that I don't, and it is this one particular patient that I would like the minister and her deputy just to consider reviewing, to take into account this person's needs in order that she can live the fullest life that she possibly can get within the limits of the resources of the province.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

So there are those two questions, Mr. Chairman. Could I ask the minister and her deputy to get a medical opinion, as I have done or attempted to do, and also to conduct a cost review to government of maintaining this patient in her present circumstances.

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Chairman, I certainly understand the problems with the case which the member for Rossland-Trail has brought to the House. He very kindly has discussed it with me on more than one occasion. I certainly understand the problems which he has with it as a member. I think the House should know, first of all, that this case was one which the Ministry of Human Resources provided for on the same basis as would have happened if this member had stood on his feet two years ago and pleaded with us to be able to relieve a family of a very stressful situation.

The story behind this case is as follows. A young adult needing extended care, one who has been diagnosed under the Ministry of Health as needing extended care, was in the care of her parents. Those parents were waiting for an extended-care bed, and those that were offered did not suit them. In order that we would relieve them of a burden — because the parents fell ill and were not able to care for their very severely handicapped child — we were asked if we couldn't provide a temporary situation, and we stepped in and did so.

If this member, or any member of this House, were to present such a case to us today from the floor of the House or by a phone call, we would look into it. If the circumstances warranted, we would rush to the assistance of the parents. We know what a burden that is, and when illness falls and the adult in their home can no longer be cared for, we would give them assistance. We did that at a cost of about $33,000 extra each and every year for two years. The member is really asking us to continue that very unusual circumstance. In this case, what you're really asking for is something that should rightfully be asked for under the Ministry of Health.

The Endicott Centre, where this service has been offered, does not have an extended-care service. It is not licensed for extended care. It is not suitable for extended care, and it is not suitable for this patient. Therefore we had to add an extra $33,000 for round-the-clock assistance to this particular patient. It was an unusual circumstance which we met because we wanted to assist the parents. Since that time, we have been looking for an extended-care situation which would fit this person's needs. We have found some. I should say that the Endicott Centre and the people involved and the professionals in the Ministry of Health have found some.

[4:00]

The decision, then, was to place this adult in an extended-care bed. It was the decision at the time she was moved to Endicott Centre, where there was not an extended-care bed that could be readily available to her. Since that time, although others have been offered to the family, they have turned them down. So at this point in time all we are doing — after two years of extra service above and beyond the call of duty — is saying that the Ministry of Health, whose responsibility this is under extended care, will be accepting the responsibility, and this patient will be moved.

The extra amount which is being spent may well go to serve somebody else who is in such a crisis situation. It could well go to that. So it isn't really a question of dollars; it is the question of meeting the need of a very difficult crisis situation at the time. We were pleased to do that, but it is not our area of responsibility. Even though it wasn't, we did not shirk our responsibility to assist that family, and we thought that was a good decision and the decision that should be made.

The Endicott Centre is not licensed for extended care. You bring up the case of a medical opinion. You were kind enough to share it with me prior to the question in the House, and I am most appreciative of that. The Ministry of Human Resources is not in a position to deal with different medical opinions. We leave that with the Ministry of Health. That is not our responsibility. We wouldn't want to take that on. But it has always been the plan for this very severely handicapped adult, with a lot of service problems to be met, to be under extended care in the Ministry of Health.

You ask the question whether it is more costly or less costly. I think the important thing is that the need is met, and at this time it is not being met except with an extra expense. I would say that if you were to give the option of round-the-clock care to several thousand other people in the province, they would probably take it. Again, what would be the need of putting up extended-care hospitals then? If we are going to license non-extended-care facilities and then just keep adding a salary for one-to-one care, I would think that would be an inappropriate expenditure of tax dollars. So as best as I can say, we've given that family tremendous service. A very great amount of money has been expended on that one patient. That patient is in a facility that is not licensed for extended care, and will be moved to extended-care. A different medical opinion has upheld the ministry's decision. The one-to-one care, which the family would like to retain, was done on a crisis basis and was not meant to be continuing even as long as two years, as a matter of fact. But we were pleased to do it when we could and would continue to do it if there was not an extended-care bed for that patient, but there is more than one extended-care bed available.

MR. D'ARCY: I'd like to thank the minister for giving a basic history of the case. The real point that we're dealing with here, though, is the fact that both she and Health have stated that they have a medical opinion, but they haven't produced that medical opinion. They have not produced a statement from anyone who is licensed to practice medicine in British Columbia, from anybody who has ever examined this particular patient, to back up their opinions. What I'm

[ Page 5955 ]

asking for here is simply that the minister, perhaps in consultation with her colleague the Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. Nielsen) and her deputy, make an undertaking before the chamber today to obtain professional medical opinions.

I have been told — and I can't document this — that the only examination made of this patient on behalf of the Ministry of Health was done by a person who is not a medical doctor but who is in fact a physiotherapist. It may have been a very well-qualified physiotherapist; perhaps he was very well qualified in other ways, but he was not a medical doctor. That's what this whole issue hinges upon. In all my discussions with professionals within my own region and within the Ministry of Human Resources, with the minister and with her officials here, they have stated that they have a medical opinion indicating that what they are doing is correct. But I've never seen that opinion, Mr. Chairman.

I'm asking that, if the minister does not have it here today, perhaps she will at least indicate that she will attempt to obtain such an opinion. Otherwise I can only go on the medical opinion I have. I realize that not all doctors think alike, just as all lawyers don't think alike, but I only have the one opinion, and that indicates that the patient should stay where she is.

Again, I would ask the minister also, regarding cost.... It's always been unclear to me whether the $33,000 annually which the minister and her ministry are putting into this patient — and everyone is greatly appreciative of that — is over and above what it would be costing the government to have this patient in extended care. Once again we have to ask how the cost of an extended-care patient is compiled. Is it only in terms of the staffing costs? Does it include the fixed costs of the building, especially if the extended-care unit is attached to an acute-care hospital, as are most extended-care units? Certainly in the Kootenays they are, in any event. In view of the fact, of course, that there is a waiting-list for almost all extended-care units, you really have to look at the overall costs of extended care.

With those two questions, I really.... I told the minister before I opened my remarks on this that I did not want to debate it, and I still don't; it's too sensitive and too personal to the people involved. But I would like her to at least undertake to get a second medical opinion from a medical practitioner or practitioners, in addition to the one that I have given her today.

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Chairman, first of all to answer the question, that $33,000, give or take a few dollars — it might be more — is over and above the cost of every other patient. It's that plus the $33,000.

The operative phrase, I guess, that I'd like to leave with you is that the needs for this patient cannot be met at Endicott Centre. They are not licensed nor are they able to meet the needs of this patient. But also I would like to say that it really is a Ministry of Health responsibility. Usually in those cases — in fact always that I have known of — a team of professionals thoroughly investigates the case before making that decision.

I will certainly be pleased to undertake to find out how that was done and when it was done. I'm happy to tell the member that I will certainly look forward to getting the results of that inquiry, and I will share it with him.

MR. D'ARCY: Can the minister determine whether any one of those professionals was a medical doctor licensed to practise in British Columbia?

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: I'd be pleased to do that in an inquiry to the Ministry of Health.

MR. PASSARELL: I have four specific questions to the minister, basically regarding her estimates and the constituency of Atlin. The first one is that many children — not under 18 but say in the 20 to 25 age bracket — are returning home to their parents because they are finding it very difficult to live in the cities further south in the province. Often many of these adult children are too proud to take any type of welfare. I was wondering if the minister, in her consultations with the other jurisdictions across the country, has come up with any idea of some type of tax relief for parents who are faced with adult children returning home who are too proud to take welfare, staying underneath their homes. Is there any type of tax relief she has come upon through consultation with the federal and other provincial jurisdictions across the country? Is the minister pursuing this idea at all? It is an expense to the parents who have their adult children returning home, too proud to go on any type of social assistance. The parents themselves are burdened with the costs.

