[ Page 685 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Oral Questions

Need for public trustee at Royal Inland Hospital. Mrs. Boone –– 685

Planting of seedlings. Mr. Williams –– 686

Political solicitation of government employees. Mr. G. Hanson –– 686

Funding for seedlings. Mr. Williams –– 686

Golf courses in Columbia Valley. Ms. Edwards –– 686

Downsizing of Woodlands and Glendale. Mr. Cashore –– 687

Funding contracts for societies for mentally handicapped. Mr. Cashore –– 687

Industrial Relations Reform Act, 1987 (Bill 19). Second reading

Mr. Serwa –– 687

Ms. Edwards –– 688

Hon. S. Hagen –– 691

Mr. D'Arcy –– 692

Mr. De Jong –– 696

Mr. Barnes –– 696

Mr. Mercier –– 700

Mr. Blencoe –– 700

Mr. Bruce –– 703

Mr. Williams –– 705

Mr. R. Fraser –– 708

Appendix –– 711

The House met at 2:08 p.m.

Prayers.

HON. MR. STRACHAN: Visiting with us today from Prince George are Wally and Myrna Moffatt, and Mrs. Moffatt's sister, Mrs. Hall, from the beautiful province of Saskatchewan. Would the House please give them a warm Victoria welcome.

MR. MERCIER: With pleasure I introduce in the members' gallery my wife Mary and daughters Suzanne and Jacqueline. I ask the House to make them welcome.

MR. RABBITT: Mr. Speaker, I have in your gallery today two guests, former neighbours and old-time friends. I would like the House to join me in making welcome Bob and Gloria Wood.

MR. BRUCE: Today in the gallery I have 60 students from the Chemainus high school. I have their names No, I don't really. I'd like the House to welcome the students who are down here today to view the proceedings, and their teachers, Mr. Ray Faught and Mr. Tom Lewis.

MR. MOWAT: Mr. Speaker, it's a pleasure for me to introduce a man who has been very active in the forest industry for many years. He started out as a logger and worked his way up to be a vice-president, but he spent a great deal of time with the junior forest wardens. It's Mr. Bert Gayle, vice-president of wood products, B.C. operations, for Canfor Corp. Would the House please make him welcome.

HON. MR. VEITCH: It gives me great pleasure today to ask that the House bring special greetings to our Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II, on her sixty-first birthday.

MS. EDWARDS: Would the House join me in recognizing the achievement of the Cranbrook Colts, who've just won the Cyclone Taylor trophy for the fourth time in a row, which sets a record, and who've won it about 13 out of the 15 times they've played for it.

Oral Questions

NEED FOR PUBLIC TRUSTEE
AT ROYAL INLAND HOSPITAL

MRS. BOONE: My question is to the Premier. Over one-half of the doctors at the Royal Inland Hospital have publicly stated that the single-issue anti-choice hospital board there is interfering with medicine and that this interference is detrimental to patient care. They have requested that a public trustee be appointed as philosophical and religious views are taking precedence over good health care. As the Minister of Health has to date refused to take any action to guarantee women their basic rights under the Canada Health Act, will the Premier now take the bull by the horns and appoint a public trustee?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I think the question is based on a wrong premise. I don't have all of the details, but I suppose I can only go by what I read in the paper, as the member no doubt did. The paper article indicated that out of 68 applications for abortions, 13 were disallowed and the rest approved. I would hardly call that a single issue.

MRS. BOONE: To the Premier again. The doctors have indicated that women's health care is at risk. These are the professional people in the field. I don't think that this is just a passing phase, and they are really concerned about it. Will the Premier do anything to appoint a public trustee under this condition to assure women that they have the basic health rights under the Canada Health Act?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: The question suggests that the doctors serving on the committee that determines whether an abortion is warranted aren't acting in a professional manner, and I can't respond to that sort of question.

MRS. BOONE: A question to the Minister of Health then. According to the hospital board president, the Ministry of Health has indicated that it will support the anti-choice board. Can the minister tell the House what indications his ministry is giving to the president of the hospital board regarding their refusal to provide the women of the Kamloops area with this health service?

HON. MR. DUECK: Mr. Speaker, thank you for the question. To the member, this minister has never indicated whom he supports. I accept the fact that that board was duly elected, the proper process was taken, and until such time as someone else controls that body, I would have no action to take whatsoever except if there was a risk to health.

MRS. BOONE: A question to the minister again. Who would you say, then, can say that there is a health risk? If the doctors in that community are indicating there is a health risk, whose opinion will you take?

HON. MR. DUECK: The therapeutic abortion committee consists of doctors. They make that decision. I'm certainly not going to second-guess a doctor, a physician. Secondly, if these people, or the other doctors, disapprove of that particular committee, it's the board that in fact performs that function. We fund hospitals; we don't run the hospitals. The hospital is run by the duly elected board.

[2:15]

MRS. BOONE: To the Minister of Health again. It is indicated that people in that community are saying that women can go elsewhere to have abortions. Is this the move of the minister, then: to insist that women are forced to go 100, 500, 200...? What is an adequate distance they must go in order to get a safe therapeutic abortion, according to the Health Act?

HON. MR. DUECK: Mr. Speaker, I have never indicated that. However, according to the statute, or the Criminal Code, a designated or accredited hospital may in fact form or appoint a therapeutic abortion committee. That's exactly what they've done, and they have that choice. The hospital board, in fact, runs that hospital.

[ Page 686 ]

PLANTING OF SEEDLINGS

MR. WILLIAMS: To the Minister of Forests. In his maiden speech, he spoke highly of the province's silviculture program. Can he give the House assurance that the seedlings that have been available are all being made use of this season in the forests of British Columbia?

HON. MR. PARKER: Mr. Speaker, I'd like to extend to the House the same courtesy as the member for Vancouver East did in this position some years ago and take the matter as notice.

POLITICAL SOLICITATION
OF GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES

MR. G. HANSON: I have a question for the Minister of Agriculture. I have a copy of a letter which was recently sent to an employee in the Ministry of Agriculture, and it was sent to his office address. The letter was soliciting money for the Social Credit Party. My question is: is it the ministry's policy to provide employee address lists to the Social Credit Party for this sort of solicitation?

HON. MR. SAVAGE: Mr. Speaker, no, it is not.

MR. G. HANSON: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary for the Premier. Similar letters have been received at work by employees in the Health ministry and the Attorney-General ministry. My question to the Premier is: what is the policy of the Premier, as head of the government, on the use of employee mailing-lists for partisan Social Credit appeals?

I will rephrase the question, Mr. Speaker. A letter comes from Hope Wotherspoon. It says: "The Premier has asked me to immediately begin preparations to seize the momentum of the election and take action to help move British Columbia forward. We will act to bring long-term stability in labour-management relations." This is prior to Bill 19, I guess. The employees in the Ministry of Health and the Attorney-General ministry are receiving solicitation letters from the Social Credit Party. My question is: is it the policy of the government to make lists available for such solicitations by a political party?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: No, Mr. Speaker.

MR. G. HANSON: Will the Premier undertake to report to the assembly this week on how widespread this practice is and whether the government has in fact provided employee mailing-lists to the Social Credit Party? Will you report back this week?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Mr. Speaker, I don't know what to bring a report back on. I said the answer was no.

MR. G. HANSON: I repeat my question. Will the Premier undertake to report back to the Legislature this week on how widespread the practice is of soliciting government employees at work on behalf of the Social Credit Party?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Well, Mr. Speaker, I can only tell you that I am opposed to this sort of thing because it reminds me of when I was first elected. I was elected on the grounds, perhaps more than anything, that a former Provincial Secretary had used government offices to in fact advise people working for a particular industry in Surrey who were government employees about a particular matter which, again, was much like this. I didn't stand for it then, so I don't agree with it now. I expect, however, that there could be names on a list of people that are employed by government and that there are also members of the NDP or of Social Credit. I don't know of any list having been provided to anyone for the purposes of solicitation.

MR. G. HANSON: Will you report back?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Certainly. If there's something there, I'll be happy to report back.

FUNDING FOR SEEDLINGS

MR. WILLIAMS: To the Minister of Forests, Mr. Speaker. It's my understanding that the lack of funding in the Prince George region will mean the trashing of upwards of ten million seedlings in that one region alone. Has the minister reviewed this question, and can he advise the House whether he will prevent that kind of trashing taking place in that region and other regions of the province?

HON. MR. PARKER: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Vancouver East for the question. I'll take it as notice.

GOLF COURSES IN COLUMBIA VALLEY

MS. EDWARDS: My question is for the Minister of Agriculture. In the Columbia Valley, between Cranbrook and Radium, there are four great golf courses, with a fifth one under construction west of Radium. Could the minister tell me why he has decided to approve a sixth course over the objections of the Regional District of East Kootenay and the agricultural land reserve?

HON. MR. SAVAGE: Mr. Speaker, that was not the decision of the Minister of Agriculture; that was the decision of the Cabinet Committee on Environment and Land Use.

MS. EDWARDS: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if I could ask the Minister of Agriculture whether he could explain his part in that decision, because it is probably of interest to his ministry.

HON. MR. SAVAGE: No, I cannot explain my part; that's part of the committee structure.

MS. EDWARDS: To the Minister of Agriculture again. Is it the policy of the Ministry of Agriculture, which participated in this decision, to alienate the best farmland in the East Kootenay for the sake of three temporary jobs and one permanent one?

HON. MR. SAVAGE: Mr. Speaker, no, it is not. Further to that, no decision has come forward...any policy-decisions of my own, when they come over my desk. These were previous applications that strung out over a year and a half.

[ Page 687 ]

DOWNSIZING OF WOODLANDS AND GLENDALE

MR. CASHORE: My question is to the Minister of Social Services and Housing. Recently the minister announced the downsizing of Woodlands and Glendale, and this raises questions about community backup. What assurance can the minister provide that full and adequate community treatment housing and support services will be in place before these residents are asked to move into the community?

HON. MR. RICHMOND: I can give every assurance to the member, this Legislature and all the people of British Columbia that every precaution, measure and consultation have gone into this decision, not just with parents but with staff and with the communities. So I thank you for the question and can give the people of British Columbia every assurance that everything is being done to make this transition as smooth as possible.

MR. CASHORE: Mr. Speaker, my next question has to do with the procedure for monitoring, both in the next year and the year after, with regard to how these people are doing and how the communities are doing. Will the minister please tell us what instrument he has in place for the ongoing monitoring of this situation.

HON. MR. RICHMOND: Mr. Speaker, the same instrument that we have in other parts of the province since we started the deinstitutionalizing of these people, and that is basically the professionals in my ministry who are doing an excellent job and can tell you of numerous success stories in this field. It's been most successful not just in my constituency where Tranquille was closed, but anywhere in the province where these people have been relocated and reestablished with their families and with the community.

FUNDING CONTRACTS FOR
SOCIETIES FOR MENTALLY HANDICAPPED

MR. CASHORE: A new question, Mr. Speaker, to the Minister of Social Services and Housing. Will the minister tell us if funding contracts for societies for the mentally handicapped will fully match their increased need for staff and resources, or is this move primarily seen as a cost-saving move?

HON. MR. RICHMOND: Mr. Speaker, let me assure the member and this House that moving people from these institutions is not done for the purposes of saving money. It is done for the good of the people in the institutions, and the progress that they make is absolutely incredible. In fact, if anything it costs more to keep these people outside the institutions than inside.

Hon. Mr. Michael tabled an answer to a question on the order paper from the first member for Nanaimo (Mr. Stupich). [See appendix.]

Orders of the Day

HON. MR. STRACHAN: Mr. Speaker, at the outset, the Select Standing Committee on Forests and Lands will be meeting later today for organization purposes. As well the Select Standing Committee on Standing Orders, Private Bills and Members' Services will be meeting later today to have a convening meeting and to hear the Law Clerk's report. I would ask leave of the House for these committees to meet while the House is sitting.

Leave granted.

HON. MR. STRACHAN: Mr. Speaker, adjourned debate on second reading of Bill 19. I believe the first member for Okanagan South adjourned debate.

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS REFORM ACT, 1987
(continued)

MR. SERWA: Mr. Speaker, I'm finding the process of debate on Bill 19 most interesting. The Industrial Relations Reform Act is significant in that it is probably the most important piece of legislation that the first session of the thirty-fourth parliament will deal with. As legislators we must approach it with a great sense of responsibility to all of the people of British Columbia. It must be addressed with good will and noble principles.

Was the old Labour Code working so well? I think that we gave the old Labour Code every possible opportunity to accomplish the job it was designed to do. It could have worked. Perhaps it could even be said that it should have worked. Unfortunately, the harsh facts of reality prevailed. Internally in our province and externally in the rest of Canada, and indeed internationally, we in British Columbia are perceived as having an unenviable reputation in labour relations and an unstable labour market.

The Minister of Labour accepted a most difficult task. He had to address the problem of industrial labour relations with a view to bringing about long-term stability in the private and public sector arenas of British Columbia. When I consider the very difficult challenge the Minister of Labour had in pulling together all of the information and opinions presented to his inquiry committee, I believe he has done a very commendable job. It will be to the benefit of all British Columbians when we improve our labour relations climate.

The old Labour Code had 14 years of life. It clearly wasn't working as well as society expected and required it to work. Improvements were definitely required. I have heard hon. members of the opposition indicate that it is indeed a shame to change the Labour Code of this province just when labour and management were getting to handle the Code and their negotiations so well. If the labour relations of the past year are indicative of the ability of labour and management to conduct their negotiations under the Labour Code without severely impacting on the public interest, if the opposition believes that the Code was working well, I suggest that their collective eyes have become half-muddied.

[2:30]

I note that an hon. member of the opposition pointed out, probably correctly, that the entire labour force of British Columbia loses more days to colds and other illness than the unionized sector loses to strikes. Let medical science do what it can in its field of expertise. Great improvements in public health have been made. Our responsibility as government is to make great improvements in public welfare. I also recognize, as does the member who made the point, that simple accommodations are made daily without impacting in any negative way on all the other elements in society. To deny the dramatic impact of the effect of key-sector strikes by quoting

[ Page 688 ]

misleading statistics is an injustice to society. An example that may be used to illustrate my point is where a dispute involving dock workers or grain handlers, and their management, is able to impact all Canadians in a negative way. The nature of that dispute is substantially different in magnitude than a small, localized labour dispute. Statistics, by their nature, can only address days lost. It is readily apparent that simple numbers cannot form a clear enough picture.

We can and must accept our responsibility to improve labour relations. The only thing that is constant in this world is change. Is it possible that Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition see their role simply as resisters of change? Is it possible that the opposition is able to dismiss its collective responsibility to all of the people of British Columbia by yielding so readily to the clamour of special interest groups, which appear to hold the opposition so tightly within their grasp? Every hon. member on both sides of the House has to agree that improvements in our labour climate are necessary, desirable and long overdue.

Almost all of the opposition members have used the word "flawed" in describing aspects of this legislation. At this point in the debate we are to address the philosophical aspects and general principles of the bill. How flawed are they? Bill 19 is designed to ensure the democratic rights of all the people of British Columbia. It is designed to ensure the rights and freedoms of the individual. It is designed to ensure fairness, justice and equity in labour relations. In its general nature, concept and design, this bill is a good bill; and its philosophy is the general theme of bringing a greater sense of responsibility to factions governed by this bill.

In third reading we will go through the bill section by section. Perhaps amendments will be made. It is at that point that detailed examination will transpire. I at that point will be as dedicated as any other Hon. member to seeing that this legislation is not only good but the best that we can collectively, as legislators, put out. You will please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but never all of the people all of the time. Simply put, everyone can't like everything.

We can stay in this House and debate this one bill till doomsday. It will still be "flawed" simply because of change being constant and being viewed from different perspectives. I know that; we all know that. That recognition doesn't and shouldn't prevent us from addressing this bill in depth in third reading and collectively contributing towards good legislation. The opposition members call out for more time — for what constructive purpose? In the field, anger and resentment are being encouraged. The opposition participates not as legislators with responsibility, but as opportunists who play lightly with their responsibilities to collective society in order to maintain special interest benefits.

