[ Page 3941 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Tabling Documents –– 3941

Oral Questions

Riverview Hospital. Mr. Rose –– 3941

BCEC lands. Mr. Williams –– 3942

Squamish Highway. Mr. Lovick –– 3942

Premier's oath of office. Mr. Sihota –– 3943

Squamish Highway. Mr. Lovick –– 3943

Replacement of TCMTB. Mr. Miller –– 3943

Presenting Petitions –– 3944

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

On vote 14: minister's office –– 3944

Mr. Barnes

Mr. Rose

Ms. Campbell

Mr. Darcy

Mr. Sihota

The House met at 2:06 p.m.

HON. MR. VEITCH: In the members' gallery today is a good friend and constituent, Mr. Doug Walker. Doug is director of sales for the Best Western Kings Inn in Burnaby. May this House bid him welcome.

MR. REE: Mr. Speaker, on your behalf, on behalf of my other colleague on the North Shore, the hon. Minister of Energy (Hon. Mr. Davis), and on my own behalf, I'd ask the House to welcome three guests today: Hilda Rizun, chairman of the board of Capilano College; Graham Crockart, a member of the board; and Douglas Jardine, president of Capilano College.

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Speaker, today we have a member of the fourth estate who is celebrating a birthday. In these past three years she has served the press gallery of our House. She was inconsistent in her good judgment inasmuch as she left British Columbia and spent four years in Ottawa, but she is back now in British Columbia these past few months, and I'd like to ask all members of the House to wish Margot Sinclair a happy birthday.

MR. SIHOTA: I just got scooped by the Minister of Economic Development because I was going to do the same thing, so I'm feeling just terrible.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SIHOTA: I feel a lot better now that I see there's all sorts of sympathy for me on the other side of the House. In any event, I do have her horoscope here and I promised her that I would read it: "Emphasis on movement, variety, contact with exciting, creative individuals. Focus also on trips, visits, relatives and signed agreements." We, on this side of the House, would also like to wish Margot Sinclair a happy twenty-first birthday.

MR. PELTON: I'd like to ask the hon. members to welcome today two people visiting the House: Lisa Kerley from West Vancouver, and Richard Hill from Yellow Point Lodge on Vancouver Island.

MR. CRANDALL: Mr. Speaker, I'm fortunate today to have two constituents here from my riding which, as you know, is a long way away. The first is Mr. Buzz Harmsworth, who is a recent retiree from government service after many years, and he's also an alderman in the district of Invermere; and secondly, Jackie Riches is here from Invermere, and she does an outstanding job in the MLA's office. I'd like the House to make them welcome.

MR. CHALMERS: Visiting the precincts today are a number of the executive board of the Professional Association of Residents and Internes of British Columbia. Two of them are members of very prominent families in Kelowna. On behalf of my colleague from Okanagan South (Mr. Serwa), I'd like to ask all of you to give a warm welcome to Dr. Peter Wilson and Dr. Robert Conn.

MR. MICHAEL: Mr. Speaker, I'd ask the members to make welcome a couple visiting the precincts today from my constituency: Mr. and Mrs. Willis Jefcoat from Salmon Arm. Mr. Jefcoat was a member of this assembly during the 1960s.

Hon. L. Hanson tabled the 1987 annual report of the Workers' Compensation Board of British Columbia.

Oral Questions

RIVERVIEW HOSPITAL

MR. ROSE: I have a series of rather serious and important questions to direct to the Minister of Health concerning the Riverview Hospital in my riding.

As the minister knows, there was a stabbing in Riverview last weekend, during which a psychiatric nurse's life was threatened. Can the minister confirm to the House that the number of seriously ill and potentially dangerous patients has increased over the last five years, hence the potential for violent acts?

HON. MR. DUECK: Mr. Speaker, the question was whether there has been an increase; I could not tell you. I'll have to take that question on notice and give you the answer soon.

MR. ROSE: Mr. Speaker, my information is that it has. This is coupled with another problem because of early retirement and other factors. Can the minister confirm that serious shortages of experienced nursing staff has made patient care and public security more difficult?

HON. MR. DUECK: Mr. Speaker, it has now been turned over to a society from government control. There is some restructuring taking place. Whether there is more of a shortage of experienced or professional people now than there was in the past, I would not like to either confirm or deny. However, if the member wishes to know what the employment ratio was previously and what it is today, I will take that question on notice and bring that figure back to you.

MR. ROSE: I'm glad the minister mentioned the business of the society. I'd like to ask what steps the minister has taken recently to improve that hospital board by appointing interested community leaders and replacing the public service bureaucrats which he appointed to that private board in the first place, whose concerns are very much the concerns of the ministry rather than either the patients or the community at large.

HON. MR. DUECK: No, the member is wrong. The reason public servants were put on that to begin with is for that turnover from government to society. We're now in the process of appointing a wide variety of people from various backgrounds to that society, so it will in fact be truly a society from the community.

MR. ROSE: We're all anxiously awaiting the true society, the reflective society and even the just society.

I'd like to ask a final supplementary, and this has to do with the community. Can the minister tell the House what he intends to do about supplying the needed psychiatric services to out-patients which are lacking, and their care, currently under community care; and whether more community placement is planned?

[ Page 3942 ]

HON. MR. DUECK: If the member is referring to downsizing of Riverview, again that is not correct; we are not downsizing Riverview. However, a report has been tabled and will be discussed by cabinet and a decision will be made whether we're going to downsize and how soon, and whether we have a shortage of psychiatrists in the field. From time to time there is a movement of people going into their own business and we lose some and have to replace them; but by and large I think we offer a good service for outpatient people. There may be an increase of some of those in the communities and we'll try to cope with that. I do not see a lack of service being delivered to any particular community.

MR. ROSE: Just for clarification — it really isn't a question — what I was concerned about was psychiatric services available to those out-patients already in the community which are lacking and causing a lot of difficulty for both the patient and the public.

[2:15]

HON. MR. DUECK: Again, we are providing good outpatient service, and I do not think that we or the people out there who are doing the job should be criticized. We have a good out-patient service in most areas. From time to time there is a change in personnel, and that has to be looked after. When you have that many people in the industry, there will be a change, and from time to time it has to be replenished because some of them may quit and go into private business.

BCEC LANDS

MR. WILLIAMS: To the Premier. You said on Saturday, Mr. Premier, that there would be five conditions regarding the sale of the Expo lands, one of which was no chance of flipping. Would that mean no resale of the lands for, say, five years?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I don't know what the details of such would be. I would seek advice from BCEC and others who are involved in the process as to how we ensure that the cabinet, in the final analysis, approves that which is best for the people of the province.

MR. WILLIAMS: Did the Premier advise the BCEC board and the minister of that requirement?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Mr. Speaker, the BCEC board is obviously in the process of negotiating at present. A recommendation will come to cabinet, and we'll all be hopefully considering it, in the light of not only those but other matters of concern to individuals or to ministries. Everything will be considered as well as possible to ensure, again, that it is the best deal for the people of the province.

MR. WILLIAMS: To the Minister of Economic Development. Is no flipping to be a requirement of the deal with respect to the Expo lands?

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Any negotiations regarding the Expo 86 lands at this point in time, which are under very sensitive negotiations, will all be made public at the close of the negotiations.

MR. WILLIAMS: It sounds like it was more hot air at the Bradner flower show.

To the Premier. Mr. Peter Brown says the meeting with you and Mr. Poole last spring was over Mr. Toigo's offer for the Whistler convention centre lands. You've said it's not so. Yesterday your minister was asked about this further and she said: "All of Mr. Brown's actions were totally filled with integrity." He answered this question twice regarding the meetings with you and Mr. Poole. I don't know what she's saying you're full of, Mr. Premier, but are you still saying you did not discuss the Toigo offer at that meeting?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: That was a private meeting, and I'm not prepared to comment on the meeting.

MR. WILLIAMS: Just to bring the Premier up to date, he has some obligations to advise the elected people of this Legislature. You're the one who spoke to the press; you're Mr. Run-off-at-the-mouth; you're the one who said that didn't happen. It's time for you to 'fess up, Mr. Premier; it's time for you to clear the air.

MR. SPEAKER: Would the member please place a question.

MR. WILLIAMS: The question is: what did you discuss with Mr. Toigo at that meeting? Did you not discuss his offer?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I discussed nothing at the meeting with Mr. Toigo. I don't recall the meeting that he is referring to.

MR. WILLIAMS: To the Premier: if Mr. Brown is not telling the truth, isn't it time to remove him from the board?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I think he is referring to different meetings, apparently, some of which I'm obviously not aware of. He's made these up, I would expect.

MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Brown has been clear more than once about meetings to discuss the Toigo offer regarding Whistler. We don't want this naive nonsense from the Premier, because it doesn't really wash very readily. Mr. Premier, the Minister of Economic Development (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) says that the remainder of the Enterprise lands should be sold separately, that she's taking leadership in the caucus on this issue. Did she advise you?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I think we're all aware that there are a variety of options available as to how the balance of the lands may be dealt with. Certainly all of these options will be considered by cabinet, given all of the information from the B.C. Enterprise Corporation and all the other experts who perhaps will be consulted on that particular matter, including the Ministry of Finance and others. So these options will definitely be considered, and we'll take whatever action gives us the best deal for the people of the province.

SQUAMISH HIGHWAY

MR. LOVICK: My question is to the Minister of Transportation and Highways and specifically concerns the Squamish Highway. In the wake of the Coquihalla overruns, in the wake of a decision to downsize and reduce the cost of phase 3 of the Coquihalla, and in light of the budget reduction to

[ Page 3943 ]

Highways, according to your tabled estimates, Mr. Minister, amounting to more than $14 million, would the minister confirm for this House whether the construction work on the Squamish Highway will indeed end in August, apparently because of a lack of money?

HON. MR. ROGERS: No, I can't confirm that. That decision has not yet been made.