The second issue I would like to raise is in regard to the caseworker in the constituency of Atlin, particularly in the town of Cassiar. This is an individual by the name of John Nuyens who has performed an excellent service to the ministry for the past four years. One of the problems that Mr. Nuyens has to face is that he covers a great area geographically, being stationed in Cassiar, when he comes over to visit the six or seven communities that fall under his jurisdiction. For instance, when he leaves Cassiar to go to Atlin once or twice a month, it's 350 miles one way. The ministry has given him a vehicle. A disturbing rumour has it that if Mr. Nuyens quits, the ministry will not replace a northern caseworker; the Human Resources services will come out of Terrace, where Mr. Nuyens was performing a service in Cassiar. This whole service, if he quits or something happens to him, God forbid, will be done out of Terrace, which would add an extra 500 or 600 miles onto the area the caseworker would have to pursue up in the constituency of Atlin. I'd like to know from the minister if this is true. If something happens to Mr. Nuyens, will the entire Ministry of Human Resources be serviced out of Terrace?

The third question I have to the minister is emergency shelter, which falls under her ministry. Has there been any funding increase from last year? This is an extremely worthwhile project in areas in the far north having emergency shelter in case of fire or some type of personal situation.

The last question I have to the minister is in regard to the apprehension of native children by the ministry. It would be very difficult, I know, for the minister to answer this question at this stage, but I'd like to know how many native children have been apprehended in the Atlin constituency in the last two years. How many of those children have been placed in non-native homes?

Those were four specific questions that I ask the minister. I won't bother the Chairman with education at this time.

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Chairman, in regard to the question from the member for Atlin on a federal-provincial agreement on tax relief for parents who would take in

[ Page 5956 ]

their teen-age children, and some of those who are returning home and who are beyond the 19 years where they do have a tax credit.... Over 19 a tax credit is already given to them; they can claim an extension if they are in an educational program. That is possible now, so there doesn't have to be any negotiating in that regard. We're also, you'll be pleased to know, negotiating with the Ministry of Labour in this government, and also with the Ministry of Education, in a joint submission in order to assist those young people in terms of re-education, retraining and so on. What we're really saying is that they're at home because they aren't out working and able to provide for themselves in their own domicile. That is going on. Also, we've had some excellent meetings, I think, with the federal people, both Hon. Flora MacDonald and Hon. Jake Epp, regarding both of their portfolios in regard to addressing this need. I think there is something quite substantial coming out in a joint representation that will meet the need of that age group.

[4:15]

So when you ask if I've been negotiating, the answer is yes, but in a different way than you suggest; more to see independence promoted rather than tax relief for the parents. I'd prefer that we help them to get into the job market, train and retrain for that, rather than try to fix the tax situation to assist.

The second concern you had was regarding the worker in Cassiar. As you know, we put a worker there just in the past five years. It's a fairly recent thing. There wasn't a worker there at all until four and a half years ago. You need not be concerned. We don't anticipate anything happening to Mr. Nuyens. We believe the service being delivered there is — as in all of our ministry offices, I think — a first-class service.

Your question regarding emergency shelter: we are still providing emergency shelter service, and will continue to do so. The amount of money last year was about $3.1 million; this year it's $3,234,638. So we are consistent in providing that.

In answer to your fourth question, how many native children apprehended in the Atlin area, I would not want to guess. I could find that out for you. Perhaps that question should be on the order paper. But I would like to address your next question in regard to native children: how many that are apprehended would be looked after in native Indian homes, as opposed to non-native Indian homes. In all respects, we attempt to get a native Indian home to assist with the temporary home or the fostering of a native Indian child. It is sometimes not possible, but in all cases we make really an extra effort to make sure that is done. We try very hard to do that.

You may know that our province was one of the first to have an agreement with a native Indian band. The Spillimacheen band and ourselves have struck an agreement, one which I'm pleased to say we did with a fair amount of good negotiating. It resulted in, I think, a fairly good plan. At the present time we are also undertaking the same kind of a plan with yet another band council. So we think that kind of organization and commitment to having the native Indian children looked after by their own people has been well carried out and well considered by this ministry.

[Mr. Michael in the chair.]

MR. GABELMANN: Mr. Chairman, I want to do two things in my comments this afternoon. The first is to make some general remarks about poverty: where we are and what I think needs to be done about it. In the concluding section I want to ask some questions in specific about some of the things the minister has been saying about the numbers of people in British Columbia in receipt of social assistance. I'll get to that at the end of my comments.

One of the things one discovers, in doing some research — if that's the proper word — into poverty lines in British Columbia, is that you're always having to work with information that is a couple of years old. I think all of us recognize, in terms of the distribution of wealth in post-1983 British Columbia, that there has been a marked accentuation of the trends evident in the first part of the eighties. That information indicates that between 1981 and 1983, poverty among families in British Columbia had risen from about 9.4 percent to 14 percent of families. Those are Statistics Canada figures. One can only hazard a guess as to what has happened to that percentage since 1983, when so many more people in British Columbia have lost their jobs, lost their UIC and gone onto the social welfare rolls. Among singles — "unattached individuals," as described by Statistics Canada — for 1981 to 1983, the percentage of those unattached individuals in British Columbia who live below the poverty line went from 34 percent to 37 percent, in round numbers. That's 37 percent of the unattached individuals in British Columbia living below the poverty line, as determined by Statistics Canada. God only knows what those numbers are today. I'm not going to try to hazard a guess.

I cite those dated figures to suggest that poverty does exist in this province. I don't think it needs to be proven. I think it's a fact that we all agree upon. I think we need to talk about it more than we do, and I think we need to talk about it from a philosophical point of view rather than simply talking in terms of numbers.

I think a good starting point for philosophy for any government with respect to dealing with poverty and dealing with income distribution would be the preamble of the Canada Assistance Plan. I want to read the first part of the preamble: "Whereas the Parliament of Canada, recognizing that the provision of adequate assistance to and in respect of persons in need and the prevention and removal of the causes of poverty and dependence on public assistance are the concerns of all Canadians...." It goes on. The important thing in terms of the philosophy, I think, is: "...recognizing that the provision of adequate assistance to persons in need." We don't do that in British Columbia. Our legislation doesn't even have a title that reflects that philosophy. Our legislation has the title: "Guaranteed Available Income for Need Act." Yet the philosophy of the Canada Assistance Plan, which pays half the costs — not incidentally — calls for the provision of "adequate" assistance. Those people who are calling for an amendment to the legislation changing the name from "Guaranteed Available Income" to the "Guaranteed Adequate Income" have my full support, Mr. Chairman.

The philosophy of the Canada Assistance Plan when it was designed was clear: financial assistance through the tax system delivered by government was to be available in adequate numbers of dollars to all people in need. That philosophy does not exist in British Columbia. First of all, the determination of how much money will be paid to people in need is based not on their need but on the government's political will and what the government believes it can get away with in terms of limiting that amount. It is the "available" money in a very real sense. It is the money that the

[ Page 5957 ]

ministry is given by the government, not based on the adequate requirements as set out in the Canada Assistance Plan but rather based on what the government thinks it needs to make available to persons in need, simply to meet some political determination that it has.

On top of that, Mr. Chairman, the idea that the Canada Assistance Plan called for, which is supposed to be a universal program in this country, included the idea that supporting people in need was to be done through government. We are now moving into a situation in British Columbia where in fact more and more we are going back to the charity models of the 1800s. You see that in terms of food banks, in terms of soup kitchens, in terms of other assistance that is provided that none of us ever see on a day-to-day basis and which is outside the tax system.