A responsible party could not and would not distance themselves so readily and dismiss their commitments to the people of British Columbia so lightly. Fortunately, competent and moderate voices in the opposition are starting to be heard. I hope that on reflection members of the opposition will pay attention to those responsive and reasoning voices. Perhaps it is timely to remember that we must be decisive and positive in our collective responsibility to do good things for all of our people. I'm in favour of moving to the next stage of debate on this bill and addressing the elements section by section.

MS. EDWARDS: In talking today to the second reading of Bill 19, I want to talk about the idea of principles. We've heard a lot of talk about whether or not we should — "we" being the public — address the issue of principle at all, and we've heard the Premier say that we are not going to change the principles; we are simply maybe going to change a few details. I think it's important that we not go past...and that we not consider this to be something that we take as a given.

The principle of this bill is what is at issue right now, and I think it's important that we look at the idea of principle and at some of the principles that are involved and that will be affected by Bill 19. One of the most important principles that is at stake with Bill 19 is the idea of public interest. "Public interest" is an abstract term, such as "justice" or "honour" or "greed." In fact, that means that it has to be defined in relation to some of the other things that we know; it is not a concrete term.

We certainly have to ask ourselves, as far as this bill is concerned, what "public interest" means. Where is it defined? Of course, we know it is not defined in the bill; it's probably defined in a dictionary somewhere. But what is the definition of "public interest" that is going to be used? Because it is used so frequently in Bill 19. How in fact do we, even if we agree on what it means and we know how it should be defined, test when the public interest has been served?

I think the question has to be put by all of us.... In our own minds we have to know whether or not there is a general acceptance of what we mean by public interest. Obviously, if you ask a number of people, even around this room, you would get different answers as to what the public interest is. Why, then, do we use this kind of term in a bill, when everybody is going to give different answers? The overwhelming answer, of course, is that there are more similarities, or perhaps more important similarities, than there are differences in our definition of public interest. Let's hope there are.

The idea is that we have to have some kind of consensus on this, and it seems to be that in searching for the similarities that we want to find in the term "public interest," we should come to some recognition and some kind of agreement on what that public interest might be. " Public interest" has been put forward sometimes as perfectly understandable by the people who said, for example, that in the IWA strike of 1986 the public interest was not served. There were certainly a lot of people who suffered in the IWA strike of 1986. Capital suffered — the owners, in other words; labour suffered; the provincial economy suffered.

How, in fact, are we going to determine what it is about that that makes public interest, and how do we follow that up by saying that it would have been in the public interest to have had someone intervene in that strike? Now that is not so easily defined and certainly not agreed upon. At the time of the IWA strike, the issue, as it was put out many times, was the issue of job security. Had they been able to set out the issue of job security, the strike would not have gone on so long. To find that solution, I'm quite sure it would have been much easier to have a single person come into the dispute and decide where the issue of job security should be settled. Much easier, I say, but would it have been better? And if it were not better, is that in the public interest?

What we do know is that now, under Bill 19, the public interest is going to be defined by a single person, the commissioner. This one person has been appointed — or at least named, let's say — even before the legislation has been

[ Page 689 ]

proclaimed. I think that that is an issue that needs more looking at, and I think that that is not necessarily in the public interest: to have legislation set up for the appointment of a person who is known ahead of time. There is no organizational theory in the world that will tell you that you consider a position which is put there for a single person and that that will be good positioning, good planning. In fact, you set up a structure so that it will work, and then you find someone to fit into that structure. But that is not how this was done. We had the commissioner named, as I say, long before the legislation itself has even been through second reading or even.... It was announced at the time of first reading.

If you set up legislation that intends to give the kinds of powers to a single individual that Bill 19 intends to give to Mr. Peck, you might, I think, observe a few comparisons and suggest to yourself that maybe this might work or might not work, or what is this going to be like? Certainly there's no comparison with this kind of labor czar anywhere in Canadian legislation. It seems to me that you might take a look at the idea of judges who have the kinds of powers that the commissioner will have under Bill 19. There are a number of things about judges — who are appointed even differently, but supposing they were there — that make it a very different situation than this single-person situation that we have under Bill 19. For one thing, judges may decide things all alone in a courtroom, but there are many judges. There is no case where a single judge sits; there are a number of people on a bench, and there are many judges. They decide issues by precedents as well as by the evidence that is put before them; therefore they have a time range and dimension that is very much broader than they themselves are able to bring to the bench. Besides that, each of their decisions can be appealed. These sorts of things simply do not apply to the commissioner of Bill 19. Obviously, no one has said that they meant him to be a judge. But an important question, I think, is whether or not the person in this position should have some of the checks and balances that go with another of the positions with that kind of power that we know in our society. This position that's set up for the commissioner does not have those kinds of checks and balances, but it has those kinds of powers. I think that we have to look very closely before we consider that to be a good thing. I think it is an extremely dangerous thing. I don't agree that it is a good thing, but I think if the public does, they have to be told what the dangers are that come with this kind of situation.

What we are not told when we read Bill 19 is whether or not this one person has to consult in many cases. It looks as though the commissioner is not going to have to consult with anyone, most times, when he does any kind of action — and he has many kinds of actions he can take. If he is to consult, with whom is he to consult? Are there any guidelines at all for this commissioner to make the kinds of decisions that he's going to make about, for example — and I come back to it because it's overwhelming in the bill — the public interest? How much is that commissioner going to have to assume when he decides what is in the public interest? And in order to decide public interest, one supposes that he is going to want to know what each one of us in the general public — that great crowd out there — thinks about our interest and thinks about the good of society. So how much is he going to have to assume about what that public interest is, what the public wants? How much are we, as the public, so often in the hands of the decisions that this commissioner makes, going to have to assume about what he knew and what he did to make the decisions that he made?

[2:45]

In order to do that, I think it useful to look at a few ideas about authority that are relatively basic to any of us who have thought at all about how authority operates. It is important to look at a bit of theory, if you like, and wonder if we should have a single person with this degree of authority. What we earn, if we didn't.... What is put very succinctly here and what I think we all know is that employees will consider themselves partners in a common enterprise, rather than tools n the hands of management, if they think that they will accept an authority, when it is socially accepted that the person in authority is guided by rational standards in the pursuit of common ends.

I think that there is some question, with the appointment of Mr. Peck to this position, that he is guided by rational standards in this bill, and that in fact the ends to which he is going are the ends of the people on whose behalf he will be making some decisions. Therefore I think it is very questionable whether or not his authority will be respected.

There is another analysis here that suggests that there are three basic conditions that create pronounced inequalities when you have a position of authority. Authority, if we remember, is a relationship. It is not a quality assigned to a single person, because authority stays with the person only so long as people willingly grant him the authority that they give to him. No one has authority if the people over whom he thinks he has authority do not think that he does, because they will not behave that way, and then we do not have a situation of authority.

It is suggested that three conditions create pronounced inequalities. I have taken a fairly standard book on management theory to give these ideas; I think they follow a number of similar types of analysis. They are close supervision, which forces employees continually to submit to the demands of a superior; employment of sanctions; and particularly arbitrary power. What this particular expert says is that arbitrary exercise of power arouses the most intense feelings of inequality.

We are right to the ultimate power that the commissioner has under Bill 19, which is the power to lead disputes to arbitration. In fact, it is the most distrusted power of all, and the relationship between the people whom he is trying to work with and the person who is going to be the arbiter or appoint the arbiter.... That trust will disappear.

In fact, as many of us know, there is a common word in labour theory for compulsory arbitration: it is called the chill factor. It is called the chill factor because it prevents real negotiation from going on. If anybody is ultimately going to go to an arbitrator, they are not particularly interested in giving up a bunch of the points that they may otherwise have given up, because everything is going to go to an arbitrator, and that point will not be on the table. It is a perfectly logical thing when you think it through, and it happens so often. It is amazing in our world that logic sometimes happens. But it happens so often that it has this term; it is called the chill factor.

What basis is this for the kind of relationship that we would want to exist if we had a commissioner with the powers outlined in Bill 19? We have a commissioner who is working on a number of assumptions, which is not a good basis for trust. He is working on an expectation of authority that depends largely on arbitrary powers, and we know that that is

[ Page 690 ]

not a good basis for trust. In fact, we would say, I think fairly rationally, that there is no basis for trust between the participants with this structure outlined in Bill 19.

This commissioner has no appeal against his decisions. He can impose cooling-off periods, intermediaries and settlements, he can impose almost anything, but in fact there is probably very little trust left between this commissioner and the people for whom he is making these decisions. Now is this in the public interest? Is this in that bit of the common idea that we have of the public interest? We certainly have some of the central core ideas, I think.

We all know very well, if we stand back and look at the imposition in this case of a single commissioner to deal with so many of the problems that are predicted in our industrial relations climate, that if in fact we put a single person in, that will probably be the most efficient, if you like. In fact, in all political theory the idea of the dictatorship is, of course, the most efficient kind of government. Everybody wants it to be a benevolent dictatorship, but it doesn't matter; that has nothing to do with the efficiency of it. But the whole issue of democratic process has to do with the sharing of power, and that really is the direction of growth. It's been the direction of growth in our political system over political issues, and now over democracy in the workplace issues, that has been the progress that we have made. If we've made any progress it has to do with the sharing of the power, not the giving of more power into the hands of one class or one individual.

This particular bill, Bill 19, works totally against that. What we've done over the years is work hard at the development of free collective bargaining, and free collective bargaining works through a consensus mechanism. We all know that that's what has to happen in order for free collective bargaining to occur, and I believe that even some of the comments that came along with Bill 19 indicate that under normal circumstances the ministry, and obviously the government, believes that free collective bargaining does some particular things. For example, under ending the compensation stabilization program the comment is there that predictably collective agreements established by voluntary settlement will reflect the ability to pay of the employer who negotiated them. Well, that's a big statement of trust by a government that is not trusting any kind of event like that to happen in the public service. But free collective bargaining where it is left alone we recognize gives consensus agreement, or at least some agreements that in fact have the commitment of both the sides to the bargaining.

If there is a threat to public interest, what normally happens in collective bargaining is that the task of determining an industrial relationship is left to the participants; and if there is a threat then to the public interest, the elected representatives then decide — not government alone but the Legislature. Under Bill 19 we do not have that right. Even our Legislature does not decide what can be done. In fact, even the minister has very much less power than he had before. What happens is that we begin to have a situation where we have one person who decides, and in fact that person is not even considered to be an impartial person.

I think that that's another question about the naming of Mr. Peck, who has not generally been regarded as a person who has not taken sides. I think you need only read.... You can talk to almost anyone on the street, any group of people: Mr. Peck is not regarded as a person who is impartial. That is another problem with this issue. If you put someone in this position which you made for Mr. Peck, and that person is not generally regarded to be impartial — whether or not he is impartial, he is not regarded to be impartial — that puts us out with our labour legislation starting with a limp.

What in fact is happening with the bill is that on accepting the bill we have a situation where if the process fails — and I would say it's almost a process of persuasion or whatever and then it comes down to Mr. Peck intervening and so on — then we have the commissioner deciding things and then the employer enforcing those things; and that comes in under the section of the bill where in fact any employee can be demoted or disciplined for not behaving. It's the employer who enforces what happens when Mr. Commissioner decides what should be done. So in order to accept the bill, we have to accept that the employers are fairer than the employees. We have to assume that the union leadership have often been poorer leaders than anyone else. I certainly do not accept that; I think a wide number of people, perhaps a majority of people, do not accept that as one of the assumptions on which we want to base the trust that we would have to put into a commissioner. What kind of a ball game is it anyway where you have to assume that one side is nicer than the other?

The whole issue of the level playing-field is in question. It's been used, but is not a level playing-field. The government has taken sides in this bill; it has remedied cases where the employers lost at law in favour of the party who lost at law. In other words, the new bill puts that in, takes care of all the problems. Is that fair? We have to ask: is fairness a principle here? Do we have to talk about it? Of course we have to talk about it; there's no possible way that we can let this go past without talking about it. Was this what was intended in the bill? Was it meant that the Treasury Board was supposed to be given broad and sweeping powers? If that is a principle that is in the public interest, then we need to talk about it, because it's certainly not in the public interest by the people that I talk to.

Those are the issues that need to be discussed, and when we talk about discussion, it's a matter of public interest as well that there be discussion. We need the discussion and consultation that bring everybody to agree to legislation. That hasn't happened. We've talked about that before, but that comes along again. It comes up to the issue whether this bill should be approved in principle. How can it possibly be approved in principle? It has not even been discussed yet.

It would be quite fair and quite obvious to say that this bill did not result from the labour hearings that went around the province in January and into February. The timetable shows that those hearings could not have been put together and been considered and been talked over and formed into a bill. There's no possible way that this bill came out of those hearings.

We need to have time for the public to consider the issues of Bill 19. The point is that many of the things in the bill were not asked for. Nobody asked for firing without cause, did they? Nobody asked for retroactivity. In fact, the kind of retroactivity that's in this bill interferes with contract law. Has anybody considered that, and did anybody want the provisions of this bill to interfere with the contracts that have been signed between parties and now can be changed by a bill that would apply to them in a retroactive way?

[3:00]

Nobody, it seems, asked for an extensive power of the Treasury Board to control school and hospital boards as well as other bodies to which they give money. I believe there may be some movement on that one — good. It's probably not the

[ Page 691 ]

only part of this bill that needs to be looked at in the light of the public interest.

One of the other interesting things about this bill and about the way it's come in and the way it's been here is the absolute repetition of many of the events of 1968, when Bill 33 was brought in, which was called the Mediation Commission bill. It came in with a legislation whose edge was — and it was quoted many times — the public interest and welfare. Constantly there was going to be a decision, and all the decisions were going to be made on whether or not the public interest was involved and whether it was being harmed.

There are some real problems with the perception of that. In 1968, the B. C. Federation made their statement against the idea of who was deciding what the public interest was. The same questions could be asked today. Is the public interest that of the logging companies that are necessarily taking out the profits that they do? Is the public interest the mining companies that are despoiling the land frequently? Is that the kind of thing that public interest means?

Perhaps more objective is the statement of the Civil Liberties Association, who spoke on the bill, which as I said was similar in many ways to Bill 19. It said that under this bill "the government is empowered to prohibit or terminate a strike whenever an unresolved dispute between an employer and an employee group is deemed contrary to 'public interest and welfare' and to refer the dispute to a mediation commission." In this regard, the bill wasn't quite as far-ranging as Bill 19, but the commission could write a new collective agreement between the parties, which would be binding. "These provisions enabled the government to prohibit or terminate any strike since the phrase 'public interest and welfare' may be interpreted very broadly to cover any or all labour disputes." I don't know why that would be different with Bill 19 than it was with Bill 33. "Moreover," the Civil Liberties Association said,"the power given to the cabinet and the commission" — and in that case it was given to cabinet and the commission, not to a commissioner — "is made absolute by section 38, which prohibits any access to the courts." Well, of course, as we know, there is no appeal from the decisions of the commissioner under Bill 19, so the same situation applies.

The Civil Liberties Association then said:

"To place such arbitrary powers in the hands of" — in this case it was the cabinet and the commission; in our case it's the commissioner — "is a serious curtailment to the rights of working people to negotiate freely the terms under which they will earn their living.

"Ultimately, the freedom to withdraw labour is the only effective way by which employed persons can try to improve their condition of life. It is this sanction which, in the final analysis, gives real power to labour in the collective bargaining process. This power is matched on the side of management by the employers' ownership or control of industry."

If in fact it says that labour has the right to withdraw its labour, it may be relatively equal to the employer's ownership or control.

In this part it says that the bill — in this case 33; I am putting it to you that Bill 19 would do the same:

"...would remove labour's ultimate sanction without any corresponding diminution of the employer's power. Assuming passage of these sections, equality could only be restored if the government, when preventing or terminating a strike, was obligated at the same time to confiscate the industry affected."