PREMIER'S OATH OF OFFICE

MR. SIHOTA: A question to the Premier. Upon election, the Premier swore on the Bible an oath of office and pledged the following: "I swear that I will keep confidential all matters dealt with in the executive council, and I will not disclose any of the same to any person other than a member of the executive council except as authorized by it or as required in the lawful discharge of my duties as a member of the executive council, so help me God." Given his discussions with Mr. Toigo which have now been repeated in the press, could the Premier explain why he has chosen to violate his oath of office?

MR. SPEAKER: Is the hon. member imputing improper motives to another member?

MR. SIHOTA: I'll rephrase the question, Mr. Speaker. Can the Premier assure the House and the people of British Columbia that in all of his discussions and deliberations with Mr. Toigo over the BCEC lands he has not violated his oath of office?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I don't need to assure the people of the province of British Columbia; I'm sure they're confident of that. It wouldn't do any good to assure the members opposite, because obviously they don't fully understand it without having to read it.

MR. SIHOTA: We're talking about a serious matter here. We're talking about the sanctity of that oath, and the Premier has obviously been shilling for Mr. Toigo at cabinet meetings with the BCEC board...

MR. SPEAKER: Could the member get to his question, please.

MR. SIHOTA: ...behind closed doors for B.C. Place, Whistler and for God knows what else. I ask the Premier again in this House: does he consider that his dealings with Mr. Toigo on matters before cabinet are a violation of his oath of office?

MR. VANDER ZALM: I repeat again, obviously it wouldn't do much good to assure those members who seem to read some ulterior motive into all things. I can assure you that British Columbians know better. If it's necessary, let me repeat that I take very seriously the oath of office. I have no difficulty with the oath of office.

MR. SIHOTA: British Columbians know that the Premier has had a hotline to Mr. Toigo. British Columbians know that there's been all sorts of runarounds in the process. British Columbians know that some of these matters have come up in cabinet and have been repeated elsewhere. Can the Premier assure this House that should it be revealed that his oath of office has not been honoured, he would be prepared to resign?

SQUAMISH HIGHWAY

MR. LOVICK: Another question to the Minister of Transportation and Highways, pursuant to the earlier one. Given the minister's answer that a decision has not yet been made regarding whether work will stop on the Squamish Highway, can the minister inform the House whether in fact a study to investigate whether that work might cease is presently being undertaken? Is that now happening?

HON. MR. ROGERS: Well, somebody in the ministry may be looking at it; it's not something I'm aware of. So I'll take the question as notice in terms of your specific question to me, but I'm not aware of it.

REPLACEMENT OF TCMTB

MR. MILLER: A question for the Minister of Labour. On March 23 my colleague for Nanaimo brought to the minister's attention the use of the chemical TCMTB and its effect on workers at the Harmac mill — and I won't bother trying to say the name. On that same day Canfor put out an announcement that they had perfected a chemical for treating lumber that has received all the regulatory approvals. Has the minister, as the minister responsible for WCB, taken any steps to ensure that the newer, safe chemical is being used in mills in British Columbia and that the unsafe chemical has been removed?

HON. L. HANSON: No, I haven't taken any action, but in light of this new information, I will see. The chemical referred to is approved by the federal Minister of Agriculture, which is where the original approval for its use comes from. As you are aware, and as in the answer that I tabled referring to the question by the member for Nanaimo, there is a joint committee of the industry — WCB has a representative — looking at chemicals that they want to use for this purpose in the forest industry. There is also a study funded by the Workers' Compensation Board — I believe it's by the University of British Columbia — on this particular chemical to determine its effects.

MR. SPEAKER: Before I recognize the government House Leader on a point of order, I would like to just discuss something with members on some of the questions that were asked today. If they were to read May's twentieth edition, page 338, it states that questions cannot impute motives or cast aspersions upon members. I would also ask the members to review May's twentieth edition, page 344, where it states that questions are inadmissible which seek a solution to a hypothetical proposition. I hope the members would take that as notice in their questions tomorrow and the next day.

HON. MR. STRACHAN: Mr. Speaker, I'm following on what you just said. I rise under standing order 47(a) which discusses oral questions and says that if there is a point of order, it should be deferred until after question period. I am now rising on that point and advising you why I have waited until this time to raise my point of order, which is to ask you, sir, to ask for a withdrawal by the member for Esquimalt-Port

[ Page 3944 ]

Renfrew with respect to the unparliamentary reference he made to the Premier.

[2:30]

MR. SPEAKER: The government House Leader has asked the member for Esquimalt-Port Renfrew to withdraw a comment he made against the Premier because he feels it's unparliamentary.

MR. SIHOTA: I'm not too sure what he's talking about, in terms of the actual word. If he takes offence to the word "shilling," which I take is what he's referring to, that word was used before in the House, and that's why I took liberty with it today. But if the member finds it objectionable, that's fine; I'll withdraw.

MR. SPEAKER: I would advise the member that even if the word has managed to creep into our proceedings somewhere, it is an unparliamentary term, and I would ask the member to withdraw it.

MR. SIHOTA: I think I have made that clear, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The Provincial Secretary has asked leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

HON. MR. VEITCH: In the gallery today are 26 students from Moscrop Secondary School in Burnaby, led by their teacher, Mr. Wayne Axford. I ask the House to bid them welcome, please.

MR. SPEAKER: The member for New Westminster has also asked leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

MS. A. HAGEN: In the gallery this afternoon are members of the Professional Association of Residents and Internes. They are young doctors in this province who have been visiting members on both sides of the House in respect to a very important bill — Bill 41 — and its effect on them. I would ask the House to officially welcome them this afternoon.

Presenting Petitions

MR. CLARK: Mr. Speaker, I beg leave to present a petition. This petition is accompanied by 8,773 signatures of West Kootenay Power and Light subscribers who are concerned about the implications of their power utility being controlled only by Americans. These names were collected over the last year, before and after the sale. The petition reads as follows:

"To the Honourable the Legislative Assembly of the Province of British Columbia in Legislature assembled:

"The petition of the undersigned concerned citizens of the province of British Columbia states that we protest the sale of West Kootenay Power and Light Co. to a foreign utility, leaving users vulnerable to rate increases. Your Petitioners respectfully request that the Honourable House condemn that sale of an essential power utility and develop legislation to protect British Columbian ownership and control of this vital and strategic sector of the economy."

Orders of the Day

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

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF
ATTORNEY-GENERAL

(continued)

On vote 14: minister's office, $236,953.

MR. BARNES: Mr. Chairman, the Attorney-General was going to respond this morning to some questions that I put to him. I know he had to rush out to a meeting, and perhaps he may wish to respond just to kick off this session, if he had those notes.

We were generally concerned about the deterioration of life for the youth in the province — particularly with reference to the youth gangs — and the desperation that some parents are finding themselves in by attempting to rescue their children from some of these teenage pimps on the streets of Vancouver. The second member for Vancouver East (Mr. Clark) brought information to the House that some students were at risk in the classrooms as a result of advances by youth gangs. Some reference was made to the Asian youth gang and the task force that the Attorney-General has in place to monitor the activities of these young people. I wanted to emphasize that notwithstanding the attempts by the Attorney General to monitor the situation and to designate a task force to study the situation, the results have been less than satisfactory. The situation described by the second member for Vancouver East is reminiscent of conditions that I can recall myself just towards the end of the Great Depression in the 1930s and early forties.

MR. ROSE: You don't remember back that far, do you?

MR. BARNES: I know the member for Coquitlam Moody.... Maillardville-Coquitlam? Moody? Anyway, he's my MLA, and I should know where he's from. He wonders if I can remember that far back.

I just want to assure the House — and more importantly, I would like the Attorney-General to assure the House — that we are not going to be visited in the city of Vancouver with conditions that the member for Vancouver East was alluding to yesterday, and conditions that I can personally recall having happened during the Hungry Thirties or immediately after, when it seemed as though the social amenities and the conditions necessary for good family life, proper access to services and programs that would maintain the integrity of family life and of traditional institutions, and some hope for a healthy future with our youth, were at risk.

Mr. Attorney-General, I just wonder what your youth was like when you were in school. I can tell you, as I listened to the member yesterday, it reminded me of a situation in my high school days, when it was more dangerous to be in the classroom than to be out on the playing-field. That's not a situation we want in Vancouver. The member was suggesting that east-end schools were going to be generally abandoned

[ Page 3945 ]

in order to make room for those conditions which we don't find too tolerable, and people would be going to independent schools, taking their youths to safer environments.

If we are going to have the blackboard jungle in the city of Vancouver, the kind of thing where teachers are so frightened and intimidated by unruly young people that it's not safe for law-abiding citizens, we may find ourselves looking for instructors like this American, Joe Clark; you know, the guy with the baseball bat in the Bronx. We don't want that in Vancouver. But it could get pretty serious.

I know this isn't entirely in your area when we start talking about the schools. It involves several ministries, and one of the questions I was asking this morning was: is the minister working with the Ministry of Social Services and Housing, the Ministry of Education and any other ministry to try and come up with a strategy that will give some reassurance to these parents who are becoming more and more desperate trying to rescue their children?

I just mentioned, as well, the case of this woman — Kathleen Bell-Younger was her name, as I recall — who was trying to get her daughter back home out of the grips of a 16-year-old pimp. That is something unusual, I think, for British Columbia, although we have had prostitution on the streets. We've had wayward youth. I think every big city has it. There seems to be something happening in British Columbia that we should really be more alarmed about. I'm not sure if it's fully understood.

We are promoting more investment. We're talking about an outreach program to the Pacific Rim. We want to develop more and more economic activity. We are talking about the sale of the Expo site, which one could describe as the heart of the city. What impact is this going to have on the inner city, on the life of those families that live on the periphery of that area?

What we are looking for is more than the usual programs. They can be presented in this House and give some impression that we are concerned because the rhetoric is in place. The acknowledgement that there are difficulties is in place, but what about the outreach? What about the reality of the situation? I wonder if the Attorney-General would indicate to what extent his ministry has the political will to identify, recognize and state unequivocally to this assembly that we have a serious problem, that it's endemic to some extent, that it's urgent, and that there's every reason to anticipate that the situation is going to deteriorate even more, without alarming anybody. The fact is that I think we've got to recognize that we need new initiatives and more resolve, and we're going to have to face what the implications are in terms of symptoms out there that happened long before these young people found themselves hustling the way they have been on the streets.