That does a couple of things. Firstly, it sets up a means test of the worst possible kind: those people who are prepared to suffer the humiliation of standing in line for soup or for a food hamper. It easily weeds out 80 or 90 percent of the people in need, because they won't do that. But it does more than that. It says to society that we have a government that believes it is not responsible either to the Canada Assistance Plan or to some basic human dignity in terms of ability to cope financially in our society.

It goes further. Contrary, I think, to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — but that's yet to be demonstrated in the courts — the government goes further and sets up arbitrary and discriminatory features in how it's going to allocate welfare. For example, if you're under a certain age, you get less; if you're over a certain age, you get more. If you're a mother with two children under 12, you get a different rate than if one child is over 12. And on and on it goes. We have a situation further than that. If a mother is receiving an orphan's allowance for a child, that allowance can be deducted from the measly amount that's provided. The system is full of those kinds of inequities. Hopefully all of them will be dealt with in a proper way by the challenges under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Unfortunately those kinds of amendments weren't brought in, either as a package of regulation changes at the same time as the Attorney-General brought in his bill, or, more properly, weren't brought in years ago when they should have been brought in.

Mr. Chairman, I'm not going to go through all the categories of recipients that are included in the manual. They go on and on and are totally unfair and totally inappropriate, in my mind, and add to the poverty levels that we see so visibly in this province.

Mr. Chairman, I've talked without defining "poverty line." On December 13, 1984, the minister was quoted in the Times-Colonist as saying: "The poverty line changes with everybody's opinion." To a certain extent that's true, Mr. Chairman. One group in Canada perceives that B.C. welfare rates are 51 percent of what they should be to meet the poverty line. Another group suggests that our welfare rates in British Columbia meet 53 percent of the required moneys to bring people up to the poverty line. So clearly there are differences of opinion.

But I think most people in British Columbia would be satisfied if the minister would recognize that the differences of opinion on this matter relate to minor elements. There is no difference of opinion among people who know and who care about the fact that overwhelmingly people in receipt of social assistance live at 50 percent of recognized poverty lines.

Now there are exceptions and anomalies — it's more expensive in Vancouver than it is in Salmon Arm, and so it goes. So there are great differences. But for the minister to reject calls for increases to welfare rates on the basis that "the poverty line changes with everybody's opinion" is just not on.

[4:30]

Mr. Chairman, the Canadian Council on Social Development has done this kind of study. The Senate has done these kinds of studies under David Croll. He's no raving left-winger, that one, but a respected Liberal, member of the same party that the former Attorney-General was a member of — at the same time too. The third group I am referring to is Statistics Canada itself. These three groups have come up with figures that tell us that the B.C. welfare rates are about 51 to 53 percent of what is required to live on in this province. That's not living well; that's living at a minimal standard. Under each of the different ways in which these figures are calculated, these are minimum standards. Yet the minister says it's just a matter of opinion.

Presumably the minister could get up and say it's expensive. If we are to meet these basic requirements, it would be very expensive to the Crown, I agree. It would be under the present management of our economy, when 240,000 people or thereabouts are on welfare in British Columbia. So clearly, in conjunction with raising these rates, there has to be an economic plan that puts every single individual who wants to work back to work in this province. My call for an increase in these rates should not be understood in isolation. It needs to be understood in the context of a properly run economy, when we wouldn't have 240,000 people.... But even if we do have 240,000 people, as we do at the present time, and we have to almost double the rates to meet these various standards.... The minister could say: "Well, that would add another $900 million to my budget." In fact, it wouldn't, because the money is cost-shared. I recognize that it comes down to the taxpayers as well. But in terms of provincial government expenditures, those are cost-shared dollars.

That $450 million would do more for the economy of this province than $400 million blown on an overrun at Expo 86. The money that will be spent by people in receipt of assistance in this province will be spent here on bread, on soup, on transportation, on housing, on clothing, and just once in a while on going to a movie. That's where it will be spent. That money will help to revive the economy of this province. It won't be spent on trips to Hawaii or money invested in various endeavours that do not bring the kind of return that direct dollars spent in local communities would bring.

Mr. Chairman, the government reminds me of a statement made almost 2,000 years ago about bread and circuses. Give the people bread and circuses, to paraphrase the quotation, and they'll be happy. All we get in this province is circuses. We don't even get any bread. And what bread is available has to be provided by charity, through private organizations such as soup kitchens or food banks. It's appalling. If you're going to give us circuses, give us bread too.

Mr. Speaker, we don't take the same.... My light is on and I'm only halfway through.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, I would like to intervene, just so that my colleague can have a sip of water and then rise to his feet and carry on this brilliant speech which he is presenting to us.

[ Page 5958 ]

MR. GABELMANN: Mr. Chairman, I apologize for calling you Mr. Speaker. I elevated you prior to the actual event.

Mr. Chairman, we seem to have a different philosophy when it comes to feeding people than when it comes to providing health care. We don't say to people, when they go to their doctor or when they go to hospital: "We will pay half or two-thirds of the cost of that visit, and you have to go down to a health care bank to get the remainder." Or if you have to go to hospital to have an operation and it costs $5,000, the government doesn't say: "Okay, we'll pay $3,000. You go out and find some charitable organization to pay the other $2,000." But that's what we do with food and hunger and shelter in this province. Why can't we have the same philosophy?

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

Mr. Chairman, it's not just a few radicals on this side of the House who might be calling for an increase in welfare rates. The list of organizations, communities and councils around this province that have endorsed the call for the establishment of assistance at a reasonable level, as defined.... Maybe there is some better way of defining it than one of these three groups that I've cited have so far defined it. That's fine; let's go through that process. Let's get a legislative committee to work to help define what that level is. Maybe it varies around the province, but we could do that kind of work if we had a will to do it.

But that aside, the list of organizations is dozens long, such as the city of Vancouver, the Council of Senior Citizens' Organizations of B.C., the Okanagan South Women's Centre in Penticton, the Prince Rupert Labour Council, the city of Duncan, School District 28 in Quesnel, the city of Trail, the Beaconsfield United Church in Vancouver, Kiwassa Single Mothers' Support Group, the city of Fort St. John.... There's a left-wing town. The city of Fort St. John council endorsed a call for the establishment of assistance rates in this province based on some reasonable poverty line.

Mr. Chairman, I suspect that one of the reasons the government isn't prepared to raise welfare rates is that if it did it would have to consider raising the minimum wage as well. It prefers to have people working at minimum wage, so they can earn a total of about $7,000 a year — not even enough to pay the rent in many cases. It prefers to have people earning those levels of income, because it knows that if it were to raise welfare rates, it would also have to, in tandem, raise those minimum wages. I'm going to talk a bit more about minimum wage rates in the labour estimates. I see those two issues as linked, and I think that's the reason the government won't do it. It's afraid of offending that small part of the small business community that persists in paying the minimum wage to their employees.

Mr. Chairman, there is ample documented evidence to support the kinds of things I'm saying. The United Way has done excellent work, and I refer to the November 1984 report on the cost of basic living. I don't think the debate should even have to happen. There is no question about the fact that people are living at less than the poverty line. There is some doubt about whether they are living at 45 or 50 or 55 percent of the poverty line, but no doubt they are living below the poverty line by about half. That is a disgraceful situation in this province.

