[ Page 6063 ]

CONTENTS

British Columbia Railway Dispute Settlement Act (Bill 39). Hon. Mr. Segarty

Introduction and first reading –– 6063

Oral Questions

Use of capital account funds in school board budgets. Mr. Rose –– 6063

Northeast coal. Mr. Williams –– 6064

Tabling Documents –– 6066

Presenting Reports –– 6066

Committee of Supply: Ministry of Environment estimates. (Hon. Mr. Pelton)

On vote 27: resource and environmental management –– 6066

Mr. D'Arcy

Mr. Nicolson

Mr. Passarell

Ms. Sanford

Mr. Williams

Mrs. Wallace

On vote 29: economic renewal water management capital construction projects –– 6070 Mr. Williams

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

On vote 75: minister's office –– 6070

Hon. Mr. McGeer

Mr. Nicolson

Mr. Rose

Mr. Lea

Ministerial Statement

Cowichan school trustees. Hon. Mr. Heinrich –– 6085

Mr. Rose

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

On vote 75: minister's office –– 6086

Mr. Hanson

MONDAY, MAY 13, 1985

The House met at 2:06 p.m.

Prayers.

HON. MR. SEGARTY: Mr. Speaker, in the House today is a special guest from the province of Alberta, the Hon. William Diachuk, Minister of Workers' Health, Safety and Compensation for the government of Alberta. I'd like the House to give him a warm welcome.

Also in the gallery is Jennie Melanchuk, his very able secretary. I'd like the House to give her a very warm reception as well.

MR. MITCHELL: Mr. Speaker, I would like you and the House to join with me in welcoming two guests from the States who have come to watch us in operation, Mr. and Mrs. Jim and Mel Connolly from San Jose, California. Jim is retired from the U.S. Army, and prior to his retirement he was an instructor at West Point Military Academy.

HON. MR. CURTIS: We have an exchange program underway today with groups of students from Parkland Secondary School on the Saanich Peninsula and their guests from Degelis, Quebec. It is my understanding that the host group is in the gallery at this time, and the students from la belle province will be in at 3 o'clock this afternoon. Would the House make them welcome.

MR. DAVIS: This time last year I had the privilege of introducing members of an executive, which I described at that time as the best in the province; they're here both in quality and quantity today. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to introduce the president, Roberta Kelly, and going on through the group: Mike Gill, Betty Waters, Ernie Sarsfield, Sandra Craig, Ron Erickson, Wanda Hayward, John Leyland, Dianne Pollock, Marilyn Anderson, Maire Arkley, Caroline Blair, Jean Brown, Margret Comba, Elsie Erickson, Rose Gill, Percy Heyes, Bunnie and Leona Hume, Nancy Huot, Don and Annie Joy, Chris Jensen, Mildred Larson, Jack and Zellah Leyland, Hilary McDonald, Buster and Trudy McKinnon, Don McMahon. Jeanni McMinn, Frank Metcalf, Al Ritchie, Gary and Susan Rhodes, Rod Rhodes, Mary Sarsfield, Brock Swanson, Roy and Marme Summerfield and Colleen Worsley — all quantity, but quality above all.

MR. REE: I join with my colleague from North Vancouver–Seymour. With his group up there are supporters and constituents of mine, and also a very responsible trustee of School District 44 in North Vancouver. I'd ask this House to welcome Dr. Ross Regan and his wife Meyga.

HON. MR. HEWITT: Mr. Speaker, in the members' gallery today is a former executive assistant of mine, Mr. Ray Dewar. With Mr. Dewar today are Messrs. Devlin, Thorsen and Morrison of Canada Waferboard Ltd. I ask the House to bid them welcome.

Introduction of Bills

BRITISH COLUMBIA RAILWAY
DISPUTE SETTLEMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. Segarty presented a message from His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor: a bill intituled British Columbia Railway Dispute Settlement Act.

HON. MR. SEGARTY: I'd just like to take a couple of minutes to explain the bill to the House. As all members are aware, both parties entered into a collective bargaining process 15 months ago. Since that time both parties have tried hard to come up with a collective agreement. A mediator was appointed in August, and Fred Geddes has tried very hard since that time to reach an agreement with both parties. On May 6 both parties served lockout notice and strike notice on each other.

Last week I asked Clark Gilmour, a very able mediator and director of mediation services, along with my own deputy minister, to meet with the parties in an attempt to discover exactly where the problems lies. Last Wednesday both parties asked that I release the mediator's report, and I was given the assurance, in a sense, that this would provide the stimulus necessary to produce a collective agreement. It would put pressure on both sides to reach deadlines for negotiations.

At that time I urged both parties to consider the impact a strike would have on their families and members of their union, and the effect a lockout would have on their customers, as well the effect a strike or lockout would have on all the communities across British Columbia with regard to the railway. Over the course of the weekend both parties met and some issues were resolved, but the bargaining process has now broken down. What I'm asking the Legislature to do today is to support the bill which calls for the appointment of an industrial inquiry commissioner to help the parties reach an agreement.

It is my hope too, Mr. Speaker, that the parties will continue to reach an agreement and to recognize the impact that a strike or lockout would have on our economic recovery program, and on our customer services throughout the world.

Bill 39, British Columbia Railway Dispute Settlement Act, introduced, read a first time, and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

[2:15]

Oral Questions

USE OF CAPITAL ACCOUNT FUNDS
IN SCHOOL BOARD BUDGETS

MR. ROSE: Mr. Speaker, I have a question directed to the Minister of Education. I'm sure he has been well briefed on this one. The minister has permitted $5.5 million in capital account moneys to increase the Vancouver school budget, allowing the official trustee to fiddle the previous government's own guidelines.

I'd like to ask the minister: has he decided to make this offer available to the other 74 school districts?

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Speaker, the access to the non-shareable capital portion of the Vancouver School Board

[ Page 6064 ]

is available to it as it has been for a long period of time. Approximately two years ago, discussions were entertained between myself and the Vancouver School Board with respect to making access to those funds easier.

As a matter of fact, I made public the understanding — the agreement — and so published that agreement in the Vancouver Sun in a letter under date of September 6; I can't give you the exact date it was published in the Vancouver Sun. As a matter of fact, with leave of the House, Mr. Speaker, I will file a copy of that letter today. I might, if I may, read from one paragraph in that letter, which says as follows:

"We eased the rules for the use of non-shareable capital. This allowed the Vancouver School Board to spend $4.5 million on school maintenance that would normally have come from the operating budget. This fund was also used by the board to pay $5 million to teachers to assist with early retirement. No other board in the province has enjoyed the luxury of having such funds in such quantity for such purposes."

Mr. Speaker, access to the non-shareable portion is available to all school districts. We must draw a distinction between the shareable portion of the capital budget and the non-shareable. The shareable portion is that which is used for capital construction land acquisition. The non-shareable is used for the purchase of equipment, maintenance, operations, severance and retirement. It's always been available, and as a matter of fact the income from that fund has been used to assist the Vancouver School Board as well as other school districts. The only distinction between the two is that Vancouver is in the very fortunate position of having surplus inventory which attracts a very considerable price because of the location in which the property is found.

MR. ROSE: In view of the minister's answer that this has always been available to Vancouver — that in itself is an interesting statement — where it may not be available to others, in a letter published in the Prince George Citizen on May 7, just last week, the minister said he would not allow Prince George to use capital budget surplus to supplement its operating budget. Why does the minister say one thing in Vancouver and another thing in his own riding?

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Speaker, with apologies to the House, that type of question requires a rather lengthy answer. I advise the Chair that with that type of question I must take time.

First of all, the member must understand that there is a considerable distinction between a non-shareable account and a sinking fund which is set up for the purposes of not only funding capital construction and site acquisition but also servicing that debt.

Mr. Speaker, the annual capital budget provides boards with authority provided these sites, the facilities and the equipment. The funding of capital budgets is administered through the B.C. School Districts Capital Financing Authority. Debentures are usually sold for a period of 20 years. Boards are required to make annual payments into a sinking fund. These expenditures are shared between the province and the local board, approximately on average provincewide about 85 percent to the province, 15 percent locally.

Payments are invested by the B.C. School Districts Capital Financing Authority. Interest rates have been much higher than anticipated when the schedule of repayment was established. This has resulted in the principal amount of the debenture being fully funded prior to the maturity date. In a large number of cases the sinking fund amount exceeded the principal amount of the debentures and the excess amount was paid to districts in accordance with the School Act. The sinking fund excess was credited to the district's surplus shareable capital account.

Again, I must emphasize surplus shareable capital account and draw a distinction between that and the non-shareable, keeping in mind that a non-shareable account is established after a property is disposed of. A certain portion goes to a shareable account, a second portion goes to a nonshareable account, and it's that non-shareable account which is used for a number of purposes by school districts. It has been for some time. As a matter of fact, I have made the rules extraordinarily flexible to give the boards a great deal of opportunity to use those funds for a number of sources, and for a number of reasons.

MR. ROSE: I wonder if the minister in his final words where he raised his voice has underlined in his little notes: "Argument weak here; talk louder." The minister cannot get around the fact that he has permitted some boards under trusteeship, or otherwise through compliance, to use funds that have been unavailable to other boards. He fired some and bought off the others, and there's no getting away from that.

MR. SPEAKER: In response to what may have been a question, the minister.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Yes, I think there was a question in there. I want to advise the House: under no uncertain terms was any particular deal made with Coquitlam or with Burnaby. All we made sure of was that they were aware of what funds they had access to. As a matter of fact, your own school board yesterday said: "There are no concessions here at all." They are quite right: there were no concessions.

All we did was make sure that the funds available from revenues, whether through lease or interest on investment income, could be added to the budget which was available....

I'm not finished yet.

Interjection.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Because I enjoy watching you get up and down so quickly. Go ahead.

MR. ROSE: I didn't quite get it. Would the minister mind repeating his answer?

Mr. Speaker, my final supplementary — in sotto voce. I wonder if the minister could tell us, since he made an announcement in Vernon that this is the last year of restraint and that there would be more money next year, why there would be money next year and none this year; and where that money will come from, since provincial revenues, we're told, are shrinking.

MR. SPEAKER: That implies future action, hon. member.

NORTHEAST COAL

MR. WILLIAMS: I have a question for the Minister of International Trade and Investment. I wonder if he checked

[ Page 6065 ]

the career opportunities section of the Vancouver Province on the weekend. There, is an ad by Quintette Coal which says: "We require a competent geologist who will be responsible for ensuring that required sampling and delineation of coal reserves is carried out...." In view of the hole being in the wrong place, could the minister advise if he was involved in the placing of the advertisement?

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Mr. Speaker, it's not really a question, but maybe I should, since the member is so interested in where the pit at one particular mine is. Maybe the socialists opposite don't understand. Had the government told them where to put the pit in the first place, instead of that decision being made by the private sector, then the government would have been asked or sued, because if the pit is in the wrong place.... The socialists opposite don't seem to understand that.

MR. WILLIAMS: It also says in the advertisement that there's an excellent benefit and relocation package. Would that relocation package have anything to do with the government? Has the government in fact met — or have other ministries met — with Quintette or the bankers or their representatives to discuss guarantees for additional loans in view of the fact that the hole is indeed in the wrong place?

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Mr. Speaker, I'd like to inform the member opposite that both the Bullmoose mine and the Quintette mine in the northeast part of the province are producing almost up to their contracted tonnages. They are employing people; about 4,000 people living in the town of Tumbler Ridge and several other employees living in Chetwynd and other areas are gainfully employed. Prince Rupert is functioning as one of the best ports in North America. Canadian National Railways, the British Columbia Railway.... Everything in the northeast coal project happens to be functioning, and because the opposition can't find anything to criticize the government about, they attack the decision of the private sector as to where one pit in the Quintette mine should be. As I pointed out before, had the....

Interjection.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Never mind the hole in the head, my friend. No one paid me $80,000 to retire; and furthermore, I wish you would have stayed in retirement.

Had government geologists directed the Quintette Coal company where to put the pit and it happened to be in the wrong place, then the government would have been sued. Had the wishes of the socialists been carried out, and had the government invested in the mine, which they wanted to do — and would have gone ahead in 1973 had the private sector allowed them to invest in the northeast coal project — then the people of British Columbia would have been responsible. As it is, the money invested by the taxpayers happens to be in the infrastructure, which is functioning very well. It happens to have been put in the right place. The fact that we spent nearly $10 million studying all aspects of northeast coal with regard to the port structure, the environment, to where the railway, power lines and highway should go — it's all been a success. The project was brought in below budget and ahead of schedule.

So I pity the poor NDP because they can't criticize the government for making a mistake. I really feel for you.

MR. WILLIAMS: Can 56 international bankers huddling in Toronto over this problem all be wrong? I'd like to ask the minister if he can confirm that in the new project that he has promoted, the Klappan project, the geological studies have been carried out by the same people that carried out the initial studies with respect to Quintette.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Mr. Speaker, in answer to the member's question, there you go again. We have geologists and we have geologists, and we have engineers and we have engineers. We also have economists; some of them are in the universities, and each one seems to have a different opinion. I think, as long as you're into projects like this, there are going to be different opinions with regard to geology. There happen to be, at the present time.... If you care to check your figures, you will find, my friend, that the Quintette mine is producing almost as much coal as it contracted for from the pit that you say is in the wrong place.

[2:30]

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, the Chair was advised earlier that the member for Cowichan-Malahat has a motion of privilege she wishes to raise.

MRS. WALLACE: On Friday last in the Legislature, I asked the Minister of Transportation and Highways certain questions relative to the Mill Bay–Brentwood ferry relocation. I quote his responses from Hansard. He said: "We have made no final decision on the exact location. We want to go in at approximately the area called Garnett Creek. They are looking at all those options now." And finally: "A policy decision was made that we have to relocate, and they are looking at that approximate site."

Mr. Speaker, I have in my hand a copy of order-in-council 801, dated May 2, a week and a day prior to that statement, which reads as follows: "On the recommendation of the undersigned, the Lieutenant-Governor, by and with the advice and consent of the executive council, orders that approval be given to the British Columbia Ferry Corporation to delete service between Brentwood Bay and Mill Bay and implement service between Swartz Bay and Garnett Creek."

Mr. Speaker, I submit that the minister's information was, to say the least, somewhat misleading. I therefore would move that a Special Committee of Privilege be appointed to consider the matter of statements by the Minister of Transportation and Highways relative to the location of the proposed ferry service replacing the Brentwood Bay–Mill Bay service, made before this House on May 10, 1985, and that the said committee report its findings to the House, the said committee to be comprised of eight members to be named by a special committee of selection, and that the committee so appointed have the following powers: namely, to have all the powers and privileges of the Legislative Assembly, under the Legislative Assembly Privileges Act.

I would so move, Mr. Speaker, because as you know, it is an offence of this Legislature to mislead the House.

MR. SPEAKER: Thank you, hon. member. Without prejudice to the member's case, the Chair will undertake to review the matter as presented by the hon. member and bring a finding back to the House at the earliest opportunity.

[ Page 6066 ]

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Speaker, I would like leave, if I could have it, to file the letter to which I referred today, addressed to the Vancouver Sun, dated September 6.

Leave granted.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Secondly, Mr. Speaker, the other day during question period I wished to file a document, and I neglected to ask leave. I would ask leave if I could now file this document. It's a letter from the office of the mayor of the city of Vancouver, referring to the Vancouver School, Board budget.

Leave granted.

Hon. Mr. Heinrich tabled the annual report for the British Columbia Railway group of companies for 1984.