I don't know whether you would agree with that, but it is probably an objective viewpoint.

I'm not sure that the government today or the government then was thinking of taking away property from industry if they were doing the wrong thing. In fact, what the bill does is take away from the workers the one thing of value that they trade, the one thing they can withdraw in order to have any power in a labour dispute situation. The Civil Liberties Association also pointed out that the ability to strike was taken away, which is of course the reason that the ILO — the International Labour Organization — has declared that British Columbia labour law contravenes the Canadian commitment to it. It seems to me it is not in the public interest for British Columbia to be the single province where, under the terms and the understandings of the international treaties that the country has signed, the right to strike has been taken away.

I think the whole issue of what is going on with this bill should he put back in the public domain, where the process of consensus building can go ahead, where in fact the voters and the government and the legislators of this province can go at the collective bargaining that needs to be done about this particular issue. Probably we have to look at that; if we don't, we will forever regret the fact that we have gone ahead too fast.

HON. S. HAGEN: Mr. Speaker, I stand today to speak in favour of Bill 19, and take this opportunity to compliment the Minister of Labour for being an attentive listener to the debate from both sides of the House.

I would like to begin today by saying that Bill 19 does represent a fundamental change in industrial relations for British Columbia. I emphasize that this change is fundamental, for that is the real strength of the proposed legislation. The call for fundamental change was something the Minister of Labour heard repeatedly during his public consultation before drafting the legislation. He heard it again and again as he reviewed over 700 submissions from labour, from management and from the public at large.

Fundamental change is not always easy to accept, even by those who stand to benefit. It is particularly difficult for those who must change their routine, who must disrupt their personal or corporate status quo. This resistance is not evidence of evil or conspiracy, but rather of the tendency of human beings to find comfort in the familiar and to fear the uncertainties of innovation. This is only natural. There is always risk in any change: risk of losing some advantage or some privilege. We saw this fear of fundamental change in 1973, when the NDP was attacked by labour and by business after their Labour Code was introduced to this Legislature. Today we see the same fear, and for the same reasons.

The true test of fundamental change is not whether it initially creates fear-based opposition; it always does, for that is the nature of fundamental change. The true test of such change is whether it proves beneficial over time. There is no doubt in my mind that the fundamental changes proposed in Bill 19 will prove beneficial to British Columbia. I also believe that the leaders of our labour organizations and our business community possess the wisdom and the flexibility to move past their initial discomfort with change and, as they

[ Page 692 ]

did after 1973, learn to benefit from these improvements in industrial relations law.

I believe this will happen because Bill 19 is good legislation. The proposed law does not attack unions and does not attack management. What it does do — and I look forward to the day when the official opposition begins to share this perception — is attack a failed process, a failed industrial relations process which is not working for the unions, is not working for management and, very importantly, is not working for the public interest. It is a process which fails us whenever union and management are unable to resolve their differences at the bargaining table, a process which fails to offer adequate checks or balances when contract negotiations go sour.

The small proportion of disputes — around 5 percent, I believe — which end in strikes or lockouts often create damage completely out of proportion to the issues in dispute. Families are bankrupted, businesses — some of which are not even party to the dispute — are destroyed, the economies of small towns are decimated. In a larger context, this province acquires a reputation for labour unrest and for unreliability. This is why British Columbia needs a fundamental change in its industrial relations laws. Bill 19 will create new pressures on management and labour to come to an agreement by negotiation rather than by lockout or strike.

The new legislation requires good faith bargaining to occur before a strike vote or a lockout vote is allowed. We are saying to management and to unions: we no longer tolerate lockouts or strikes until after you have at least tried. A strike vote or a lockout vote must be a response to lack of progress in negotiations, not a cause of bargaining failure. This is not unreasonable, not draconian. It is an alternative to a failed process, a failed process which no longer does good service to the people of this province.

When negotiations do fail, the proposed commissioner will have an extraordinary array of innovative strategies to break the logjam and prevent a strike or lockout. He can appoint a fact-finder to investigate the dispute. He can meet directly with parties in dispute and recommend voluntary settlements. He can direct a secret ballot vote on the employer's most recent offer. He can appoint a public interest inquiry board to determine how the dispute affects the public interest. He can order a 40-day cooling-off period in strikes which affect the public interest. He can name a special mediator whose report can become a collective agreement if disputing parties fail to agree. He can order arbitration proceedings, including final-offer selection or mediation arbitration.

This is quite an array of strategies. The members of this House are already familiar with the details. These features have been described in great detail by previous speakers. However, this listing does point out the need for a great deal of sensitivity in selecting the appropriate response. A ham-fisted, clumsy application of these tools would indeed bring about the chaos feared by the opposition.

This will not happen. We will not have chaos or insensitivity or ham-fistedness. We will not have any of these because this new machinery will be administered by an extremely capable man with years of experience in industrial relations in British Columbia. Ed Peck is respected by mainstream labour, by management and by both sides of this House. Mr. Peck also has the sensitivity to make the delicate judgments involved in recommending to cabinet whether or not a dispute has disrupted the public interest. The nature of this judgment will vary with each situation as Mr. Peck evaluates factors which have never before been formally reviewed on a routine basis — factors such as the permanent loss of markets or jobs from operations not directly involved in the dispute; the effect of a particular dispute on British Columbia's reputation as an international or interprovincial supplier; the effect of a particular dispute on British Columbia's reputation for industrial relations; any overall damaging effect on the provincial economy which could cause job loss, corporate dislocation, loss of external trade, loss of major investment, loss of government revenues.

[3:15]

As Minister of Advanced Education and Job Training, I am especially aware of the need to maintain tax revenues. We have a fine post-secondary system in this province, and that system is an expensive investment. Just last month we committed an extra $50 million annually to student financial assistance, a move which was applauded on both sides of this House. That type of service to our taxpayers can only be maintained when tax revenues are not disrupted by major labour disputes. In fact, services such as this are really the only justification for implementing taxes.

My point is that disputes which disrupt the entire economy of this province, disputes such as the protracted forest dispute last fall, not only threaten individual and corporate survival, but threaten our ability to fund our most basic social, health and education programs, programs which British Columbians of all political viewpoints agree are necessary to our well-being. Protecting these programs, protecting our international reputation, protecting individual families and protecting the overall economic health of this province are the concerns met by this legislation.

These concerns more than justify giving Mr. Peck the tools to break logjams, the tools to construct a safety net which will prevent labour disputes from getting out of hand. This is a safety net that the people of British Columbia — and this includes the ordinary working people — want to see put in place. Like all safety nets, it will not be used very often. The parties involved will make every effort to avoid the need to rely on a government safety net. However, on those occasions when the safety net is used, it will, like all safety nets, prevent damage and disaster from occurring. In the final analysis, that is why we must support Bill 19, Mr. Speaker: because this province cannot afford to be without such a safety net.

MR. D'ARCY: Unlike the apologists for this legislation from the Socred cabinet benches and Socred back benches, I'm going to attempt to consult notes from time to time but actually to give this speech, as opposed to reading it. I would think that, while we are referred to casually as "speakers" on legislation in this House, the speakers in this debate from the government side could more appropriately be referred to as "readers."

Mr. Speaker, it won't be any surprise to you, of course, that I'm speaking in opposition to this legislation. I suppose we could all get very philosophical about why we on this side of the House oppose the bill and why people on the other side can support it. But the public, at least in my constituency — not those with an axe to grind — are concerned about this legislation. There is not a great understanding of it out there. There are a lot of opinions out there, a lot of rhetoric about what it does or does not do, or might or might not do. But

[ Page 693 ]

there is a lot of just plain concern that the government doesn't quite know what it's doing with this legislation.

There is a lot of concern that the government took its own philosophy, its own ideas — superficially acquired them over a period of time; yes, sought submissions from the general public, and out of every hundred perhaps took the five that confirmed the government's own prejudices and trashed the other 95, whether or not they came from knowledgeable people in a particular field. In my own experience there are a number of fields which, in a technical sense, I certainly do not consider myself to be an expert in. Indeed, in some of the fields that I've had quite a bit to do with, the more I get to know of them, the less I think I'm an expert in them.

I certainly am quite prepared to accept the knowledge and experience of those who have training, knowledge and experience in specific fields. I tend to believe, for instance, in the legal opinion of lawyers over my own legal opinions; I tend to believe in the medical opinions of doctors over my own medical opinions, and so forth. Mr. Speaker, that is the concern which is running through the community in B.C. — as I said earlier, not those with a specific axe to grind, who feel that their own personal situation is likely to be damaged. There is a general feeling of unease in the public that the government doesn't really know what it's doing with this legislation and doesn't really have any idea of what effect it is likely to have on the larger body politic and the economy of British Columbia. Mr. Speaker, when that feeling gets out there, there is a lack of faith and trust in government in general. While we in this chamber have disputes with each other about the direction of government on a great many issues, none of us likes to feel that the institution of this elected parliament or the elected Parliament of Canada has fallen itself into disrepute — that that orthodoxy in itself is not taken credibly by the people out there who are electing us and paying the bills.

Mr. Speaker, we have had references in this debate, from people on the other side, that one of the reasons that there's a problem in B.C. and one of the reasons we need to go ahead with this is that the union movement and the management bargaining sector have not particularly helped the economy. In the areas where there has been the most disruption due to the exercise of individual democratic rights in this province, we hear again and again that absolutely record profits are being made.

Mr. Speaker, I would agree that there are economic problems in this province. After all, we look at the most recent employment figures — and I emphasize employment — in this province, and we find that only 6,000 more people are working in British Columbia than a year ago. This represents a 0.5 percent increase. That's not much real growth, only a tiny fraction of the total number of jobs created in Canada over the same period of time. Not only that, but we find that average weekly earnings in B.C. over that period have declined in real terms. Some months they have declined in actual terms as well.

Mr. Speaker, one of the things that concerned everyone in this province throughout the last year or so, and even through the election of last fall, was that some people were too shrill, too confrontational, too ideological and not pragmatic enough in their approach to problems in British Columbia. Legislation such as this — one of the fundamental reasons why I oppose it — brings back the feeling that this government is confrontational, that it is shrill in putting forth its ideology, in imposing the personal beliefs of the cabinet and the back bench on the body politic of British Columbia. That's not what any of us — this side or the other side — were elected to do. We were elected to be pragmatic, businesslike and sensible, and that's not what the public feels about this legislation. That's why I oppose it, and that's why I ask the government to withdraw it in the form which has been put before this chamber.

Mr. Speaker, we can all go out and find people who are very agreeable with how we feel as individuals. The mark of a sensitive government, though, is feelings of tolerance for those who disagree with them and how they incorporate those other feelings into their particular legislation. When the government was receiving submissions, some of which were apparently considered in the drafting of this piece of legislation.... I say with all respect to the minister that it is a very sloppily drafted piece of legislation. One of the things said by major business groups, major employer groups.... I'm not talking about recently, since this legislation came in; I'm talking about back in the winter when the government was receiving submissions. One of the things said, and I paraphrase, but it was said several times, was that government should not create a whole lot of new problems while attempting to resolve or alleviate some older ones. In other words, let's not make changes for changes' sake. That advice, which was given several times, has clearly not been heeded by the minister and the government across the way.

[Mr. Pelton in the chair.]

Mr. Speaker, there are elements in this legislation which drastically alter if not simply wipe out some major contract provisions arrived at freely by individuals bargaining collectively in both the recent and the distant past. There's no question that this then becomes retroactive legislation involving what is in effect the private property of the parties who freely came to those decisions. In many cases, in entering into those freely negotiated contracts, both sides gave up certain concessions to the other — which they weren't happy about, but in order to resolve some of those things, they gave up certain situations in order to agree with each other that others should be in effect.

Because we're not in committee, as you know, Mr. Speaker, I can't get down to specific sections, but there are aspects of this legislation that retroactively wipe out portions of collective agreement contracts freely reached by individuals. I have to emphasize — "individuals," because those contracts had to be approved by the individuals involved in the bargaining process on management side, and they had to be approved by the individuals involved in the bargaining process for the tradesmen or workers or professional people on the employee side. So the individuals entered into a collective contract, provisions of which are being arbitrarily abrogated by this legislation.

I will make a brief reference to something which occurred just before this session was called in, when the federal government decided they did not like one of the tax provisions proposed regarding SkyTrain by the member for Saanich in his capacity as Minister of Finance. There were howls, shrill howls, from people on the government side about the terrible thing that Ottawa was doing about the retroactivity of those changes. Well, there is a whole lot of retroactivity being foisted, forced, on individuals in this province by only one section — which I will not refer to — in this particular

[ Page 694 ]

legislation. This is another reason why I am strongly opposed to this legislation.

The government spokesmen have said over and over again how they want this legislation in place because, after all, both they and the office of commissioner which they will be setting up under this legislative proposal need the power to act in the public interest. I know of no case where the public interest has been offended by clauses which were freely negotiated into contracts and are already in place. Can anybody on the government side tell us — they don't even need to tell us; tell the people of B.C. — how the public interest has been offended in any way by contract provisions which are in place now and have been in place for some time, contract provisions that were freely negotiated by employers and employees? So if it has to be done — according to Socred spokesmen — in the public interest, why is that section even needed at all?

[3:30]

Over the years employers, employees, individuals have been to the courts on labour-management questions. They have been to quasi-judicial bodies like the Labour Relations Board. Again, I can't go into a discussion of specific sections, but there are aspects of this bill which state clearly that some, in fact a great number, of those decisions which courts and quasi-judicial bodies rendered over the years are in fact invalid. Why is it to be considered by Social Credit that it is in the public interest, then, for all those individuals and all those groups to have gone under rule of law, gone under what they thought was law and order duly enacted by their elected representatives, gone and argued a case and won some, lost some or had a compromise decision rendered in others, gone through the process, in other words, usually — I was going to say "often" — at great expense, only to find out that they really had been wasting their time and their money in believing, as Canadians and as British Columbians do, in the concept of process and law and order, and only to find out that the government of the day has decided that they did not like the decisions rendered by those courts and those quasi-judicial bodies and are simply saying that they are not valid from this day forth, presumably the day that the government will force this piece of legislation through the House and get it royal assent.

Mr. Speaker, the powers of the commissioner's office in our history — and I am speaking not just of British Columbia, but of Canada — and indeed in the history of democracies in the western world, whether they be under a republican form of government or some form or outgrowth of British parliamentary democracy.... The powers the commissioner is proposed to have under this legislation are broader than any powers given anyone. There are no checks and balances. It could well be argued that even the emergency boards and controls that were experienced in wartime were not as broad as some of the powers to be granted to this commissioner. And I might point out that in wartime, it was generally acknowledged that there was an emergency situation; we had a call to patriotism, and there were genuine emergencies in some areas of the economy. There was no question that certain aspects of the economy, such as shipbuilding, port maintenance and the provision of armaments and foodstuffs, were incredibly essential. Yet, Mr. Speaker, it could be argued that even those boards did not have the powers that are proposed to be given this commissioner's office — and I refer to the commissioner's office, not to the individual who will be employed there in any capacity. They'll be human beings.

They'll do some good things and they'll make some mistakes, but they will be human beings.

Mr. Speaker, members on the government side have professed in this debate and at other times that they have a strong allegiance to something that all too often in our society and economy is rather mythological: something they refer to as the marketplace. Well, if the government, through terms laid down through a commissioner's office, is going to be setting the terms of settlement in virtually every dispute which is not settled at the collective bargaining level, surely the members opposite would have to agree that the government is entering into the marketplace in a way which government in this province has not entered into it before, ever.

Mr. Speaker, over the last few years we've had the compensation stabilization office; we're all aware of that. That office has had powers not to increase settlements but to decrease settlements in the public sector. We now have an office that is going to have powers to enter into the private sector to arbitrarily increase, decrease or change provisions of contracts, and that is definitely an interference into the marketplace which we have not seen in this province — and I hope we don't see, because there's still a chance that this bill may be delayed or may not get through the House on the schedule that the government wants.