Mr. Chairman, you look at a particular category of people in receipt of assistance. You took at the HPIA group — handicapped persons' income assistance plan — paying, I think, at the moment, $6,577.68 a year — $548.14, if my memory is correct, a month. In any event, it's $6,500-plus a year. The poverty line in the rural areas of British Columbia is $7,500 — a thousand dollars more than is paid to people on handicapped assistance. That's supposed to be a pension to people who are unable to work. You know what the poverty line is in Vancouver for that same individual? It's $10,238. Persons on a pension because of their handicap in the lower mainland are earning because it is an earning, not a benefit; it's an earning 65 percent of what it costs them to live, if they can live at the poverty line.

Those rates have been frozen for the last few years. Section 8 of the GAIN Act was never proclaimed, section 8 being the one that allows the government to bring in indexing. Do you remember, Mr. Chairman, how, for so many years, old age pensions used to be a political issue in this country, because people in their post-65 years were poor? We finally began, bit by bit, struggling over the years, to get the senior citizens' pensions up to a more reasonable level, and we indexed them. We don't hear the same kind of political tumult about senior citizens' pensions now that we did in the old days. That's because there were fights to bring them up to a more reasonable level, and indexing was put in place. Why hasn't indexing — section 8 — been proclaimed, so that these rates too, once they are brought up to a proper level, can be indexed on a quarterly, or at worst six-month, basis?

Our goal in this Legislature should be to wipe out welfare. That should be our goal. Those people who need assistance, whether they're handicapped or whether they're single parents who would require some kind of assistance, should be on a pension. Call it what you will, whether it's a guaranteed annual income, a pension or whatever you want to call it, that's what they should have, and then we should say that there will be no more welfare. We should wipe it out. That should be our goal in this province.

Interjection.

MR. GABELMANN: Give those people who cannot work a pension, yes.

AN HON. MEMBER: What's the difference? It's semantics.

MR. GABELMANN: There is a big difference between earning a pension and having to go down to a dinky welfare office and stand in line for half the money you need. One earns a pension when one has a right to it, and somebody who is handicapped in this society, who can't work, deserves that pension and has a right to it. Mr. Chairman, that's all I'm going to say on poverty. I've made the point that I wanted to make, I hope.

The minister, quoted in Hansard.... The photocopy doesn't indicate what day it was; it was probably late last week. She said: "Fifty percent of the people who come on income assistance today will be off income assistance anywhere between three months and eight months from now — on their very own. They do not stay on the caseload. Fifty percent of the rest of them are off in the following four months."

[ Page 5959 ]

Let me just paraphrase what she said. Fifty percent are off within eight months, some as early as three months — anywhere between three and eight months. So fifty percent are off in eight months, and fifty percent of the rest are off in the next four months. That means 75 percent of the people on social assistance are off in a year, according to the minister's figures.

Let's just try to go through this, because I'm not very good with these numbers.

In round numbers we have 240,000 people on social assistance. Seventy-five percent of that is 180,000 people. Therefore in the last 12 months 180,000 people who were on social assistance are not anymore. There's a new 180,000 people who are on to replace them, presumably. Now the year before the rates weren't quite as high. So say there were only 150,000 people on who came off welfare in the previous 12 months, two years ago. We're now up to 330,000 people in two years who have been on welfare and have come off. Now I would guess — and it's hard to calculate; I'm not a statistician — that in ten years, based on the numbers of people who have been on welfare in British Columbia over the last ten years, over a million British Columbians have gone onto welfare and gone off again. Absolute, palpable nonsense, Mr. Chairman.

Now the minister is going to come back and say to me: "Oh, there aren't 240,000 people on welfare." She always uses a different figure. The figure she uses whenever she talks in the public about welfare numbers is the figure of family heads, which ignores the spouse and the children who happen also to be on welfare. So I would like to ask her how many different people since 1976, including women, children and husbands — and it may take a few minutes because you will have to ask the computer this question, I suspect — have been on welfare in British Columbia.

[4:45]

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Chairman, the last question that the member has posed, and it's really the only question.... He says that I'm fond of using a figure that is different than his. But you see, when you're talking about turnover.... I did try the other day, obviously unsuccessfully, to explain to the members opposite that the turnover rate, the people coming into income assistance and going off income assistance.... We try to shorten that time if possible. We try to put all sorts of opportunities so that we can get those people into independence as soon as possible. The member himself said that that was his motivation. I'm not sure it's everybody's motivation on that side of the House, but he said it was his motivation.

Interjection.

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: The negative member for Vancouver East isn't in his seat. If he wishes to speak, maybe he should speak from his own seat, Mr. Chairman — the second member for Vancouver East (Mr. Williams).

At any rate, to the member for North Island, the numbers of people you can take is over.... I think you mentioned 235,000 or 240,000 people on income assistance, including children. There's nothing wrong with using that figure except that it's usually not children that go out and get a job and change the turnover figure. So on the one hand if you want to discuss the turnover figure you must discuss the heads of households only. That's where you wish to transpose that figure and use the figure of all the dependents of those heads of families, but if you do, you distort the very premise on which your argument is based.

Another thing that you said earlier: you were talking about CAP, and I want you to know that the CAP program has served the nation very well, and it was our provincial government's proposal to the federal government a week ago in Ottawa that because it had served us so well, we wished, as did all of those ministers represented across the nation, to keep it intact. It was indeed a program that had served well for the purposes that it was meant to serve, and we had hoped that there would not be too many changes. We did however hope — and this was consistent with Manitoba, Alberta, Ontario and with all the members who were representing different provincial jurisdictions — that there would be some flexibility in order to give to those people on income assistance first choice and first chance in any joint government kinds of targeting for job creation. That was very well brought forward by those members present from across the nation, and we're hoping that the federal government will listen to that.

MR. GABELMANN: I'll leave the question of CAP alone. I think CAP would be great if we would just follow it — if we would provide what it calls for, which is adequate assistance to people in need. We do neither. We don't provide adequate assistance, and we don't provide it to everyone who's in need.

I'm quoting again: "Fifty percent of the people who come onto income assistance today will be off in the next three to eight months." How many people come on income assistance each day?

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Maybe it would be more interesting to the member to know that some several hundred come off income assistance every month. Last October it was somewhere around 7,500. That was the last figure that I can recall. I could probably get more up-to-date information on that. But it varies from day to day. I can get the figures. It's the kind of question that it would probably be better for the member to put on the order paper, however, unless he gave me prior notice.

MR. GABELMANN: I would agree in ordinary times that that's the kind of question that should go on the order paper — or even I could write her a letter and ask the question. But she stated in this House last week that 50 percent of the people who come on income assistance today will be off. How many? Fifty percent is how many? I mean, you can't make one statement without knowing what the other is.

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Well, Mr. Chairman, perhaps it would help and maybe this will assist the member. The caseload is remaining very even at this present time, so new cases coming on would be approximately per month. I don't know each and every day, but approximately per month there would be about 10,000 cases coming on, but there would also be 10,000 cases going off, if that helps you in any way. In other words, the caseload is staying just about the same, and in fact is a little bit less in the last month and a half or two months.

MR. GABELMANN: I want to be clear that I understand this, Mr. Chairman: 10,000 new cases come on. Now this

[ Page 5960 ]

isn't people, this is cases, so we could assume it's probably 20,000 people. But let's just talk about heads of families, or heads of households. Ten thousand new ones come on each month, and 10,000 go off. Some of those 10,000 came on in previous months, obviously. So the 10,000 who come off are people who came on earlier. That's 120,000 new cases each year. That's 240,000 people, roughly. I won't quibble about the numbers, because I'm just doubling because I think that's fairly close in terms of how it works. It varies in tough times, because there are more single people, but doubling it.... So we have 120,000 cases coming on every year, and 120,000 going off. That means that at the end of a year — take this year — we have a quarter of a million people on assistance, and a quarter of a million people who have gone off assistance. Does that mean in the course of this year that half a million people, counting children, have been on social assistance?