MR. ROSE: I ask leave to table the letter by the Minister of Education, as published in the Prince George Citizen, in which he refused the Prince George School Board permission to use capital account money to supplement and increase the Prince George school budget.

Leave granted.

Presenting Reports

Mr. Blencoe, Chairman of the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts and Economic Affairs, presented three reports, which were read as follows and received:

"Mr. Speaker, your Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts and Economic Affairs begs leave to report as follows:

"Your committee has received correspondence from John A. Bovey dated June 28, 1984, the chairman of the Public Documents Committee established under the authority of section 3 of the Document Disposal Act, and having read the submission on behalf of the Public Documents Committee, recommends that, in accordance with the provisions of the Document Disposal Act, approval be given for the, destruction of various public documents, as listed in the submission to the Public Accounts Committee for 198344, insofar as the following ministries of government are concerned: Ministry of the Attorney-General, Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, Ministry of Labour, Ministry of Universities, Science and Communications, and Ministry of the Provincial Secretary and Government Information Services. All of which is respectfully submitted."

My second report: "Your Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts and Economic Affairs has received correspondence from John A. Bovey dated April 17, 1985, the chairman of the Public Documents Committee established under the authority of section 3 of the Document Disposal Act, and having read the submission on behalf of the Public Documents Committee, recommends that, in accordance with the provisions of the Document Disposal Act, approval be given for the destruction of various public documents, as listed in the submission to the Public Accounts Committee for 1983-84, insofar as the following ministries of government are concerned: Ministry of Agriculture and Food, Ministry of Attorney-General, Ministry of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Forests, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Lands, Parks and Housing, Ministry of Provincial Secretary and Government Services, and Ministry of Tourism. All of which is respectfully submitted."

The third and final report, Mr. Speaker. I should add that all these documents — about 23,000 boxes, about six miles backed up, if they were put together.... We are trying to get rid of a number of documents at only one go.

"Your Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts and Economic Affairs begs leave to report as follows: that your committee has received correspondence dated April 17, 1985 from Mr. John A. Bovey, the chairman of the Public Documents Committee established under the authority of section 3 of the Document Disposal Act, and having read the submission on behalf of the Public Documents Committee, recommends that, in accordance with the provisions of the Document Disposal Act, approval be given for the destruction of various public documents, as listed in the submission to the Public Accounts Committee for 1983-84, insofar as the following ministries of government are concerned: Ministry of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, Ministry of Finance, and Ministry of Health. All of which is respectfully submitted."

MR. BLENCOE: Mr. Speaker, I move that all these reports be adopted, by leave.

Leave granted.

Motion approved.

Orders of the Day

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

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENT
(continued)

On vote 27: resource and environmental management, $91,605,504.

MR. D'ARCY: Mr. Chairman, back in 1963 when a water licence was issued to B.C. Hydro by the late comptroller of water rights, Mr. Paget, to build what came to be known as the High Arrow and ultimately the Keenleyside Dam, a requirement of that water licence was that there be a major fishery spawning project on the Lower Arrow Lake because the major fish resource, which were and are the kokanee and rainbow, in fact spawned in the lower levels of creeks, mostly all of which were going to be flooded due to that impoundment.

The minister is probably well aware that that's a fairly U-shaped valley, that the only calm, quiet areas of the creeks were the lower areas and as soon as you got away from the main body of the lake it became very precipitous. The creeks were not creeks in the normal sense; they were rather a series of cataracts.

Recently — within the past year — Environment ministry technicians and officials came up with a project which

[ Page 6067 ]

they felt they could put their signatures on professionally. It involves the construction of a fishway at the mouth of Inonoaklin Creek near Edgewood. That project has since gone from the ministry — I don't know whether it went through the minister's office — to B.C. Hydro and Hydro is considering the project at this time.

I'm asking if the minister can undertake to give a report to the House on the progress of this project. Better late than never — 1963 was 22 years ago. But I would like to point out that the fishery resource, both as a food source and as a sport and tourist attraction on Lower Arrow Lake, has been historically significant going back to, the turn of the century, and is still significant today. There have been mitigation projects for the Revelstoke Dam, which was just completed last year on Upper Arrow Lake. The people on Lower Arrow Lake are still waiting for a mitigation project for the High Arrow dam, for a licence that was issued in 1963.

HON. MR. PELTON: Mr. Chairman, through you to the member for Rossland-Trail, I would first of all like to thank the member for notifying me that he was going to bring this question forward. I'm aware of the problem. I'm aware that the fish ladder was supposed to have been installed and that there have been some discussions on this matter which relate to the fact that there are some farmers in the area who believe that if the fish ladder is installed it will inhibit their availability of water for irrigation.

That is where the project stands at this point in time. I can't help but agree with the member that 1963 to 1985 is a long period of time. One would expect that certainly the matter should have been resolved prior to this. What I will do on behalf of, the member — I have my staff looking into this already — is see that he receives a full and complete report on the status of this report.

MR. D'ARCY: Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the minister for his undertaking on this matter. I'd just like to point out that while I or, my constituents who use the lake from a sport and recreational point of view have no desire to injure the agricultural industry in the Fire Valley, the fact remains that the minister does have professionals on his staff who do make appraisals and analyses of the capability of any given water system. I would hope that there is enough water in the Inonoaklin River to both meet the requirements of the agricultural industry and the residents of the valley as well as those needs to supply spawning channels with an adequate supply of fresh oxygenated water.

MR. NICOLSON: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to draw the minister's attention to the intended spraying by the Ministry of Forests — the aerial broadcast spraying of Round-up to defoliate certain deciduous growth as part of their forestry treatment program. It's in the Kaslo and north Kootenay Lake area. This is an urbanized rural area — in other words there's a lot of settlement in the area. People are very upset. I understand that the previous minister had banned Round-up spraying. I believe that some of the ingredients of Round-up herbicide were part of the list of chemicals that were first approved based on falsified data, tests done in the United States, I've had some information that tests done since then would tend to back up the companies, I suppose; but bear in mind that the tobacco companies can get researchers to tell you that tobacco is good for you, the sugar lobby can get researchers to tell you that sugar is good for your teeth, and everything else. People are very concerned. If we look at the track record of this particular type of prescription, it's one that has a very tarnished past.

In regard to the changes in legislation which changed the hearing process and served to deter people from appearing and speaking out on their concerns about spraying, the minister has said he would remove the fee. I congratulate him for that. I want to ask the minister if he will order that hearings take place before there can be any consideration of aerial spraying in the Kaslo and North Kootenay Lake area. It is a matter of very grave concern. I understand there is going to be a meeting tomorrow evening: I just regret that I can't be in two places at once. In view of all of these things, would the minister order that the proper types of hearings be held and that interveners be heard, and that there of course be no fee in this matter?

[2:45]

HON. MR. PELTON: I can't accede to the member's request by making a statement that I will order that a hearing be held, but certainly there is nothing to stop those who are as concerned as the hon. member is, and others. They can file an appeal, which will be treated in the normal manner and will involve hearings.

MR. PASSARELL: Just at the onset, I'd like to thank the minister in his new capacity as Minister of Environment for the assistance he's given me on issues that I've been able to go to him and resolve through discussion.

I have five or six specific constituency questions to ask of the minister. The first one is in regard to the hunting regulations, the quotas that have been placed on a number of guides and outfitters in northern B.C. Three subsections to this question. One, who sets the quotas? Does it come out of regional office, particularly Smithers? Two, when these quotas are being made, are they in conjunction with the guides and outfitters in the far north. or are these just bureaucratic decisions made in the regional office? Three, approximately two weeks ago I brought to the minister's attention Chief Sylvester Jack, an outfitter in the Atlin area whose quota was set at five bears for five years. I bring this into relationship with the two subsection questions that I asked the minister — who sets the quotas, and are they in conjunction with the outfitters. It's pretty difficult to make a business operate on that level if an outfitter-guide is left with five bears for five years.

My second question is on the Stikine. What environmental protections are being made specifically in regard to the B.C. Hydro crews that have been surveying the river in the last 18 months? It was my understanding — and I think the House's understanding — that approximately two and a half years ago all decisions regarding the Stikine Dam project were put on hold, and there are still Hydro crews working those dams. I'd like to know if the minister has any further information in regard to environmental protection of the Stikine River.

My third question is in regard to Amax. Before the ministry had the Amax mine at Kitsault — before the minister gained this portfolio — it was a major issue, nationally and internationally. Subsequently the mine closed down due to market prices. The problem was the dumping of tailings into the ocean, into Alice Arm. Scientists and consultants across the U.S. and Canada were talking of the movement of the

[ Page 6068 ]

tailings in the seabed. The federal government was conducting testing on the movement of those tailings...which the Nishga use as food fisheries, particularly in the crabs and shellfish that exist in that area. Since the mine has been closed down for 18 months — 24 months now — has any testing been done through the provincial office, or does the minister know of federal testing that's been done in regard to the movement of these tailings in Alice Arm? The water is constantly moving — the ocean bottom tides. Are the tailings moving farther out to sea?

The fourth question is in regard to perk tests, an issue that was brought up this weekend when I was at home in Atlin. An individual who owns a sawmill approximately 18 miles from Atlin — he makes dimensional lumber — was asked by the government to provide a perk test at his sawmill. He uses no chemicals whatsoever. He received a letter from the Smithers branch of Environment asking him for a perk test. He didn't really understand why he received a request like this, because he doesn't use chemicals in his operation at all. Is this a new position or policy of the Ministry of Environment?

The last two questions. There was a recent logging operation, by the Wrangell-B.C. border on the lower Stikine. The logging happened this winter and caused a lot of controversy and concern among the residents of Telegraph Creek, particularly the Tahltan people. Have there been any environmental studies commissioned by your ministry in regard to the logging on the lower Stikine?

The last constituency question I'd like to direct to the minister is in regard to fishing regulations on the Taku River. We often find ourselves playing second fiddle to the federal government and their regulations. The Taku is probably the last untouched salmon river in this province. There is quite a concern in regard to Americans who are coming across the border and fishing in the Taku, which is just south of the community of Atlin.

The last question I have is in regard to the cutback in Fish and Wildlife officers, particularly in the far north. There is one individual, out of Cassiar, who serves an area about half the size of the constituency. Last fall there was a problem with poachers coming down from the Yukon as well as poachers coming across the Alaska border. Is there any position being brought forward by the ministry to bring in some additional help during the hunting season for the Fish and Wildlife officer in Cassiar, who covers a large area?

Poaching is a major issue in the far north because individuals come in to hunt from Yukon Territory as well as the state of Alaska, because they know that with one Fish and Wildlife officer.... For instance, if he's coming from Cassiar into Atlin, he puts a sign up and says he's going to be there from date X to date Y. Anybody who's going to poach can find out that that individual is going to be there on those specific dates and won't come across the border; he'll leave it open for another 27 or 28 days of the month to come in and poach.

So those were seven specific questions I addressed to the minister, and I'd like to hear his replies on those specific questions.

HON. MR. PELTON: The hon. member for Atlin certainly posed a number of questions, and I've tried to record them as he went along. I will respond to them to the best of my ability.

First of all, with regard to the quotas that were questioned, the quotas do come out of the regions, hon. member. They come out as recommendations and they pass through the ministry, where they are considered by various officials in the ministry, and subsequently they are passed through to cabinet and approved as orders-in-council. We do attempt, I'm told, to consult with the Fish and Wildlife people and with the guides and outfitters when these quotas are being considered at the regional level, and before they come into the ministry. As with the case that the member brought to my attention about the five grizzly bears over a five-year period, I thought a response to that one had crossed my desk. But if there are any other questions similar to that with regard to any of the other quotas that have been set, the ministry would certainly be more than pleased to provide the hon. member with some answers.

The Stikine water resource. I'll have to take that one as notice and get you an answer on that. The answers just don't come to mind off the top of my head.

The question on the Amax mine. No, we have not been monitoring any movement of the tailings. I would gather from the information I have been given that there was never a requirement that this should be done. However, I will get whatever other information might be available and pass it on to the member.

As far as the perk test is concerned, I have a little difficulty understanding that myself. The only thing I can think of is that perhaps the gentleman has filed for a pollution-control permit of some kind, and one of the requirements of getting this is to have a perk test done. But normally I think of perk tests in relation to the Health ministry and the installation of septics and that kind of thing. There again, if there is anything else that we can pass on to the member, we would be pleased to.

The fishing regulations on the Taku River, I'm informed, are a responsibility of the feds, so I can't really answer that question to any great length or elaborate on it.

The matter of conservation officers, I know, is an ongoing concern of many people throughout the province like the hon. member, especially in those areas where there are very large areas to be covered by very few people. We have done our best to address this problem in light of the financial constraints we've been living under for a few years. As I mentioned on the opening day of the debate on my estimates, we did manage to reduce the conservation officers by only 10 percent, whereas the other ministry staff were reduced by well over 30, something like 38 percent. But as we're looking at conservation officers in an ongoing way, we have some ideas of some things that might be done to alleviate the problem, and I would hope that we could bring something forward on this within the next six or eight months.

MS. SANFORD: I want to raise briefly with the minister an issue that I spoke about last week during question period, at which time the minister indicated he had no information. I want to follow up with him on that issue at this time. The Tsolum River, which is near Courtenay, is virtually dead according to Mr. Genoe, who is the hatchery manager on a tributary on the Tsolum River. He indicates that because of leaching of very high levels of copper concentrates, not one of the 2.5 million fry released into the Tsolum River has returned. A number of tests have been done, Mr. Chairman, which indicate that from time to time those levels are very high and are certainly lethal to any kind of fish.

The mine was operating for only 18 months. This is Mount Washington copper mine. It closed in 1968, and today we're still paying the price, because that river is virtually

[ Page 6069 ]

dead. My understanding is that if there's going to be any cleanup of that abandoned minesite it's going to be quite costly. Since the company is now defunct, it appears that the only people responsible will be the taxpayers of the province, if in fact we're going to restore that stream to fish production again.

It seems to me that it's incumbent upon the government to ensure that when a mine such as the Mount Washington copper mine is given the right to mine copper, it too has some obligation in terms of the future fish production in that particular stream.

Now what is the government doing? What kind of assurances is the government today, all these years later, getting from these mining companies that it is not the taxpayer who is going to pay forever and a day, it seems, for 18 months of profitable operation for a given mine in this province?

[3:00]

HON. MR. PELTON: Unfortunately, at the time that that mine was developed there was no requirement that a reclamation program be filed when the mine was opened. Of course, that is now a requirement by law. Unfortunately, it wasn't at that time, and so we were left with the problem which concerns the member, and which concerns the ministry as well. We are aware of the leaching of metals into the river, which has certainly had disastrous effects on the fish. What we're doing about it.... It's a process we hope to have completed by the end of this month. The regional staff, in cooperation with the ministry in Victoria, are having the original analysis upgraded to include all the available data. We're soliciting input from the federal agencies as well. We expect, as I said a moment ago, to have a preliminary report on the matter completed by the end of this month. Then I'll be making a report available to anyone interested. I'll have the file noted, hon. member, and see that you personally receive one.

MS. SANFORD: Is the minister indicating to me that if there is any problem now with the wastes following the closure of a mine, the company is now responsible for all the cleanup, because of the reclamation plan that has to be filed? Because what's still happening, Mr. Chairman, is that mines such as Western Mines are given more and more authority to produce larger volumes of.... I don't know if copper is the main product out of Western Mines, but they are still dumping into lakes like Buttle Lake, even though it's very clear that the levels of mineral content in Buttle Lake are very high as well.