I think there is cause for concern when 13- or 14-year olds are seeing the only option for them as being out selling their bodies, or stealing lottery tickets and cashing them in, or parents are out chasing teenagers, trying to rescue their daughters, etc. This isn't the trend that any of us in this assembly can be proud of or be looking forward to with any comfort.

HON. B.R. SMITH: You would get no quarrel from anyone on this side of the House for those remarks, I can assure you.

Maybe I'll just go through what programs are available, and I'm going to try and deal with it as a governmentwide business instead of just describing my turf, because I don't think that helps very much.

The Ministry of Social Services and Housing has a program called Outreach, which involves specialized social workers who deal with street kids who don't fit into normal group home settings. Funding is available for special group homes under this program.

The Ministry of Education has a program for street kids in Vancouver. It provides educational opportunities at a grade 12 equivalency level for young people living in the streets who are apparently unable to adjust to a normal schoolroom setting.

The Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Social Services and Housing maintain a special clinic in an emergency centre at 575 Drake Street in Vancouver to provide emergency medical attention and emergency housing for young people as required.

Then we have, I think, what the member has been getting at — the Interministerial Children's Committee, the purpose of which is to deal with child prostitution, drug and alcohol abuse and other problems that involve street kids specifically. That committee has representatives from the various ministries on it. It's chaired by Sandy Cook, and it has somebody on from Social Services and Housing, Health, the Vancouver School Board, the city of Vancouver social planning department, the Greater Vancouver Mental Health Service, and the Vancouver police. That committee is directly what the member's been trying to act at.

There's also a group of professionals who call themselves the B.C. Caucus and they are dedicated to service to street kids. They are involved in research and education and receive funding from the province for their professional and public education programs.

When young offenders are convicted of prostitution, they are all dealt with by a probation officer who works at family court, and since October 1987, 35 young offenders in custody have been charged with soliciting. Ten are repeat offenders: these are usually about 17 years of age. Most did not have homes in Vancouver or were reluctant to return to their homes. The probation service attempts to find alternative accommodation or a group home setting in Vancouver. If they are convicted, the usual sentence for a young offender is supervised probation and an area restriction.

I guess that the response we have for a street kid is the non-criminal response first of all, if they're not committing a criminal offence or someone that we're going to charge but are just a child in the street in need of some support, which is what so many of them are. The Vancouver city police patrols with the kiddy car and constantly picks up kids like this 24 hours a day in addition to regular patrol cars — but the kiddy car specializes in this.

If a child is picked up, that child will be taken to the Ministry of Social Services and Housing health emergency centre — the one I mentioned on Drake Street. That's where we would take them. If the child has a home to go to, they will try to work towards a reconciliation with the family and provide support towards that end. But if the child has no home to go to in Vancouver, then they would go to a group home, if they agree — it's voluntary — and then would be provided transport to a home in some other area with liaison support from Social Services and Housing. A very last resort would be apprehension by the superintendent, and that would involve group homes and concentrated youth worker support; but that's involuntary.

[2:45]

If they're involved in prostitution and we're going to proceed by the criminal justice route, then they would be

[ Page 3946 ]

picked up in the patrol car and again be taken to Drake Street first of all. The first intention would be to try and give them some service and not have them in custody for imprisonment purposes. We would put them in a group home again, and they would appear in court the next day. They would be released on bail supervision, with fairly stringent conditions: the residence would have to be approved; they'd have to report; they'd have area restrictions and curfew; they'd have to attend counselling or school. Those would be administered quite tightly. If they were convicted eventually, there would be lengthy probation designed to support the child and encourage a home life; or if they were put in custody, of course, we would work towards that end as well.

Those are the programs available in Vancouver for street kids. But I don't suggest to you at all that these programs are curing the situation; they aren't. They deal with some of the kids, and they provide a base of support. But you have to somehow get at the sickness in society that causes young people, many of whom come from very advantaged families.... They're not just kids that come from families that are split up or families where there's violence; some of these kids come from really good families. They're out there and they won't come back, and their parents can't get them to come back in some cases. In some cases their parents don't want them back, but usually they do, and they can't get them to come back. What does a parent do who has got a child on the street, or a child involved in prostitution, who pleads with him and goes to him so many times? It's a terrible anguish for a mother or for a father in that state of affairs.

The state can do its best to bring about group home facilities, reconciliation and so on, but you have to get back to the motivation, the sickness that's there, that causes these people to go there; something that they were lacking in their homes or in the community, or some lack. I don't suppose we'd ever do too much in this field.

I hope that's at least a little more comprehensive response than if I gave you just a sort of justice response, which I don't think is adequate to this problem.

MR. BARNES: I appreciate the candour of the Attorney-General. He's always very impressive in responding to these issues. I think he's genuinely concerned and sincere. That's the difficulty with issues such as this: we try to do our job in a critical way, in the opposition, in terms of the lacks and the gaps in the programs, recognizing the good intentions in some instances, especially with families. I don't think it's just rhetoric on that side of the House when the government expresses its desire to see more integrity in homes and in the community, in the social system and in our fundamental principles. But we have to find hard-core cases sometimes in order to dramatize situations. Often that's at great expense. The tragedies are beginning to multiply and are quite often out of control.

I guess I'm appealing to the minister to undertake even more than goodwill and the trust of his staff and the existing agencies and government departments to address these concerns. I think sometimes there has to be an expression of serious concern and outrage — even outreach — by the political arm as well as by the bureaucrats and the hired staff, especially when it comes to putting our money where our mouths are, so to speak; when it comes to the rhetoric we use when we talk about youth as the most valuable resource. When we say that, who's going to argue? As the minister said, he certainly takes no issue with what I'm saying.

But the thing that concerns me is that the fiscal policies, the other government priorities, seem to mitigate, in effect, against the good intentions and the expressions of concern. Certainly a good home life, nourishment, opportunities for parents to be able to achieve some of their ideals in life.... It means in some cases having adequate day care programs in place that are not just there physically but in fact are there qualitatively; not in numbers but in quality. There are day care facilities and there are day care facilities. But particularly with the target groups that we are describing here, where people are falling through the cracks, and where they are being influenced by heavy-handed media advertising products and are reaching beyond their ability to achieve, they are marketing themselves, their souls and their resources for quartz, so to speak — fool's gold.

To use an example, this young pimp we've referred to a couple of times who's 16 years of age has had many tragedies in his own life, but the caption on the story dealing with his life says: "High Life for Pimp." This is a 16-year-old. What kind of things influence a 16-year-old to influence a young woman to sell her body? It talks about this young man living a lifestyle of the rich and famous. At 16 he's wearing very expensive garments costing hundreds of dollars, riding around in fancy limousines and living in high-class apartments. It's not real, for any of us. Even those of us in this chamber probably would not find that a good expenditure of our hard-earned dollars. But these young people are at risk, and it's costing us, and I think we've let them down someplace.

What I would like to see are more guarantees. I'd like to see a more rational approach, right from the cradle to the grave, particularly with young people — certainly from the cradle through to the age of majority. We're going to have to begin to recognize that if we believe as we seem to — at least to a large extent — in the sanctity of life and the importance of a living organism, then let's be consistent with that.

The debate that we had over abortion relates very much to the debate that we're having here this afternoon. I think the member for Saanich, in his attempts to talk to the pro-lifers — which in itself is not an accurate expression; I think we all are pro-life, but for some reason for political purposes a group call themselves pro-lifers — was on television telling them: "Look, you can't have it both ways. If we're going to demand that these young people be allowed to live, that these babies be allowed to have a chance, then we have a duty to look after them later on." I think that's the point.

We argue on one hand about the sanctity of life, and then once a person is born we say: "You're at risk; you're on your own." Or we say: "We're all for the family, but don't ask us for any help. It's not good for character building for us to give you too much assistance or to put too many programs in place that might impair your ability to struggle to really learn what life was like, like I had to learn what life was like." So we've got contradictions that are serious and that are being detected by the youth. Parents are having problems trying to argue these points with their youth because the youth can see the fallacies.

Now that this chamber is taking on some of these more sanctified issues — for lack of a better expression — that normally are out of the purview of the politician, things like marriage and religion and a few others that we normally like to leave.... Politics: that's another one that we don't like to discuss. Here we are talking about very serious personal matters, about these rather abstract, difficult issues to legislate around.

[ Page 3947 ]

I think we're going to have to become better role models, set better examples and be prepared to be consistent and more honest, because the problem with the youth of today, I believe, is that they don't have that much confidence in the adult figures that they see around them. They find it contradictory for us to talk on the one hand about looking after themselves, saving their pennies and getting a good education, only to find that when they finish, the rewards are not there, the justification is not always in place, and that, after all, they still have to have leverage — they have to know somebody in high places. It's always the case of not enough of a demand, despite the concept of supply and demand. It usually works out that if you have supplied yourself with a good education, if you are qualified and are ready to go to work, you'll find out that there are a whole bunch of rules out there which will work against you.

So it's not an easy road. We've got to be prepared to guarantee more to our youth. Surely that would not deviate too much from what we've been telling them. So how do we guarantee? What kinds of things are important? If we really want young people to believe that there is something better than what's happening, let's give them some options. Certainly — as we were talking this morning, and you're right — I have been down on the strip, so to speak, a few times, and so have some members on your side of the House been down on the strip and talked to many of these young people and some adults as well to find out what it is really like.

It seems to me that one of the problems is that we don't put enough muscle on the other end. In other words, tell me what good it is for a social worker to go through a process of rehabilitating a young person, pulling him off the streets — for instance, with the 75 or so native prostitutes that are down on the Hastings area around Hastings, Main and Strathcona, in that community. Just the other day we had a demonstration down there by these people who were concerned about some of the physical abuse that these women were experiencing.