Mr. Speaker, we've heard also from the other side that one of the great things that this bill is going to do is open it up for trainees and apprentices to get training and apprenticeships that they perhaps wouldn't otherwise get, especially in the building trades under the craft union closed-shop agreement. In my experience in the workplace, I have known people who were 50 years old before they got an apprenticeship; they'd been waiting for years and years and years. In fact, it is quite common in the industrial sector of the B.C. economy for people to enter the workforce at some point in their lives, in their twenties or thirties, in a particular plant or industry, work perhaps in a labouring type job, a fairly low-skilled job, move on into an operating job, eventually bid into the maintenance department as a helper and finally after years of having their names on the list — having passed all the entrance courses, of course, having taken all the pre-apprenticeship training offered by the province over the years, I might say — after waiting years and years, in some cases decades, finally being admitted into an apprenticeship, because the waiting list was that long and the opportunities were that slim.

Mr. Speaker, no union was blocking them; it was simply a case of supply and demand; there simply was not the opportunity. We have heard from the people on the opposite side about the individual rights of the 18- to 20-year-old to get into those apprenticeship programs. What about the rights of the people in their twenties, thirties, forties and sometimes even fifties who have been waiting years and years to get into those same training programs because they want to be a tradesman? Tradesperson — some of them may be female.

So, Mr. Speaker, we see the selective judgment of some people on the opposite side. Well, they will see a problem as it affects a younger person and not see the same problem as affecting people in the workforce who are not 18 or 20 but rather 38 or 48.

Of course, Mr. Speaker, we all know the real problem is not the trade union movement, not the apprenticeship programs in British Columbia, not even the employers; the real problem is that there simply aren't enough jobs. That's the real problem; there are simply not enough opportunities.

[ Page 695 ]

But cutting workers off at the knees who have gone through the process and waited in the queue by saying you're going to allow the employer to bypass that provision — which is what this legislation does — is not fair, once again, to individual rights. It is not fair to the individual who has played the game by the rules — rules they didn't like; rules they didn't make — because they want to be fair to other people in their community; they want to be fair to their fellow workers and even the employers.

Once again, we see what some of the employers' groups warned about well in advance of this legislation being tabled. They warned about the government creating more problems than they were going to solve — again, not just sloppy drafting, but fuzzy thinking and a sloppy conception of where the real problems were and how to deal with them.

I have another series of reasons for speaking against the powers of the commissioner's office. All government decisions, whether under this legislation or some other, are ultimately perceived by the public to be small 'p' political decisions. Even good decisions are perceived as being political. When I refer to the public, I'm referring to that large constituency out there. I'm not just referring to the trade union movement or trade union leaders, or even individual citizens who belong to trade unions. I'm not just referring to large, major employer groups, but also to individual businesses who are not part of a management collective agreement that works as a group in bargaining with its employees. These decisions will be perceived by the broad spectrum of the public out there as expedient, in political terms, on the part of government, whether it is that government over there or some other government that may be in place in the future. That is one of the reasons I am convinced.... As I said earlier, in our parliamentary democracy and in democracies around the world it has been generally agreed that any particular office with this kind of arbitrary power is demonstrably not in the public interest. The Socred government of today cannot reinvent the world. There are certain truths which transcend political parties and their philosophies and which should be retained, having grown as a collective body of knowledge over a long period of time.

I've spoken with a number of people in my constituency about this, and even those who generally like what they feel is the philosophy and thrust of this legislation have great reservations about the government's ability to do it fairly and the commissioner's office's ability to accomplish things fairly and in the best interests of the B.C. economy and the B.C. taxpayer. That's what we're here to discuss — not the interests of employers, not the interests specifically of trade unionists, but the best interests of B.C. taxpayers as a whole.

This skepticism doesn't come from some kind of political bloody-mindedness on the part of those who are simply stridently opposed to anything Social Credit does, nor does it come from what have been characterized by some Socred leaders in the past as bad British Columbians. It comes from people who don't want confrontation. They don't want unreasoned haste from government. They don't want ideology and personal theory forced down their throats. This concern has been expressed by people who perceive that government over the last few years has caused some of the major difficulties in British Columbia. Yes, they want the government off the backs of the people, because they feel the government has been a bad influence. When the government comes out with legislation like this, they have a sense of deja vu. They feel that all those high expectations that were there last summer and last fall — of government at least doing some reasonably objective consultation, accepting what is reasonable, having some judgment as to what is reasonable and rejecting what is not reasonable — have gone by the board.

There is a lot of speculation out there among my constituents as to what this bill is all about — and, I will say quite frankly, a lot of misconception. But the fact remains that the public is uneasy. They are not sure why the bill is bad, but they have a feeling that the bill is bad, because they're talking about it all the time. In many respects, the government and the Premier in this province, after being in office for ten months — six months since the election; maybe nine or ten, counting the time before that.... The Social Credit government, even though it's about 11½ years old, under this particular Premier is still less than a year old. It is still, in the minds of many British Columbians, on a bit of a honeymoon. Mr. Speaker, that honeymoon can rapidly come to an end because while the public does not expect that it will agree with what government does — after all, we would not have a province of 2.8 million individuals if there was constant agreement over what politicians do or say — the public does not want foul-ups. It does not want government to cause problems; it wants government to resolve problems.

[3:45]

Mr. Speaker, I say to the government and to the minister that it's not too late to begin a process of genuine consultation where you listen to the things that you don't quite agree with as well as the things you do agree with. There has been an aspect of failed economies in the free world that is very, very common, and that aspect has been authoritarianism and authoritarian powers. We need only to look at a number of the military authoritarian dictatorships that have been tossed out in recent years. I'd like to say they were tossed out because the public spontaneously rose up and said: "We don't like this kind of authoritarianism and totalitarianism any more." That's not really the reason; they got tossed out because their economics failed.

There is one thing about freely operating democracy and free collective bargaining: it tends to lead to a strong and stable economy. There is one thing that authoritarianism on the part of government leads to and that is failed economies. We don't even need to get into the Soviet bloc to find failed economies; we can find failed economies under authoritarianism in the western world.

Mr. Speaker, this legislation is not just a step, it is a major movement down the road to authoritarianism in this province and a direct intervention not only into individuals' lives but a direct intervention into the economy itself. Because what we see is that the government is going to make what will be perceived as political decisions in industries which are dependent on variable commodity markets, industries which are dependent on a whole lot of factors other than internal things in British Columbia, industries and employers and groups of employees which by and large have responded to those external and internal market forces very well — a little slow on occasion, but they have responded.

AN HON. MEMBER: Time.

MR. D'ARCY: Times does fly, doesn't it?

AN HON. MEMBER: When you're having fun.

[ Page 696 ]

MR. D'ARCY: Yes, and I'm just getting through my opening remarks. But, Mr. Speaker, should the House go into committee on this particular bill — Committee of the Whole — then there will be other more detailed aspects of this legislation which I hope to have the opportunity of discussing with the minister.

MR. DE JONG: Mr. Speaker, it gives me indeed pleasure to rise and speak in support of Bill 19. While the members of the opposition are saying that we have not consulted, that we are not consulting, I believe that consultation has been held. Public hearings have been held throughout the province. The invitation was to all; none was excluded. It wasn't limited to anyone, but it appears that some have obviously not taken the opportunity to express opinions and therefore they feel a little hurt perhaps at this point in time. But the people generally have aired their views, and the central theme of the submissions that were brought to this committee was need for a democratic and productive workforce.

We in British Columbia talk about being an active participant in Pacific Rim trade. How can we participate and how can we be successful participants? Can we expect success with the labour climate that we have experienced during the seventies and early eighties? Productivity and stability, in my opinion, are essential ingredients in the marketplace, but more essential when we are participating in world trade, which is a must if the people of this province and the government are to achieve their goals. However, labour is and always will be a key link to that success.

While we have in the past experienced that a lot of products were shipped out of this province, there is really no reason why we in British Columbia cannot manufacture many of these products ourselves. I believe it is this type of legislation that will help achieve this goal, and I believe that the goals and objectives of this government are very clear. This in particular was one of those that was contained in the throne speech and also in our budget, in terms of funding.

Our Minister of Economic Development, the Hon. Grace McCarthy from Vancouver-Little Mountain, is indeed pulling this together with the Partners in Enterprise program....

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. member, sorry to interrupt you, but I have had to remind the House of this on several occasions. We do not name sitting members of the House in our speeches. Please proceed.

MR. DE JONG: My apologies, Mr. Speaker. The first member for Vancouver-Little Mountain is indeed pulling this together with the Partners in Enterprise program, a program many municipalities are participating in. The Minister of Advanced Education and Job Training (Hon. S. Hagen) is also gearing his ministry towards the training of our young people to take an active part in obtaining skills and technical knowledge so that they can successfully, as individuals and as a province, take part in Pacific Rim trade.

Sure, the opposition may ask: what does this have to do with Bill 19? Well, I wish to point out that we cannot take everything in isolation. It is another point in the government's program that must be achieved, However, there are undoubtedly a lot of different views among the people of British Columbia as to what labour relations should or should not be. Having listened to the people in my riding and having studied Bill 19, I believe that the committee that went around the province has not only been listening, but has also struck a fair balance as to what was brought to it in terms of submissions.

There is fairness and equity for both the employer and the employee. Why would the members of the opposition oppose fairness? Why are the big labour bosses threatening revolt and other means to stop Bill 19? Is it because they do not believe in democracy within the unions? Have the labour bosses and the president of the B.C. Teachers' Federation not learned that cooperation is a two-way street, and that those traveling one way must respect those traveling in the opposite direction? Surely neither is going to reach their goal or point of destination with actions of revolt or disrespect.

I am sure that this government is going to cooperate, but it is also going to govern. The opportunity to consult was given. The opportunity for debate is now, and time for implementation is essential. I am confident that if the union leaders were honest with themselves, they would back this legislation in an attempt to settle the little wrinkles it may contain in the spirit of cooperation and to give the people of the province the opportunities to achieve.

Bill 19 will allow the people of this province to get on with the job. Bill 19 will give this province the opportunity to achieve the many applaudable statements contained in the Speech from the Throne. Bill 19 is designed to provide fairness and equity. It is designed to minimize labour stoppages either by strikes or lockouts. Bill 19 is designed to bring about continued growth in the economy of this province. Bill 19 is designed to honour the rights and freedoms of all British Columbians, rights and freedoms the people of this province so richly deserve.

Mr. Speaker, I support Bill 19 and urge the members of the opposition to do likewise.

MR. BARNES: This is my second time speaking on this bill, unsuccessfully I must regrettably say, in that the motion to hoist Bill 19 was rejected by the government. We lost in that vote, as I'm sure we will lose on the main motion. All of the other protests that we may make are not going to be successful in this House. That's unfortunate, because if ever there was a piece of legislation before this assembly that needed the benefit of time and review by all parties concerned, not the least of which would be the public itself....

It's not just the labour movement and the so-called big labour people — the big bosses, as I think they like to refer to them on that side of the House; those people who represent hundreds of thousands of workers in this province; the so-called biggies who are attempting to get equitability in the workplace: fairness, decent working conditions, fair wages, benefits such as those of us who are members in this Legislature enjoy in terms of retirement plans that are livable, a cost of living that's related to the purchasing power of our dollar from year to year, protection of pensions, feeding families, making lifetime commitments to increasing or making better citizens for this province. Those big-timers out there who are working on behalf of organized individuals are not the only ones we're concerned about. Nor are we concerned only about the people we call the capitalists, who invest their dollars — the so-called good guys, as that side of the House would lead us to believe, who have, by the good graces of God, come on their dollars by accident of birth, by hard work in some instances, leverage in some instances, knowing the right people at the right time in some instances.

[ Page 697 ]

But the so-called capitalists are on the other side, and they're not the only ones concerned about this bill.

[4:00]

The public does not understand what is going on. They do not understand Bill 19. Despite the government's claim that it has consulted with all parties, the public does not understand this bill. For that matter — and to be very candid with you — there are details in this legislation that I'm sure even those of us in this assembly do not appreciate or understand. So the debate that really mattered, the one that the government passed up, was the opportunity to hoist this bill for six months. Now we’re talking on the main motion, having gotten the clear message from the government that this bill is going to go through come hell or high water. There is an urgency about it somehow; it cannot wait. This bill is going to do for the people of British Columbia what ten years of successive Social Credit government has been unable to do: that is, to bring about instant recovery in our economy.

Bill 19, the magic bill. Bill 19, the bill that can't wait. It's too bad, because as a result the people of the province are going to be thrust into a situation that I think will be unprecedented. The bill, to put it very bluntly, is a radical departure from what we are accustomed to in this province in terms of free collective bargaining, in terms of the processes that all parties are accustomed to in resolving disputes, be they job related, in terms of working conditions, fair wages and even market strategies. In other words, this bill is short-circuiting a process in such a way as to destroy any semblance of confidence that may have existed between the parties in the past. It breaks fundamental principles of cooperation. It fails to recognize that no matter how perfect an idea you have or how excellent and imaginative your view of the future might be in terms of quick fixes, there are essential things that you must never forget. Where there is more than one party involved, it requires a coming together of the minds and of the dedication and the desire to make it successful.

The methods that the government is using in imposing this bill on the people of British Columbia are of such magnitude and outrageous proportions that I think those of us on this side of the House are dumbfounded by this government's seeming indifference. It is so accustomed to being in office, and having the power to ram things through, that it doesn't realize that this is an exceptional situation, and one that I believe is going to set us back. I'm not one to make predictions lightly, but it will set us back for fundamental reasons, not because there weren't possibilities for the bill.

Surely we all recognize the need for an improved economy, the need for dealing with the changes that are taking place in the world, especially the marketplaces around the world. We all know that we have to remain an attractive, competitive economy. No one is disputing that if you don't have the means you can't get to the end. You have to work together. People have to recognize limitations on resources, on capital, on the cost of doing business, and on people's stress levels and their ability to work without proper compensation. There are all kinds of problems, and we all recognize that.

No one is arguing that the government shouldn't be addressing this problem, and that the government should not be innovative. No one is denying that. What we are saying is that you are short-circuiting the process — the only process by which you can be successful. You cannot impose success. The Premier is making predictions that by bringing in Bill 19 we're all of a sudden going to have people rushing to the boundaries of British Columbia to pour their capital into the economy. Why? Why would the capitalists of the world want to come to British Columbia and pour their money into the economy, unless there is an awfully good deal someplace? Because there are all kinds of Third World countries — the Pacific Rim, Asia Pacific, all over the place. You can put money all along the coast. You don't have to come here.

I was down in the Caribbean not too long ago — St. Lucia. I spent a few months down there. I couldn't believe that those people had their day of independence a few years ago and they're worse off now than ever. Independence is like saying you now have the right to starve, because your economy is held to ransom. People are not organized. You've got poor people thinking that they're going to become rich capitalists by milking their neighbour. You have chaos rather than cooperation. You don't have compassion; you have the so-called individual initiative — get what you can get.

But can't you understand that times are changing? The workers far outnumber the so-called capitalists, who themselves are nothing but workers. There's no such thing as a big fat cat anymore. Everybody is working hard — the guy with money and the guy without money. Times are tough. We have to cooperate. What you're doing now is giving people the illusion that there is a class system here where there are those who should have and there are the others who shouldn't have, and that we've got to put those workers in their place so that we can get on with the economy. That doesn't work any more. That's an illusion. It's not real. The capitalists are just as scared as the workers, and if a worker wants to become a capitalist, and he thinks he's going to have it easier, forget it. It's tough. We have to cooperate.

The time has come when the markets are changing, when we're going to have to pay for what we get and do it together. Bringing in a bill such as this, which begins to put the worker in this place.... It tells him that he can only organize to a certain point, and after that point we're going to bring in the hammer of Thor. We're going to bring in the big czar who is going to come down and say: "That's the end of negotiations — force a settlement on those people." Do you think that's the way we're going to build cooperation and we're going to build an economy in this province? It won't work.