Now it seems to me that this process is still going on and that the government has still not come up with a plan that ensures that the people of the province don't have to pay for the problems that these mines create in terms of environmental degradation.

HON. MR. PELTON: May I suggest, with all due respect, hon. member, that when you speak of tailings being dumped into the lake, you're onto a different subject. It is my understanding that the reclamation plans filed by mines today don't provide that we wait until we get ourselves into a problem like the very thing that you brought to my attention. In the reclamation plans, I believe, they do works at the mine to ensure that the leachate or other contaminations which would affect the environment don't occur when the mine is shut down.

It is very similar to, I understand, the same idea.... If they abandon a dam, for example, there's a requirement that the dam be breached and drained before it's abandoned, in order that there aren't repercussions farther down the road.

I'll look into the business of tailings in Buttle Lake.

MS. SANFORD: If there is leaching, in spite of the plan that's been filed by the company, it is the company that is responsible for paying for any cleanup. Is that it? It's very well to file a plan.

HON. MR. PELTON: I can't give a firm commitment, but I would think that that would be the idea: if the job is not done properly, it would be up to the people who owned the mine; they would be held responsible.

MR. WILLIAMS: Most of us would think so...

HON. MR. PELTON: Oh, that's good. I'm glad we think alike.

MR. WILLIAMS: ...but you're in charge.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please.

HON. MR. PELTON: Anyway, where were we? The hon. member should be aware also that my colleague the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources becomes very involved in this process of reclamation.

MS. SANFORD: Mr. Chairman, do I need to say any more? "I think that that's what the plan means; it means that if there is leaching, as a result of the operations of any given mine, I think it means that they might have to pay at some time in the future." Well Mr. Chairman, that's not good enough. The people of the province have paid time and time again for the operations of various companies, whether it's in forestry or mining or whatever. I think it's high time that we set standards in this province that ensured that the taxpayer didn't have to come up and pay after the company has made its profit and has left town.

MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Chairman, last week the minister indicated that he would review the northeast coal question, and maybe he could bring us up to date on the standards that are applied there.

HON. MR. PELTON: Yes, the hon. member was kind enough to give me the weekend to ponder the situation. I have a report that I would trust would be acceptable to the hon. member. Certainly there were some problems, I have discovered, with the operation at the outset, I am told that this is not unusual with this type of thing, and that they did have the problems, and that in some cases they were a little bit slow in rectifying some of them.

At this point in time Quintette Coal has nine pollution control permits to cover the various discharges to the air. land and water surrounding the site. I am told that the company is in full compliance with six of the nine permits, and the noncompliance of the remaining three involves some overdue data which they are required to provide and some minor extensions of ditching systems to catch some surface runoff and some fine-tuning adjustments to a small sewage treatment system. All of these matters are considered minor

[ Page 6070 ]

problems within the ministry and are being followed up by both the company and the ministry.

In addition to what I've just said, there is effluent from a machine-repair station, which is not yet under permit, and the effluent is discharged into a holding pond and subsequently used to spray on the roads to keep the dust down in the summertime. The volume of this pond must be accurately known before we can establish operating levels of the pond. I am given to understand that there are some people in there doing just this, trying to establish the volume of the pond. We will be issuing the permit in this regard once the technical matter has been resolved.

Since their inception, the Quintette mine has expended in excess of $13 million on fish and wildlife studies, on sediment bases and on environmental protection equipment. These works have been effective in minimizing the impact on the surrounding environment.

MRS. WALLACE: Mr. Chairman, I was waiting for the minister to come back with the answers to the two questions he took over the weekend on advisement from me relative to the CPR spraying and the leaky PCB capacitors at Mackenzie.

HON. MR. PELTON: Insofar as Mackenzie and the Kennedy substation are concerned, we are aware of the problems in that area, as I mentioned the other day, and we have ministry staff onsite right now. They've taken samples of soil and water around the site which have been sent to the lab for analysis. We expect to have further reports very shortly, and I expect to make a full report to this House later this week. Hydro is also being contacted and advised of our concerns. I was told just before we came into the House that they are prepared to participate fully in any cleaning up that might be required.

MRS. WALLACE: Why are the capacitors still there? They were supposed to be out of there long ago. Surely if there's one thing that pinpoints the need to get on with the problem of hazardous waste disposal, this is it. Those capacitors are still sitting there after all this time. They at least could have been put into some safe storage site, instead of sitting there where they are leaking into the water source of a community like Mackenzie. It's disgusting, really, that this is going on and on, and nothing is being done about it. All we get are excuses and platitudes.

[Mr. Ree in the chair.]

MR. WILLIAMS: Could the minister advise the House if that's about the standard ratio of compliance across the province? They've nine permits, and they comply on six. Is that sort of par for the course in British Columbia?

HON. MR. PELTON: No, it's not.

MR. WILLIAMS: Is it worse or better?

HON. MR. PELTON: Better.

Vote 27 approved.

Vote 28: emergency assistance, $2,403,500 approved.

On vote 29: economic renewal water management capital construction projects, $4,000,000.

MR. WILLIAMS: Could the minister advise us what the breakdown is for those expenditures in terms of major capital projects?

HON. MR. PELTON: Mr. Chairman, the hon. member flatters me that I should be able to remember all those details. I'm afraid it's quite a long list, but I'd be pleased to produce it for the member.

Vote 29 approved.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF UNIVERSITIES,
SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS

On vote 75: minister's office, $127,740.

HON. MR. NIELSEN: I understand the minister will be here in a moment. Obviously the member for Nelson-Creston wishes to speak first on these estimates.

MR. NICOLSON: In the absence of the minister.... He is here. I suppose it would be proper if he were to start in this — if he's ready.

HON. MR. McGEER: Mr. Chairman, in introducing the estimates, perhaps I might make a brief report on the three portfolios for which I have responsibility.

First, in the field of communications there has been a change in national government and some review of existing policy in our country. I have had a number of communications with the new minister, the Hon. Marcel Masse, and I regret to say that there is still a wide gap in policy between what we have established in our government — which, I think, should be subjected to review by the opposition and by the public of British Columbia — and what is seen nationally. The view we have taken is that there should be an open-skies policy; that is our declared policy in British Columbia. Essentially what lies behind it is that there should be, in our view, no attempt at regulation of what an individual receives. Much of what the CRTC is doing, and much of the difficulty and resentment which is generated in Canada as a result of federal Department of Communications and CRTC policy, stems from efforts to control what people watch and what they hear. We consider this unnecessary and odious.

[3:15]

The thinking behind attempts to control reception has been to protect the Canadian consumer against American culture and Canadian broadcasters and Canadian culture against the overwhelming competition which comes from south of the border. The difficulty, of course, is that attempts of this kind really result in censorship, and the only people you really can limit, in terms of what they may receive, are those beyond line of sight of the border — i.e., the people in the smaller northern communities. So what federal policy does is work a discrimination and a relative hardship on people who live in our smaller communities, who are deprived of culture and entertainment compared to the big-city slickers in Ottawa and Toronto and, I suppose, Vancouver and Victoria as well. To try to have Canadian identity ride on their backs is, to my way of thinking, unfair and unfortunate.

[ Page 6071 ]

We have suggested that, Canada being a sparsely populated jurisdiction, with vast geographical impediments to a close community spirit, there would be no greater advantage to a nation than to exploit all modern technology to improve our communications system, and to use this as a way of knitting together our country. That means embracing rather than resisting technological change; it means seizing technological change to our advantage. I would submit that, far from rationing the broadcasting end, which is the supply end — after all, that is what the CRTC was created to do — we should instead be promoting more stations, particularly superstations that can use modern technology to beam into the United States and thereby obtain external markets for Canadian culture.

Moving to the Science portfolio, I want to say that our long-term goal here is to upgrade the quality and quantity of science in our province, to make us more competitive economically as well as culturally in the world in the future, because the benefits of science are not restricted to economics and to science alone. The advances permeate all aspects of society, and therefore it becomes a vehicle for social as well as economic improvement.

We have a variety of practical vehicles that we have developed in our province to further the science objectives, and they are the following. First of all, there's the Science Council of British Columbia, which acts as the Science Council of Canada, NSERC and NRC all rolled into one, concentrating on particular scientific opportunities for our province as opposed to national scientific priorities. They give away of the order of $3.5 million a year — whatever our Legislature votes each year in the estimates. They award prizes; they award industrial post-doctoral fellowships; they award pre-doctoral fellowships in the form of great awards so that the whole system is one of discretionary grants after peer review to people who are most capable of carrying out the scientific work.

On the entrepreneurial side, we have established the Discovery Foundation, which operates the research parks in our province and which also operates a program called the discovery enterprise program. Again, this is a peer review system of emerging enterprises in our province, and it's designed to provide the bridge funding between an idea and a working, profitable company. We've had some initial statistics on firms that have gone through our Discovery Parks and our discovery enterprise program, and the success rate of the small businesses is truly astonishing.

One anticipates at least an 85 percent failure rate in small businesses in the first three years of operation, whereas the success rate of the small businesses that had been through that program — much of it located, by the way, in Burnaby — is the highest success rate I know of for small business anywhere in the world, So we are really quite proud of the achievements of that program, and we suspect that from the small businesses that are beginning to emerge, great businesses will develop.

Now at the same time we have a program of attempting to recruit scientific industries from abroad to locate in our province. In the world today there are a number of industries that are growing at a truly extraordinary rate — 40, 50,100, 200 percent a year — and these growth industries need to find locations. If we in British Columbia can peel off for ourselves just a small portion of that growth, then that will supplement in a very major way the resource industries that have been the traditional fountain of wealth and employment in our past.

Interjection.

HON. MR. McGEER: Oh, I don't think that's true. Of course, one can always look for greater successes. The only time when you would say "enough" is when you've become saturated or over-saturated, as we now see in the Silicon Valley area of the United States and as they're now experiencing in Austin, Texas, where their combination of policies and the happenstance of successful industries has created goldmines, in an industrial sense.

Of course, the fellow who has the technological innovation, or the invention, is a little like the prospector. His idea, his invention, is like the goldmine or like the opportunity to build a pulp mill because the forest resource is there. It's difficult in Canada when we have so little tradition in this regard to find those who are either venture capitalists or traditional financial officers to recognize this equivalent. They may be very willing to fund a venture in the forest sector or in the mining sector, if they can see the forest resource or if they can see the mining assays, but when it comes to an idea and an invention, that's a little bit beyond their traditional experience. Therefore, compared with jurisdictions that have experience in the high-technology field, it's been uphill sledding in Canada.

But progress is being made, and our electronics industry in British Columbia last year surpassed fishing as the fifth largest industry in our province. In my view, it will soon surpass mining and tourism. and by the turn of the century our major source of employment in British Columbia will be the high-technology manufacturing industries. Well, whether that will come to pass or not depends very much on our policies and how well they are accepted. as well as the genius of the people we rely upon to build new industry in the high-technology field.

Interjection.

HON. MR. McGEER: Well, you can comment on that in another arena, and I don't think we want to have the debate depart into the resource field. You and I would have an interesting conversation about that, but it might not be permitted by the Chairman.

Finally, I want to move into the field of universities, which has generated much acrimonious debate over weeks and months, to which the member opposite has contributed more than his share. That's his special talent, and he has not missed his opportunities in this field.

Of course, as with all of the heavy spending portfolios in our province, our difficulty is in providing all the money that they would wish to have. I feel very badly that there is not more money for our universities, just as I feel badly that there isn't more money for our schools, colleges and hospitals. But that's the reality; our economy is not able to support a generous expansion at the present time.

MR. WILLIAMS: Not with bungled megaprojects all around.

HON. MR. McGEER: Well, the member has decided that the megaprojects are bungled, and without diverting from the main thrust of my argument, that member has had direct experience with bungling megaprojects. Over the perspective of time, one can see very clearly that these were bungled. Now, of course, the cry is going up that northeast

[ Page 6072 ]

coal is a bungled project. I know the member who used to sit over there — Mr. Leggatt — was predicting that every single day.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, hon. member.

HON. MR. McGEER: I think in the stretch of time, it's going to be a very different story. As we look back on resources during the period '72 to '75....

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. Mr. Minister, I think if we get down to vote 75....

HON. MR. McGEER: I'm trying, Mr. Chairman, to keep very closely to the topic. If only people would not entice me into these broader arenas.

Interjection.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. Hon. members will have their opportunities to stand in debate.

HON. MR. McGEER: Coming back to universities, Mr. Chairman....

Interjection.

HON. MR. McGEER: I should hope so. If I were in your position, I certainly would.

Mr. Chairman, the fact remains, however, that people looking into the future, in the big-spending areas, will have to recognize that their prosperity is linked to the producers of this country, and that they rely very much on taxpayers and industry to support their activities. It's not any God-given right that they should have unlimited access to taxpayers' funds or to borrowed funds. We're not the only jurisdiction that is having difficulty now, and as I look around at....

[3:30]

Interjection.

HON. MR. McGEER: Well, a little closer than that. The University of Washington is having a budget cut of 10 percent in their universities in the period '85 to '87. That's nothing that we've ever had to do in British Columbia. They've had difficulties in the past in Washington. That just happens to be how it will be in our closest jurisdiction in the next two years.

As the member knows, I was in Texas only three weeks ago looking for high technology opportunities for British Columbia. The state of Texas is experiencing a deficit of possibly $1 billion this year; university fees in Texas as a result will quadruple this year, and the universities will have a cut that was originally proposed to be 30 percent for the university system, but will probably be reduced to 5 percent. So here we are with even funding in British Columbia this year, Texas is quadrupling the fees and dropping their contribution, and the state of Washington is cutting by 10 percent.

It's merely to say that this is something which always happens when the economy can't support the spending activities of the systems that are major consumers of the tax dollars. It doesn't mean to say that we haven't tremendously high regard for our universities and those who provide service in them. It doesn't mean that we don't accord them enormous priority. It doesn't mean that when the economy turns around they will not be able to share generously in the new spending capability that will follow upon that. It does mean for the moment that they have to bear their share of the burden. It's not as severe as the burdens of those who are unemployed or all of the businesses that have been devastated by the recession, but certainly some of the burden. We would like to think that that could be done with....

Interjection.

HON. MR. McGEER: You know the unemployment figures for British Columbia. I don't need to detail them. It's tough out there. It's very tough.

Interjection.

HON. MR. McGEER: When the automobile industry came roaring back.

Interjections.

HON. MR. McGEER: You see, Mr. Chairman, the Premier doesn't control the price of copper. When it goes from $1.25 to $0.62 and mines close down, that's not something that is set by the province of British Columbia. But I can remember, Mr. Chairman, right here in this Legislature, when copper prices were at world record levels and that member personally created a depression in the mining industry. As the member for North Vancouver — your predecessor in this House, Mr. Chairman — previously said: "They created a miracle by producing despair in British Columbia mining at a time of world record prices." That's what they did.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, Mr. Minister.

HON. MR. McGEER: Now, with prices at their lowest level....

Interjections.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. On vote 75, the minister's estimates.

AN HON. MEMBER: Pure fiction.

HON. MR. McGEER: Fiction? Did the Premier set the world price of aluminium? Not at $0.94, as it was six months ago, but at $0.47? No, these are circumstances — world commodity prices — and people have to recognize and adjust to these circumstances. If you go around believing myths, then what you're going to do is build policies that will undermine in the future — to use a pun — because that group over there was undermined. That's why they were defeated in 1975, that's why they were defeated in 1979, that's why they were defeated in 1983 and that's why they're going to be defeated in 1986.