At the same time, some points were made that there were counsellors down there attempting to get these people off the streets, working to convince them that that was not the life for them. These counsellors didn't have very much going for them other than goodwill. They didn't have the resources that they needed to really assist people who already had many disadvantages. Many of them didn't have sufficient education or job skills or a variety of other skills in terms of self-confidence — the ability to present themselves to an employer, for instance.

In other words, there were interpersonal and personal problems that they had to cope with. Let's say that we got all of those things in place. Then what happens to these people? What happens when they graduate from university and find themselves up against ridiculous government policies? This is often what happens. Where do you go? What guarantees are there? Should we not be making some guarantees? Is it not about time we realized that if we're going to spend all these dollars on rehabilitation and on education, on getting people, for instance, to become medical doctors only to have them get out and become subject to irrational regulations around billing numbers...?

We won't get into that; that's a diversion. But that's the type of thing, where you just cut them right off after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per student. Or to rehabilitate somebody indefinitely or to sustain them on social assistance programs indefinitely.... Can't we do better than that? We know that all of those organisms out there have energy and they've got to expend that energy. They've got to have a balance and we know that they've got to fill some sense of achievement, some sense of accomplishment, some sense of importance, some sense of relevance. All of the things that we expect for ourselves have to happen with those clients of ours.

We're talking about the youth, and many of them are oblivious to all of these concerns. All they know is that the environment is hostile, the environment is challenging them constantly. They don't have the skills to do very much more than survive, and they are vulnerable, they are easy pickings for the persuasive person who has the ability to convince them that they can make it the easy way.

[3:00]

You see cases like this 16-year-old whose father was a pimp who committed suicide, whose mother tried to commit suicide. So he grows up, and by the time he is 16 years old he is a master con artist. He is able to say the right things to people to get what he wants, is good-looking, dresses well — very slick. But look at the situation. That's just one example of the kind of things that I think we should be much more aggressive in dealing with. You don't have to do it by looking for criminal activity: you do it by taking a positive approach, by putting programs in place, by guaranteeing them, by being able to go to someone and say: "Look out on the streets. We are prepared to follow through. You do this and we will do that."

I know the Attorney-General understands what quid pro quo is. The society wants something back, but society is prepared to give something. This is the thing. We are prepared to help you if you help us. We don't want you in jail. We don't want you to grow up and abuse your children because you were abused: we want you to do better. But we've got to show you that we think you are worth investing in. So do something for us. Clean your act up, get on top of it and we guarantee you that we'll look after you. We'll give you a break.

This is why I asked the government the other day if they had anything called an affirmative action program. I know, when you think right off the bat, "Social Credit, affirmative action," it's contrary to policy. We just wouldn't be doing that. On the other hand, we might give some thought to it if you can convince us that there may be some wisdom in it. I think there is a place for it. There is a place for it even if only to draw a comparison between seed money for a corporation for some of your friends, just to get them started — forgiving taxes for a few years just to get them going and then taking it back, or giving them a loan without interest. Why not do something for the people? Why not help them help themselves? This is basically what I'm saying.

What's contrary to the public's best interest in affirmative action where it makes sense, where we know special groups of people out there who need that break? That's the kind of thing I'd like to see happening in this Legislature and that I'd like to see the minister say they are going to do, notwithstanding all of the things you are already doing. Believe me, I'm sure they are quite considerable. But there has to be leadership, a sense of enthusiasm, and outreach. We have to demonstrate that we are doing what we are saying, and we have to get the media down there and seeing that we are in fact doing it. Let's get some reports on some positive programs helping people help themselves.

Is my time up?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Time's up.

[ Page 3948 ]

MR. ROSE: He was in full flight. I was really entranced by the eloquence of my friend. If he has not completed his remarks, I would certainly be pleased to intercede for him. If on the other hand he would like the A-G to intercede at this time to answer some questions, it will serve the same purpose.

MR. BARNES: I think it would be appropriate to have the Attorney-General respond, because basically I've stated the case. I think from now on it's action. I don't really need to say too much more. As a member speaking about this subject as I have, I certainly intend to do my best to assist the government in the outreach that I'm talking about by going out myself and trying to bring forward examples of how we can improve this situation, because I think we all have a duty to get hold of this thing and achieve it, as quite often happens with members on that side of the House, who say, "Where there's a will there's a way," and: "You doom-and-gloom guys are always criticizing, but we are pro-action. We are going to make things happen."

Well, I've said, "Let's make things happen for the youth," and I believe we can make things happen if we say we're going to make things happen. The youth would respond, because that's what they're looking for.

HON. B.R. SMITH: I think all those measures that I outlined that we have in a non-legal way that deal with children on the streets in Vancouver and the support system there are good, and it's a good net. Also, I think the liaison workers that the Vancouver School Board will be able to hire this year, which we are funding directly under our program, to try to deal with the youth gang situation will help. Educational measures are probably the most promising of all. So to the member, thank you very much for your feeling remarks, and we'll take them very seriously.

MS. CAMPBELL: It's always a pleasure to listen to the debate around the Attorney-General's estimates, I think because the debate generates very intelligent commentary and commentary about issues that are extremely important. Perhaps as a member of the legal profession I have a particular interest in those issues generated by discussion of the law; I think these are always one of the highlights of the discussions in the House. I also appreciate very much the comments by the second member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Barnes), whose remarks in the House are always worth listening to and very eloquently expressed.

I do hope he got the permission of the second member for Nanaimo (Mr. Lovick) before using the expression "quid pro quo" in the House.

I want to participate in this debate, really, as a member of the legal profession and, as the discussion of the Attorney's estimates draws to a close, to add some of my comments particularly on some of the comments that the Attorney made in his opening remarks.

As a whole, I think the legal profession is very concerned about the need to make legal services available to the public at a reasonable cost. Those of us in the profession are often bombarded with bulletins from the Law Society about various programs and efforts to find ways of delivering our services to members of the public who need them.

There are two problems, of course, that exist in doing this. One, of course, is the complexity of laws themselves, and to some degree this can be addressed by this House.

Secondly, there is the need for professional help in dealing with certain circumstances in our society. Like most professionals, lawyers have only their time to sell, and therefore must bill by the time spent. The more complex and difficult the issue, the more expensive it therefore becomes for members of the public to have professional legal help.

Therefore there is a need to do whatever can be done to remove needless complexity from laws and to provide remedies that do not require enormous amounts of time from lawyers to access them. I think there are a number of promising signs, and some of them have been dealt with by the Attorney. But I'd like to mention, first of all, one that was not dealt with in his remarks but in which his ministry has in fact been very supportive: the Computers and the Law project at UBC. In particular, I think of Profs. Robert Franson and John Hogarth, who have developed a program. Perhaps some lawyers have been a bit concerned that it will make them redundant in society. I don't think that's going to happen, but the experimental program on sentencing holds the promise of doing a great deal more in terms of computerizing access to the vast quantity of cases in the common law, which access is the fundamental component of legal research and is what lawyers spend most of their time doing in preparing a lawsuit.

The development of the computerization of legal research, which has been much enhanced by this program at UBC and, as I say, supported wholeheartedly by the Attorney and his ministry, will do much, I think, to reduce costs of accessing professional legal help for citizens in the province by making efficient research. It's been estimated that the time to do legal research on particular points could be reduced; for example, problems that used to take a week could be resolved in 10, 15 minutes by the use of the computer to access the appropriate cases.

Secondly, I'd like to compliment the Attorney on the increased commitment to legal aid in the ministry this year. I think the importance of legal aid is often not fully understood by the public at large. We certainly understand the need for publicly funded medical services and universal accessibility of medical services, because we believe that life and health are fundamental rights. But I think legal services are often equally important to the individuals who are involved. In the case of the criminal law, of course, it's a question of one's liberty or, if one gets off with a fine, of economic well-being; but often in discussing legal aid the question of abuse is raised and the concern is expressed that legal aid is provided for recidivists — people who are in and out of the courts like yo-yos.

I think there are two things that have to be borne in mind when we talk about legal aid, and even the funding of people who are in and out of the courts more than once. First of all, there is certainly no gain to society to jail people who shouldn't be in jail. Nothing is to be gained. It's very expensive to incarcerate people; it's expensive to process them through the courts. Secondly, there can be an enormous waste of court time where parties are unrepresentative by counsel.

Now I'm probably a bit presumptuous speaking about the criminal law, because I was a civil barrister and my only involvement in anything even quasi-criminal was a motor vehicle case which I fought for the son of one of the partners of the firm where I practised. But it was a great triumph, and I think it would not have been such a great triumph if the young gentleman involved had not been represented.

He was charged with an infraction against, I think it is, section 122 of the Motor Vehicle Act: driving without due

[ Page 3949 ]

care and attention for other persons using the road — due consideration for other persons using the highway. The complainant was a paragon of virtue, a lawyer's nightmare, an absolutely upstanding, wonderful citizen who had attempted to flag down my client as he was driving up a hill. He was the kind of witness that you hate to have, because the judge clearly thought the complainant was a paragon of virtue and my client was still in that kind of rumpled stage that some adolescents are in and didn't immediately compel the judge's confidence.

However, I was able to point out to His Honour that in my view the complainant was not a person using the highway for the purposes of the statute, and the judge of course had to agree; so my client was let off. Now you could say that I had him off on a technicality, but I think in fact it was an inappropriately laid charge.

I should point out that the judge in the case, fearing that my client may well have been getting away with something, went up one side of him and down the other and warned him about being a danger to society, and it wasn't until we actually left the courtroom that my client understood that he had in fact been acquitted of this particular charge. But certainly the case was resolved much more quickly because he was represented by counsel. You'll forgive me if this anecdote is self-serving, but it's the only one I can dredge up from a legal career that's even faintly related to the criminal law.

There's also a concern with respect to civil remedies, and we were looking at remedies in the civil law. We're not talking about liberty particularly; we're talking about other very important things at stake. We're often talking about livelihood. Those of us who practised commercial law during the recession saw many people whose livelihood was wiped out, whose businesses were destroyed. Certainly with respect to family law, livelihood is extremely important for the spouse who is seeking support. Access to children in family law cases: there can be very few issues that evoke more emotion or are more central or important to the people who are involved in the dispute. We live in a complex society where we cannot always do business on a handshake, and sometimes lawyers are blamed for that; but in fact it does result in the need for people to seek recourse to the civil courts.