There's one thing we can say: we've been criticized in this province and in this country as Canadians, people saying we don't have much backbone and we're always looking for an easy way out; we want to be rescued by those foreigners with their investments and we want to get the benefits without much risk. I can tell you there's one thing that all Canadians like and respect, and that's their right to choice, their freedom and their right to feel that they are relevant.

If you sit down at the bargaining table knowing that there's some guy in the back room who's going to have a clock ticking and tell you that your time is up, what kind of a negotiation is that, especially when it's favoured on the side of the so-called capitalists, when you're saying that workers should not be organized? This, in effect, is what you are saying. You've got all kinds of cute little parts in this bill that beg the ability of a person to take it seriously. I personally am looking for solutions, the same as you are; I'm not looking for ways to obstruct the government. It's tough enough being government; and it's tough enough being in the opposition. But what's worse is when you have to go and listen to people complain about the unfairness of government, the insensitivity of government, the lack of compassion of government, the lack of consistency of government, the lack of the

[ Page 698 ]

government standing for something and meaning it, instead of being all over the place, looking to see which way the winds are blowing and how the polls are showing. One suspects that the government has calculated very carefully this initiative and believes that it is going to divide and conquer; it believes that it will get public support for this initiative. Because I think the government believes that the people in this province are so insensitive and so selfish in their views about protecting their interests. After all, we've heard from that side of the House that 85 percent of the people are working; there have been speeches made that indicate to me that the 15 percent who are not working, well, that's too bad. We'll do what we can for them, but they're going to have to fit in.

I suggest that Bill 19 is probably the gauntlet, so to speak, and I say that because.... We have to go back a few months to some of the remarks by the Premier when he was speaking to some of his gatherings of people from the chambers of commerce around the province. He warned — actually, he almost admonished — when he said to them: "The time will come when you're going to have to make up your minds. You're going to have to stand firmly, be with me, because the fight is coming."

We sort of laughed around Christmastime and said: "Oh, no, surely Vander Zalm isn't going to go back to confrontation after all those speeches that he had been making up at Whistler when he was running for the leadership of the Social Credit Party. Surely he's not going to start confronting again after convincing everybody that he has changed his spots. He is truly the saint he's been telling everybody he is, a compassionate man. He's not a wolf in sheep's clothing. His smile is for real. It's not true when we say that he's flip-flopping back and forth" — like we did, you know, in the campaign with our little ad. That's turning out to be more accurate than even we realized: he says this, now he says that, now he says this, now he says that.

It was sort of humorous at one time, but you know, let's face it, we're dealing with an individual who is the Premier of this province. I feel he has his mind made up, has an agenda. What we're doing in this Legislature is really immaterial in terms of what's going to happen to this province because of this man's personal design, his personal campaign. And he has brought Bill 19 in through the Minister of Labour, but it's the Premier's bill. And the Premier, I'm sure, will make no bones about where he stands in terms of the economy.

When the collective bargaining process began to come up to a level of equitability with capital, when it begins to be a case of equality so that all parties can get a fair share, he sees this as mitigating against the development of a good economy, a healthy economy. And he's opposed to it.

You've heard a few of the references to some of the things that are happening with the bill — for instance, what they call double-breasting. I always thought that was a suit or a dress design of some sort, but you know, now they're calling double-breasting what is a double reverse — like in football: you're going this way, but he's going that way, now which way is he going? You'll see in a minute, because he's cashing in at the till while you're still over here trying to picket this place. They've moved the goal-posts.

It's the kind of thing that makes it very clear to me that the government doesn't really want organized labour and the working people to share in the power and have any serious role to play in which way things go in this province — that is what this bill is doing. We've accused the government of being anti-union and anti-worker; but I don't think there's any doubt about it that this government has an agenda which involves reducing organized labour in this province to nothing, so it can go around the world and say: "Look, the workers have no real power in British Columbia. You can come here and pay them whatever you feel like. You can invest whatever you wish. You can manoeuvre. We will support you 100 percent. Just give us a commitment that you're going to spend your money here. Mind you, we're not going to hold you to leaving it here. You can take your profit anywhere else you want." It's sort of like those so-called economic zones that the government had in mind. That was another scheme, another aborted attempt to try to find a way to circumvent organized labour and workers in this province, to basically cheat the majority of people in this province of having a fair share. That's what it's all about.

Yes, it's sinister, and yes, I think it's evil. I don't think what this government is doing is sincere, I don't think it's fair, and I don't think it's responsible. Quite frankly, I don't think it's going to work. I think you're going to get quite a backlash. And I think the Premier was probably right when he was telling those people from the chambers of commerce to be ready to stand tall, to fight: "There will come a time when we're going to have to have you putting up, because those guys are going to start to get onto what's going on."

[4:15]

I'm opposed to it, Mr. Speaker. Not that I'm taking sides, but as a responsible member of the Legislature, I believe that the government has come up with what it believes is a quick fix. It believes that it's politically popular, and that any time you want to attack a group who are at a disadvantage, the people of British Columbia will support it.

Working people basically just want to make a living. They basically just want to raise their families. They basically just want to pay their rent. In fact, they want to be able to buy a few cases of that beer that the Premier promised he was going to negotiate lower prices on. They want to go to the movies; they want to see the world a bit. They want to get their children through the school system and into university — train them so they can get jobs and go out and play their part in society. Working people — what we've perhaps mistakenly referred to as "ordinary" people.... But you know, if that's ordinary, that's a pretty high standard for any of us to emulate. These are people who just want to do their duty. Why can't we give them a fair shake? Why can't we ensure...?

Why don't we become more proactive in our legislation and in our thinking, instead of taking the view that if you want something you've got to go out and fight for it and take it. It's about time we realized that equitableness has to be a tangible commodity. It has to be something that people can get their hands on and feel, and know that the government cares, instead of having a government led by a Premier who says: "Look at me. I'm a saint. I'm a man of high moral standards, and I am opposed to gambling. I never gamble. But if that's what the people want, okay." There's your so-called high standard, your man of high morals. "It's okay to gamble. I don't like it, but if that's what you people want, all right." Check him out. But then, on the other hand, he says: "I'm a man of high standards. I don't believe in abortion." "Yes, but, Mr. Premier, it's the law; it's okay." "I don't care what the law says. It's wrong and I'm going to fight it." That's the difference between.... That's how the Premier of this

[ Page 699 ]

province thinks. And on and on and on it goes. How can you trust him?

I think that the Premier is insensitive. He's not compassionate. He has his own agenda, and he's using those people, including the Minister of Labour, whom I happen to believe is a pretty decent fellow. I believe he's fair-minded. I believe he means it when he says he's going to listen. But the cards are stacked against him. He is not going to get around this Premier. I remember this Premier when he was Minister of Education. The teachers who are getting ready to go out on strike now have got themselves a problem. They know, because he filled the Agrodome with nothing but teachers back in the seventies. They even got a bottle of Tylenol out and tried to scare him. That didn't scare him; he turned that into something and made more headlines for the Zalm. Pardon me, Mr. Speaker, we're not supposed to use names. But I think that in this case.... It's a phrase coined by the press. It's almost an aphorism. It's something we should all be using: the Zalm, the Zap.

Interjection.

MR. BARNES: Yes, not twice. Okay.

This Premier was also Minister of Human Resources. We had social workers — all those bleeding hearts, do-gooders, committed people — who were trying to help the downtrodden, the hard-done-by, the misused and abused, the neglected, the frustrated, the suicide-prone, all of them. People from all over the province were marching all over the place, coming across all the bridges of False Creek, coming from every direction, filling the lawns, and where was the Premier, at that time the Minister of Human Resources? He was saying then what he says today: "The bigger the crowd I get, the more I know I am on the right track. I must be doing something right because look at all those protest crowds out there." Check it out if you think I am fabricating. That's the way he thinks, that's the way he talks, and that's why we're getting nowhere.

So how can we trust this man when he says: "Look, this piece of legislation is going to do it for us"? Do you want me to withdraw that, Mr. Speaker?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Please. The hon. member knows much better than that.

MR. BARNES: I withdraw.

We certainly can trust the Premier to do what he has always done, in the same good character that he has always shown, and that is to be as deceptive as any quarterback I have ever played against; you never known where the play is coming from next. Now certainly it is not unparliamentary to draw parallels like that, Mr. Government House Leader. You surely cannot object to me drawing a parallel. After all, politics is power, isn't it, Mr. Speaker? Politics is plays, tactics, deception, all those things, and this is what the Premier is doing. I think he feels that all's fair in love and war, or something along those lines.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: But hon. member, the Chair thought we were talking to the second reading of Bill 19.

MR. BARNES: I am talking directly to Bill 19. Bill 19, I feel, is a tactic. It's a device. It has nothing to do with trying to resolve the problems of the people of this province. What it has to do with is the government making a commitment to a particular ideological stance. It is taking it, and it's firm, and it is warning everybody to be ready for the fight.

That's what Bill 19 is doing, and I say it is wrong. I say I have to oppose it not because I am in the opposition, but because it fundamentally goes against my view of what a democratic process and a democratic society should be. I don't think the government is respecting that process at all; if for no other reason, it should be opposed. Due process is due process. Everybody should be given their fair chance and equal opportunity. Why should we have a set of laws for those workers and a different set of laws for other people? Why should Mr. Ed Peck, who I am sure is a very committed man and is going to do the very best he can, be asked to take on a job that the legislators can't even take on?

You know, it's wrong. What are we doing when we can have someone outside the Legislature with more power than those of us inside the Legislature? How can you convince those people who are sitting down at the bargaining table that what they have to say really will matter, when the clock is ticking and is saying to them: — You've got so much time. Make up your minds, and keep it in line, or we're going to make it for you." No choice. Well, so it goes.

You know, I must say something about this apprenticeship program — the way you are going to go about using young people, the desperate-for-jobs, those people who are trying to fit in and trying to make it. Do you think those 19; 18- and 17-year-old young people are aware of the politics of Bill 19? Do you think they understand what it means when you say: "We're going to give you a chance to serve your apprenticeship by just going directly to an employer"? Do you think they understand that they are assisting the government put up a big flag: "Children, youth, we're trying to help the young people. They've got to have a start in life"? What you are basically doing is flaunting that situation in the face of organized labour and people who have worked, who also have children and are making their children go through the process the same as anybody else. You are saying that all of a sudden the owner, manager or proprietor of a particular business is going to be able to hand-pick and place people in the system to suit himself and circumvent the shop procedures of any union.

It's wrong, and the reason it is wrong is that we have a history of organized labour here — and it's a long, sad story. I'll tell you that if it wasn't for organized labour, we'd all be a lot worse off. This wouldn't be a better economy; it would be a poorer economy. There would be more suspicion, more neglect, more poverty, more people hurting and more people disillusioned about those dreams that we talk about being possible in this system. Instead of celebrating organized labour, instead of cooperating and trying to encourage them.... If you feel that they are not as democratic as they should be, why not work with them and support them? This is what they are saying: "Let's sit down and let's work together." Why wipe out the whole Labour Code and change something else with this so-called new Industrial Relations Reform Act? It's not a reform. There is nothing reformative about this legislation. This legislation is simply a frontal attack on a group of people. It is an abutment. It stops all action.

I hope these young apprentices, when they do get these jobs, realize that they have been party to some scams by the government, because at some point working people are going to realize that they're losing a very valuable thing. This

[ Page 700 ]

government's agenda has achieved that. Step by step, bit by bit, they will dismantle the essential elements that make trade unionism and organized labour what it is. With all the shortcomings, and there have been plenty — we can all point to unsavoury union leaders and tricks and exploitation and a number of things — I can tell you that fundamentally the trade union movement has been one of the most important things that has happened in our democratic society. We grew out of a European culture where you had sweatshops, children being exploited, babies being used and abused and neglected, working day and night and weekends, until bit by bit these people began to realize that they had to share the power. They've never wanted to take over; they've only wanted to share.

How can you say in societies such as ours that you are going to take away these powers, that the time has now come when we no longer need representation? In a democracy you always need representation. All these people have is their labour, and they have a right to sell it at a fair and equitable price. We have a duty to respect that, the same as we respect the right of MLAs and cabinet ministers to be properly remunerated, to be given the proper resources to do their jobs. We don't need to have anybody organize for us, because we can vote for ourselves and make sure that we are covered, and I say that we should do the same thing for those people who are organized workers in this society.

I hope it is very clear by now that I oppose this legislation and believe that it should be withdrawn.

MR. MERCIER: Mr. Speaker, thank you for this opportunity to speak in favour of the Industrial Relations Reform Act, Bill 19. You know, I found the opposition comments very interesting. I've been quite disappointed that so much time was taken to say so little. Each opposition speaker used their full time allotment and came up with very little in the way of tangible criticism of the bill. In fact, the last speaker spent fully five minutes in a personal attack on the character of the Premier, which I think is really not necessary when you're addressing Bill 19.

I'm pleased, however, with that in a sense, because if all they've got left to say is the personal criticism, it's an indication that the bill itself....

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. member, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I would just like to point out to you that you are doing precisely what you're saying is being done on the opposite side of the House.

MR. MERCIER: Well, I didn't think I had said anything yet that should be withdrawn, except that I didn't think it was necessary to have an attack on the Premier under the debate of the issues involved with Bill 19. What I am saying, if it's come down to that, is that Bill 19 must be fairly sound, if that's all that can be said.

Really, Bill 19 is talking about the freedom that was lost to the employers, especially in smaller companies. The freedoms that protected the union members in their battles with the larger corporations became very onerous, in the sense of the powers granted to unions, for the smaller employers. Over the years, there has been a shift to protect organized labour — in the last 20 or 30 years. There were rulings of labour relations boards of times gone by that often ignored the facts of the marketplace.

[Mr. Weisgerber in the chair.]

Some rules had, in some respects, overwhelmed small business. It must be recognized that there are 100,000 to 105,000 small businesses in operation in this province, and I take small business to mean those that have 50 employees or less. They are already operating under incredible odds. They need the freedom to manage their labour force. Entrepreneurs that are running these small businesses are the risk-takers. They spend long hours and are dedicated to what they're trying to do. They're confronted with taxes, regulations, bankers, financing, mortgages and bad debt accounts that they're trying to collect.

[4:30]

On top of everything else, they'd have a union organization chasing their tail. Well, they have to have union organizations in the larger companies for employee protection. There are alternatives for protecting the employees' rights in smaller companies. The smaller companies and the smaller businesses value the efforts of their workers. They tend to treat them as well as or, in many cases, better than organized shops and organized businesses, but the employers probably felt somewhat hamstrung when faced with the labour laws that were really designed to govern much larger, stronger businesses.

The simple freedom to choose the workers that they wish to employ in their businesses.... They want to choose the best workers, and some of the laws that were in place restricted an employer from that simple freedom, very important to a small business. They would have to go through the union to replace an incompetent employee or to find out if they could hire a particularly qualified younger person who wanted to start out in a working career. Those situations really hurt productivity. They prevented many businesses from carrying out their business plans.

Everyone knows that productivity depends on a happy workforce, and a happy workforce can happen even in nonunion shops. In fact, the majority of our businesses are not organized and they do have a very productive workforce. Unions don't necessarily guarantee a happy and productive workforce.

The expansion of the workforce will follow the confidence small business will have because of the stability that will follow Bill 19. The world markets will see B.C. as a reliable producer which relies heavily on the time-tested individual initiative of the workers and of those entrepreneurs and small business people who create things and build things.

The minister has advised that we would look at criticisms that might arise which disclose technical flaws, and that's part of being an open government. To put a complex bill together is a difficult task. It's a good bill, and there may be flaws; minor corrections may have to be made. That's what the opposition should be directing itself to. In the meantime, the philosophy and the principles involved will not be amended. Bill 19 is this government's position, and it's this government's responsibility under the parliamentary system to take the initiative and create the legislation. In this case they've done a very good job, and I'm speaking in support of it.