We're hearing the very reasons today. No, sir, no repentance, no insight, no reform at all over there. The same old gang — against industry, against wealth, against success. They put failure on a pedestal.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Minister, would you please apply your comments to your ministry estimates — vote 75.

[ Page 6073 ]

HON. MR. McGEER: Mr. Chairman, what we have done in the Universities ministry is ask our institutions to put forward for the first time an academic plan which will establish for each institution its own direction in the future. We believe in the autonomy of our institutions, and this is a way for them to survey the needs of the future and to respond by charting their direction. This is something which our universities have never done before. I think the exercise will be an effective one.

Included in the plan is an adjustment to our anticipated post-secondary population in British Columbia. There's been a great deal of talk in our province about participation rates, so we've taken a very careful look at how our high-school graduating students are moving on to the post-secondary system.

In the university stream — this is not necessarily all going to our universities but also university-level courses, which includes BCIT — we have over 53 percent of the recent graduates. So we are picking up at university level over half the graduates. In addition to that we have our vocational stream which are short courses designed to prepare people for the working world.

Mr. Chairman, I want to say that the participation rate in British Columbia is extraordinarily high. The member opposite says: "Come on now!" I have to say that I consider that to be the number one educational myth in our province, because when we take the statements made by those who want to see their institutions grow.... It's a natural enough thing. Here we've got three public universities, fifteen community colleges, six institutes, a knowledge network, an open learning institute, all anticipating growth — because that was what took place when the baby boom was moving through our system — suddenly looking into the future with the service to be provided until the turn of the century, with the baby bust group. Our population now, right back to grade one and grade two, is flat or dropping, so you're looking at a smaller and different clientele.

We aren't going to have, in the next 20 years, growth like we had in the past 20. It will never again take place in our province. What we're looking at to serve is a population that is already in the school system. They're there, and you can understand what's going to happen to them if you plan carefully with respect to the future. There's no point in planning your educational establishment thinking that the baby boom is going to continue to the year 2000. The educational institutions can blame the mothers if they wish to grow, but folks, the kids aren't there in the school system. We've got to think very carefully about the size and distribution of our educational systems in the future. That should be taken into account in the five-year plans of our universities, as well as our colleges and our institutes.

Mr. Chairman, I've been asked about the tunnel. If the House wishes, we can go to the tunnel for a few minutes. No? The Chairman objects. Well, if I'm asked specific questions and the Chairman entertains them, I would be delighted to deal with that subject too. I'll just close to permit, I'm sure, sharp, brief, incisive questions — did I hear a giggle. Mr. Chairman? — from my friends opposite with respect to the three portfolios, inasmuch as they have been given such a concise and objective account.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

MR. NICOLSON: Mr. Chairman, in his opening remarks the minister was talking about his relations with the new national government and his talks with Marcel Masse. He said that he regrets there is still a wide gap, and that's the thing I'd like to talk about: the wide gap as far as university participation is concerned.

Here in British Columbia the participation rate for people from metropolitan areas is about 17 percent; the participation rate for people from non-metropolitan areas is now down to 7 percent. It wasn't always thus. It was pretty well closed up back about 1974. But that is what is happening under this minister under the lack of priority and lack of assistance for students. which impacts upon all students very much — taking away the grant portion of student assistance, for instance. He says we have the colleges. He should find out what is happening in the colleges. They're closing down all of the transfer programs. They're discontinuing those programs because of the government direction that they're getting. There is a wide gap. Also, the participation rate in this province is absolutely abysmal compared with other provinces in Canada.

He wants to talk about Washington, about Texas. He neglects to mention that Texas had the most dramatic increase in its universities in the early 1980s. If there is some sort of a rapprochement taking place there now, that's maybe appropriate, but this was after a huge and dramatic increase. He should know that if he's been there recently.

Net provincial contributions to universities here in British Columbia have fallen at a faster rate than in any other province since 1981-82. That's according to the Johnson report, with which the minister should be very familiar. The minister talks about this participation rate, saying that we have a high rate, and he throws in everything, including the Open Learning Institute. But we really have to look at what is happening with the number of students leaving school. We have to look at people in those young age groups and see how many of them are engaged. We have a very low rate. Indeed, if we were to enrol at the rate that students are enrolled in Ontario, we would have to absorb 24,000 more students into our institutions.

Mr. Chairman, I think that any way one wants to look at it, there is a great deal for us to be concerned about here. I think that at the top of the list is the fact that the government is using money as a lever to force universities to do the Social Credit bidding. There has never been so much — I won't say carrot and stick; it is stick and stick — bullying of our universities. It is a very dangerous, destructive and economically disastrous move to make.

[3:45]

The minister talked about how prosperity is linked to the producers, and I'll agree. But, by golly, the people in the universities are the producers. One day this minister will get up and he'll throw his arms around Dr. Rudi Haering and try to identify himself with the moly battery. But today he wants to talk about people like Dr. Rudi Haering as non-producers. The people in the arts community are producers. If the minister would look at the kind of economic impact here in Victoria, in Vancouver and throughout our province, he'd find out that the fine arts are a multi-million-dollar industry in this province. In fact, if anybody is working today, it's the graduates of general arts and science. If anybody's being hired today, it's the graduates in general arts and science. Engineering has fallen on hard times, but, of course, times will come for them. These are hard times for them, here in

[ Page 6074 ]

British Columbia at least, when last year about eight graduates out of 30-odd in chemical engineering got jobs. But most arts and science graduates are getting jobs.

Mr. Chairman, we have never seen such interference. Academic freedom is an essential ingredient of university life. But today there is a sense of uncertainty. It hinders and impedes academic research, academic activity, and the kind of clear mind that one needs if one is going to be on the leading edge of thought and development and creativity.

This government is heavily involved in university budget allocation. It came up with this $14.7 million allocation. Of course, they couldn't explain what the $14.7 million was going to be for. They couldn't explain immediately, on budget day, who was going to allocate it, and after some pressure they said it would come through the Universities Council. Even today we don't know exactly what it's going to be for; but I think that everyone sitting on this side who listened to the budget speech that day could have told you. It's going to be to buy out.... It's going to be golden handshake pay. It's going to cover the legal costs of this government's interference in the academic system in getting rid of professors. There's also going to be this kind of one-time bonus pay for star performers — under what criteria, I don't know, but supposedly to induce people not to leave the university.

I guess one can anticipate that maybe in the commerce faculty at the University of British Columbia.... There's a lot of concern there that a lot of top people have been approached by the head-hunters from the United States. So maybe they're going to try to keep them, or maybe they think that a one-time bonus, a signing bonus, is going to attract people to come into British Columbia. Well, I don't think that is going to happen.

The government has been pressuring presidents directly to go along with their anti-education priorities — they've sent letters; they've laid things out very specifically — and the minister has laid out his thoughts on what they should be doing in terms of prioritizing their spending and rationalizing. He talks about the university adjustments program, to assist the universities in accomplishing the objectives that they and the Universities Council set out in their joint letter to him of January 23, 1985. Of course, all 15 members of the Universities Council are appointed by the minister, and we know that it's very hard to tell who is saying what to whom.

That letter was to identify and maintain the vital core programs. I remember the core curriculum that came out for elementary and secondary schools — quite a flap about nothing. But what are the vital core programs? Are they defined? How do we know what is expected there? "To enhance programs of defined high social demand, outstanding quality and provincial need, and to redeploy to higher priority areas resources made available from the reduction or elimination of programs of lesser academic strength and priority, and to employ strengths and management capabilities to meet on a timely basis academic and fiscal responsibilities." Well, what has happened?

We have all had letters from people in rehabilitation medicine, people concerned about cancellation of programs such as architecture at the University of British Columbia. We've had resignations of people who have seen commitments cut to the engineering faculty at the University of Victoria, and only restored after the very high-level and politicized resignation of Len Bruton, the person most capable of leading a program to fruition to make that program a first-class university program that would stand in good stead as a world-class program.

The minister sets out his goals: "A modest reduction in overall size in keeping with post-secondary forecasts." You know, he put out some post-secondary forecasts; he appended some figures to these statements. I think they were called the enrolment statistics forecast, or something or other. All I know is that when I looked at them I noticed some glaring errors. In other words, the post-secondary enrolments were consistently 36,000, 36,000, 36,000; then, for two years in a row, it dropped to 26,000, 26,000, then back up to 36,000.

Interjection.

MR. NICOLSON: A typographical error. Well, if it's a typographical error, what does it come from? What are those statistics? What book, what publication? There's a specific question that the minister can answer later: what specific publication do those figures come from, or were they dreamed up? They couldn't have been done by a spreadsheet program on a computer, because the program would have corrected such an obvious error. It was obviously something that was typed up and, as far as I am concerned, made up, and really doesn't tell much of a story.

The real story again is the participation rate. The minister can talk about the enrolment forecasts for the next couple of years, and what's going to happen with grade 12 graduations. Certainly at the rate this government's going grade 12 graduations might drop even lower, because they're discouraging students — not only participating post-secondary but also in secondary school.

AN HON. MEMBER: Gloom and doom!

MR. NICOLSON: Gloom and doom! This is the truth, this is the way, and this is an enlightened — I won't go too far recognition of some of the facts.

The government have pressured their appointees on university boards to rationalize or eliminate programs in accordance with government wishes. One university president, Dr. Pedersen, has resigned, and both of the others have spoken publicly against this oppression of the universities. The University of Victoria dean of engineering has quit, as I say, and 140 top academics are considering job offers elsewhere.

University Affairs editor Gloria Pierre has said that this is the, worst education climate she's seen in 25 years. She said in the May 1985 edition:

"If the problem in B.C. were only a lack of money, serious as it is, I'd not be writing this column. It is the apparent use of money as an instrument of power, as a lever to force the universities to do what the provincial government wants, that is the real problem. What the government wants at present appears to be the elimination of programs that it does not consider worthwhile, and the reduction of enrolment. This in a province that has one of the lowest, if not the lowest, participation rates in the country. The education climate in British Columbia is the worst that I have seen in 25 years."

She talks about the pressure — and a great deal of pressure — that's been put on the universities in the past few years to eliminate programs. We have a government that believes there are too many people at university, that they are there for

[ Page 6075 ]

social reasons, and that entrance requirements should be raised to reduce enrolments.

Mr. Chairman, British Columbia's participation rate, as I have said, is.... If it were at the Canadian average.... I should correct what I said earlier: not if it were at the Ontario average, but if it were at the Canadian average, there would be another 24,000 full-time students at our universities and colleges. I suppose if it were at the Ontario average, it would probably be in the neighbourhood of 50,000 more students at our universities and colleges. The full-time university enrolment is dropping in British Columbia: it's down 2 percent in the past year. Really, if one looks at the number of no-shows in first-year programs, one would realize that it is a very serious portent of what is going to happen over the next four years. Why? It's because we're making it virtually impossible. It's being reflected right now most seriously, as I say, with students from the non-metropolitan areas. But it will go on.

Mr. Chairman, we see what their plan is here. British Columbia has the worst student-assistance package in Canada, yet some of the highest tuition fees. The minister is fond of saying that students have it easy on fees. He talks about the days when he was at school. Fees have gone up faster than inflation over the past 35 years. I've looked back to the year 1950, which I figure is when the.... First, I think if the minister goes back and talks about what student fees were when he was at university, he'd have to remember that when he was at university there were still a lot of war veterans there; there was a DVA program. Probably most of the students at university, more than half of them, would have been getting full student assistance as veterans of the Second World War.

I know that when I went to the University of British Columbia, the student population had been up over 9,000, but when I enrolled there, the population of the University of British Columbia was under 5,000. That shows you the impact of the veteran participation. Even bearing that in mind, going back to the years when those veterans were there.... I know that if the minister was not there in that time, the deputy minister certainly was there, so we can have some first-hand advice in rebuttal, I suppose, on what it was really like at that time. Going back to 1950 and working out the average fee increase over the years 1950 to 1985, we see that fees have increased 5.75 percent, whereas the average inflation rate, measured by the cost-of-living index, has been 4.70 percent.

Until 1980 inflation and fees were more or less in step. Fees increased at 4.04 percent annually, and inflation was at 4.29 percent annually. In the period 1980-85, the student fees average a 16.66 percent increase annually, while inflation runs at 8.49 percent over the same period. In other words, student fees have been increasing at double the inflation rate. This is based on statistics from the University of British Columbia, which of course was the university in operation back in 1950, It's based on an arts degree, or enrolment in regular arts and science. The tuition is now up over.... For this year, of course, we see more and more increases. We see 10 percent increases forecast. We now have one of the highest tuition rates in Canada.

[4:00]

The minister claims that there is such a great deal because provincial tax dollars cover 85 percent of the budget. The province does not put in a nickel any more. The balance of this, really, is being put in by student fees. In fact, in EPF funding the forecast.... Next year I think EPF funding will pay for 108 percent of government contributions to post-secondary education.

The minister says there are too many people in university, and that they are there for social reasons, and that entrance requirements should be raised to cut enrolment. That is the government's view, and he has alluded to that. They've used rather distorted statistics, and reasoning, to support the diversion of federal moneys away from post-secondary education. And, of course, there is the minister's letter of April 2, 1985, entitled " Dear Faculty Member," in which he tries to explain the diversion of EPF funding.

The minister claims that health expenditures have increased more rapidly in B.C. than post-secondary expenditures because, in part, of the 19 percent increase since 1980 in our over-65 population and the 2 percent decrease between the ages of 6 and 24. But StatsCan advises that the increase in over-65s is 15 percent — 285,900 in 1980 and 329,000 in 1984, but not 19 percent. The 6-to-24-year-old group is down, but the 0-to-5 age group, which the minister ignores, is up 10 percent and just entering the education system.

But really, you know, it doesn't matter. We still have to come back to the fact that we have the lowest participation rate, that even with what we've got today, if we were to have the same participation as the national average, we would have 24,000 more people enrolled, almost the equivalent of another UBC in size. Well, I don't know that I want to get into all of these statistics, because the minister likes to play this game. But really, if you examine the minister's statistics, they just don't hold up. He's talking about a very small projected decrease in enrolment, and even if the minister's figures are accepted in terms of projections for grade 12 graduation into university, it doesn't begin to answer the shortfall that we have, simply because we're discouraging students from attending.

It's a vicious circle: no student aid and high fees will discourage attendance; lower enrolments will justify more budget cuts and still higher fees, This government wants the economic spinoffs of the best intelligence, but will not pay to attract and keep the necessary people.

What skills are we going to give to our young people today? If we read the papers, we see more and more concern about these young people who have never had a job, this new lost generation. So what are we doing for these young people to ensure that they will be able to live up to their potential in the twenty-first century? The Socred view is that all we need is to have a few highly specialized technocrats, and then, if we need somebody else, we simply hire them away from California or Ontario or other parts of the world. But we are going to deny our young people participation in these challenging, high-level, demanding jobs and professions — and lives.

It just isn't good enough. It's philosophically corrupt, I think, to talk about stealing people from other areas where they've been trained, from other areas that have paid for their education. It is also philosophically corrupt to talk about denying our young people participation in the really fulfilling and challenging life which can lie ahead for them if we invest today. It's like our not investing in our forests. We're not replanting trees. In the case of our universities, we're not replanting students for the growth that is going to have to take place in order that we can realize and, I suppose, exploit the resource that they will mature to in 5, 10 or 20 years' time.