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: No.

MR. GABELMANN: The answer is no, she says. I don't understand it. Let me just back up a bit then. Ten thousand new cases each month — 20,000 people. Right? I think that's what she told the House — 10,000 new cases each month, offset by the fact that 10,000 go off the lists. That's another 20,000 people. Is that right?

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Well, Mr. Chairman, I know the member either wants.... I know it's difficult for him to understand the caseload of income assistance. You have to work with it for a little while in order to understand it.

I don't think it's a laughing matter. The member for Burnaby-Edmonds (Ms. Brown) is laughing. It's not a laughing matter for people to be on income assistance, and I'm hoping that the seriousness with which this question is being asked is being felt by all members of this House, because it is a serious question.

But what the member who is asking the question should understand — and I guess.... Let me put this another way. The people who come off income assistance today have been on for varying lengths of time, so it's very difficult to take one number and sort of put an amount to it. What we try to do is reduce the length of time that they are on income assistance, if at all possible — in other words, to not just assume that people who are on income assistance today are going to be with us forever on income assistance. We're hoping that that can be overcome. We're not just hoping; we're doing a whole bunch of meaningful things in order to make sure that they reach that independence.

Most people in this province use income assistance for what it was intended. They use it for temporary help in time of need. Some of those people will take income assistance today, and they may not get a job for two, three, four, even five months. But when they get a job.... They will go into the job market, and maybe work for five or six months; and it may be that for some reason — it may be the kind of work they take or the kind of work they're capable of doing — they are laid off. Then they go on unemployment insurance, and we may not see them again. But then again, if they need us, we're there to help. So each and every individual in the 10,000 who come to us in this month is a different and individual case. It is true that the caseload is in direct proportion to the unemployment figure in the province. If there is more employment in the province, there will be fewer people on income assistance. We all know that. That's an historic thing.

But I think that what has not been recognized over the years — and I can tell you that it hasn't yet been acknowledged or recognized in other parts of this country — is that our best help to those people is, first of all, to definitely be there when they need our help. I resent your saying that we are not there, or that we do not give assistance. You said that CAP should be used for what it was meant for. It is used for that in this province, as it is across this nation. When people need assistance, that safety net is there for them. If they qualify for it, it is there. There are no questions asked — it is there.

The second thing that one should note is that we are the only province in Canada thus far that has recognized the need to reduce the time that people are on income assistance by putting in programs that will reduce the time that they stay there, simply because we long ago recognized that the longer they stay on income assistance, the longer and more difficult it will be to get back into the job market, because they won't be job-ready. They won't have the confidence and they won't have the ability to get back into the job market. So we have hoped to reduce that time-frame, and we've been very successful at it — with the job action program, with the Individual Opportunity Plan, with re-education and retraining, with all of the extra assists we give people to move from one job to another. They are able to get back on their feet in that regard.

So what you're seeing is a much quicker turnover because of the efforts that we have made.

Interjections.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. It's most unparliamentary for members to heckle or interject when another member is speaking. It is decidedly unparliamentary for a member to heckle or interrupt when he's not even sitting in his place.

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Chairman, if the member wishes to have a broader explanation of the turnover concept.... It is something that you have to get your head around. You have to work with the staff in order to do it. If he'd like to have that kind of help, I'd be very pleased to have that provided for him.

MR. GABELMANN: If you're patronized by a woman, is that being matronized, Mr. Chairman? I find that really quite offensive. One of my tasks as an elected member in committee debate of estimates is to try to find out what the estimates are all about. Instead of getting answers, instead of getting a direct approach from the minister, we get this patronizing drivel. Let me ask the minister: how many individuals went through the IOP program in 1984, went off welfare, got a job, and are still employed?

[5:00]

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: I'd be pleased to get that for him, but unfortunately I can't give it to him. Approximately 7,500 recipients of income assistance, each and every month, are in an Individual Opportunity Plan.

While I'm on my feet, I wonder if I could please respond to the member for Atlin (Mr. Passarell). The member for Atlin asked about native children in the Atlin constituency. I would like him to have this answer on the record, even though he's not in the House right now. The Cassiar office, whose

[ Page 5961 ]

boundaries closely correspond to the Ad in constituency, have currently five children in care. They were apprehended between 1983 and 1985. Of those five, four are native Indian. These four native Indian children are placed in fully native or part-native — that is, one spouse would be native — homes. There is one white child in that five, who is placed in a non-Indian home.

Interjection.

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Did you catch it? Okay. That's fine. I'll send this over to you, as well.

MR. GABELMANN: The more questions that don't get answered, the more questions I have.

Back to the CAP, just to divert from the mainline of my questioning. The minister said that everybody who is in need in British Columbia is provided for, as she said, as is called for under the CAP agreement. That is not true. If every person in British Columbia who was in need was provided for, there would not be 30 or 40 soup kitchens and food banks in this province. Why is it that those soup kitchens, for example, in Campbell River only have 5, 10 or 15 people at the beginning of the month, but have 70 or 80 people at the end of the month? That's because the province of British Columbia is not following the law of this country as provided for in the Canada Assistance Plan. It calls for the provision of adequate assistance. When you're hungry and have to go to a charitable organization because the government doesn't provide adequate assistance, that, in my view, is a violation both of the law and of the spirit of the Parliament of this country.

It might be easier, before I continue with these questions, which I think are legitimate public property, Mr. Chairman.... It might be helpful to me if I could know how far back the computer has records of people who have been on assistance in this province. How many years back is that information available for?

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: People in our province have been on income assistance since the 1930s; the computer hasn't been around that long, so I can't really answer the question. Are you asking how long we keep records?

MR. GABELMANN: I thought it was a simple question, Mr. Chairman. You should be able to get the computer to tell you who's on assistance today. I know you can do that. How far back in time can that computer deliver information as to who has been on assistance in British Columbia?

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Because we do not have need for the information.... I can tell you that we could probably go back several years, but unless we would have a need for that — to get a specific program going or some specific need for it — we wouldn't probably use that information. But the information is there, back several years.

MR. GABELMANN: So it would be possible to determine for several years how many different people have been on assistance in British Columbia, I presume from that answer. I wonder if the minister would undertake to provide that information. I don't want names, obviously; I never would want to see the computer printout. But I would like the minister to undertake that she will deliver to the House the number of different people who have at one time or another been on social assistance in British Columbia.

Mr. Chairman, maybe if I explain what I was trying to get at, the minister would have an easier time understanding my questions. In this House, outside this House, the minister constantly talks about her great programs of getting people off welfare. The IOP: 7,500 people a month go through the program. No answer to my question about how many are still working, but 7,500 through the program. She says, as she did last week, that 50 percent of those who have come on income assistance today will be off, leaving impressions in our community about what a wonderful program she administers. I think the service delivery provided by social workers and financial aid workers is pretty good, but I think the delivery of that ministry is exactly the opposite — pretty bad, in terms of the politics at the head office. When I say the head office, I mean her office. She leaves impressions around this province about how wonderful everything is. Everybody's able to get a job. You just get on welfare and go down to the office, and you can enroll in the IOP; then you'll be off, you'll have a job and everything will be wonderful. I don't believe it.

Interjection.

MR. GABELMANN: I'll believe it when the minister produces the data. She won't produce the data.

Interjections.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please.

MR. GABELMANN: Mr. Chairman, when my house is burning down and the fire department is on its way, I'm not going to say: "Well, it'll be fine if I just sit it out." That's the optimistic route. That's the kind of approach that the member for Surrey (Mrs. Johnston) would have us take: always talk about how great it is, how wonderful it is. Let's do that when there's cause to do it. The member for Surrey says: "We believe there's cause for optimism." If that's the case, then the Minister of Human Resources would be delighted to answer some of these questions.