MR. BLENCOE: Mr. Speaker, as we wind down the debate on second reading, one had hoped, certainly on this side of the House, that the government had received a number

[ Page 701 ]

of messages from concerned citizens about the full implications and ramifications of this legislation — not taking the point of view of labour or any specific interest group, but an expression by many British Columbians from all walks of life that this legislation before us will not do the things that this government wishes to do. It will continue to create confrontation and destabilization and in the long term will be bad for the economy.

We tried with the hoist motion to ask the government to take time to reflect, time to consider other opinions, time for the government to consider its election promises, which basically stated that this government believed in open consultation and participatory democracy. All of my colleagues intelligently and rationally gave good evidence, looking through the bill, various aspects of the bill that would add to the problems the province will face in the future if this bill goes through intact. And the member just said that the basic principles of the bill will not be pulled and will not be reconsidered.

Mr. Speaker, once again, as I did in my discussion of the hoist motion, I really do have to sincerely ask the government in its wisdom to listen to British Columbians — people such as Mr. Matkin — who have years of experience in these areas, to really think about the action it is taking. In my preparation for this debate on second reading, I perused an excellent article written by Mr. Matkin in 1975, entitled "Government Intervention in Labour Disputes in British Columbia." In the opening remarks, Mr. Matkin states the following, which I think epitomizes much of the philosophical and global debate that's coming from this side of the House in terms of how the government is approaching this issue: "Where significant group rights are in issue in a democratic society, it is imperative to develop a strategy of participatory legislative reform. Even well-founded attempts to regulate the balance of economic power in collective bargaining law may be rendered ineffective and unsuccessful by a unilateral process of reform, rather than by any lack of merit in the reform itself."

Those who know this issue better than I do, particularly our Labour critic, the member for North Island (Mr. Gabelmann), will give the merits and lack of merits in this bill, and have already indicated some of them. But for me, Mr. Matkin's statements about group rights in a democratic society, and how it is imperative to develop a strategy of participatory legislative reform, are telling, critical, essential. What has happened with this piece of legislation is that Mr. Matkin's sound advice on determining legislative reform by participation has been ignored. Bill 19 and Bill 20 came into this Legislature with no consultation with the labour movement, the business community and the other groups and individuals impacted by this legislation. What Mr. Matkin is saying is that even if we agree with this bill — and obviously we don't, because we think it's bad for British Columbia — the process will render it basically ineffective. The unilateral process that you're using with this legislation will create nothing but trouble for the government.

I have to say once again that this government really should heed the words of people like Mr. Matkin. They are sound advice. As we go through the bill, and as the days wear on, we find — virtually daily — new wrinkles in this legislation that even government members, ministers of the Crown, cannot explain. They don't know the answers; they don't know why certain things are in the bills. It's profoundly flawed.

I recall some years ago, when I first came to this House, the debate we had on the compensation stabilization program, the Public Sector Restraint Act and others. We asked the government of the time to think about what they were doing, the chaos they would create in the province through those various restraint measures. We asked them then to hoist those pieces of legislation. But we heard from the government that there was great urgency, and they were going to proceed, hell or high water, with those and other pieces of restraint legislation. If there's one thing that all of us who are responsible to our constituents and to all British Columbians should do in this chamber, it's to learn from our mistakes, learn from history; learn that when you get a reaction.... Some reactions are obviously predictable. We know that. But in this debate, and in the last two weeks, reaction by certain people has not been predictable. We should learn from that; we should learn from past experience that when you proceed too fast, when you surprise people and change the playing field radically, you're going to have nothing but trouble and headaches.

Once again, over the last few years in this province we've gone through turmoil and confrontation. We heard that things would be different. We heard that moderation would be the byword of this government. We heard that consultation was going to be promised in anything major that would impact upon people's lives; for instance, on this particular bill, organized labour. We heard it; we were promised it. But what has happened? I guess those promises have gone by the board. And what we have is an extreme piece of legislation — extreme, Mr. Speaker. On this side of the House, we're calling for moderation, rational thought and a rethink of a piece of legislation that can only harm the majority of British Columbians in the long term.

Mr. Matkin said it, and I quote him again. He said on CBC radio that this legislation was basically moving to protect the non-union, unorganized part of our economy and presumably that assumption is that this will attract more investment. But the difficulty with that assumption is that in the meantime we have to get along with the unions who do exist. He concluded his statement on CBC radio by saying that this legislation "doesn't treat unions as an important part of the economy, is rather insulting to them, and I think that it will make it more difficult for employers to get along with their trade unions."

Once again, we ask the government to forget some of its ideological bias, its dogma, its philosophical perceptions of what a union is all about, or what they perceive to be the problems with unions, and really talk to those individuals who can give you sound advice on how to get the job done. Nobody disagrees, Mr. Speaker, that a government should be able to govern. The government got elected; we don't disagree with that, obviously. But when you're dealing with such critical issues for the future of this province, and when, as you say, you violate the basic principles that Mr. Matkin indicated in his 1975 article.... When you're dealing with trade unions and working people, you must ensure that the participatory legislative reform process is alive and well if your legislation is to be effective. It's not going to be effective, Mr. Speaker.

[4:45]

What we have is a unilateral action by a government that, for whatever reasons, is determined to hurt the trade union movement in British Columbia. They have an axe to grind that can only slow down recovery in the province and hurt the

[ Page 702 ]

long-term economic benefits to a stable economy and a unionized workforce that believes in collective bargaining and in collective bargaining being left intact. It believes that government, where possible, allows the collective bargaining process to proceed freely. What this does, Mr. Speaker, is virtually destroy 15 years or so of work under the Labour Code. Sure, the Labour Code has its problems, but it generally has been accepted as a good mechanism to work out management-labour problems in the province.

We have made, and will continue to make, much of the point that this bill is bad for the economy of British Columbia — not just for labour, but bad for the average British Columbian.

Interjection.

MR. BLENCOE: That's us. It's all of us. Sure.

The average British Columbian and their family will be hurt by Bill 19. It may very well cost the jobs of British Columbians. For example, employers will be able to contract out work to someone on a minimum-wage contract, even if the union's collective agreement doesn't allow that to happen — or disagrees. There'll be virtually no job security if your company changes ownership. Workers will have no protection if the company restructures internally. The union will not be able to change this at the bargaining table. Mr. Speaker, at the end of all this, workers through the trade union movement who have struggled for a decent working wage in this province over the years will have less money to take home and less job security.

Interjection.

MR. BLENCOE: And soon for small business too, absolutely.

Mr. Speaker, many people are asking this: can workers be fired for walking a picket line? A basic, fundamental right in a free society, a democratic society. Canada belongs to the International Labour Organization. We signed those things and believe in those things. But in this legislation, a worker can be fired for walking on a picket line. A worker's right to picket exists only if the new boss of the Industrial Relations Council says it will not affect the welfare of the residents of the province. If he orders the picketing to stop, and you refuse.... I'm not talking about secondary picketing or anything; I'm just talking about normal picketing by somebody who for whatever reason has decided to take that action. If you are ordered to stop, and you refuse, you can be fired with no right to arbitration.

MR. ROSE: It's draconian.

MR. BLENCOE: Mr. Speaker, I am trying to avoid those heavy words today. Let's say it is heavy-handed.

We are trying to point out that there are a number of aspects of this legislation that.... Even those who don't have much time for labour find some aspects of this bill particularly offensive.

How about the right to join a union? Mr. Speaker, joining a union will be very difficult. We believe that if a worker wishes to join a union, he should be free to do so, and it should obviously be decided on his own conscience. No one should be able to interfere with that. But Bill 19 invites employers to campaign against the union. Long delays at the new Industrial Relations Council will be common, and once you get a union, it will be very difficult to bargain a collective agreement to protect workers.

What about the Essential Service Disputes Act, and the government saying that they have removed that act from the face of British Columbia?

MR. WILLIAMS: They put it everywhere else.

MR. BLENCOE: That's right. Has the government removed the Essential Service Disputes Act? No, Mr. Speaker, it has not. It still applies, and any worker can be declared essential by the industrial relations commissioner if their dispute affects the welfare of the residents of the province. I am quoting. This applies to both public and private sector workers. The commissioner has the power to declare a portion of the workforce essential and leave the rest to strike.

What about the whole question of double-breasting? The government says double-breasting is gone; this legislation won't allow double-breasting. But there are some trade unions who say it does. Who is right? All workers whose employers set up another non-union company to underbid the union company used to be protected if the new double-breasted or side-by-side company was under "common control or direction." Now unless the new side-by-side company is under the same operational control or direction, companies are free to double-breast. This means that a worker's company can set up a non-union company double-owned by the employer's son, for example, or run by a different manager, and you will have no recourse when that company underbids the company you work for.

This bill is full of so much smoke and mirrors and deception — I have to say deception — that as the days go by, we see more and more offensive components that this side of the House and the majority of British Columbians cannot accept in a democratic system.

What about the small business sector? The member for Vancouver East mentioned that. The point we are trying to make on this side of the House is that this bill doesn't just impact on labour. It has serious implications for all British Columbians. That's why over the last week or two we have asked this government to take another look and actually learn about some of the sections that you don't seem to know about. I wish the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Couvelier) were here.

MR. WILLIAMS: I'll catch them later.

MR. BLENCOE: I know. I'll get back to the small business sector in a minute.

There is a section at the end of the bill, section 73, which refers to the Financial Administration Act, and which says that the government's power "to control or limit expenditures and set conditions for any kind of expenditure under an expropriation includes the power to require, as a condition of the payment of any grant, subsidy or any other payment...." And it goes on. The Minister of Finance says he doesn't know what this is all about, but we know what it's all about. The government is going to control local government. It's going to say what they can expend and what they can collect. We have, in a labour bill, Big Brother telling local governments what they're going to be able to do financially. That's what they're going to do.

[ Page 703 ]

MR. ROSE: Expo funds all over again, right?

MR. BLENCOE: That's right. But when the Premier was.... No, I take it back. I don't think the Premier was asked about this one. I believe the Minister of Labour was asked about this section and I think the Minister of Finance was asked about this section, and they both said: "Oh. Well, I'll have to go take a look at it. I'll get back to you." And we've had no explanation, Mr. Speaker.

MR. WILLIAMS: "Don't blame me, I didn't write it."

MR. BLENCOE: That's right. What does it mean? No one on the government side seems to know. It's our understanding that there are a number of sections that members of the government have been asked about and that no one seems to want to know about or professes to be the author of or really knows the meaning of. It's a sad, sad indictment of a government that says it's in control and that wants to do great things for the province of British Columbia, when they can't even explain — and the Minister of Finance can't even explain — a section in the act that impacts upon the Financial Administration Act of the province of British Columbia. He doesn't know what it's about.

MR. WILLIAMS: They're being honest.

MR. BLENCOE: Well, that's true.

What about the small business sector, Mr. Speaker? There seems to be a fundamental mistake by this government that if you control organized labour you're going to control all sorts of other things. What this government fails to realize is that working people with a decent wage and an ability to spend contribute to the economy of the province.

You know, Mr. Speaker, the small business community in the last few years, particularly under restraint.... I know that in my community when that restraint legislation came down they saw the results of a crazy government that didn't consult over what it was going to do and they saw the withdrawal of consumer spending and the dramatic impact on small business. And they know what Mr. Matkin is saying in his 1910 article when he says that when you bring in a unilateral process that doesn't consult the people who are going to be affected or the business community that's going to be hurt — because what you've got is a process that's not understood, it's not participatory, and it's not reform in a progressive sense — you're going to get problems. And I can tell you that the small business community, just starting to recover after Mr. Bill Bennett's time, is saying, "What's to come now?" because they know those working people and those organized trade unionists spend dollars in their community and that they're essential to small business health.

This bill will mean uncertain spending habits, to say the least. Certain purchases aren't going to get made, because the trade union movement — those thousands and thousands of trade unionists — is not going to be sure about their future. They don't know what they're going to get. They don't know what this government is going to do to them next. If they can do Bill 19, what's around the corner? Instability.

The small business community is just starting to recover. You've got thousands and thousands of working people who don't know what their future will be because of Bill 19. The long-term effect is continued instability, and therefore reluctance to invest in the province of British Columbia. It's time to clean up the image in this province. It’s time to clean up the image of confrontation and legislation that doesn't consult and, in the words of Mr. Matkin, is a unilateral process of reform.

Bill 19 changes the intent of the Labour Code from that of promoting collective bargaining and the resolution of disputes by the two parties involved to making the public interest and the interest of the market economy paramount.

[5:00]

MR. WILLIAMS: That's progress.

MR. BLENCOE: That's right. And the disregard in this bill for the current methodology of resolving labour-management problems means that neither unions nor employers are sure what the rules are. There's so much uncertainty that it will have a profound impact on the general economic climate.

Mr. Speaker, there is no question that the small business community wants, as we've said many times, a level playing field.

MR. WILLIAMS: It's a flat earth they're after.

MR. BLENCOE: Isn't that the chamber of commerce?

Mr. Speaker, in committee we will be going over the various aspects of the sections of this bill.

HON. MR. COUVELIER: Is that a promise?

MR. BLENCOE: It's a promise. There are numerous sections that we will show will be a major problem for the government.

I would like to close by stating that this bill is going to mean nothing but problems for the people of British Columbia. It's not going to do what you want. I have to refer back to Mr. Matkin's very important statement in 1975, when he said: "Where significant group rights are in issue in a democratic society, it is imperative to develop a strategy of participatory legislative reform. Even well-founded attempts to regulate the balance of economic power in collective bargaining law may be rendered ineffective and unsuccessful by a unilateral process of reform...." Mr. Speaker, those are sound words.

AN HON. MEMBER: Would you repeat them?

MR. BLENCOE: "A unilateral process of reform."

We ask this government to go back to the drawing-board, consult with those who are asking to be consulted — the business community, labour groups, interested individuals — and try to come up with something that won't be so draconian and have such a major impact on the positive future that this province could have if we had a government that really believed in consultation with the people of British Columbia.

MR. BRUCE: I'd like to speak a little bit more optimistically. It's springtime, and I think there's a feeling of optimism in this province, a feeling that this province is moving ahead and that there's some leadership.

HON. MR. COUVELIER: Introductions first.

MR. BRUCE: Yes, introductions first.

[ Page 704 ]

Bill 19 is, of course, one that offers, I think, some leadership — leadership that this province has been looking for.

It's been interesting to listen to the debate, and certainly to the last speaker talk about small businesses and the little person who is going to be hurt by Bill 19. Well, I come from a small business background. I also come from a community that was very badly hurt during this last dispute that we had in 1986: the IWA and the forest industry. Nobody in that particular dispute was a winner — nobody at all.

Take the small community of Lake Cowichan in my constituency, where many people work in the woods industry. During that time I had the distinct pleasure of campaigning at the door of many of those people and talking with them, and the one major issue that came up time and again was this dispute and how it could be resolved, and that there had to be a better way of resolving these disputes.

I think it's fair enough to acknowledge that we find that, in the main, most of the negotiating process that takes place in situations where people are looking to come up with a new contract, takes place without any difficulty. As others have mentioned, about 5 percent find themselves in some form of dispute, and of that, an even smaller percentage could find themselves in a prolonged dispute that really starts to put an onus on the people involved — and the third party.

It's that particular aspect that Bill 19 is really dealing with. It's no longer a question of just two players at the table. We're talking about that very large third party. It's funny, I've heard time and time again in this House of a level playing-field. Well, the playing-field isn't level; it's a great big U with two sides fighting it out, and stuck in the middle of it is that public sector that gets hurt time and time again. It's that public sector that we're attempting, with this particular bill, to look after.

When I was at the doorstep, through the Lake Cowichan area and through the riding of Cowichan-Malahat, people who had their life savings depleted because of the prolonged nature of that particular strike — a situation that hurt not only the small businesses in those communities, small businesses that were, as the member speaking just before me mentioned, trying to come out of what has been a difficult time for small business, just starting to get back at it.... They found themselves hit again. And they truly were hit again because of that purchasing power, and quite rightly because of that union purchasing power. I know what that union purchasing power can do, but that union member has to be working. The system has to be working, or the dollars are not there to flow.