Our view is that our people need an equal chance to compete for the jobs that will be available. The NDP believes

[ Page 6076 ]

that ability to pay exorbitant fees is not usually related to talent and intelligence. The NDP believes that education should be available to every person to the extent that they can benefit from it. We have faith in British Columbians. We believe that as technology makes some jobs obsolete, it's going to be harder to plan to equip students with job-specific skills. Our education system should concentrate on providing students with two essential qualities: a high level of general education and flexibility; and students will need to be flexible enough to cope with the stresses of rapid and unpredictable technological and social change.

I might just say — just to touch tangentially on communications, since it is part of the minister's responsibility — that the other day I attended a conference on communications. I confessed to some of those experts my abysmal ignorance of matters of communications, because as hard as I try, things keep changing. Do you know what the experts told me — one from Washington? They said that it's the very same for them: nobody can keep up. So that's the kind of world that we are into, and yet we want to send people out into that field very ill-equipped. It's like sending out an ill-clothed army with slingshots against laser weapons and armoured vehicles, Mr. Chairman.

We have to make an investment. The minister talks about what we can and cannot afford. I'll tell you, we can't afford any more mistakes like this government has been making with its economic projects. We can't afford to be spending $1 million to create one job, which is what this government has done in terms of its megaprojects and its northeast coal project: $1 million of government spending to produce one coal-mining job. We've got to get better return for our investments. We can't be writing down all of these megaprojects and putting that money into direct debt against this province at the expense of a properly educated youth. There will be nobody to pay off the debts for those megaprojects if we don't have an adequately prepared youth, and if we don't have the creative energy that comes from that academic community.

I want to ask the minister how it is that he can one day wrap himself in the reflected glory of a Dr. Haering and on another day fall short of the mark in terms of supporting the people who will be the Dr. Rudi Haerings of tomorrow, or the David Suzukis, Sam Blacks, Jack Shadbolts and other leading people of tomorrow, whether they be in the sciences, arts or humanities. How can the minister have been in this community for so long and yet not observe the importance of our doing our share in this province in terms of participation rate and reaching out to maximize the potential of all of our students?

HON. MR. McGEER: Mr. Chairman, I just want to come back for a moment to reiterate that the greatest myth in postsecondary education in Canada is this silliness about the low participation rate. It just is not factual. I'm reading a statistical thing in "Current Issues in Post-Secondary Education in British Columbia" by an official of the federal government in which college enrolment in British Columbia is quoted as being 22,000, and on that basis they suggest the participation rate in British Columbia is low.

Mr. Chairman, we built colleges all around British Columbia. The purpose was to permit people to have university level courses in their own community. That's why we put up 15 community colleges all around British Columbia. We had three universities, but they're down here right in the southwest corner of the province. It's easy, if you live in Vancouver or Victoria or New Westminster, or perhaps even Coquitlam, to commute to a university. You've got a deal. But it's not that way, as the member knows, if you live in Nelson or Trail or Salmon Arm or Prince Rupert or any of the smaller communities. So what did we do? We built colleges all around the province so people in those communities could get a university-level education and career and technical courses in their own community.

What's the accusation of those in the universities? The accusation is that the participation rate is low because we didn't force these people to leave Nelson, Prince Rupert and all these other communities and have their parents fork out the money for them to come to Vancouver and Victoria. Are you against that, or do you think it's right and proper that people should be able to have these educational opportunities at home? For heaven's sake, when we provide that, don't come and say the participation rate is low. Count those people in those communities as human beings and as students, the same as you would count them on the University of Victoria campus. And please tell them on the University of Victoria campus not to covet those who are in Trail and Prince Rupert, if they want to stay in those communities and have their education there, because our policy is to give them a chance there. Is that wrong?

[4:15]

[Mr. Ree in the chair.]

We weren't satisfied with that, Mr. Chairman. We said: "We're going to let you take it right in your living-room." That's why we created the Open Learning Institute. I wish my friends from Pacific Press were up in the gallery today. I hope they're listening back there in that press room, because they opposed it and so did the Vancouver Province. They didn't want educational democracy in British Columbia. They wanted to force these people to come down to the campuses where their friends are who talk to the editorial staffs. That's what took place.

All of these conversations between the editorial boardrooms of the Vancouver Province and the Vancouver Sun and. the administrative offices of our lower mainland universities, saying what a terrible thing it was to have an open learning institute that would bring university programs into the living-room in Horsefly and Quesnel and Osoyoos and Peachland and all those places.... Why, these big-city stickers were against that, right there in the Pacific Press. Are you listening, Pacific Press?

AN HON. MEMBER: You're waking everybody up.

HON. MR. McGEER: I'm just reminding them of their past. Now when these people are registered in the programs and they're able to take them in their living-room and get a college degree through the Open Learning Consortium.... No sir, they're not participants. They're being very naughty. They're not participating in this university system, because they don't troop obediently down and offer themselves up at our university campuses in the lower mainland. Baloney, there isn't participation. There is, and it's distributed all around British Columbia. I wish people would recognize that that is taking place. The opportunity has been provided.

I want to tell you, it hasn't been easy, because there was no willing support from the great media of our province. They weren't the ones pushing for educational democracy in

[ Page 6077 ]

British Columbia; no sir. They were demanding more money for their friends in the lower mainland, that's what they were doing.

I want to say that I'm very proud of what we've been able to achieve, bringing educational opportunity to all of the small communities of British Columbia and having our Knowledge Network and the Open Learning Institute taking programs right into the living-room.

You know, the Open Learning Institute is now the second largest educational institution in British Columbia, with 16,000 participants. These are people registered in courses, folks. They're in the educational system working for credit toward a degree.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: What about the apprenticeship program?

Interjections.

HON. MR. McGEER: The largest one? It's UBC.

Oh, I'm not sure — maybe the apprenticeship program, if you include it at all.... But PVI is smaller in total numbers of people at any given time than UBC or the Open Learning Institute.

But this is something that we had to push very hard to achieve, because it wasn't done willingly. There was this demand: "You've got to come to our place. You've got to make our numbers grow. If you don't do that there isn't participation." Baloney! There are more people taking university-level courses that are not on our university campuses than there are students on the university campuses. That isn't by accident; that is by design. If we're going to enrich our participation in British Columbia, it has to be taking the education to the student, not forcing him to come to you.

We have a particularly difficult geography in British Columbia, because our population base is right down here in the southwest comer of the province. So it does require a little extra effort, but it also requires a little extra understanding and insight. People are sent into this chamber from all around British Columbia, and they quite rightly fight for opportunities, in an educational sense, for the people who live in their communities, wherever they are. I can tell you this: they're going to find a very sympathetic ear from this particular minister, because I think that's right.

I'm not going to read garbage statistics that are prepared by people whose main interest is trying to prove that there should be more individuals trooping down to their particular campuses and fewer spread around the province where it's really required. I'm not sympathetic to that. But I do tell you it's a myth, and the participation rate in our province is extraordinarily high.

We examine the total number of graduates from our high school system; they're published every year in enrolment statistics. I'm sure that a member over there would agree. It's appropriate that we should keep figures on how many people are in our school system. We should keep figures on how many graduate. The fellow who does all this myth-making at the University of Victoria couldn't understand why you would have 35,000 people attending high school in grade 12, and only 25,000 graduating. This is a historic thing that has gone back a very long time. Not everybody who finishes the twelfth year has completed all of the requirements to enter academic courses at the college and university level. You have these minimum requirements. It used to be junior matriculation. But there still is that incompletion on the part of about 10,000 people who are in grade 12 each year.

Later on, the major adult education enterprise in our province — and we haven't talked about that, but it's a very large component of what goes on — is called adult basic education. Adult basic education is picking people up to that grade 12 graduation level. There are many vocations, quite apart from the academic stream, where that requirement of grade 12 completion is there, and therefore they have to finish that in order to get into whatever particular specialty they require.

That's not so for our Open Learning Institute, because there you start with the assumption that you can do the work. The whole purpose in setting up the Open Learning Institute was that people would have a chance, no matter where they lived, no matter what their financial circumstances, no matter what their previous academic achievement. So there aren't those kinds of restrictions to get into the Open Learning Institute programs.

This is the reason why there's that difference between the numbers in grade 12 and the numbers who get their university-entrance certificate. Then of those 25,000 or so who get that, over 50 percent move on. It used to be that if you lived up in Salmon Arm you had to have the money to come down to UBC to get your university-level course. Now you can start right in Salmon Arm. That's the way it is all around the province. That's real participation. I just wish people would include some of that in their statistics.

MR. NICOLSON: Mr. Chairman, the minister tries to criticize the statistics of — and I think I know the member he's probably referring to — a very conscientious and important person in the education community in this province at the University of Victoria.

I can quote right here from Statistics Canada, table 28, "Education in Canada, 1983." It talks about the participation rate in universities. It might even give a breakdown of male and female. Undergraduate: male, 1982-83, 20.6 percent; female, 18.7 percent; for a total of 19.7 percent. We look at British Columbia, and we see: male, 15.2 percent; female, 14.3 percent; and a total of 14.7 percent.

Interjection.

MR. NICOLSON: This is for undergraduates, the 18 to-21 age group.

Now I want to talk about the 18-to-21 age group, because that's what we have to compare if we're comparing apples and oranges. You know, kids don't come out of high school and say: "I'm going to go to the television set and get a degree through OLI. OLI is fine. It has its place; it does a heck of a good job. But you know, there's a great deal more to education than filling out correspondence forms or sitting in front of a television set watching packaged programs from.... I watch the Knowledge Network, and I see computer science programs that are at least five years out of date. Some of them are pretty puerile stuff. They're great; they're better than nothing. It isn't bad to be five years out of date; it's better than not being up to scratch at all. Some of the other stuff is excellent, and some of it is entertaining.

But even if we accept that as being an equal or equivalent educational opportunity, which it isn't, 19,000 or 20,000 people — or something like that; the figure you threw out —

[ Page 6078 ]

in those outreach programs still doesn't close the gap between our participation rates. It still wouldn't come up to the Canadian average. It wouldn't even come within hailing distance of Ontario. Here in British Columbia.... I was born in British Columbia. I'm a parochial British Columbian and I think British Columbia should be the best, not pulling up the hind end in terms of its rate.

If we look at the statistics in terms of the 18-to-21-year olds in our participation rate, again for undergraduate programs we rank tenth out of ten. That's not something from the University of Victoria; that is straight out of Statistics Canada. For the minister to get up and equate.... What athletic teams does one play on in OLI? Is the OLI basketball team right up there with the University of Victoria team? Does their football team compete with the UBC Thunderbirds? Does the wrestling team compare with the Simon Fraser Clansmen?

AN HON. MEMBER: Video games.

MR. NICOLSON: Video games — maybe they're number one in Canada. I don't know.

To compare this as an equivalent experience — what arrangements are there for doing labs? I know that professors do travel up. There are seminar groups and you have a concentrated period where you actually meet with a real, live professor — that is, if the plane gets into Castlegar. That's some other technical expertise that the deputy minister could comment on and advise the minister on. Really, it is spurious; come on, Mr. Minister! To compare the two experiences and to lump in those statistics.... As I say, even if I accept your statistics, it doesn't bring us up to national averages, but I don't accept them. I accept OLI and the Knowledge Network as being useful, innovative, excellent and supplementary, but is the minister honestly saying...?

[4:30]

If you live in the lower mainland you have two universities to choose from; if you live in lower Vancouver Island you have one university; but if you live in Prince George, Dawson Creek, Nelson, Cranbrook or Kelowna you have to sign up for correspondence, or watch your television set and take your courses from there, or get in your videotapes or audiotapes. I know there are all kinds of learning assists — canned records — but there is still no substitute for that face-to-face contact and meeting some of those top people. When I was a student at the University of British Columbia I had Dr. Gage, Jack Parnall, Dr. Wort in biology — all of these top rate people; Dr. Margaret MacKenzie in English and Dr. Steinberg, who used to come in when she was away and couldn't do her classes. Dr. Gage got the first award at the university for teaching excellence, and Dr. Steinberg was about the third. I experienced people like Derek Livesey in physics, and a number of others — Karl Erdman and others in physics, or people like Roy Nodwell, who you now have on the Science Council. I had Roy Nodwell for optics and did very well, thank you.

To meet those people face to face, and to have them return from an academic symposium, as Roy Nodwell did.... A paper was given on the laser, and he was one of the first people to hear about it; and he brought this right back into the classroom — that kind of immediacy. I was not an honours student; I was not a graduate student; I was just taking majors. But we did get that kind of exposure. Now you can't get that kind of immediacy, and that's what university is about. It's about being on the leading edge, or having some contact with people who are on the leading edge. They're not on the leading edge when they've recorded a videotape two or three years ago. It is absolutely impossible. So don't try to compare apples and oranges.

I'm not going to defend the position that I've taken by calling down OLI or the Knowledge Network. They're fine programs. They're supplementary programs. They do something for people who cannot disrupt their family; for couples who have children and midlife responsibilities, and who cannot uproot and come down here. But I'm talking about the 18-to-21s who can come out of school and go to university, who are mobile, and who are at an age when they are eager to learn — they're the most motivated. We're not giving them the opportunity. We're denying them participation in the twenty-first century if we continue the way we're going.

HON. MR. McGEER: I'm not disagreeing with the member. All I'm saying is: don't refer to people from our small communities as non-persons in an educational sense. They are participating in a system that we deliberately set up so that they would have that opportunity. If they wish, they can come down and register at UVic or SFU or UBC. But we put a system in place so that they didn't have to do that; they would have a choice. My, objection is that the people who prepare these tables pretend that those individuals are nonpersons, and others coming in say that there's some dreadful plague on the educational system here in British Columbia. Everybody doesn't do what these statistical moguls would like them to do. It just so happens that we've put in a college system, and we encourage people to take advantage of it. You can get university courses — maybe not up to Prof. Gage's, but you can get them, right there in Salmon Arm. You used to be able to get them in Nelson. I feel badly about that, but you can at least get them in Castlegar now. That was put there for a special purpose. I'm dismayed that we have all these people who have convinced themselves that those in the interior are non-persons in an educational sense. I think it's a shame.

MR. ROSE: I think the minister is extremely convincing and persuasive in his arguments — to some people perhaps, but not to me. I think he does compare apples and oranges. He gives a high school diploma participation rate, going on to some form of post-secondary education, as the basis for the percentage of high school grads.... All the stats that we have been reading have to do with the percentage per capita, not the percentage per high school grads. As a matter of fact, it really condemns his argument terrifically. To say that, well, out of 35,000 kids in grade 12 — or 39,000 or 29,000, whatever he said — about 19,000 really don't complete.... They're dropouts, in other words. They don't complete their high school graduation — what we used to call their matriculation — in time to go on. I think that's a condemnation of a number of things.

I think the minister should talk about degrees per capita. I know that nobody's interested in these stats, except maybe people who are making speeches or university professors. In degrees per capita and diplomas per capita, the information I have is that in B.C. we have 733 college diplomas per 100,000 between the ages of 20 and 29. Those are the people who are going to university. In Canada we have, on average, about 1,500, or double. That kind of distorts that business about the great benefits of the Open Learning Institute. I don't discount the fact that an open learning institution is a

[ Page 6079 ]

great help to those people who are geographically bound, housebound — moribund — or whatever. I'm not knocking that at all. But the facts speak for themselves: college diplomas in B.C. are about half what they are in Canada; we're about sixth among the provinces. We're tenth among the provinces, per capita, in the production of bachelor degrees, including open learning grads. Therefore I can't put much stock in the minister's assertion. Those are StatsCan figures — I can give you the catalogue number, if you care to look at it.