Let me try a few that haven't been answered. She hasn't undertaken to tell us how many people have been through the social assistance system in the last few years for which information is available. She hasn't told us how many of the 90,000 people who last year went through the Individual Opportunity Program are working today. I'll give you a chance to answer that: how many?

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Perhaps the figures from March and February would give you that answer better. There were 11,709 new cases on income assistance in March 1985, but the cases that were closed in that same month numbered 12,136. That 12,000-plus number of cases, as opposed to the 11,000-plus that came on, would have been people who had been on the Individual Opportunity Plan. They would have been people who had found jobs on their own. They would have been a mixture of people. They would have had different reasons for leaving income assistance, but the fact is that when they leave income assistance they leave because they are no longer in need and do not qualify. So again, in March, 12,136 left income assistance.

[ Page 5962 ]

MR. GABELMANN: Mr. Chairman, may I ask the minister again quietly: can she give me the numbers for any month in 1984, or any period of time in the last few years — non-specifically; any figures she wants to choose — of the people who in that period of time went through the IOP and are still working?

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: I'd be glad to look at the feasibility of doing that. I can't do that at the present time.

MR. GABELMANN: If it's a question of looking at the feasibility of doing that, am I to understand that that's not done regularly as a way of assessing the value of the IOP?

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Well, Mr. Chairman, it's really a question of priority use of our research staff. One of the things that I did learn when I was at the federal-provincial conference was that unlike our Ministry of Human Resources in British Columbia, most people across this nation take the easy cases and then hold it up as a great success. You can go across this nation and in just about every jurisdiction have people tell you about some very successful income assistance programs, or programs for income assistance recipients, where there is a great success story. Then when you question them on how long those people they use have been on income assistance, you get to finding out the real story. This member who's been on his feet has been accusing me of telling the bright side of the story. Well, I tell the bright side when it's real. I'll continue to do so, because I don't intend to make "neganews" the way these people across the way from us in the opposition do. This is not a negative party that I belong to, nor is it a negative government that I belong to.

Let me tell you this: it is easy, you see.... You say that I make up figures or I make it up to tout around the province. You've made that criticism on the floor of the House today. But if I wanted to do that I would take all the people who come onto income assistance today and then try to find them a job. The fact of the matter is that those people find their own jobs. We don't do that in our ministry. We discovered a long time ago that most of those people are going to get back on their feet on their own in the first few months after they go on income assistance. We take the hard-core ones. We take the difficult ones. So when I tell you there's success in the Individual Opportunity Plan, and when I tell you there's success in the job action program, I'm telling you that there's true success in those programs because they are working and because they are the most difficult to get working. So don't accuse me of trying to pad the figures and make things look good in terms of how many we are getting off income assistance, because it's a fact of life: it is working, and 12,136 leaving — cases closed in February — is testimony to that.

Now if the member wishes to have information on how many of those Individual Opportunity Plan people or job action program people have left for a job and then come back onto income assistance.... Would it make any difference, Mr. Chairman, if they were off income assistance for even five months or six months or eight months? Would it mean that you wouldn't have them come back on income assistance after that? The whole basis of the program is to offer help in time of need. So if we get them a job through IOP or job action and they are independent, it adds to their work record, it adds to their curriculum vitae. If they have had some experience they are easier to place the next time. They just may come back to us for assistance again.

But I don't know what good that kind of information would do for us, except to give us a lot more time in terms of research help, and tie them up for more time. Sure, there must be some who go back onto income assistance. But that's what income assistance is for: to be there for people in time of need.

MR. GABELMANN: Mr. Chairman, one of the things that I always used to believe an efficient government would do when it established a program is to monitor that program. It would try to evaluate whether the program was worthwhile. Clearly that is not done with IOP. Otherwise the minister would be spouting the figures off the top of her head, she'd be so proud of them.

What we have with IOP, Mr. Chairman, is nothing more than a political agency so that the minister can go around making grand speeches about how her ministry is helping to put people back to work. I wish it were true. If it were true she would give us the numbers.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I'll try to get some of this information a different way. Of the 240,000 people who are on welfare today, how many have been on for 12 months or longer?

[5:15]

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Keep going with your questions. We don't have that right now.

MR. GABELMANN: Mr. Chairman, this is a good illustration of why it would be useful to have a real committee where we had witnesses, the staff and the computer terminal in the room as well. How can we, as people who are supposed to vote yes or no to expenditures of billions of dollars, make intelligent decisions about that when we can't get basic and fundamental information about the most expensive part of her program?

I don't feel that I'm very much further ahead now than when I started. I don't quite know how to do that. I don't want the Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. Nielsen) to get a swelled head, but the contrast between the way he answers every single question in detail, usually almost off the top of his head, and this performance is like black and white, like night and day.

Interjections.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. Order!

MR. GABELMANN: Mr. Chairman, I think it's because this minister would rather be the minister of Expo or the Minister of Tourism or the minister of some glamour travel portfolio, and she quite frankly doesn't give a damn, my dear.

MRS. WALLACE: It's discouraging to even get up and try to get any responses from this minister, in view of what's just happened here, because I wanted to deal with a similar subject in a slightly different way.

So let me begin by saying that in Cowichan-Malahat, that area excluding Victoria city and north from Victoria to Duncan, which more or less encompasses my constituency, the figures from the ministry show that for 1985 there are 13,716 unemployed people — at least, clients of the Ministry of Human Resources in receipt of income assistance.

[ Page 5963 ]

There was a survey done recently in my constituency, which I have quoted in this House before, under a LEAP grant from the federal government. According to the figures there, if you take the average family size, which is 3.8, and you take the total population within the constituency, it works out that something like 40 percent of the people who live in Cowichan-Malahat constituency are in receipt of either UIC or social assistance — a tremendously high figure. When you consider that the poverty level is set for a family of four — and we're 3.8, right on there — for a rural setting at $15,316 annually and for a semi-rural area, which I think would be more comparative to our particular area, at $17,206.... If you're an employable person and under this ministry's guidelines your maximum return is some $10,400, you're looking at anywhere between a $5,000 and $7,000 shortfall just to reach the poverty level.

There are three food banks in operation in my constituency. They operate on a basis of providing low-cost food to people on reduced incomes. They give away a lot of free food as well, through donations or however they manage to get it. They do a lot of other things too. They do a lot of advocacy work. They run drop-in centres. They deal extensively with Human Resources, trying to sort out problems that people face with this ministry. They take appeals to the minister.

What they are providing is a supplemental service to this minister, who has failed to meet the responsibilities to provide for people in need and who has failed dramatically to provide that assistance. If she were providing adequate funding to assist those people in need, and adequate staffing to provide the kind of counselling and the additional services that are so badly needed when you have a stress situation, as you have with high unemployment, these voluntary services would not be required. People are giving of their time and their money and their food to take on the job that this minister should be carrying out. That's an abdication of her responsibility, in my estimation.

[Mr. Michael in the chair.]

In the Lake Cowichan area, during the last year, the 1984 year, they sold at cost 1,300 bags of groceries — at $20 a bag, that's $26,000 worth of food — and they gave away 240 free hampers. They had 400 advocacy cases, and they have a drop-in centre where they get some 230 people a month dropping in. The Duncan food co-op sold 5,036 bags, or $100,720 value — that's at cost. They gave away 289 bags of food. They dealt with 198 MHR cases, including three appeals. They had 520 general advocacy cases and 2,500 drop-ins, and in the Cobble Hill–Shawnigan Lake–Mill Bay area, where I live, they had food sold at cost to a value of $27,000. They don't say how many bags they gave away free, but I know from first-hand information that there were many hampers given away by that group as well. They had 112 MHR cases and 312 general advocacy cases.