What we're attempting to do in Bill 19 is to make sure that if all else fails there is a process available so that that little person, the union member, the small businessman, the third party, is protected and given an opportunity to survive. I think we could probably go back to all of our respective ridings and cite cases of individuals hurt very severely during this last shutdown in the woods industry. You see those particular situations that arise and you hear.... We didn't need to have hearings and a public inquiry take place throughout this province to know that there had to be a better way.

It was told to each and every one of us during this last provincial election campaign that there had to be a better way. There seems to be a fair concern, in particular with the commissioner's role and the fact that he has a tremendous amount of power. I'll be interested to hear the point-by-point debate. I've been involved in government long enough to know that any type of legislation that is written can always be written better. There can always be different aspects that need to be amended or revised or reviewed, and I'll look forward to the opposition's comments as well as those of my other colleagues on the different points that will be made as to amendments or changes or clarifications of the legislation that has been presented.

But the essence of what is being attempted here is good, and I believe it is what the people of the province of British Columbia have been calling for. I do not believe that this is an attempt by the government to go forward in trying to thrash or bash unions; far from it. It is an attempt to provide stable union membership; it's an attempt to keep the people that want to work working, and I believe it will work.

There is a fine line, as was mentioned by the member for North Island (Mr. Gabelmann) between the collective rights and the individual rights, and it's one, of course, that we have to be careful of in dealing with a democracy and whose rights are being trampled upon. It does take a tremendous amount of balance and care when one is talking about legislation that affects both the collective rights and the individual rights. It's not something that comes easily. At the same time, I don't think at this point we should be shouting from the rafters or the rooftops that we're trampling on the collective rights of unions and that we're giving far too much power to the individual rights of the members within the unions; or, conversely, that we're giving tremendous power for improved rights to the management side.

Certainly management has not come out right on the line here saying that this is the best thing since sliced bread. They, too, must have some misgivings, and that to me means that there is some thought that's taking place at the management level and at the union level in respect of this legislation. Perhaps both parties are not completely happy with it, but in time, as we go through the point-by-point debate, some of those items that are concerning both parties can be clarified to lay their concerns to rest.

When you talk of the commissioner, I've heard some stand and say that it's a 28-day strike. As I read the legislation, it could certainly be much longer than 28 days. Those types of points, I am sure, will be clarified, and we'll get a better understanding as to the concerns that each member here in the House has in respect of that legislation and how it could possibly be improved upon. It's the third party that I am talking about that causes me the greatest concern, the one that we need to look after and the one that I think Bill 19 actually does. It's that public interest.

The member for North Island (Mr. Gabelmann) had mentioned that the collective rights of unions versus the individual right of union members is something that we must be careful with. The power of the union to regulate that membership must be there, but at the same time that individual within that union must also have his and her rights protected as well. But while we talk about the collective rights of a union versus the individual rights of the union membership, what about, then, the collective rights of the public at large versus the individual rights of the unions or the corporations? What about the collective right of that entire body, the people of the province of British Columbia?

That is who we ultimately as a group here represent and should be concerned about. Good government leads in providing legislation, does not sit back and simply caretake. When there is a problem, good government looks for that

[ Page 705 ]

problem and deals with that problem. When that good government is put in place and is active, it also listens, as this government is listening, to what people are saying not only in this House, but throughout each and every one of our ridings. But good government does not necessarily succumb to pressure groups or to special interest groups; it listens to the response of the total body as a whole. It's that process through which we will be able to develop good legislation for the province and for the people of British Columbia.

I'm pleased that we are coming close now to the end of second reading, so that we can move ahead and deal with the item-by-item debate of this bill, clarify those points that the opposition finds offensive, clarify and perhaps amend some of those sections that others have brought forward that need some sharpening up, and get on with the actual introduction and adoption of Bill 19, which I think is a long overdue improvement for our labour-management relations here in the province of British Columbia.

MR. WILLIAMS: Well, it's clear that the line is shifting a little bit there on the government's side — signals from the back bench about amendments to come. So it's a real learning process....

[5:15]

AN HON. MEMBER: We listen.

MR. WILLIAMS: Ali, yes, indeed, you listen. If you really wanted to listen on the other side, you'd have taken the legislation out for six months, as we did when we were government, to hear what the people have to say about the legislation, and then dealt with it — not in your back rooms with your legal-beagle management consultants that pull together their kind of statute, where mush-mouthed ministers on the other side barely know what's in the material. Indeed, the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Couvelier) should chuckle, because in a few minutes I want to talk about his interview on CBC last week. If anything was mush-mouthed, that interview last week was pure mush-mouth. But we'll get to that in a few minutes.

Ah, the amendments are going to come raining down. We're going to get a real picture of the kind of soft shuffle and backstep that's going to be necessary as this government moves away from the legislation it brought down with such loud hurrahs and lockup and massage and propagandizing a few weeks ago.

You know, the last time I spoke in the debate I referred to Mr. Matkin and the things he's had to say about this legislation. I don't think it can be overemphasized that this man, who has as much experience in this area as anyone, and who was involved on an earlier occasion in the writing of the previous statute, is making it very clear what his concerns are. At the same time, we talked about Prof. Allen at UBC, who said you were addressing problems that simply weren't there.

Interjection.

MR. WILLIAMS: No, not this time around. I want to quote the Minister of Finance, because that's classic material. That is absolutely classic material.

So today I'd like to talk about the centralizing of power that this legislation involves. The Minister of Finance's subsection clearly does that in terms of interfering with school boards, municipalities, all and sundry agencies that get government money, and some of the latest things that Mr. Matkin has talked about.

Now I'd like to talk about democracy. You folks on the other side have said: "Why, this is going to bring democracy in." As a person who is interested in the subject — as all of us should be in this chamber — I thought it might mean something like workers on the boards of directors of corporations, like they have in West Germany, in Scandinavia and indeed as we once had in British Columbia. I was surprised to find that worker democracy didn't mean workers having some say in the management of the companies they worked for, or being part of the board of directors. So I'd like to talk about that a little bit.

I'd like to talk about the IWA strike as well, since that seems to be the touchstone for so many on the other side of the House. That's why you brought in this legislation. But it's very clear, from all the speakers we've heard from who are informed in this area, that indeed it was intervention that caused much of the problem in the IWA strike. Now you bring before us a bill that is nothing but intervention; it's intervention personified.

The Minister of Finance's chunk of the bill is in substantive amendments to the Financial Administration Act, section 73. Very dramatic stuff! Why, it says: "The power in this subsection (1) to control or limit expenditures and to set conditions for any kind of expenditure under an appropriation includes the power to require, as a condition of the payment of any grant, subsidy or other payment, that the corporation or other body or other person receiving the grant...shall comply with....

Interjection.

MR. WILLIAMS: Somebody should have explained it to the minister before he got on radio, because that's clear. It says you can intervene, you can set conditions in terms of any grant to any body, any institution. This was made clear at the beginning when our finance critic, the first member for Nanaimo (Mr. Stupich), explained the section. He got on radio the other morning and said very clearly that any payment of any kind to any person, organization or corporation shall comply with the directives of Treasury Board. And he spoke before the Minister of Finance, so you would think that little bit of help from the member for Nanaimo would have clarified a little for the minister what he had to say. It means you can move in on salaries, compensation, conditions, and it flies in the face of everything the Premier said prior to the election in terms of decentralization, more authority for local communities and boards, and the like.

What did the Minister of Finance say when he was questioned? "Well, it's a question of intent." Indeed it is. Then he said: "But you've got to look at it first as a package." Well, once you do that you know you're in trouble, because that package hits you with a thump. Then he says: "The intent was balance." But the minister was off balance. He said the CSP is being eliminated by this statute. That's true; it's just being extended to everybody else. That's essentially what it does. He talked about high taxes, and the questioner, the "Early Edition" host, said: "But what about all this excess authority, Mr. Minister?" He said: "Third reading, clause by clause, will explain it. We're not into it yet, and it's up to the NDP to cooperate." Now there's an answer for you.

[ Page 706 ]

Then the host said: "But it's your legislation, Mr. Minister. Does this mean unlimited control over school boards, hospital boards and other agencies?" The minister said: "Well, I wouldn't put it in those terms" — I guess he wouldn't — "but it'll be debated in third reading. It's a matter of the public interest and the third party, and it'll be understood in third reading." Not if the minister has anything to do with it, it won't.

Then the host said: "Well, are you saying never?" And the minister said: "No politician ever says never." And then the host said: "But are you saying yes or no?" And the minister said: "Sometimes." There's the bottom line, and this guy is handling the books of the province. Is it any wonder we are in debt? Well, you know, it seemed to me....

HON. MR. COUVELIER: It was early in the morning.

MR. WILLIAMS: It wasn't that early! That explains it. The minister says it was early in the morning. That's why his mouth was full of mush. But I came to the conclusion that the mush was a little bit higher, that it was really above the shoulder.

It's one thing to use the minister's devices as he uses them in question period. We get that mush on a regular basis in question period — and that's after lunch. But it really wasn't a ploy on CBC. I wonder if maybe we are giving the minister too much credit. Maybe the emperor really has no clothes, and he is really telling us what he thinks. That's the secret: he is really telling us what he thinks. The message is very clear.

We heard much from Mr. Vander Zalm, though, about this important issue of decentralization when he was campaigning in the election, and before that. I was intrigued by that, because I too was out of this chamber for several years, just as the Premier was. I was out longer, and I think that replenished the human capital to a greater extent than in the Premier's case. But that is a biased point of view. I think it is important that politicians be involved, maybe be out and then back again, because I think it does give them some perspective. I remember the Premier being up in the East Kootenays during the election campaign, talking about the importance of decentralizing and not having all the power here in Victoria or with the big corporations. That has a lot of appeal for me. Since I was out longer, I hold the view much more strongly than the Premier that it is important that we decentralize, and that the power indeed be out in the regions and among the people, and that it be spread about in a pluralistic way as much as we can.

But you know what happens. As a person that used to work for me when we were government, he used to talk about this problem you have in this crazy little precinct; he used to talk about it as the royal jelly, in terms of the royal prerogatives that are applied to ministers of the Crown. It's a real problem. You're captivated by this sense of power when you are in these roles, all too often. I think that's what has happened with this minister. He's been eating a little bit too much of the royal jelly, along with the mush. It’s absolutely devastating. It ends up becoming the stuff of Big Brother. We should deal with it. It's serious. We're all the losers when this happens.

I'd like to talk a little more about this statute, in terms of talking about these disputes as labour disputes. As the member for Prince Rupert (Mr. Miller) and some of the others have said, we always tend to talk about these issues as labour disputes; we never talk about them as management disputes. Never, never, never!

The assumption over there on the other side is that the management elite really has all the answers. I've known enough captains of industry in this province that it has shaken my faith in free enterprise, folks.

MR. R. FRASER: Name one.

MR. WILLIAMS: Oh, I could give you a list as long as my arm. And I'm sure the Minister of Forests (Mr. Parker) could give me a list of names from Westar as long as his arm, and we might almost agree on the list.

I reflected on this a little while back, when I was looking at the Nilsson report on the forest industry of British Columbia. This was a Swede from the Royal College of Forestry in Stockholm, who came here under Peter Pearse and the FEEA study group at UBC, to look at our industry and make some projections in terms of the future. There is a range of things that come through. But in Nilsson's report what clearly comes through is a questioning about the competence of management in this province, in this sector. It comes through loud and clear. This is a forester and business person from Sweden, with a different background; a different sense of values, of course, to some extent. He looked at management in this province, and he came away feeling black about it.

He felt that a lot of the so-called labour disputes in British Columbia were the fault of incompetent management, insensitive management, and that is often the case. But in the public perspective and in terms of the line the government always peddles, that's never ever raised as the potential area of problem, and it is. It's real. So Mr. Nilsson made it pretty clear. He didn't think management managed very well, even in terms of their own so-called management prerogatives in capital spending, because they generally accelerated capital spending at the wrong time and created surpluses on the market, which depressed price, which was not in the interest of the province or the corporation. So we got that kind of managerial incompetence, and they may have learned some lessons. I think they have. That's certainly the impression I've had from recent meetings with the corporate sector in the forest industry. Nevertheless, they've been expensive lessons, and we've never addressed the lack of learning or understanding in the labour sector. When you get somebody from western Europe here looking at those questions, they see it in a very different light.

Enough of Mr. Nilsson. I think it's clear. But maybe it's worth reflecting on it a little bit more, because I guess in the Vancouver press of a week ago last Tuesday they gave us a list of what the top executives are getting paid. Competence doesn't matter very much. They all get....

Interjection.

MR. WILLIAMS: Well, no, because frequently engineers get these top management jobs, and you know I don't....

Interjection.

MR. WILLIAMS: Too many of those folks have an antilabour bias that doesn't do them good stead in management. What's happened is that the managers pay themselves. Look

[ Page 707 ]

at the numbers. Nobody questions these. Bell Canada's chairman gets $977,300.

[5:30]

MR. BLENCOE: De Grandpre?

MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, that's Mr. De Grandpre. Alcan's president gets $1,157,958. How do you like those apples? Better than engineering. Canadian Pacific. I remember meeting Mr. Stinson here in Victoria some years ago as Minister of Forests, and he wanted to know if I thought it would be reasonable if Canadian Pacific and CP Enterprises built a pulp mill on Vancouver Island in terms of using some of their great forest assets they had, and I indicated that indeed it would be most worthwhile and we would welcome it. We're still waiting for the pulp mill, just as we're waiting for Mr. Doman's pulp mill, Mr. Minister. I wonder if you might be as firm with that staunch Socred supporter as the last minister in terms of demanding performance. Mr. Stinson, who asked that very thoughtful question a decade or so ago, is now paid $667,418 a year.

What about Mr. Smith, the president of M&B? Why, last year he was getting $250,000. He got into a fight with labour; they had a strike for four and a half months. You can be sure he was calling the shots with COFI. They pay most of the bills with FIR, Forest Industrial Relations. Well, $250,000 last year; he puts the workers out for four and a half months, and then decides to pay himself $450,000 this year. That is a modest increase of 79 percent. Well, that's great stuff. What are his bosses saying by this? What is the collective management group saying? They're saying: "Go to it, Ray. It's fine when the workers are out for four and a half months. It's quite all right. It's another 79 percent increase."

Westcoast Transmission's man, Anderson here, was getting $469,000 last year, and he gets a modest 28 percent increase to $601,841. On it goes.

HON. MR. COUVELIER: What's the relevance?

MR. WILLIAMS: Imagine the Minister of Finance asking what's relevant! Imagine a person that gives the kind of answers that he gives in question period and on radio, and then demands to know what is relevant in terms of what anybody says anywhere. It's a kind of unlimited gall, but there you are.

The relevance is that you people have one blind eye. You just see the problems in terms of labour; you never see it in terms of management. It is always assumed that management is right. That's what is always assumed on the other side. I mentioned Prof. Bowles last time I spoke in this debate, a professor for....

HON. MR. COUVELIER: Careful on these quotes.

MR. WILLIAMS: It's very difficult on some quotes, I have to admit. It is very difficult to catch the cadence, and it just doesn't make sense, so you have to write each word separately and then repeat them.

At any rate, Prof. Bowles has looked at some of these questions. He has looked at the problems in North America — management questions — and the performance of the economy in broader terms. He's a professor of economics in Massachusetts. His view, and he supports it with some interesting research and data, is that the trend in North America since the Second World War, since 1945, is one in which the answer of management, in dealing with problems in terms of productivity and problems with respect to responses from labour, is to apply more management to the problem. The history of the corporate sector since the Second World War in North America is one of answering perceived problems by layering on more levels of management. The data is in, and it's clear that that is indeed what has happened since 1945. You've got a problem, so you add more levels of management. What's happened?

Interjection.

MR. WILLIAMS: Well, it is relevant, because the average worker then becomes more and more isolated and separated from the decision-making process by this unproductive level of management in terms of superintendents, foremen, assistant managers, deputy managers, vice-presidents, senior vice-presidents, executive vice-presidents, presidents, chief executive officers and chairmen — all these birds that get paid very well and generally don't add to productivity. So in terms of communication with the workers and all the rest of it, it doesn't happen. It simply doesn't happen. I think Prof. Bowles has really made an argument.