I think the basic difference in his arguments here is that most of the StatsCan stuff — the latest I have is 1983-84 full-time post-secondary enrolment.... In the community colleges we're 11.5; the Canadian average is 16.7. Then, I suppose, Manitoba and Saskatchewan are a good deal lower: they're around a quarter of what we are. Certainly we're below Alberta; we're below Quebec; we're below Ontario; we're below P.E.I.

If we go on, as well, to look at the university enrolments — again I'm quoting from the same document — we're in the same boat. In 18-to21-year-olds, our participation rate is 10.5 and 13.5 for Canada. It's even worse if you look at the total post-secondary, which includes postgraduate: 17 percent for B.C. and 23 percent for Canada. Some of the other figures are comparable. Ontario and Quebec, of course, are much higher, in central Canada.

So there are lots of impediments to getting a university degree. We all know that those people who have a university degree, or for that matter, even any post-secondary at all, have about twice the chance of achieving gainful employment, even during the Bennett recession. So I think that we are, in short, shortchanging our students.

We talked about, for instance, the funding for education. We've got to be able to provide a decent amount of funding for education. I quite frankly don't think the province is doing its job. We've had a series of increases of federal money, and at the same time the increase in federal money has been pocketed by the province for use for whatever. Now the minister knows.... His argument is that that's all B.C. money anyway. I've heard him say that many times. "You can't say the EPF bound for universities is federal money, because it really comes out of B.C. taxpayers' pockets." That's the minister's argument, and I think he would nod his head to that one. Yes it is, that's the argument: that's our money; nothing legally demands that we do anything with it other than what we're doing. But it seems to me.... And I know that's his argument; I don't like his argument, but that's his argument. There's nothing legally demanding on the province to direct the ever-increasing federal funds from Ottawa into education, even though EPF was devoted to assisting the province in health and post-secondary education since its inception. But since 1977, there have been no ties on how that money was spent locally. However, old habits die hard, and people persist in continuing to think about how that money might have been used had it not been diverted into some other purpose.

Similarly, the minister talks about access, and that the community college system — which is not really up for debate today — and also the Open Learning Institute contributes to the education of those people who are out of the geographic area of the lower mainland. I agree it does. But at the same time that is happening, the university transfer programs in the various community colleges have been downgraded. They are not on the "must" list; they are on the "may" list. In terms of what programs are to be given at the community colleges. We find that those programs, including the adult basic education, have been downgraded. The classes are a lot larger. The programs are not nearly as numerous, and the local colleges are not required any longer to emphasize those programs. So anyway that is the situation.

Let's look at the federal increase. In 1983-84, the increase in EPF was 7.3 percent or $450 million. The funds granted and transferred in 1984-85 were $477 million or an increase of 6 percent; that was the year you cut the universities by 5 percent. This year they remained the same in real dollars, but you know that at least 5 percent was eaten up by inflation. We have a 7.4 percent increase. It will bring the federal contribution, if the budget — I think it's on Thursday — reflects a recommendation of Secretary of State Walter McLean, to $511 million.

So we've reached the stage — and I wish to remind the minister; he might deny it — where really the province is not contributing at all from its own sources. It's getting a free ride. As a matter of fact, it's making money on post-secondary education, because of its increase of the student fees to the extent where the students are paying an ever-increasing proportion of it. The minister will counter, I imagine, by saying: "Well, it's still a very good deal for the students in post-secondary education." It is a good deal. I have no doubt that it is a good deal for those people who are able to go to university. But we know that enrolment is biased in favor of the upper-middle class to the affluent. The aim of our party is to increase the participation rate on a meritocracy basis — in other words, those people who are meritorious in terms of their adaptability and their intellectual equipment, and also, a favourite of the minister's, their motivation. I'm not sure, where you have ever-increasing fees, that you are not going to continue the negative skewing of a rural population — and I used the term advisedly. I'm speaking in the statistical sense; there is also a more physical sense. Nevertheless, that's what's happening.

Fewer and fewer of those people coming from lower-income families will be able to attend university. It costs a rural student a minimum of $2,500 more than the urban student to go right now. In addition, because we don't have the access loan, which was $22 million two or three years ago. we have the worst student aid program in Canada if not North America. It's going to cost a student in British Columbia going all the way through university on loans at the maximum amount approximately $15,000 more to get a B.A. degree than it does a student in Ontario.

I was told that somebody's relative here, whom I met the other day, is taking her French major in Switzerland, and it's cheaper than going to UBC, if you don't count the transportation. What are we doing? Am I kidding?

AN HON. MEMBER: It was Gary Lauk.

MR. ROSE: No, I don't think it was Gary Lauk.

But anyway, that is the thing. So what is happening? Are we really chasing people out of the universities? Are our universities too big? The minister seems to think they are. I don't think they are in terms of the needs for them. The United States has probably got the biggest university system in the world, and they have an economy that reflects that system. They're pumping all kinds of money into universities, because they think that education is good for the economy. Pure and simply, on the economic basis — never

[ Page 6080 ]

mind the social, cultural or any other grounds — the educated person is good for the economy.

A brother of a friend of mine wrote this staff study for the Economic Council of Canada in June 1966. His name is Gordon Bertram, and the title of his study was "The Contribution of Education to Economic Growth." He makes these assertions: he compares the Canadian economy with the American economy, and he compares the educational attainment of the average American to the educational attainment of the average Canadian. Also he compares the income attainment of the average American to the real income of the average Canadian.

[4:45]

He has this to say: "Part of the explanation of the neglect to analyze education and human capital as a factor in economic growth may lie in an unwillingness to regard education as an investment in human beings." It goes on further to say: "What is less well-known is that per capita income in Canada has remained persistently about one-quarter below that of the United States since the turn of the century." Then he goes on further after developing that one to say this: "To the extent that decision-makers at various levels of public authority fail to recognize the existence of certain external benefits associated with education, there could be a misallocation of resources in the economy, for social benefits (including external benefits) may exceed the direct benefits which decision-makers compare with education costs."

Education costs too much. What are the benefits? You can't quantify the benefits. He's arguing on the grounds that you can quantify these benefits of education. The Canadian male labour force is two years in schooling below that of the U.S. male labour force, at least for the group from 25 to 64, "which constitutes the bulk of the existing labour force. Accumulating evidence and analysis point more and more to education as a pervasive and basic element contributing to the real earnings potential of people, and therefore also of a whole economy or society."

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

I'm not going to quote this very much more, but I'll get to the basic conclusion that he reaches. The point that he's making is a strong relationship between education and the economy. He points out that ours has been consistently low, and therefore that is one of the reasons that we have fallen behind in terms of our economy, as measured in real dollars.

The argument has often been made that education is a cost rather than an investment. So the matter of access is a very important thing as far as we're concerned. I would like to ask the minister a few things here, and they have to do with an open letter that I received from a conversation that he had recently with Ehor Boyanowsky, Phd., of the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia. I'd like to ask you whether or not the minister has fought for the increase in the EPF, reputed to be 7.5 percent this year. Has he fought to have these funds passed on to the universities rather than put into general revenue?

I know that the minister is aware that the general formula in the past, at least pre-1977.... Of the education portion of EPF, the universities received about 59.5 percent; colleges, 24.5 percent; and 16 percent went to the high schools. So that's one question that I would like answered.

The next question stems from the letter from Dr. Boyanowsky. I would like to know whether he agrees with the tradition of 50 percent of the funds for universities coming from provincial treasuries and 50 percent from federal funds, and whether or not the federal funds really amount to virtually the whole cost of universities, less the amount the students pay in fees.

HON. MR. McGEER: Mr. Chairman, first of all I want to make a general comment for the benefit of my friend opposite. We have put in a very broad and comprehensive educational system. It's the most comprehensive in terms of richness of opportunity and diversity of subject matter that is available in Canada.

The Open Learning Institute is a recent addition, and we haven't got our first graduate yet. They're all moving through the system, taking individual courses or two and three at a time. We've gone to great trouble to make it possible for people to take part-time degrees, to re-enter the system. We've placed emphasis where possible on technologies with certificates rather than BAs. The more you do of this, the more you take people out of the simple traditional mode of going for the four-year arts degree. If you go and look at something like how many BAs per population, you lose sight of the very thing that we've tried to build here: to give that diversity so that people may be taking terminal courses in Castlegar or Prince Rupert or at BCIT or PVI. No, they're not part of the type of statistics that you would see from eastern Canada, where these things don't exist. But don't be fooled into thinking we don't have people here in British Columbia taking advantage of the system that we've put in place. It's there, and as far as we're able to track people, the participation rate is extraordinarily high.

I want to talk a bit about the established programs financing. I'm certainly not going to talk about the letter that you received from Boyanowsky but which I didn't receive. But I'll tell you this: there won't be interviews in my office again without witnesses. I don't take that kindly.

MR. ROSE: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order, I read this as an open letter. I presumed it was published in the paper. It was an open letter to Dr. McGeer. I hope that I so designated that letter.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, that is not a point of order, because during committee stage of a bill members are allowed to further explain any of the comments they might have made in a previous speech. That will be afforded to the member during the course of debate.

HON. MR. McGEER: I can't say anything about the author of that letter beyond suggesting that you judge for yourself when someone sends an open letter to me, to you and everybody else in British Columbia but doesn't have the courage to send it to the person he allegedly had that discussion with.

Mr. Chairman, about the established programs financing. One of the first things I did as Minister of Education was to go back and renegotiate British Columbia's transfer payments, because when the federal government brought in its program of paying 50 percent of the cost in 1967 — and the member may have been in the federal Parliament at that time....

MR. ROSE: Yes, I saw you down there one day.

[ Page 6081 ]

HON. MR. McGEER: Well, let me tell you the story, and you would know because you were there. The federal government said they would pay 50 percent of the cost of postsecondary education. Once the bills started coming in, what they did was put a cap on the funds. They would pay 50 percent of the costs last year, except if they went up by more than whatever the cap was, and I think it was about a 10 percent addition.

The feds didn't put any more money in; they just took what was there and they spread it across the country. What they began to do — and this was when we went there in 1975, Mr. Member — was distribute the funds that had been capped across Canada according to how they had been historically adjusted. British Columbia came late with its community colleges, and we discovered — can I use this term, a parliamentary term — that British Columbia was being screwed.

That happened because they were not paying anywhere near 50 percent of the costs in our province; they were tunnelling the money to Quebec and Ontario, because they were paying 50 percent of the costs in the earlier days, and when they put the cap on, they just continued to funnel the money to Quebec and to Ontario. That was a jury-rigged system. Two people helped out to bring some fairness to British Columbia. One was John Roberts, who was then Secretary of State, and the other was Ron Basford, who was the senior minister from British Columbia. They essentially told the bureaucrats in Ottawa: "Enough is enough. You can't get away with this." We were prepared to take them to court, because they were not fulfilling the legislation that they themselves had passed. They renegotiated that whole arrangement for Canada, and it resulted in British Columbia getting an extra $100 million.

I only say this because British Columbia taxpayers pay into that pool, and one of the reasons they don't leave the income tax in the province of origin is that they like to take.... And I had discussions with the bureaucrats at that time. "British Columbia's fat and wealthy, so what we'll do is take the income tax revenue from British Columbia in addition to all of the equalization payments that came from the resource base, and we're going to distribute that around the rest of the country." I'll tell you, it's going to be a long time, even in recession, before British Columbians will see their share of the income tax and other federal taxes put back into the programs here.

We get into these big federal programs, and I can tell you that money just gets siphoned off to eastern Canada. But in any event, there has been enough trouble over what British Columbia had done in forcing a renegotiation of the whole deal, when they were trying to cap the increases each year. When that established programs financing act came forward — and I don't know whether you were in Parliament at that time — I can tell you that the last thing that Parliament and the bureaucrats wanted to do was to be in a position of funding 50 percent of the post-secondary education costs. They just said: "Here's cash, here's transfer. Get out of our hair, and spend it on health and education." I wish it would be possible to take more of these transfer payments and put them into the educational enterprise.

We've got another little problem, which you people were asking more money for just a few days ago, and that's the health system. The health system is still open-ended, or almost open-ended, and when people try to put some kind of a lid on that spending, as you do with the educational system, by the way.... You just give so much money to a school board or to a college or to a university; that's it. You can cap the educational system, but not the health system. So what happens is that our health costs are soaring and when this Legislature tries to take some move to bring a little bit of equity, who are the ones penalizing British Columbia for this? Why, it's the federal government again.

So on the one hand they're passing legislation — that's what Monique Begin did — forcing the expenditures to go up in health, and saying you should use the money for education. We happen to have some sense of fiscal responsibility in this Legislature. We think that by the time you get to a billion dollar deficit — or $900 million, as it is this year — there's a bit of a problem and we should maybe start thinking about that. It's not that way in Ottawa. Thirty-five billion, so what?

I'll bet you when Michael Wilson brings down his budget next week, it'll be even higher. "Don't worry about it. Somehow, tomorrow will take care of itself." Tomorrow won't take care of itself, and I'll tell you as surely as we're in this room today that the International Monetary Fund will be in Canada within three years if we keep racking up the kind of deficits that have been characterized by the last three or four years in Canada. It's just runaway irresponsibility. Yet that seems to be the political demand.

[5:00]

It's this failure to look down the road and anticipate the needs and requirements of tomorrow. That's one of the things, in my view, people in the Legislature should be: just a little bit on the futurologist side. Many of the things I was saying in education 20 years ago were based on the fact that people were not projecting the needs based on that bulge of students who were coming through. Now that bulge of students has passed right through the system. We're looking in the future at a smaller population that's coming along, but we're also looking nationally.

Interjection.

HON. MR. McGEER: But here, look. Would the member please...? Here it is: "B.C. Public School Enrolment Information." Just look at this. Mr. Chairman, could we have the Page take it across to my friend opposite? Just look at the numbers of people who are in the school system, and you'll get some instinct for what's coming along between now and the turn of the century. We don't have that bulge. It's the big....

MR. NICOLSON: Mr. Speaker, a point of order. This is a purloined document. This says: "Return to the Legislative Library. Do not circulate. For use in library only."

MR. CHAIRMAN: That's not a point of order, but it's a very interesting comment. Do you have a citation?

HON. MR. McGEER: That member has stolen material, Mr. Speaker.

MR. NICOLSON: If the member will remember the rules that we brought in regarding the library....

MR. CHAIRMAN: Just looking.

HON. MR. McGEER: In any event, the problem that we have in Canada today, and the thing that we have to address ourselves to, is not a looming population of people that we

[ Page 6082 ]

haven't provided for in our system. We've got the plant built, and we've got the professionals in place to look after them. What we've got looming on the horizon is an enormous runaway system of accumulating debt, something which should be terrifying every single Canadian. This is the fundamental problem that we face. Yet here in this Legislature, amongst our friends in the fourth estate, the fifth estate, can we get the national government, the people in our banks and the average voter focusing on this enormous, consuming, overwhelming problem that will dominate everything else in our legislative lives in the future, this staggering debt-load that we're building up? Can we get people to focus accurately on that? No we can't.

Here we are, just taking a small tiny proportion of it in British Columbia and saying: "Let's at least cope with this." But the demands persistently come: spend more, spend more, spend more, whether it's really required or not, without taking into account the long-term damage that goes with this enormous spending habit unsupported by an economy that can cope with it. That's the fundamental problem that we have.