Those are voluntary services that are dealing with almost half.... Forty percent of the people in my area are having to use that kind of a facility, rather than deal with the government-funded system. This service, you know, is not a privilege; it is a right for people to have these kinds of services. Instead they have what can be a very degrading situation — going to their peers and saying: "Look, I don't have enough money to feed my family." That is not something that we expect to see in a province like British Columbia.

It's been said before that it's been two and a half years since there was any increase in those welfare rates, and we know from simply dropping into any MHR office that cuts in staff have taken place and the staff are overworked, overloaded and are not able to provide the kind of help that should be expected — that is people's right to expect — from a ministry responsible for the social well-being of the people in this province.

The member for North Island (Mr. Gabelmann) has quoted several people that have been concerned about this, and I would like to quote just those from my own area. They are all respected and responsible groups. One of them is from the president of the Cobble Hill–Mill Bay–Shawnigan Lake Self-Help Society, who happens to be the United Church minister there. He writes:

"We, the members of the Cobble Hill–Mill Bay–Shawnigan Lake Self-Help Society, a volunteer group providing advocacy counselling and moral and limited material support to residents in our area who are out of work or otherwise in severe financial straits, are greatly distressed by the grossly inadequate financial assistance provided on GAIN. As presently established and administered by MHR, GAIN rates paid in British Columbia amount to only half that needed to reach the poverty line as determined by the Canadian Council on Social Development.

"We request and urge that basic GAIN payments be increased to at least the poverty line, and that recipients be permitted to generate income equal to one-half of their monthly GAIN payment before any deductions are made."

That would give further encouragement to people who want to work, but the way the system works now you often lose financially if in fact you try to get involved in gainful employment. You lose some of your medical benefits, you lose a lot of things. If you take a part-time job, you lose a lot of those things that are covered by MHR. If you would allow that kind of provision, where you could earn at least half your GAIN payments, as the secretary of this organization requests, it would be much more humane, to say nothing else.

The letter continues:

"In these tough economic times, with limited employment opportunities, it is essential that individuals in need be provided with sufficient income for mental and physical well-being. It is also critical that those with the initiative to earn supplemental income while on GAIN be allowed to do so with no loss of benefits. Such individuals would then have some hope of eventually getting themselves off GAIN and becoming fully productive members of the community once more.

"It is evident that the mental and emotional stress resulting from the anxiety and frustration of living at a bare subsistence level are shattering to most individuals. This may cost the public far more eventually than would have been needed to maintain GAIN recipients at an adequate income level."

That's the old adage — that prevention is cheaper than cure. It's a long shot cheaper if you're going to have to deal with broken homes, with mental breakdowns, with the judicial system — all the things that result when people are forced to live in that situation.

[5:30]

[ Page 5964 ]

The Cowichan Valley Regional District has also written to the minister regarding this. They sent a resolution, which was passed by that council, that lists all the whereases, and says: "Therefore be it resolved that the CVRD endorse the principle of raising welfare rates to the poverty line. In addition to the foregoing, the board strongly urges the government of British Columbia to give further consideration to government funding for constructive employment opportunities in the Cowichan Valley area." We haven't seen any of that forthcoming. Even with the offer of federal assistance, we haven't seen this government being involved in any way in providing those kinds of constructive and long-term measures, which we would like to see available to the people in the Cowichan valley.

There's another letter from the village of Lake Cowichan. I won't read it all, but the gist of it is the same. They're writing on behalf of the council to urge your consideration of raising MHR rates: "While perhaps your ministry officials believe that persons should be able to maintain themselves on the levels of income assistance provided, the sad fact of the matter is that so many variables come into the picture that cannot be considered on a universal basis." This is one of the reasons why it's unfair to always think that the rural areas are the ones where you can live so much more cheaply. "Rural British Columbia, for example, often has higher costs for transportation, clothing, food. We in Lake Cowichan, for instance, have only one grocery store and no bus service." Economical shopping opportunities are non-existent. Low-priced housing is limited to older homes that need more heat because they're not well insulated. There are higher upkeep costs.

Interjection.

MRS. WALLACE: That's right — it's colder. Those support allowances just don't cover them.

I won't read this letter — my colleague from North Island has referred to it — but I wanted to mention it, because the city of Duncan is another one that is saying that they endorse the principle of raising welfare rates. They want them raised to a level that is relevant to the poverty situation so that people will not be forced to live below the poverty line, and they want a review to be undertaken to encourage this to happen.

I am concerned that the minister has made no response to my colleague from North Island relative to the need for this increase — no response that makes any sense. Perhaps she will respond to me.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, I think the question of the inadequacy of the income assistance rates is one that we're not going to stop speaking about until we get some kind of commitment from the minister that she recognizes that the rates are totally inadequate. As I pointed out last week, to expect a person to live on $3.33 a day, not in a Third World country or in a developing nation but in one of the wealthiest provinces in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, is completely inappropriate and unacceptable. The minister may as well respond to my colleague from Cowichan-Malahat, because this debate is going to continue.

There are a number of different issues in a number of different areas which I'd like to touch on as the debate leader. But the primary focus of this discussion this time is that people are being forced to live below what was mentioned at the food bank convention in Edmonton as the "misery line," below abject poverty, as a direct result of this government's refusal to accept that you cannot live on $3.33 a day.

I think we don't talk enough about the dollars and cents involved in being on welfare. A single person in receipt of income assistance in this province, below the age of 25, gets $125 a month to live on, to buy food and clothing, to pay for transportation, to took for a job — buy a newspaper, put 25 cents in a telephone to make a call or whatever — and to buy soap, toothpaste, deodorant and everything else. That's what we're talking about. Because the amount of money which that person is given to cover rent is $200 a month, often part of that $125 has to go to subsidize the rent. So with the most generous calculations, we find that as a direct result of this ministry's policies, people in this province are being forced to live on $3.33 a day. It makes sense, therefore, that people in the community who care and who are compassionate would try to do something about it. That's where the soup kitchens and the food banks come in.

I want to ask the minister whether it has now become the policy of Human Resources to refer people to the food banks before giving them emergency assistance, because I have a number of specific cases — one in Kelowna, a number in Kamloops and others coming into my office — which I would like to cite where people were sent by the Ministry of Human Resources in those areas to the food banks before they would receive any emergency assistance. I'm asking the minister: is that now the ministry's policy?

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Let me just respond to both the member for Cowichan-Malahat (Mrs. Wallace) and the member for Burnaby-Edmonds regarding the adequacy of income assistance. May I just say to you that anything that I can say about income assistance rates will probably be misconstrued by the members opposite, because they continue to do so. The member for Burnaby-Edmonds continues to quote a single person's amount of income assistance, but forgets, of course, to quote.... It's as if every single person, married and single, is on the same amount of money. That's misleading, because that's not true.

The other thing that's misleading, and I think unfortunate, is that the member for Burnaby-Edmonds and the member for Cowichan-Malahat forget to talk about the adequacy of income assistance rates across this nation, including their beloved province of Manitoba, where an NDP government is in power. Income assistance rates in Manitoba, Mr. Chairman, show that the same single person that the member is so happy quoting about all the time has a monthly after-shelter income — that's after whatever rent they pay; it's recognized in both areas — of $103, which is very much less than the British Columbia after-shelter amount. In Quebec, which I think is a better comparison, there is nothing left. In other words, the income assistance benefit for a single person is in total — and that has to go for anything they purchase — $154 per month, as opposed to $375 in British Columbia. So if you want to start making comparisons, you can certainly make comparisons with other provinces. We don't look too bad in comparison. We're not the highest in the country, but we're certainly not the lowest.