I'd like to compliment the Attorney on three comments in his opening remarks and three developments in his ministry which I think are looking to make those kinds of services more available to people in the province. The first is the appointment of the Hughes commission, which is going to be examining the delivery of legal services and the administration of justice in the province. I want to commend the Attorney for that appointment. Clearly there is no better person in the province than Mr. Hughes to head this commission up, and we are very lucky to have such a distinguished member of the bar and legal practitioner to head this commission.

Secondly, I'd like to comment on the expansion of the application of arbitration. When the international arbitration centre was first set up, of course, many of us saw it in the context of international commercial dealing. I used to practise at a firm where there were a couple of members who did a great deal of international commercial arbitrations. They were always heading off to Paris or other equally glamorous places, so I'm not sure how happy they will be to have to remain in Vancouver to solve those cases. But what I find so interesting is the expansion of the services of the arbitration centre to civil cases, in particular personal injuries, and I'd like to see the continuation of that trend because I think it's very hopeful. It is not the only answer to the question but it certainly can deal with the troublesome and worrying costs incurred by parties in certain kinds of civil actions.

Thirdly, I'd like to commend the Attorney for his legislative initiative in the enforcement of maintenance. Once again, there's nothing more vexing and difficult than dealing with family law cases and the question of maintenance for spouses and children. Those who are party to family law cases are often not in their most stable and sensible emotional frame of mind. It involves issues that go to the heart of people's sense of emotional vulnerability, and it is therefore very difficult often to enforce the obligations of spouses or former spouses in these cases because there are many other agendas taking place. So I commend the Attorney for the initiative that has come out of his department with respect to the enforcement of maintenance. I think it will reduce to a great extent the anguish felt by people who are parties to these kinds of disputes.

[3:15]

There is a concern, as I said, in the profession regarding the cost of civil suits, and particularly family law disputes. Many of us have memories of advising clients who had, in a sense, good cases and were suffering injustices, that the cost of litigating would far exceed the recovery that they would get from the suit if victorious, including court costs. So I hope the Hughes commission will come up with some good suggestions to deal with that situation, because I think all barristers feel a sense of defeat and a sense of despair, when they are not able to find remedies for clients who are otherwise deserving. Once again, as I say, the expansion of the arbitration facilities is to be commended.

I think it's important, though, when we look at these other forms of dispute resolution, that we do not try to discourage people from seeking some of the traditional remedies; I think particularly of civil jury trials. If they desire these, I think that we should be very careful about the techniques we use to try to make those forms of dispute resolution less available. I think the financial incentives of the spectre of court costs as they are now, as opposed to the very modest costs of arbitration, are sufficient to encourage people, where appropriate, to seek the less costly dispute resolution device.

I'd also like to commend the Attorney-General for his use of legislative committees in the last year. I speak, of course, as the Chairman of the Labour, Justice and Intergovernmental Relations Committee. And I very much appreciate having had the opportunity to deal with some issues, and the efficacy of those committees and the appropriateness of them for dealing with some of the matters that come to the Attorney-General's ministry and come before this House. We dealt, of course, first of all, with the question of provincial court judges' salaries, and it was a pleasure to see that matter resolved very quickly, in a spirit of bipartisan cooperation. This, of course, leads to a much more efficient utilization of the time in this House, when committees can resolve issues and, hopefully, come up with some kind of bipartisan consensus, thereby reducing the need for partisan wrangling in this Legislature,

We now have before us the Builders Lien Act, which is a complex but very important issue. We had an excellent briefing by Mr. Arthur Close of the B.C. Law Reform Commission, and Mr. Bob Ward, a practitioner in Vancouver.

[ Page 3950 ]

The question of the Builders Lien Act, of course, raises issues which affect the rights of all parties in construction, and therefore is an issue that crosses the province in terms of its economic significance. It's important for us to try to create a legal framework which provides an effective and inexpensive method of resolving disputes and also provides genuine protection for those who believe they are being protected by the act.

Mr. Chairman, I'd like to say in conclusion that these issues that I've touched upon are important on a number of levels. First of all, they deal with fairness and equity for our people, the ability of people in the province to seek and find justice. They also deal with the cost-effectiveness of programs for government and for individuals and businesses who seek legal redress of their grievances. But, I think, just as important is the impact of these programs on confidence in the rule of law in our society. For many people, their only contact with the legal system, as such, is expensive and frustrating.

My father was, for example, the first justice of the peace who established the informal traffic court in Vancouver. I remember his comment that one of the positive things about that particular court — its informality, its efficiency — was that for many people it was their first contact with the judicial system; and because they were fairly dealt with in a kindly fashion, they went away feeling positive about the administration of justice in our society. I think that's extremely important. People often like to quote Shakespeare's comment: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." But, as the Hon. Mr. Justice Bruce Cohen pointed out when he was treasurer of the Law Society, that comment is often taken out of context; it was actually spoken in the mouths of anarchists, who were saying that in order to take over a society, in order to destroy its order, they should kill the lawyers, those who are the custodians of the law and order. I think we in this House have a responsibility to promote the respect in society of the rule of law. I won't go on at any length about my own experience as a Soviet specialist and my own intimate acquaintance with a society where there is no rule of law, but it's a very frightening experience.

We in this House share a responsibility with the legal profession to try to make the legal process accessible to all British Columbians. I'd like to commend the Attorney-General and his ministry for his and its ongoing commitment to this and to the concrete measures that he has put forward already.

HON. B.R. SMITH: Mr. Chairman, it's very good to have the positive debate on these estimates that we're getting on subjects that don't have anything to do with partisanship but have to do with problems being addressed, whether they're the second member for Vancouver's street kids problem, or whether they're some of the matters that the first member for Vancouver-Point Grey (Ms. Campbell) raised in her remarks.

She mentioned the computer-sentencing program which now makes it possible for a judge, when passing sentence in a complicated criminal case, to find out, in a matter of minutes on a computer printout, exactly what kinds of sentences were handed down by various courts across the country for similar circumstances. I think it will produce much better sentencing.

Another thing that the member mentioned was that we have too many people in jail. She said that in a particular context, and that's the context that I'm going to deal with. I've spoken quite a bit about parole and the need to tighten up parole and the need to earn parole. I believe that implicitly, but I also believe that we have too many people in custody in Canada who shouldn't be in custody.

I agree with the chairman of the National Parole Board on this too. I think that some non-violent crimes that people are incarcerated on and are serving sentences for.... Some of those sentences could be more appropriately served in a noninstitutional type of custody. It's for that reason that we embarked upon our bracelet experiment in British Columbia, which is now being looked at by almost every jurisdiction in Canada. We've had about 28 people go through that form of custody. I don't know of any problems or violations in relation to it.

I think it would be particularly useful to use that form of custody in the area of drinking and driving, because about 21 percent of our people in custody in provincial institutions in this province are drinking drivers. Of course, that means they are repeat drinking drivers; they're not first-time. Almost all of them are repeat, and that's why they're in custody. There are about 300 of these people in custody serving more than an intermittent sentence of periods ranging from 21 days, maybe, to six months or a year. I have to believe that society's main concern about having them in custody is that they don't get behind the wheel of a car. We know that on a bracelet system they wouldn't be behind the wheel of a car, because it would show up on our electronic devices if they were anywhere outside their office, home or whatever the device is set for. I think that there's very fruitful ground there, and I've directed my people to expand as much as they can the use of these bracelets.

I see no purpose in locking up for lengthy periods a whole series of offenders who are either not a danger to the public or do not require lengthy imprisonment for deterrence. These people could be in some alternative form of custody — open custody is what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about people not being punished for their crimes; I think they should be punished. But I think denunciation and loss of freedom are punishments. Closed custody isn't necessary for a whole range of offenders. I appreciate the member's comments.

Also, her comments on the arbitration centre are particularly appreciated. That has been a brave experiment that we could never have embarked on in this province unless we had the will of a number of people to do it in very short order — about seven months — to put it all together, to open it for Expo, to get the international convention adopted in Canada, and to change our own law of international arbitration and our local domestic law of arbitration. All that modernization of our laws took place in a period of under a year, and we opened a centre that we never expected would suddenly be brim-full of international arbitrations. It takes a long time to build up a credibility to get into that field.

The directors of that centre have been very busy trying to promote alternative dispute resolution, and the most promising use of that centre in the domestic law field has been to move into that the settlement of automobile insurance claim cases. Since October 1, 1987, 78 cases have been referred to the centre. The largest number of these cases are ICBC cases. I commend ICBC and my colleague the minister for their foresight in this.

A number of these were cases set down for trial. There were 21 cases actually set down, and they are now referred to

[ Page 3951 ]

mediation counselling or a form of commercial mediation. Out of these 21 cases, 18 were settled in a period averaging about four hours for each mediation hearing. The range of values in the settlement was from $8,000 to $200,000. It is conservatively estimated that that process with that few cases — the settling of only those 18 cases in that short period of time — saved over 100 court days and saved the province over $400,000 in costs. In other words, almost the entire cost of this centre was paid for with the settlement of those cases by mediation.

I'm telling you that this centre is tremendous in terms of potential international business that's going to come here for international arbitration — I'm talking about business, not just arbitration business — and in terms of revolutionizing the way we approach settling our disputes, to get them out of formalized litigation in courtrooms, particularly some of our commercial cases. Accident cases are the best example that one can think of — the so-called fender-bender that doesn't need to occupy two or three days of court time. Four hours of mediation results in a much more straightforward performance. Delays disappear. Here's the answer for much of the backlog in the courts — not all of it, but some of it.

I noticed that my deputy, who is a wise judicial figure and who has been trailing around this province with an intelligent entourage, listening to briefs on law and justice reform, particularly on the courts, was taking full notes when the first member for Vancouver-Point Grey spoke. I know she's going to do a brief for the Justice Reform Committee.