I can say that so far we have no evidence from the federal government that they're going to address this consuming Canadian problem. If and when they do, we're going to have to cope in British Columbia with more modest transfer payments, and the provinces, as with the federal government, are going to have to adjust to the reality that the taxes and the economy can't support it and the borrowing can't continue at the current pace. Surely people somewhere can begin to see this as the overwhelming problem, and all of the spending, including education, has got to recognize that as a looming reality. And so, Mr. Chairman, we must realize it in our health system. But we've got this difficulty of an open-ended system, with every kind of check or cap being resisted, and at the same time an aging population, a population that consumes health resources at five times the rate of the younger people. So we're going to have to spend some more on them anyway, simply because of this change in demography. But even at that we're going to have to cap both the health and the education expenditures.

People have just got to realize that it can't be: "More for me, and somebody else will worry about the general good." The general good is the responsibility and worry of every single Canadian, whether they're a retired citizen, somebody in the school system, a professor, a doctor, a politician, or whether they're a journalist; all of these people have got to worry about this overriding Canadian problem.

MR. ROSE: I was wondering, Mr. Speaker, if the Minister of Universities has talked to his colleague, the Minister of Finance. He's very concerned about debt, because the provincial budget went up this year by 14 percent. The debt or the deficit of this year is $1 billion, so he's really preaching, I think, to the wrong people. He also might preach to other right-wingers, notably Ronald Reagan, who has inflicted upon his own country the highest debt in the world, and the highest deficit per year per capita. He's also arranged and manipulated, through the monetary system of the United States, the highest interest rates, so as to put most of the Third World into bankruptcy. And yes, there will be a problem with the International Monetary Fund, because the system that we have enjoyed for the past 25 years is on the verge of collapse. Or there's going to be anarchy and chaos when some of the Third World countries refuse to pay because they can't pay, and that's true.

I suggest that he would do well to talk to his own finance minister first and find out what rat holes he's pouring money down in terms of what might be an investment, whereas education could be a profitable investment for the country. There's all kind of evidence to show that. There's a limit to what we can do, but when the minister talks about diversity, I can read him a long list, a sickening list: animal science, plant science, architecture, nursing, sociology, archaeology. All of these courses are going to limit the diversity offered by our school system.

I would like to ask him one final question. He talked about the EPF and how the feds didn't want the 50-cent dollars any longer because it was open-ended. The provinces didn't want the accountability any longer because they wanted to divert it into roads and sewers. Would he support a dollar-for-dollar accountability for educational funds through EPF if the legislation were there and it was being contemplated to implement that kind of a policy?

HON. MR. McGEER: Mr. Chairman, as I understand what the member said, yes, I would. But I think the sincerity of the federal parliament needs to be tested on this, because when they were putting up half they backed out of it awfully quickly. I'm talking about when they had specific legislation; that they paid half of post-secondary education costs. That went from 1967 to 1977, and that was the program the feds wanted to back out of.

You know, Mr. Member, that what is spent on health and education in this province — you've got to add in health — is far more than the EPF transfers. I think the whole thing is going to have to be thought through again. If the federal government wants to stay in the health and education field, I think they're going to have to arrive at a new deal. But if I seem a little skeptical along the way, it's because I was there, Charlie, when the feds backed off. As our Minister of Education I was there negotiating with them; I know what they were doing. If they want to come on now with a perfectly straightforward upfront deal on post-secondary education, you'll find me one of the strong supporters of it. But it wasn't because of the provinces that they ran away back in 1977. It was because of their own federal parliament.

I want to say just a word about the global situation. You've drawn attention to Reagan and how the deficit in the United States is going to bankrupt the Third World, and all of the problems of the American debt — we're not sure what it's going to be, but probably of the order of $180 billion. Canada has a tenth of the U.S. population. And remember that most of the states are not permitted to run deficits, so that most of the overall government debt in the United States is federal debt. Canada — all governments in — is running over $50 billion.

Interjection.

HON. MR. MCGEER: No, this is actual dead-weight debt. On a per capita basis, dead-weight debt, governments in Canada are running over three times the U.S. It isn't just that it happened one year, two years at six times; three years, nine times; four years, twelve times. That's the momentum that is so terrifying in Canada. You might be able to stand triple a debt one year, but when you accept that as a norm for

[ Page 6083 ]

running governments, federal and provincial, and you accumulate that year after year after year, it's the total that is terrifying. It isn't that the federal people haven't been apprised of this. They've been warned that if it carries on for another four years the interest on the debt itself will be greater than $35 billion a year.

So you build the momentum in, even if you can balance income and outgo. That's what we're looking at, and yet I tell you that people in Canada have got their heads in the sand. They're not looking to the future and recognizing this consuming, overriding problem, which has to impinge upon the spending levels in every legislature across our nation, because it's in health, education and welfare that nearly 80 percent of our spending goes. The money that comes from transfers is not going into highways. It used to be that we had heavy subsidies for highways, but now the taxes on gasoline and motor vehicle taxes of various kinds more than cover the expenditures on the highways. It's now going from automobiles, for heaven's sake, into a human resource field. That's the change that's taken place.

So if we're going to try to bring overall spending in Canada under control, we've got to pay attention to the services that, as our Prime Minister said, have become a sacred trust, but we've got to take a look, very carefully, at the overall levels of spending because of this mounting deficit problem. It's a terrifying thing, and I just wish Canadians would pull their heads out of the sand.

MR. LEA: I concur that it's a problem, but I don't hear any solutions coming from the other side. I don't hear them saying: "Here's what we have to do." It has to be a problem for a nation when you see the kind of debts that we're running up.

I should also mention, though, that I don't see the national debt as as big a problem as provincial debts, because they're two different, distinct kinds of debts. At the national level, at least the majority of that national debt is owed to Canadians, but at the provincial level most of the debt we have is owed to the financial institutions. It's like being in business: if that business owes money, and it owes it to the owner and to the owner's family, that's not nearly the problem it is when you're in business and you owe the money to the bank — you owe it externally. It's not that one is great and one is poor; they're both poor. You'd like to be debt-free. But there is a difference between the national debt and the provincial debt, and the provincial debt is the much more dangerous debt as we go down the road.

What have we been spending this money on? We've been spending the money on programs that we say, as Canadians, we want, whether we can afford them or not. But when the minister talks about going into debt for education or debt to go into something else, again you have to make the differential.

[5:15]

First of all, when we're considering going into debt as a people, surely we must be looking at those areas where we're going to spend money and asking: down the road what sort of return can we get on the investment? It seems it's good economics to do that. So when we look at education and we look at the changing economy and we know the kind of contribution that education can make to the restructuring of the economy that we're going to have to go through, then education may be a very good place to spend money. I'm not saying we should throw money at it; I'm not saying we should keep the same old education system we've had. There's one of the biggest problems.

[Mr. Ree in the chair.]

All of the institutions that we have in society today come out of social contracts, either formal or informal. All of those social contracts were designed and put into place in the institutions to deal with an economy and a society that's very quickly disappearing. So naturally we have to examine the social contracts. Naturally we have to examine the institutions that come out of those social contracts to see whether those institutions are able to serve the society we live in today and whether they're the kind of institutions that can take us into the future as best we can judge.

In terms of education, it seems to me that the appropriate education is something that we should be more than willing to invest the appropriate amount of money in.

AN HON. MEMBER: Appropriate education.

MR. LEA: Appropriate education and appropriate funding. We can't afford to do anything else. But the first thing we should start to examine is: is the education system that we have adequate to the task? If it isn't, how can we change it to make it adequate for the task?

When I hear about universities, or education period, it seems to me that education has to serve two purposes. Education has to make sure that we have well-rounded citizens coming out of the education system. They have to take part in the democratic system on the one hand, in terms of electing people like us and taking part in the civic affairs of the society they live in, and they have to be educated. I've never heard of a democratic theorist talking about democracy being able to work when you have an uninformed mass. The job of education is to make sure that we have an informed society so that they can take part in the decision-making process, not only in the civic affairs end but in the economic end.

What I fear is happening in the universities is that we are forgetting their basic purpose. They should not just be trade schools. They should be places where we go to learn about the human condition. They should be places where we go to learn to think. They should be places where we go to just mix with the people who are part of that process.

But what do we do? We say to our citizens: we're going to make two levels or classes of citizens. We say to one person, "How do you plan to make your living in this old world," and the student says: "Well, I was planning on being a typist." We say: " Oh, if you're just going to be a typist, then there's no need for you to go to university. There's no need for you to understand history. There's no need for you to understand where we are culturally in the scheme of things. There's no need for you to take the humanities. It's good enough that you can go to a trade school. You don't have to be a well-rounded citizen who's able to participate in society fully. You're just going to be a typist."

The next person comes along. "How do you plan to make your living?" He says: "Oh, I'm going to be an architect." 'An architect! In that case you're going to be a professional. You should be a well-rounded citizen. You should be able and expect to go to university, so that you'll be a well-rounded citizen. You're not just going to be a typist; you're going to be an architect — a professional."

[ Page 6084 ]

I believe that we could train architects at BCIT, and that the typist should be encouraged to go to university, if we're going to treat the universities as they should be treated. They should be the cornerstone of a civilization. Every citizen should be encouraged to have a university education. That doesn't necessarily mean their vocation. We should have both. Both are important. As I see us going into the future, we are by necessity going to have to have a more decentralized economy, with smaller economic units that are more efficient, more flexible, and more ready to handle the change that is in place and that we know is going to grow rapidly. We also have to have a decentralized decision-making process on the civic side, in government, and more than ever before we're going to have to turn people out of the education system who are better able to deal with that kind of decentralized system. They are going to be expected to, and they are going to have to, take more part in decision-making on both the economic and the civic side.

Education has to be the one area of concern that we all apply ourselves to. It has to turn out citizens who are well-rounded, informed citizens, people who travel in a milieu in which they are exposed to all of the areas that make you a good citizen — not just trades training, not just vocational training, but that side of training that gives you the roundness that you need: the humanities. I see us going the other way. I don't see us applying ourselves to the education system that way. I see financial formulas in place that are turning universities into trade schools as opposed to well-rounded places of learning. That must give us all a little bit of concern.

Are we going to apply ourselves to changing the institution of education so that it can apply itself to the problems we face today and future problems that we imagine or guesstimate? Education has to be where it's at if we're going to have an economic future. Education has to be where it's at if we're going to have a decentralized democratic future. You can't solve it all by throwing money at it, but we have to spend the appropriate amount for an appropriate system. I don't see us grappling with that problem. I don't see us grappling with it in any of the other institutions either — in political institutions or any of the other institutions that were designed to deal with an economy that is quickly disappearing, as we move from the mass economy and go through the revolution we are in and into the information economy, and all of the ramifications of that revolution that we're going through. We aren't dealing with it.

So what are governments doing, including this one? They're borrowing money to prop up the old institutions and the old way of doing things, hoping that some sort of miracle is going to take place, that economic growth is going to come from somewhere. When you take a look at government debt, and take a look at the national debt, you see about a third of every dollar of revenue going into the national coffers — going either to pay the interest or at least to try to reduce the debt. We're concerned about that. But the ratio in the corporate world in this country is almost exactly the same. They are debt-laden. They've been buying each other out — not producing new jobs, but buying each other out; more consolidation. When you take a look at the citizens of this country and you aggregate their debt, you find that their ratio of debt to earnings is higher than the corporate world's and higher than government's.

We've all been living in the same bubble. When the bubble breaks, we start looking around to see who we can blame: anybody who's handy. The national government; if you live in this province, it's the provincial government; it's the trade unionists; it's the professionals. All we want to do is find a scapegoat, somebody to blame. But how many people in this chamber weren't wringing their hands when their houses were going up with unearned earnings because of inflation, saying: "Gosh, we charged it up at $50,000; it's now worth $200,000. Let's not say anything about that. Let's not deal with it as if we're part of the problem."

Each and every one of us has been part of the problem, because we've all been living in the same bubble. The only way we're going to deal with the problem is if we admit to ourselves, each and every one of us, that we have contributed to the problem. We got into this trouble together, and the only way we're going to get out of it is by working together and discussing these problems openly, not pretending that they're not there.

It would be great to hear from the other side of the House about the very real problems we have in the forest industry in this province. Don't put your head in the sand and say: "Elect us and they'll go away." They're there. The only way we can deal with them is to talk about them openly. That's all we can do.

Another thing, you know, is that there's nothing wrong with debate. There's nothing wrong with talk. We've gotten to the place in society where we honestly believe that it's a waste of time to discuss things with each other. You must always take action; discussion is a waste of time. Communicating with one another is a waste of time, and that spreads. People start to believe that this chamber isn't worth very much, because all we do is talk. If we would talk about the very real problems we have and look for some real solutions, then this talk would all be worthwhile.

But I can't understand, Mr. Chairman, how the minister can stand up and talk about the diverse education that he hopes we'll have, when in fact he's part of a government that has applied a financial formula to it that will not bring around diversity. It will bring around a university system that will turn out educated barbarians. You'll turn out engineers who can count and measure things, but are they going to be well-rounded citizens? Are they going to have some training other than just learning how to be an engineer? It gets progressively worse as you start taking a look at trade training, and the lack of opportunity they have for higher learning.

One of the biggest serious problems I think there is in education is that the education system has tried over the past few years to turn out equality. That's a mistake. What we should be doing is giving people in the education system a chance for equal opportunity. If you apply equal opportunity, you will be, by its very nature, turning out diversity. If you turn out diversity, you will have a rich society. When you start limiting by financial formulas the number of people who can go to university, you are ruling out equal opportunity. If you rule out equal opportunity, you rule out diversity. If you rule out diversity, then you're going to have a very bland, non-rich society.

So the financial formulas of government are increasing the problem. They're not a solution. I think the minister knows that, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to have us talk in this House about education and forget which side we're on, because we have a real problem. We have to take a look at that institution as well as others, and try to be creative and innovative. That's what our job is.

[5:30]

[ Page 6085 ]

HON. MR. McGEER: I'll respond very quickly, and no doubt this subject will come up later. Of course I agree with the member that you don't educate for an economy; you educate for enrichment of society. That implies a very large diversity of programs, as the member recommends. Of course, along the way you've got to do a little bit of educating for the economy, because that's the seed grain of the future. I suppose if we were to identify one conspicuous weakness in the post-secondary system of Canada in the past generation, it's been precisely that: engineering, science and technology in our university system have been in the shadows for this period of time. We find ourselves now ill-equipped as a country relative to our major competing industrial partners. Canada has roughly 10 percent per capita of the scientists and engineers that Japan has, and we wonder why we can't match them in manufactured products for the world, and why it is that with all of the resources in Canada, and all of the natural advantages, we haven't got the momentum in our economy.

I would submit that while we educate for enrichment, if we aren't also laying the basis for economic expansion, then we don't have the funds. One of our problems today is that because we didn't do that in the last generation, we're stuck without the economic resources now to support the very things that you demand. Also, Mr. Chairman, our institutions themselves should be the ones to perceive first that the problem exists, and not last. I'm not sure in our institutions that we have the futurologists for our country. I know that when I was first a student in the university system, UBC in its finest day expanded to look after all of the graduates who came back. Then when that same policy of adding, adding, adding was extended past that period and into the sixties, there were no other educational institutions, because UBC had it in its head that it would be all things to all people — one post-secondary educational institution. When the plan for diversification came, UBC was against it. That had to be forced, despite the resistance of the university system.