HON. MR. COUVELIER: What's the relevance of this?

MR. WILLIAMS: It is relevant. It's disturbing to get the Minister of Finance continuing to ask what the relevance of this is. If you have to explain the relevance of these questions, it's an indication of the kinds of problems we're going to have down the road, in terms of the operations of that ministry and the attitude of that minister. I had really thought that those kinds of statements on radio were a front; you didn't want to talk about the issue and so you just filled it up with flannel. But the real thing is obviously flannel, that's the problem.

Mr. Matkin, from the employers' council, has come out yet again saying how he felt about things. The Minister of Labour met — last Monday, was it? — with Mr. Markin and other representatives. They met for over two hours, and Mr. Matkin said they were discussing ways of improving the legislation — changing, amending, reworking it. And what was the main problem? Why, the main problem was third-party intervention. The whole core, the principle of the statute, third-party intervention....

MR. RABBITT: Somebody has to worry about it.

MR. WILLIAMS: Somebody indeed has to worry about it. All of the public in British Columbia has to worry about it, Mr. Member from the steelworkers' union long ago.

    Mr. Matkin says: "Our message is that the real success of labour-management relations in B.C. Is the private settlement of these disputes by the primary parties, and that the law is of secondary importance." Well, listen to that. Then he said further: "I think the message today was essentially, to the minister, that collective bargaining is working fairly well in British Columbia, contrary to the forest strike, which was an unusual dispute." So there we are.

We went into this before, Mr. Speaker, in terms of these questions. The problem is one of too much government intervention, and this bill extends that.

The democracy question. I wanted to develop that a little bit. As I said earlier, when you said that the bill involved

[ Page 708 ]

democracy, I thought it might mean workers on the board of directors. I have a little bit of experience with that, Mr. Speaker, because when we were government, we owned Kootenay Forest Products in Nelson. The workers there were interested in becoming members of the board of directors. As a result, we asked the IWA to make suggestions for representation on that board of directors, and they did. They ended up suggesting two new people: one of them was a tradesman who was relatively conservative; the other one was a guy who worked on the floor who was, in regular terms, a little bit more radical.

They were placed on the board of directors, and you know what happened over time? The one that was radical became a little more conservative, and the one that was conservative became a little more radical. They started understanding that company a lot better. They learned how to read a balance sheet, which they were not able to read before, and they understood the bottom line, and they started to understand the core problems of the company.

At the same time, the other members on the board started to understand the labour problems which were very real in that company. That company, Kootenay Forest Products, had a history of wildcat strikes unprecedented in British Columbia. They had one of the worst records. That happens to be the place Jack Munro came from. He became an expert at the wildcat strike and went on to greater things. But what happened after these workers got on the board of directors was that there simply were no more wildcat strikes. Efficiency increased tremendously in those initial years with the workers on the board of directors.

I thought that when you folks were talking about democracy, it might be that kind of democracy, where you'd use the brains of the workers up at the highest level. You'd get around these kinds of problems that Prof. Bowles had raised, that there's too much management between the workers and the top levels. But it was just too sophisticated an idea for the folks on the other side.

There's an assumption over there that workers don't have that kind of capability or competence, and it just isn't so. We send workers to the Legislature here. Some of them stumble — especially over there — and others come on to do great things. There's a tremendous potential out there in terms of people in the regions and at lower levels on the economic ladder who are not given the opportunity to show their stuff. They generally have a lot more to show than they're given opportunity to do. That's a loss for the economy; it's a loss for them; it's a loss for all of us.

If you were genuine about democracy in the workplace, and if you were thinking clearly about the question of democracy in the workplace, you'd be thinking about all those layers of management and trying to get more productivity and communication, and you'd try to have some involvement by the workers at the highest level of the corporation.

I look forward to the day when government will change, so that those opportunities will indeed be provided the workers of this province, so that we can do something to see that more and more of both the public and the private sector involve workers at the highest level of management. I think we have everything to gain and nothing to lose by opening up those higher levels to the workers. We might then begin to get the quality of management that would support the kind of numbers I talked about a few minutes ago. But I don't think any workers are looking for those kinds of numbers at all.

Enough of that, I guess. [Applause.] Well, I could get back to the morning show again. I think that would be great fun.

I'd like to talk a little bit about the IWA strike of last year, because you people use it as a touchstone to justify this legislation. I don't know what the time is, Mr. Speaker. Do I have time for a lengthy dissertation on the IWA?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Two minutes.

MR. WILLIAMS: Two minutes? Good heavens, I have 15 pages on the IWA strike.

Suffice to say that in the case of the IWA strike last year, there clearly was intervention by the Premier on more than one occasion. It's very clear that the interior labour relations people were ready to settle that strike very early in the game, right at the beginning — Mr. Todman communicated that to Mr. Munro. That would have broken the back of the dispute. That would have settled the hash. What happened, however, is that the Premier intervened; Mr. Todman was asked by the Premier not to have the meeting with Mr. Munro, and it went downhill from there. In the end, the various interventions by the Premier only hurt the parties in the dispute. Four and a half months, Mr. Premier. Are you going to take credit or not? Do you want to take credit?

The irony, though, is that at the initial stages the Premier talked about the companies having to move and give a little, or give some. The judge that he appointed — Henry Hutcheon, one of the finest judges in this province — said they indeed came out in favour of the unions, and argued that these kinds of things should be adhered to and that contracting out should not be accepted in the way the companies wanted it.

So intervention did not pay off. The Premier should have learned his lesson; he hasn't. It's more intervention under this bill. I'm sorry I don't have another 30 minutes to go into the details. If the Premier is ready to give leave we could continue, but there may be others in the room who don't agree.

[5:45]

MR. R. FRASER: I heard that member over there talk about executive salaries. He missed one that I would like to remind us all of, and that's the $20 million that Chrysler paid to Iacocca. It strikes me that there are hundreds of thousands of workers in the United States who will be thrilled that Iacocca made $20 million last year, because he actually did something. I would like to think that some of those lesser paid executives — and goodness knows, $600,000 should be enough — earned their pay too, and that if they did not the boards would send them packing, for indeed they have the power to do that.

I have no objection to your saying that some people in management aren't very bright, because it's true. I've said before that they should be sent packing. The companies suffer from those kinds of things, and they should be removed. Equally so, there are union leaders that aren't very bright either. So I think both groups suffer from the brilliant and from the ignorant; and there can't be very much doubt about that.

Interjection.

MR. R. FRASER: Actually, some of them, I believe, pay quite well, but I don't know the numbers. Perhaps you'd be kind enough to send them to me, Mr. Member.

[ Page 709 ]

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

I was reading some of the comments from Mr. Matkin, and I thought it was very interesting. He was described as a hero of the left because he said that the bill said the public interest would come first, that some businessmen won't like it. I thought that was, in a way, sort of a backhanded compliment to the bill, because it said, indeed, that the public interest was being placed ahead of that of certain unions or certain corporate leaders, leaders on both sides, whatever you will. Further, the one thing that no one has talked about in the House, to my knowledge at least, Mr. Member, is that Mr. Matkin said: "Give the legislation a try." Now that seemed to make some sense to me. He said: "Let's give it a try, because we don't know for sure until we give it a try." So we're going to give it a try, probably with a few amendments. Probably.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. R. FRASER: Maybe not. Who knows?

Interjections.

MR. R. FRASER: He wants time. You know, if it came to that, or even if it didn't come to that....

Interjections.

MR. R. FRASER: Ah, the worthy members opposite are helping use the time. Isn't it wonderful? But I will tell you one thing for sure. The debate on this bill has been so lengthy that we will all own it. None of us will be able to disown it. So those that vote against it will be voting against their own debate, and won't that be fun? It will be a prolonged debate, for sure.

Again, we see from the opposite side the party of the special-interest group, the party of the lowest common denominator, the party that pushes collectivism instead of individual opportunity, always on the bottom, never reaching for individual opportunity, never trying to push people forward, always wanting to go as this little group. How do you like that? People are individuals. They live separately, and they go their separate ways. Some are teachers and some are engineers and some are planners and some are elected officials; all these different groups.

Goodness knows, the things you read about the legislation are incredible. I would suggest to those of you who said: "Isn't it a shame that we are not allowing the BCGEU to vote during their working hours? What a terrible thing! We should let people stop working and vote on whatever they wish" — in this case, Bill 19.... It strikes me that nobody would really agree with that. We want them to vote on their own time. That makes sense to me. It certainly did where I worked. You vote on your own time, and you work during company time. That made sense, and if every now and then you worked a little longer than usual, then you got paid a little more.

I wonder occasionally at all this fuss we're hearing from the opposite side. Are they trying to cover something up? Why are they fussing about this bill? They say that labour/management relations are great here. Only 5 percent is the problem — that's the number we hear all the time. But 5 percent seems to cause an awful lot of trouble in British Columbia. Something had to be done, and this is what is happening. We're going to make some changes here. I wonder if all the fuss from the opposite side isn't caused by the fact that they have really abandoned the west, and this is a way of covering their tracks. They have said, for example: "We're going to give Quebec a special veto status." That's the national party. And so here we have the party which claimed to be from the west now going totally east. It is unbelievable.

MR. BLENCOE: That's relevant?

MR. R. FRASER: Sure it is.

Interjection.

MR. R. FRASER: Well, it's a coverup.

You know, the interesting thing about the legislation and the fight from the union side — and I don't mean the union member; I mean the union leader — is: who was missing from the fight? That's an interesting number. I haven't seen Senator Ed Lawson of the Teamsters, I haven't seen the Tunnel and Rock Workers, I haven't seen the Operating Engineers, and I haven't seen the Construction and General Labourers' Union. There are a whole bunch of unions out there learning to live with the idea of getting along better with their own members and with the employer groups. That's what it's all about.

Interjection.

MR. R. FRASER: I already know who the minister met with this morning, because I have reasonably close ties with the union movement.

Interjection.

MR. R. FRASER: You had your turn, Mr. Member.

Yes, I've got pretty close ties with the union movement. As I have told you before, I was a member of a union, and I was a member of a management group at one point. There is some understanding of both sides here. That's what you get on this side of the House — a lot of understanding, not all the doom and gloom and "the end of the world is coming." It is not coming. It will be better, and it will be better because we are going to work at it.

When you talk about union members being on the board of directors, fine and dandy — no problem. I guess we had the classic example of a union member being a member of a board of a huge company in Doug Fraser of the Automobile Workers in the U.S. He left voluntarily, incidentally, because he thought it was in conflict with his job. But any shareholder can be on the board if he gets elected. It may be more difficult for some of us than for others, but the opportunity does exist. The whole idea of this great society we live in is to create the opportunity to go where you want to go because of the capacity you have to use.

Interjection.

MR. R. FRASER: Yes indeed, and now you know why. If the 5 percent is all our problem — which seems too small to me — then indeed there must be something wrong with the number, or the 5 percent is wagging the entire economy, which we cannot stand. We cannot, if we have such

[ Page 710 ]

a good labour record.... We're told again and again by our own members and members opposite that B.C.'s labour/management relations are better than in many provinces, but that is not the impression that we get from everywhere else or from our own people. There's an impression around British Columbia and elsewhere that our labour-management relations are the worst in the country. Somebody's promoting bad news, and it certainly isn't me.

We have to keep telling the story, and I'm glad that you're starting to tell the story from the other side, because it wasn't the common experience for me to hear. I'm glad to hear you saying that our labour relations are better than most people think they are, and they're going to get even better now that we've got this new legislation. We're going to present people with opportunities to do it themselves. That, Mr. Member, is what we're trying to do. I think you describe yourself humbly as "your man in Victoria," as I read the column — not bad; quite close.

You know, when you read the paper and you listen to some of the wild comments from across the floor — and indeed to some of them from the radio stations — you have to wonder if we're talking about the same bill here. We're talking about opportunities, Mr. Member. We're talking about chances for people to work. We're talking about giving the people the right to vote on their circumstances. That's what we're talking about. We're not talking about legislating: "You do this and you do that; we're legislating." How do you want to do it? You vote. That's what we're trying to do; that's where we're going.

Now, Mr. Speaker....

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Don't quit.

MR. R. FRASER: Well, I tell you what, there's so much more time to spend, and I know that you want to listen to this because you want to hear how it's going to work — because you want to hear the optimistic opportunities that come forward from people who could work. You want to get out there doing things. You've been an instructor in a college, Mr. Member. You've seen the way the kids' minds come on when you give them something to think about, work on, and they make up their own minds. That's what we're talking about again.

Like you say, why not give the workers a vote? Why not put the workers ahead of the management of the union and the staffs and the management of businesses and make them think about it, make them go for it? Why not? You're going to do it.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Why not?

MR. R. FRASER: Why not, indeed. Why not give them a chance? Gosh, you know, those few phone calls I got when that long, prolonged IWA strike.... It was unbelievably long, too long. The calls that I got and the hardship that people felt — honestly, it was unbelievable. How can we sit here and not contemplate changing legislation that starved people from their salaries for four and a half months? We can't do that.

All those who made an effort to solve the problem, I congratulate. I would have been happier if I had had a feeling that there was more willingness on behalf of the IWA leader to solve the problem, but I didn't get that feeling from him at all. Sometimes I would have liked to get the feeling that he wanted to solve a problem instead of create one. I wonder if it didn't become a political agenda with him, in fact, because it looked a bit that way to me.

MR. LOVICK: What an ingenuous observation.

MR. R. FRASER: So you felt the same way, then. I'm glad to see that.

Interjections.

MR. R. FRASER: Oh, yes, lecture. Isn't it funny how you get the feeling of being looked down on when you're being lectured by a professor? Not to worry, though; we've all survived many a teacher and gone on to work our own way through.

MR. WILLIAMS: All engineers took remedial English.

MR. R. FRASER: One of my great pleasures was going to see the students at university when they were in their second, third or fourth year, and they were saying: "What is the most important course I take in engineering?" My answer was always: "English." We didn't get enough English in engineering; no question about that, and certainly we must envy those who have such a huge command of the language. There's no question about that.

No one takes away from your brilliance, either, Mr. Member, but somehow it doesn't come out right. It doesn't come out like we want to give people a chance. Let them think and let them work. That's what we're doing.

Mr. Speaker, in view of the hour, and because I want to do it again tomorrow morning or tomorrow afternoon — whatever comes first — I move adjournment of the debate until the next sitting of the House.

Motion approved.

HON. MR. STRACHAN: The House is sitting tomorrow. I forgot to advise members of that last week. He was about to say that anyway, but by agreement, the House will sit tomorrow at 2 o'clock.

Hon. Mr. Strachan moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 5:59 p.m.

[ Page 711 ]

Appendix

WRITTEN ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS

3       Mr. Stupich asked the Minister of Finance and Corporate Relations the following questions:

In 1986, with reference to Schedule I of the Home Owner Grant Act, SBC 1980, c. 18: How many homeowners paid the minimum of $200? With reference to Schedule 2 thereof: How many homeowners paid the minimum of $1?

The Hon. M. B. Couvelier replied as follows:

"In 1986, with reference to Schedule I of the Home Owner Grant Act, SBC 1980, c. 18, it is estimated that 62,000 homeowners paid the minimum of $200. With reference to Schedule 2 thereof: It is estimated that 28,500 homeowners paid the minimum of $I."

6       Mr. Stupich asked the Hon. the Minister of Transportation and Highways the following question:

With respect to the ferries listed below:

Albion-Fort Langley Ferry;
François Lake Ferry;
Kootenay Lake Ferry;
Needles-Fauquier Ferry;
Upper Arrow Lakes Ferry;

for each of the years 1984, 1985, 1986 and to date in 1987, how many vehicles and how many passengers were carried?

The Hon. C. C. Michael replied as follows:

"Ferry statistics on passengers and vehicles are retained on a fiscal year basis, not calendar year.