I'm going to put a few things on the record that arose this morning out of questions. I appreciate very much that members were prepared to accommodate me when I had to go back and forth at lunch hour to make a speech in Vancouver.

There was a question raised by the member for Esquimalt-Port Renfrew (Mr. Sihota) about some principals of a contractor who supplied bingo paper for the B. C. Lottery Corporation, and some suggested activities that these people have been involved in. All of this arose from an Edmonton Sun article in 1980, and I have learned that in October 1980 the Edmonton Sun tendered a new account of the events and an apology.

I might say that in September 1986 a contract to supply bingo paper was let to the individual who was the subject of the article in the Edmonton newspaper, Mr. Len Stuart, and that the usual Lottery Corporation security check was made. Following that security check, the contract was approved. It was a one-year contract with an option to be renewed. It was renewed, and the contract will be out for tender at its expiry, which is in the fall of 1988.

I think that's all I can say about that. There was no substantiation for the concerns expressed in the earlier article in the Edmonton newspaper.

[3:30]

The member for Esquimalt-Port Renfrew also asked me about the position of Keith Mitchell, who is a director of the B.C. Enterprise Corporation and whose firm, Farris and Co., have been doing some of the legal work. I think I may have been lacking full information when I answered the question, so I want to just correct some statements I made yesterday. My concern was that Mitchell as a director was not benefiting his firm in terms of fees that his firm were getting for some legal work they did. That's correct because the firm do not get any director fees from the B.C. Enterprise Corporation. A pro forma gratuity or honorarium is paid, very much like the honorarium we pay to community college board members. That's paid annually. So he gets that honorarium personally, but his firm don't, and he's not paid legal fees for anything he does in relation to board meetings at B.C. Enterprise.

The reason his firm do legal work there is that when the company was formed originally as the B.C. Development Corporation, they were the solicitors who incorporated the company and they were solicitors and counsel for that firm. When Mr. Mitchell went on as a director of that company, he went on by reason of his already having been a director of Expo. He was one of those Expo directors who continued on at the Enterprise Corporation, so they'd have that expertise in disposing of the assets. It was fully disclosed at that time that his firm were the solicitors and had been counsel for the company; and his firm therefore gave up their retainer as counsel. That went to another law firm. Since then the B.C. Enterprise Corporation have retained Farris and Co. for some specific tasks, I'm advised. One of those tasks was the disposal of the Expo lands, for which they wanted the services of Mr. Frank Murphy.

I think that you'll get that answer in the Blues anyway. I wanted to lay it out for the member. I didn't want to leave that question dangling.

Also, the member for Kootenay (Ms. Edwards) asked me a number of questions concerning the victims program. I think she has a mistaken notion that this victims program has not been getting into the north or the interior. So I'll just put on the record a few facts on that.

The information line, which this year will cost approximately $97,000, is designed for the very communities that she is speaking of. Those are the communities that use this most, and that's provincewide.

The police-based victim programs have a budget of $736,000, and a number of those have been adopted by communities outside the lower mainland and Vancouver Island. The community-based specialized support programs — sexual assault, wife assault and child sexual abuse centres, information and support — are run by community agencies, have a budget of $600,000, and do not require contributions from municipalities, as do the police-based ones in larger communities.

The Crown-based witness assistance programs have budgeted $297,000 and are available all over the province. The victim reparation programs run by the corrections branch, providing offenders with the opportunity to compensate their victims through payment, have a budget of $200,000 and are available all over the province. The program support services, with training manuals and public information materials, are particularly geared for communities outside the major population centres, and have a budget of $128,000.

The overall program is a coordinated one, and it has also been designed to ensure that there is geographic equity. To make these programs work we have to have community support. Very few proposals have been turned down, and when they are turned down, it is usually because there is an overlap or because we've got a number of agencies doing part of it, and we try and bring about coordination.

We have had excellent support for these programs. I'm not going to put on the record where they are in each community, because she seems to be concerned about that, but I put on the record and repeat my offer to her: I will have my staff visit her in her office and go over every single community that she is interested in relation to what victim programs there are or what application has been made. And I'll now sit down.

[ Page 3952 ]

MR. D'ARCY: I'm not going to extend discussion on vote 14, because I know the Attorney-General's had a very busy day.

I want to make a couple of comments, though, very quickly about the question of parole, with particular reference to people convicted of violent crimes. It has been my lay observation over the years that parole review people and parole officers pay too little attention to the question of the protection of the public when it comes to people who have shown a propensity to commit violent crimes. I would suggest that the public is in a different situation vis-à-vis those types of offenders than vis-à-vis the people convicted of crimes which do not involve injury or damage to life and limb, particularly whe.... It has been my observation again that when someone who is convicted of a violent crime has good communications skills, good intelligence and good education, they are often past masters of studying exactly what to do and say in order to convince parole review boards, officers, judges or whoever might be reviewing their case that they really aren't like the person who was convicted for whatever it was, and even if they were once, they would never be that way again — which, we know, in many cases is garbage.

I'm not a bloodthirsty type when it comes to penalties or keeping people incarcerated, but I do think that protection of the public from individuals who have shown a capacity and a capability to perpetrate violent crime needs to be paid very close attention to.

What I really wanted to ask about — and I'll be very quick — is the question of the Gaming Commission and licences for casino halls. Fairly recently a decision was made — rather an arbitrary decision — that there had to be a certain basic minimum, or licences would not be issued or even renewed for casino halls. I object to this ruling. Governments, particularly one which rhetorically, at least, says it is in favour of free enterprise, do not go around limiting the operation of a very small business: a corner store because it does very little business, a hostelry because it doesn't have very many guests, or a restaurant or a liquor licensee merely because they do very little business. I do not recognize the rationale for putting out of business an operation that's already in business, for no other reason than that some floor minimum of volume has not been reached.

I concede that the government has every right, and indeed should have some right, to set certain standards of operation for anything which is licensed, whether it be a gaming hall, a liquor licence, a taxi operation or anything else. But setting a minimum floor volume surely should be the right of the owner-operator and the charities which take advantage of that operation. That is their privilege. If they want to operate on very low volumes and wish to continue to do so, the government should not interfere and put them out of business. This is particularly true in my area, where we only have had the one casino licence, and that one casino licence is depended on by a number of very important volunteer agencies within the community for some backup funding — quite legitimate agencies involved in child care, home care and a whole lot of assistance programs in the community which very easily fall within the category of charitable operations, not in the grey area at all. There's absolutely no reason why these shouldn't be allowed to continue, especially since this one operation attracts a certain amount of its clientele from outside the immediate region, other parts of British Columbia and, indeed, because of its proximity to the border, from the United States as well.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to get on the record and ask for the minister's feelings on this, and have him consult with his commission regarding the removal of licences from casino halls for no other reason — I emphasize that — than that they fall below a recently established arbitrary volume minimum. It's not a practice followed by government at any level in this province relative to any other business, and I see no reason why it should be applied to this type of business either.

HON. B.R. SMITH: I guess the philosophy has been that those activities do not exist primarily for operators and people who rent halls; they exist for charities. When you get percentages of the win exceeding 50 percent going into paying for hall rentals, expenses and operators, then it is not beneficial to the charities, and we have had that low-volume problem. It is true that we did close casinos in some parts of the province. In your community, bingo halls as well had difficulty. But the charity licences for bingos which were lifted.... My note shows that they were reinstated January 1, 1988, with the condition that they could only bingo in licensed commercial bingo halls in which the 25 percent minimum contribution was met.

Where the Gaming Commission had to shut down a bingo operation, as they did in Penticton as well, it was done on the basis that there were too many outlets seeking too few dollars. In some communities there was initial disruption from that, but the Gaming Commission encouraged the charities to go with the other outlet, and the charities were soon plugged into other outlets. The operators initially had convinced the charities, I guess, that they wouldn't be able to get access to funds, but we've had a number of cases where the charities have got into other bingo operations.

I just believe that the objective of bingos and casinos is to help charities, and that we're not going to help charities if we encourage the kind of operations that we had here for some years, where they weren't even getting near the target percentages, where the vast majority of all the money bet was going into the hands of various operators and expenses. We have been tough with that. We've brought in these percentages. They may seem arbitrary, but the commission has given a fair amount of leeway. It has given operators time to make those percentages.

Now, of course, we've begun the licensing of commercial operations. Before it was just charities that were operated. So we'll have better control where we should have, over the operators, and the charities won't become the pawns. In any given case that you bring to me, I know that the commission will look carefully at it. There have been some successful appeals. My understanding is that the bingo licence was restored in Trail on January 1 for those charities on that condition.

Your remarks on parole are greatly appreciated.

MR. D'ARCY: I made no mention in my remarks about bingo licences. I was talking strictly about only one casino licence, and I was speaking on behalf of the charities. The Attorney-General said that the charities shouldn't be used this way. It is in fact the charities which are concerned about this — and the operators, as well.

First of all, I want to repeat: there is no competing operation. We're not talking about several operations out there trying to scramble for too little business. We're talking about one operation with one set amount of business which

[ Page 3953 ]

hopefully is going to grow. I also made no complaint about the question of the percentages. I quite agree with the Attorney-General that the government should have the right to set and enforce percentages and standards.

I was talking about the licence to operate at all being set by an arbitrary floor level which says: "Look, if your business is less than that, it doesn't matter that you conform in every other way; you cannot operate." That is inconsistent, in my view, with a government which claims to be in favour of free enterprise and small business. I would like the Attorney-General to review that policy, not only relative to the operation that was in Trail, but also relative to other operators.

[3:45]

HON. B.R. SMITH: It's not the business that we're trying to regulate; we're trying to regulate how much of that gets to the charity. We don't care if the volume is as low as $100 a month, as long as $50 goes to the charities. You may think that percentage is arbitrary, and I know there are some charities who take the view that anything is okay — 5 percent, 10 percent or whatever. They want to have access to this revenue, and we've tried to set standards that will get a maximum amount of money into their hands.