When we look for further enrichment.... I ran into it again with the Open Learning Institute. Who is resisting the change? The ones who are protecting their turf. So circumstances must be altered, and the momentum that the universities have experienced as a result of the baby boom.... They have to readjust their thinking. That's part of the academic planning that we're going through now, and I hope it will give us better vision for the future.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

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

COWICHAN SCHOOL TRUSTEES

HON. MR. HEINRICH: I rise to make a ministerial statement. At 4:30 this afternoon the Cowichan School Board defeated a bylaw adopting the budget and the mill rate. Today is the last day on which the school district would have an opportunity to submit a compliance budget. The school district had felt that they had passed a validating bylaw. This was referred to the British Columbia Supreme Court. The decision was rendered by the court that the bylaw in fact had not been carried. The court instructed the school board — its trustees — to make a decision on or before 5 o'clock today. The decision which the school board made was six to three, as I have said earlier, rejecting the bylaw and the mill rate.

As a result of this, I have no other alternative than to appoint an official trustee for the Cowichan School District, School District 65. The official trustee is Mr. Cornellious Holob, who is a former superintendent of the Richmond School District. The official trustee is now traveling to Cowichan. Letters to each of the trustees, as well as to the superintendent and to the secretary-treasurer, are also being couriered.

I might point out at this time that there is absolutely no other alternative, the reason being that under the Municipal Act a municipality must have delivered to it the mill rate bylaw and the amount of money under the validating bylaw this evening so that the appropriate municipal bylaw can be prepared. The tax notice issued by the municipality covers the moneys required for the school district as well as the municipality. On Monday, May 14, the first three readings are given to the bylaw, and the following day is the date on which the fourth and final reading is given.

I am advised that we can expect full cooperation from both the superintendent and the secretary-treasurer. It is with reluctance, Mr. Speaker, that the government had to appoint an official trustee, but under the circumstances there was absolutely no alternative.

MR. ROSE: Mr. Speaker. this is really another sad day in a whole series of sad days facing education in this province. There were two boards who finally received the ultimate penalty. One wonders, of course, why it was necessary to issue the ultimate penalty to one board last Monday, while two or three other boards were given a week's grace to get their house in order. During that time they've been cajoled or browbeaten or bribed in order to get the reaction that the minister wanted.

It's just another example of the attack by this government on various individuals and institutions in this province. It's gone on for a long time. The ministry has gone over the head of local people in the most blatant fashion. Thirty-four boards issued maintenance or needs budgets. Finally we got them down to two, which were finally fired, They withstood, if you like, all the threats and cajolery and browbeating, because the), felt that they had an obligation to the citizens who elected them, under the oath they took and the declaration which asked them, under section 155 of the School Act, to provide sufficient accommodation and tuition. If in all conscience he couldn't do that, a trustee had no option, in terms of his integrity, but to say that the first loyalty he faced was to the people, his local constituents. There's no question that the minister has the power to do this — he gave himself the power — but under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms there is an equity position and a conscience provision, and I don't think any government that respects democracy would force duly elected individuals to vote against their own conscience.

It's unconscionable, unfair and inequitable, firstly, to tell people how to vote on an issue when he has the power to overrule them anyway — to force them into that position, to force on individual board members all the anguish that they've undergone for the last few weeks; and secondly, to treat boards inequitably — to fire one board a week ago, to cajole the other couple for a week more and try to buy them off, to pressure them with various tactics, and when they finally resist, to put them under trusteeship. I think it's a very sad day, and I'm glad I'm not in the minister's shoes. Attack is the name of the game: divert people away from the appalling state of the economy. That is the strategy.

[ Page 6086 ]

Let me conclude, Mr. Speaker, by saying that I think there is a determined effort to rid this province of all elected opposition. We once had the resource boards; they're gone. Then we had the hospital boards; they're now all appointed — friends of the government. Not a peep out of those people. Then the college boards, some of them once elected directly. The college horror stories are as great as the school board horror stories in terms of classes and cutbacks. Not a peep out of those puppets that have been appointed to do what they're required to do. The only people left are the municipalities and the school boards. They're the only opposition left besides the legal opposition elected locally. I regret very much that the minister has had to take this course of action.

AN HON. MEMBER: He didn't have to. He took it.

MR. ROSE: He took it for whatever reasons, but he took it, and I think he took it under orders. I just can't believe this minister.... He's done it because people are not regarded highly, nor are their views, by this government. They want to rid the province of opposition. I'm sorry, Mr. Speaker, that this is the case. I congratulate all the boards in the province that have grappled with this problem, and I regret that he has chosen to use this course of action on duly elected, sincere people in order to achieve his aim at any cost.

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

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF UNIVERSITIES,
SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS
(continued)

On vote 75: minister's office, $127,740.

MR. HANSON: Well, the episode that we just witnessed exemplifies very much the kind of overall context within which education matters are dealt with in this province. The ministerial estimates before us today.... We've heard the minister in charge of universities and science throw out and distort all sorts of numbers to justify the overall approach of this government to higher education. We know what they're doing in the public schools, K to 12, and what is before us now is the post-secondary section.

What we have is a minister who has basically an elitist concept of education, and what we have are numbers provided by other jurisdictions — Statistics Canada, other reports and so on — which indicate that access to postsecondary education in British Columbia is restricted in this province. In fact, the records show that we are at the bottom. We are a have-not province in education.

[5:45]

There was a time.... As a child in British Columbia, I was constantly being told how fortunate I was to live in a have province of Canada. Along with Ontario and Quebec, British Columbia generally ranked third in so many economic indicators and so many other quality-of-life standards. But when we look at the numbers now, after ten years of Social Credit, in post-secondary education we are at the bottom. We're in the cellar, Mr. Chairman; we're ranking number ten. The minister is prone to distort figures and to use his own way of analyzing — taking, for example, those students who are in grade 12 and using that as a base for determining the percentage who pursue higher education. That is not the way it is done all across Canada. That is not the way it is done by Statistics Canada. Their reports and their statistics indicate that we are in the cellar.

I heard the minister a short while ago, in praise of the Open Learning Institute, talking about how many people are participating and so on, and sort of in a way denigrating degrees — you know, BAs, MAs and so on. And yet he doesn't really want to flaunt the figures that show that, by percentage of those between 20 and 29 years of age, in the production of college diplomas we rank sixth overall, and in output of bachelor degrees we are tenth. Do you know that we are tenth even including the degrees that are granted under the Open Learning Institute? Lumping the Open Learning Institute in with all of the universities, we are tenth. That is provided in Statistics Canada's " Education in Canada, " catalogue No. 81-229. Yet, Mr. Speaker, that minister likes to stand up and wax eloquent and be the expert on debt or on Star Wars technology or on cancer research or on a catalogue of other subjects. He feels he's an expert on almost every matter.

But what we have, Mr. Chairman, is an elitist approach of restricting access and of not providing appropriate support. He's a centralizer. He knows best. He and his government and he and the Premier know best what courses shall be provided, whether there shall be music or fine arts, whether there shall be political science or business administration. This is a Social Credit matter, not something to be determined by a college board or a universities council or any other body that would be determining on other criteria what the needs and what the futurological projections are, as that minister is wont to do — to talk about futurology and so on.

But the numbers are there. And the numbers show very clearly what is happening to us in British Columbia. We have become a have-not province in education, and our priorities are not.... When he talks about debt he doesn't talk about the $100,000 that he threw down a hole in the water in his study of building the largest exhaust-pipe in history between Vancouver Island and the mainland. He spent $100,000 of the taxpayers' money when nobody wanted it. We had a good ferry system; we had a ferry system that needed upgrading; but he took $100,000 and spent it on consultant reports to take the consciousness of the public away from the real nitty-gritty have-not matters of education and health care in this province.

It's a downhill spiral we're on here. That's a sad, sad thing, because it's been mentioned many times in this House that the future does not look rosy for children of working people, children of the unemployed, children of the middle class. Our universities are fast becoming institutions for the haves in our society. It's a vicious circle, Mr. Chairman, because no student aid and high fees discourage attendance; low enrolments will justify more budget cuts and still higher fees. It's a continuing spiral.

The Socreds pay lip-service to wanting economic spinoffs from the best intelligence, but they certainly don't want to pay for them. The minister is also apt to make all sorts of gratuitous comments like: "Well, we can buy tradespeople; we can buy academics. We can bring them in from surpluses in other areas." Earlier today he used the analogy of Texas. He talked about the university system in Texas, and how there were cutbacks in Texas and cutbacks in Washington state. Texas experienced the largest expansion in the university system of anywhere in the United States over the last five

[ Page 6087 ]

years. Sure they're curtailing it now. But there's no comparison between the extensive university network, both public and private, in the state of Texas and that of British Columbia.

He mentioned Washington state curtailing expenditure in education. We have no comparison with the extensive university network of our friends to the south in Washington state. If we were to be so lucky as to curtail on their basis the degree of enrolment, the degree of participation, the breadth and diversity of course programs and so on.... Yet there are all the charts and so on that have been produced that indicate how tough it is to go to university, particularly if you're outside of the urban or metropolitan areas in British Columbia.

We know that the participation rate, as low as it is in comparison with the rest of Canada, drops off precipitously when we look at the non-metropolitan areas. What is the solution for that? It has to be more than just television sets. It has to be the kinds of things that the member for Nelson-Creston (Mr. Nicolson), our debate leader, has said.

If we want a top-quality education system, we have to be willing to put money into it, and we have to be willing to allow for one-on-one contact between student and teacher, student and academic. We can't simply rely on the television set to answer all of our education needs, because we will not be able to compete with other jurisdictions at all.

Let me give you just a few more numbers of undergraduates. The minister may find this disconcerting, because he prefers to use his own number-crunching. But for undergraduates in the 18-to-21 age group, British Columbia ranks tenth — at the bottom — in terms of participation rate. In total university participation, which includes post-graduate from 18 to 24, where are we? We're tenth, at the bottom. We're behind Newfoundland, We're behind Newfoundland in undergraduates aged 18 to 21 participating, in terms of the way it is calculated in every other province of Canada. They look at the people who are residing here in British Columbia between the ages of 18 and 2 1.

What are they doing? How many of them are attending university? We are at the bottom. Shame on you! You talk about Texas, you talk about your pension for us, and having our universities linked into Star Wars — and we're opposed to that on this side of the House, by the way. We are not for academic and scientific excellence being built on the military-industrial complex of the United States. That may come as a surprise to you, but we're against it.

In terms of the total post-secondary 18-to-24 age group, we come just a shade ahead of Newfoundland, in the ninth position. When we look at this Stats Canada report and look at community colleges in terms of the regional attendance in post-secondary in the 18-to-21 age group, on the average, for males — it's slightly different for females — the total is 15.4 percent who attend college in Canada. What is it in British Columbia? It's 10.2 percent; we're 5 percent below the the national average.

We have talked before about underfunding: how much other provinces are willing to pay into post-secondary education. In terms of our gross provincial product, we're well below the national average. Other provinces are willing to pay, on the average, 5 percent; we pay 3.5 percent. We have the poorest assistance package, the worst student assistance package, in all of Canada. How about that? Here we happen to have very regional and diverse communities and towns, yet we don't provide assistance for those non-metropolitan students to make their way and be supported in universities.

What skills will young people growing up today, living under Social Credit, have for the twenty-first century, when we're going in this direction? It's a downhill slide. As our universities shrink, as we lose our top talent, as we become more and more substandard, it's a downhill spiral.

Interjection.

MR. HANSON: That's quite true. The Socred view is: "We need just a few highly trained, specialized technocrats, so our education system could cater only to those people; and if B.C. needs more, then those skills can be imported from other jurisdictions. We'll high grade at the expense of our sister provinces, and not give our own children the opportunity to realize their own potential, to achieve academic excellence and to make a contribution — to plough those abilities and skills back into our own economy."

Here we have such a poor.... When we look at our economy.... That minister always wants to lurch off and talk about other domains such as debt and so on. He doesn't look at our economy in terms of the technological expertise that we require to get away from being hewers of wood and drawers of water, or to build our own equipment, so that in the forest industry we wouldn't be relying entirely on equipment manufacture coming from outside of our borders. Why can't we have our own forest technology right here in British Columbia, providing our own mills and so on? Why can't we have our own food technology? Why can't we have our own advanced food technology to take our protein resources from the sea and our other farm products, and convert them to...?

Interjections.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. All members will have their opportunity to stand in debate. Two minutes, Mr. Member.

MR. HANSON: Mr. Chairman, that minister, who has responsibility for science and technology, is so derelict in his duties, is so derelict and deficient in his mandate, that we are constantly losing ground in our forest technology, in our pulp processes and in our sawmill technology. We could be doing so many things in equipment manufacture and in every other aspect of our strength in resource processing; yet that minister just wants to talk about how we'd benefit from Star Wars, and how great some other achievement is in some other jurisdiction. Ploughing money into things that don't make any sense, like that long exhaust-pipe study that he did for Vancouver Island to the mainland.... This minister is so derelict. He could be making a contribution. The list is extensive.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

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

[6:00]

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, earlier today the hon. member for Cowichan-Malahat (Mrs. Wallace) rose on a matter of privilege relating to remarks attributed to the hon. Minister of Transportation and Highways (Hon. A. Fraser) during question period on Friday, May 10, 1985. The hon.

[ Page 6088 ]

member for Cowichan-Malahat at the same time tendered order-in-council No. 801, dated May 1, 1985, relating to British Columbia Ferry Corporation service between Brentwood Bay and Mill Bay, and Swartz Bay and Garnett Creek. As I understand it, the essence of the member's complaint is that the Minister of Transportation and Highways misled the House in his answers to questions posed by the member on Friday, May 10, 1985.

Parliamentary privilege is described on page 70 of Sir Erskine May's twentieth edition as follows: "Parliamentary privilege is the sum of the peculiar rights enjoyed by each House collectively as a constituent part of the High Court of Parliament, and by members of each House individually, without which they could not discharge their functions, and which exceed those possessed by other bodies or individuals."

Hon. members, the Chair is giving a ruling, and if I don't have silence I'll excuse those members from the House forthwith.

Another definition of privilege is contained in May's eighteenth edition at page 132 under the heading: "Acts or Conduct Constituting Breach of Privilege or Contempt." This eminent authority states as follows: "It may be stated generally that any act or omission which obstructs or impedes either House of Parliament in the performance of its functions, or which obstructs or impedes any member officer of such House in the discharge of his duty, or which has a tendency, directly or indirectly, to produce such results, may be treated as a contempt even though there is no precedent of the offence."

The question the Chair must ask itself in the course of determining whether a prima facie case of breach of privilege exists here is whether or not anything emerges from the answers given by the minister in question period which would impede the House or any member thereof in the performance of their functions. The order-in-council tendered by the hon. member refers to approval to be given to the British Columbia Ferry Corporation to discontinue service between Brentwood Bay and Mill Bay, and implement service between Swartz Bay and Garnett Creek. The minister's words, as quoted in Hansard extract, indicate that the government has "made no final decision on the exact location"; and further, that the new location would be from the Swartz Bay terminal to "approximately the area called Garnett Creek."

In summary, both documents refer to Garnett Creek, and the minister's answer during question period would indicate that the exact location in the Garnett Creek area has not as yet been determined. The minister goes on to say, in answer to the question, that all the options are being considered; and further, that the studies that are presently being made will certainly be made public.

It is difficult to conclude that the two documents, when read together, would deceive any hon. member of the House so as to obstruct them or impede them in the discharge of their duties. In my opinion, a prima facie breach of privilege has not been made out by the hon. member.

I thank the hon. member for her courtesy in giving the Chair advance notice of her matter of privilege.

Hon. Mr. Schroeder moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 6:03 p.m.