I also want to respond to the member for Cowichan-Malahat, who made the comment regarding what was considered.... I think she mentioned Stats Canada regarding the poverty line — something around $15,363. To obtain a

[ Page 5965 ]

$15,000 a year revenue after taxes, you would have to be making $18,000 a year, or the equivalent of around $8.65 per hour. The minimum wage in this province provides $7,600 a year, and there is no allocation as to how many people you have to raise with that. You could be a single parent with one child, or a family with more than two children, and still get that minimum wage. That $7,600 a year is $3.65 an hour.

The amount each year that income assistance provides to a family of four in the province of B.C., with all of the additional benefits, is $10,440. But above and beyond that, for example, there is the child tax credit, family allowance, medical premium, earnings exemption, Christmas bonus, day-care subsidies, school startup costs and tax refunds. It is the equivalent of more than the amount of the exact $10 440.

We did a study of an income assistance client who is single with three children and placed that person's well-being or revenue from income assistance along with a clerk in a government office. The office assistant in the government job has a total take-home pay of some $18,458, whereas the counterpart with the same number of children, the same circumstances — one of the children in day care, etc. — had an equivalent revenue from income assistance of $15,860.

So when we talk about adequacy and if we talk about the numbers, we compare favourably with other provinces in Canada. We certainly compare favourably with the province which the NDP represents in this nation. But again let me say that our whole idea in our ministry is not to try to bring people any further into income assistance, but to give them an adequate way out of income assistance, and independence, if we can. That's been our whole thrust in income assistance. Any suggestion by the member for Burnaby-Edmonds (Ms. Brown) that what we are discussing today is in any way going to change.... The budget is in place; there will be no changes this year. I think the member for Burnaby-Edmonds knows that quite well.

The member for North Island asked some questions regarding how many income assistance cases are left after, say, the year. In December '83 to '84 less than 25 percent; 75 percent, then, are off income assistance within the same year.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, I think it's always dangerous when you start using statistics and you're being selective about it, because if the minister really wants to do a comparison.... I'm not doing a comparison, because I'm not the debate leader for all the provinces, just for British Columbia. But poor little P.E.I., which doesn't have a resource base or our standard of living or anything, manages to pay $509 a month.

Interjections.

MR. CHAIRMAN: It's just a little noisy in here, hon. member. Could the Minister of Forests (Hon. Mr. Waterland) and the Minister of Tourism (Hon. Mr. Richmond) come to order, please.

MS. BROWN: Of course, I don't hear any comparison with Saskatchewan and Alberta and some of the other provinces. But I'm not going to get into a comparison thing with the minister.

The reality of the situation is that in February of this year, there were somewhere in the neighbourhood of 54,593 single males and 20,547 single females in receipt of income assistance. So when I speak about living on $3.33 a day, I am referring to what's happening to about 75,000 people in this province. So I think we should get the facts straight. I'm not discussing one or two people; I'm talking about what is happening to about 75,000 people in this province.

[5:45]

The other thing that the minister likes to use are these global figures, without breaking them down in terms of shelter as opposed to allowance. You don't get your full shelter costs, Mr. Chairman, unless you actually spend it. So when she talks about a family of four having $10,000 a year on income assistance — and it doesn't even say that here — what we are really talking about is four people having to live on $3.33 a day each, because it's organized and prorated that way after the shelter is deducted. The amount of money that they have left for food doesn't increase at all. After you deduct the shelter for two people, if anything it goes down. After you deduct the shelter, two adults have $230 a month between them, which means $115 each. Then you make the same deductions and presumably you work on the thesis that two people can eat cheaper than one, and so they have less to live on.

So I don't think the minister should brag about it. I am distraught at her comment that there is not going to be any change. However, she did not answer my question, which is: is it now the policy of the Ministry of Human Resources to refer people to the food bank prior to giving them emergency assistance? I have a report from an advocacy group in Kamloops I met with last weekend. They indicated to me that before emergency funding was given to a Human Resources applicant they had to prove that they had exhausted any benefits that they could get from the food bank in Kamloops. The unemployment action centre there tells us that of the 4,351 people in Kamloops who are on income assistance, 2,726 are classified as employable, and because rents average $275 a month, they find themselves — these single people — with $100 a month each to cover the cost of utilities, clothing, food and any other expenses which they may have.

So I'm not making this up, Mr. Chairman. These are statistics that come out of volunteer groups and community groups that are doing the job which should be done by the Ministry of Human Resources. The reality of the situation is that, as a direct result of the failure of this ministry to discharge its mandate, we now have parallel Ministries of Human Resources operating in this province; we have unemployment action centres, who are doing the job that should be done by the Ministry of Human Resources; we have food banks; we have soup-kitchens; we have advocacy groups operating out of legal services offices and other places. All are doing the job which should be done by the Ministry of Human Resources, and are trying to pick up the slack which has been created as a direct result of that ministry's not discharging its mandate.

I have a complaint from Kelowna, where an applicant, a 31-year-old woman with a 12-year-old daughter, who had exhausted her UIC and was now on the six- to two-week mandatory waiting list, had $20 in the bank — that was all she had: no credit cards, no family. The father of this child was unemployed, and therefore she was getting no maintenance from him. She went down to Human Resources and was told that she couldn't have an appointment for an assessment to be done — this happened on April 25 — until May 1, because there were other people in need and so no one could be bumped to help her. When she asked what she should do in the meantime, she was told that she should go down to the

[ Page 5966 ]

food bank, and if they didn't have any food, she should go to the Salvation Army. That's what she was told to do prior to coming back for her appointment with Human Resources. Is it now the policy of the Ministry of Human Resources to refer income assistance recipients to the food bank prior to issuing emergency relief?

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: No, Mr. Chairman, it never has been the policy of the Ministry of Human Resources, and it never will be.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

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

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, earlier today the hon. member for Alberni (Mr. Skelly) rose under the provisions of standing order 35 to seek leave to move adjournment of the House to discuss a definite matter of urgent public importance; namely, to reverse an order-in-council relating to the Vancouver School Board, and to enter into negotiations "with all other school boards" in the province with respect to differences which may exist between the government and the school boards. While reserving my opinion on this matter, I did indicate to the hon. member that his application appeared to closely parallel a similar application which failed, made on Thursday last, by the hon. member for Coquitlam-Moody (Mr. Rose), who sought leave to discuss the need to negotiate a settlement with respect to differences on school board matters.

It will be readily seen that the language used in each application is very similar, if not identical. The hon. Leader of the Opposition sought to distinguish the two applications on the ground that a new circumstance had intervened; namely, the appointment of an official trustee. As the Chair made clear on Thursday last in relation to the similar application made by the hon. member for Coquitlam-Moody, motions have been disallowed because the matters raised by them involve no more than the ordinary administration of the law — May's sixteenth edition, page 372. This authority is also applicable to the present application.

It was urged by the hon. Leader of the Opposition that the appointment since Thursday last of an official trustee to replace the Vancouver School Board should place this application on different grounds. The Chair is bound, however, to give cognizance to the further prohibition set forth in the sixteenth edition of May at page 372; namely, that such motions are disallowed where the matter involves the exercise of a discretion under statutory powers. It is clear that the appointment of an official trustee does involve the exercise of a discretion granted under the provisions of the School Act. Accordingly the motion must fail on the basis of the authority which I have cited from the sixteenth edition of Sir Erskine May.

Hon. Mr. Gardom moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 5:53 p.m.