I will acknowledge that the situations are never the same in all parts of the province. The problems that charities have in the Kootenays may be quite different from what they are in Vancouver and Victoria, in terms of volume and competition and other things. I'd certainly be prepared to ask the commission to review the policies in the light of regional and local needs. They've done that on an ad hoc basis in relation to their appeal procedure, but in terms of generating policies, they'll want to look sensitively at the needs of some other communities which may have circumstances quite different from higher-volume areas. I guess what you're getting at is that we can't judge the Trail casino on the basis of a casino on Broadway in Vancouver.

MR. DARCY: I don't wish to spin this out much further, but I think we're moving in the same direction here. I have to reiterate though, that I am not expressing a concern about the percentage levels as they exist or as they apply in Trail or anywhere else in the province. That is not my concern, Mr. Chairman. What I am concerned about is the government's setting of an arbitrary minimum of $1,500 a night or something of that nature and saying that anybody who doesn't make that $1,500 minimum is not going to stay in business. That is my concern.

It seems to me that as long as the percentages which the minister quite correctly alludes to are met and all the other rules and criteria and licensing provisions are met, there is absolutely no reason why the guy can't starve to death if he wants to — the same as any other business. He shouldn't be put out of business by the government saying: "We're simply not going to license you."

HON. B. R. SMITH: I won't prolong the exchange either, because I can see that we were talking about two different things. I'm quite happy to look into what you're now talking about, because I'm not aware of any rule that we have of a minimum that somebody has to generate from this business or any other business.

MR. ROSE: Mr. Chairman, I am about to make one of my favourite speeches. I have given it for the last five years, and I am becoming so accustomed to it that I can almost do it from memory.

I have a certain area in my riding — a very beautiful part of it — called Belcarra. It has some interesting beaches and parks that attract about 600,000 visitors each year. Especially in the summer, you can scarcely go up and down those roads because it is so central and so attractive.

Year after year we've asked the Attorney-General's department — not just my asking, but the municipalities affected of Belcarra, certainly the district of Coquitlam.... Now we have a new municipality called Anmore. Year after year we've put forward to the minister figures justifying an increased allocation of police in that area, especially during the summer, and year after year we get turned down. The latest time we got turned down, Mayor Drew of Belcarra was told by the E Division manpower allocation program that "the deputy commissioner advises that the Coquitlam detachment serving Belcarra did not receive expected resources during this reallocation, as higher priorities existed elsewhere."

Well, I don't have the crime stats for every area, but I do know that it isn't just a case of crime, although there is often vandalism associated with recreation properties, beaches, parks, etc. There are also accidents, drownings, traffic snarls and other problems. I was at the opening of White Pine Beach park, or I attempted to attend that last summer. I couldn't get up the road. The place was absolutely jammed, bumper to bumper. I know part of the problem is highways, because the road goes from nowhere and ends at a dead end at Belcarra Park. That's an argument for the Highways department.

I want to express my mild, controlled but nevertheless outrage at this continuing ignoring of the legitimate needs expressed by legitimate means. I don't know what it's going to take, but that area in the summer desperately needs further protection by the police. If we needed it five years ago, we need it ten times as much now, because not only has the growth of resources and parks been large in that area, so has the suburbia. The urban growth and the housing has probably doubled in the last five years. I want to put forth as strong a representation as I can to the minister on this subject, because nobody is pleased about this. We feel that we're being ignored, and we don't like it very much.

HON. B.R. SMITH: I must commend the member for speaking so regularly and resourcefully on behalf of the citizens of Belcarra, and also the other citizens of British Columbia who go to that lovely part of our province during the summer months. I have really never heard such formidable arguments in support of increased policing in that area.

It has been to several RCMP manpower reviews. The very words of the member have been hung upon at countless rounds of RCMP briefing sessions, and they have looked at these and they have carefully evaluated manpower allocations. It looks as if we're back again another year and this member isn't giving up. We have to give him an A for effort. Even though the allocation this year doesn't free another partial FTE to Belcarra....

MR. ROSE: We need policemen. We've had enough of those FTEs.

HON. B. R. SMITH: Well, I'm going to recommend anyway that the RCMP take another look at particularly summer allocation of some help there. I'm going to send it

[ Page 3954 ]

back to them even though the annual allocation has been done. I do believe that we should take another look at this one for some summer help.

MR. ROSE: I'm grateful for that positive and amiable response. I'm sure that he would be very influential on the manpower allocation commissioner. I'm pleased that the minister, although certainly not overweight, would lend his great weight to this formidable and important project. An accident, a tragedy, is going to happen, and then we'll have all kinds of cops swarming around the place, but that's not good enough. We need regular and continued addition in terms of safety from accidents and various other things that can happen — riots and anything that's likely to happen where a place appears to be underpatrolled. This definitely does. This area certainly qualifies.

[Mr. Rabbitt in the chair.]

I'm grateful to the minister, and I hope he can assure me that because of his intervention I won't have to make this speech again next year. It will be a relief to all of us.

Moving right along now, I want to raise another matter. I'm glad the Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. Dueck) is here. I don't want to be an alarmist, but we've had some very unpleasant experiences lately in the area in which I live. The Minister of Health is responsible for the Riverview institution; however, the Attorney-General has a number of guests assigned to the forensic institution. Because of a recent incident involving my daughter, I've heard the alarm expressed probably more widely than I would have otherwise. I'm not up here trying to increase the level of community alarm, but nevertheless any incident such as what happened to my daughter a couple of weeks ago, or the stabbing incident, raises the alarm of many people in the neighbourhood and around there.

I wanted to ask the Attorney-General before he went outside some things about the forensic institution because again, I'm a local member, I've expressed some interest in it. It's in my riding. I hear the horror stories of some of the guests of the Attorney-General sometimes taking unwarranted walks. There are some examples, I think, that can be documented. Some people won't speak to me on the record about it, because they're fearful of their jobs or whatever.

I would like to know the policy of the minister regarding his guests at the forensic institute. It's right next to Colony Farm where a lot of people walk their dogs, and go for walks with their families. It's a very beautiful area. Patients at the forensic institute are sometimes at large. They're not supposed to be. They're not supposed to have ground passes, as far as I know, but they are at large. One of the people employed by the government down at the forensic institute said, in warning to those people who sometimes or regularly use that area of Colony Farm for their own recreation — walking their dogs or the children, and so forth — that they should be careful. Because people in that institution are not suffering from bad breath. They are often there because they are violent, they are criminal and they are insane.

I would like to ask the minister if any recent steps have been taken on the one hand to ensure the rights of the patient — and that, I think, is important — and the treatment of the patient so far as possible, but also to reassure the public. I'm quite sure that I could document a number of stories of people who are his guests there who are out on day passes with or without escorts and were seen around the community, and this causes some alarm.

HON. B.R. SMITH: I don't want to duck the issue at all. I'm quite happy to debate the issue, but it's not under my estimates; it's under Health. Health runs a prison for people who are in custody by order-in-council. The only function I have in this whole thing is to bring to cabinet orders that set out the conditions under which they are held. I don't police them once they are there. That's totally a Health function. When it comes to making the decisions to release them, we are obliged by law to deal with them as health matters, not as parole matters. It's very hard sometimes to get, as you would know, the heads of everyone dealing with these people from the standpoint of health. Are they now well enough to be at liberty? And, of course, whether they are a danger is a factor for sure.

We can't deal with it as a parole matter, and it doesn't come under me, but it sure concerns me. People who are the guests of my system then pass into a Health system. As we come to the time of making custodial decisions as to how people who are mentally ill are going to be integrated into the "community," I dare say that we will be very careful to make sure that we don't have overly rapid or unsafe integration of people who are being held under order-in-council and who at one time, it was alleged, committed a very serious crime, and may be held there only on the basis they were judged not guilty by reason of insanity. So I hear your remarks.

[4:00]

MR. ROSE: I'll ask the Minister of Health as well. I don't expect him to make any response at this time, but I am appreciative of the fact that he's listening.

Is it true that a patient at Riverview, such as the one accused of stabbing a psychiatric nurse last Friday or Saturday night, would come under the Attorney-General's custody only long enough to be committed to the forensic institution, then become, once again, the responsibility of the Ministry of Health?

HON. B.R. SMITH: That's right. Then I pick up responsibility for him again at such time as his level of custody requires to be changed by order-in-council, or if he commits some sort of offence inside, then, of course, he becomes a concern of mine. But the housing and custodial care of him is a Health matter. That was long ago separated by the law and done very deliberately so it would not be a criminal justice custody situation but Health custody situation.

MR. ROSE: I won't go on with this, but as I say, I've got all kinds of letters, virtual horror stories of people expressing their fears, but often expressing real, violent tragedies that have befallen their families because of this. I don't think I'm so far in the Dark Ages that I don't agree that it's very difficult sometimes to predict what someone might do once released or once escaped; and I don't deny that the responsibility upon parole officers and others of making a value judgment is a very great one.

I was intrigued, though — and I'm just about through with this — by the minister saying that he felt there were too many people incarcerated in Canada. My information is that we have the ninth highest in the western world. In other words, there are eight countries that have fewer people per capita in prison than we do. That's not the perception of the

[ Page 3955 ]

public out there. They think that people who are guests of the Crown have got there through light sentences and are going to be wined and dined and pampered until they serve a third of their sentence and then they are out on parole again.

On the one hand, the minister frequently comes across as very liberal in terms of prisons and the population. On the other hand, he sometimes puts on his jackboots and clomps across the floor as Mr. Law and Order. I never know how to read him. I think he's a bit schizoid — if that's unparliamentary, I'll withdraw it — in some of his attitudes. I wonder if he could clarify for me what he really meant.

HON. B.R. SMITH: I think he's got me figured out pretty well, that I'm law and order with a view.

Nevertheless, at one end of the scale, where you're dealing with people who have not committed reprehensible crimes, who aren't a danger or a risk, who aren't the sort of people that the member for Rossland-Trail (Mr. Darcy) has just spoken of.... They're not people like that, and they are not people who have committed crimes which the public finds particularly odious — that is, serious white collar swindles, that sort of thing. They are people who are in there because of crimes against property or because they have a problem with alcohol which makes it unsafe to ever have them behind the wheel of a car.

I don't believe those people should be sitting in cells. Those people should be in custody, yes; those people should be punished, yes; but their custody should be a kind of open custody, where we know what they are doing. We know they are not behind the wheel of a car, we know they are being punished, and we know they have been denounced. It makes no sense to warehouse them; that is what I'm saying. If you think that's bleeding-heart, I don't think it is at all. I think it's just damn common sense.

On the other hand, I do believe that we've had problems of a major kind in dramatic cases with parole in Canada, cases which have given the public the impression that parole is lousy for some reason. And parole isn't lousy.

MR. SIHOTA: I said that.

HON. B.R. SMITH: I know. I'm agreeing with you and I'm agreeing with your friend from Rossland-Trail too. Public perception of parole has been bad because of some mistakes that have been made, and also because of a philosophy that people have had in that system — that their job is to get them in and out as quickly as they can, all of them. That is not the philosophy that the public accepts, because the public does believe not only that should we confine people who are dangerous, but also that some of the rogues and the recidivists who are in that system for drugs and B and E and so on should earn their way out; and that's what I've been saying on parole. So I am both liberal and conservative on the matter of custody, you're darn right I am. I'm a unity party man.

MR. ROSE: It's not unusual for the Liberals and the Conservatives to be at war within the Socreds, so I can understand how the minister's personal problems might affect that.

Many of the people who I'm told populate our prisons — at least half of them — are in there on drug-related charges, and a great many, a far greater proportion than their numbers would predict, are natives or people who are poor and do not have an adequate defence. Very seldom do we see a large number of so-called white collar criminals behind bars, because they can usually pay a smart lawyer to get them off.

I think it's all very well for the A-G to make his speech....

MR. SIHOTA: I didn't write that question.

MR. ROSE: I didn't refer to you, because I was talking about a smart lawyer.

The minister fulminates about how these people who are non-violent or involved in these trivial crimes should be serving their time and be punished in some other institution. Could he tell us what institutions he's planning, so that we could relieve the heavy numbers which we have in Canada in prisons serving time at great expense? The last time I looked we had something like 12,000 inmates in federal institutions and about 12,000 guards. We could take one home, one to a customer.

Now that's no solution, but the solution is along the lines that the minister is discussing. Try a variety of approaches rather than just incarceration. What I want to know is: we've heard his beliefs; what's he doing about it?

HON. B.R. SMITH: I didn't realize that he was going to give me such a good platform, and I'm going to resist too much speech-making here because there are other people who want to do their estimates and talk.

The problem with natives in the prison system in Canada and in this province has been a very serious one. A little over 17 percent of the adult prison population is native, and about 19 percent of the youth prison population is native. Those figures, as you can see them going back over the years, have been more or less consistent; there hasn't been much variation. In other words, an awful lot has to be done....

MR. ROSE: Is that 36 percent in total?

HON. B.R. SMITH: No. 17 percent of one system and 19 percent of the other. It would work out as an average of about 18 percent at both levels.

We have a number of natives, of course, on community programs as well. So what am I going to do about it? Well, I've already mentioned the bracelet form of custody that I pioneered in this country and that I believe we've got to expand a lot more. To be comfortable in doing that legally, we're probably going to need some changes to the Criminal Code, but we're going to do the best we can under the existing law to expand it as much as possible — number one.

Number two, I will continue to support better work programs and camps, programs such as Alouette River and Kokanee — I wish the member for Nelson-Creston (Mr. Dirks) were here — which get inmates outside doing constructive things, learning trades and skills, so that they become much better candidates for early release. Those sorts of programs are the important ones, and we are paying close attention to them. I thank the member for the platform.

MR. SIHOTA: I have several questions to ask the minister now that all the other rogues have sat down and we can get back to some of the other issues I wanted to raise.

AN HON. MEMBER: Rogues?

MR. SIHOTA: Did I say "rogues"? I think I was just quoting the Attorney-General. Colleagues — sorry — is what I meant to say.

[ Page 3956 ]

I want to continue on two matters that I raised earlier and then deal with the provincial emergency program and prisons, and I think that will probably wrap it up; because I too feel the pressure of time.

First of all, on the matter of the company involved in Richmond: does the Attorney-General have any further comment on the comment I made about that company and its principals?

HON. B.R. SMITH: Yes, I answered it and put it on the record when you were out of the chamber; I think you were just coming in when I dealt with it. Certainly the security checks were made on the individual. The article that precipitated the concerns in the Edmonton press early in 1980 was largely repudiated in an apology in October of that same year. A security check was run on this individual, and the contract was let on a one-year basis with a one-year renewal. The contract comes up again for consideration in October of this year, I think.

MR. SIHOTA: With respect to another issue I raised on Thursday, I believe, I come back to it. It deals with Mr. Toigo and the provincial government's ongoing involvement with the situation as it relates to BCEC. Just to recap, the other day I made reference to the fact that the Premier had issued a press release indicating that the Attorney-General's department was not investigating Mr. Toigo, and we talked at that time about the propriety of that statement. Could the minister advise this House as to whether that press release puts to end the ministry's involvement with Mr. Toigo?

HON. B.R. SMITH: Well, how could I possibly confirm that and be consistent with the position I've taken all along, that I can never confirm or deny whether anyone is the concern of my ministry in the way in which that's meant. I can't possibly confirm or deny that, because it's another way of asking the first and primary question.

MR. SIHOTA: I take it, then, that the Attorney-General is not prepared to comment one way or the other as to whether there are any other investigations of Mr. Toigo. Is that what I take his comments to mean?

HON. B.R. SMITH: That's correct. As I recall, the release you're speaking of, which came from the Premier's office, was in a slightly different form than that. I don't have a copy of that release in front of me, but as I recall, the release had to do with requests for investigations. Maybe you have an up-to-date copy of it. I don't know that it was quite as broad as you indicated; but you've probably got a copy of it — I don't.

MR. SIHOTA: I find it passing strange that the Attorney General does not have a copy of it, and even stranger that I would have a copy of it when the Attorney-General doesn't. It would seem to me, again, strange that the Premier would not have provided a copy of it to the Attorney-General. I take it, therefore — again, just to make this matter clear — that the Attorney-General is not prepared to comment on whether there are any other matters of concern or of interest to his ministry as they relate to Mr. Toigo, apart from the BCEC issue. I wasn't talking about the BCEC issue in my previous question. I meant: apart from the one matter that the Premier made reference to in his press release. Other than that, is there any other involvement of his ministry with Mr. Toigo?

HON. B.R. SMITH: I'm really surprised that the member would ask that question, because it's the same question as the primary question. It really puts individuals in an unfair position, when I perhaps appear to be ducking this question. But I cannot answer that question — not just for Mr. Toigo but for someone else. As to not having the press release, I really have not carried it around with me; I do not have those documents here this afternoon. I think we canvassed them in the House soon afterwards — it was last Thursday. So I don't have any of those with me, but I have a very good recollection of the events, and I am telling you what my neutral position permits me to tell.

[4:15]

MR. SIHOTA: I want to thank the Attorney-General for his response on that issue.

I want to turn now to another issue. Just to put both him and his officials on notice, I intend to deal now with the provincial emergency program; subsequently, the matter of corrections and prisons in this province; and finally, a number of quick miscellaneous issues.

MR. ROSE: All in 12 minutes?

MR. SIHOTA: All in 12 minutes.

There are more than 6,000 volunteers within the provincial emergency program. Yet there appears to be little government support or effort to organize those people effectively. I say that because of the report on the provincial emergency program which the Attorney-General — I want to thank him for this — was good enough to make available to me. I understand that it is available to municipalities across the province but has not been officially tabled in the House. The report indicates that the Social Credit government has not prepared B.C. for a provincewide emergency. This study suggests that if we had a major disaster in British Columbia, it is very possible that the government would simply not be ready to provide public safety measures to ensure that risks to life and property were minimized.

What is of great concern to me, Mr. Chairman, is that this government knew last year that the provincial emergency program was thoroughly inadequate, but rather than acting on the report's recommendations, it appears from the budget information that they moved in the opposite direction and cut the program's budget. It seems to me that there is no way the government can justify these cuts, if they are indeed true. I want to deal with that, as well as my feeling that the government should amend the Municipal Act to require municipalities to have emergency plans in place, and to update them regularly. Furthermore, in my view, as an opening comment, it must recognize the recommendations in the study and provide the necessary funding and resources to develop a comprehensive contingency program.

The report — again, I want to thank the Attorney-General for making it available to me — during the course of its conclusions, on page 87, says that "the provincial emergency program is currently incapable of responding effectively to a major disaster." It goes on to state that the program might actually be a liability in the event of a major disaster. How could the Attorney-General have had this report in his possession since last August and taken nominal action on it? Or perhaps he can explain what action has occurred since last August, particularly in light of the fact that, from my reading of the budget, it appears there has been a 6.2 percent cut in funding for the provincial emergency program.

[ Page 3957 ]

HON. B.R. SMITH: The budget is really the same. There's been a building occupancy shift, that's all, so it's virtually the same budget. This program was transferred from the Ministry of Environment to my ministry in November of 1986. The concerns that are expressed in that report bear out the considerable concern that many citizens, and many municipal people actually, had expressed to me and to my ministry as to the ability of the provincial emergency program to respond to any major emergency, and also concerns about what appeared to be the lack of planning for government response to a disaster such as a major earthquake or a tidal wave which....

You know, all you have to do is go and look at communities that have been hit by these. You can still see the consequences in Alaska of that terrible earthquake. I saw the consequences in the Hawaiian islands not too long ago of a tidal wave that hit there and a storm that followed that in 1982. It really has taken about six years to rebuild, and still the damage to beaches and so on is evident.

So I think that we woke up to the fact that we had to have a look taken at this and a response made to these concerns. We embarked on a major evaluation of the program last year. This evaluation certainly reveals the deficiencies in organization and management and, indeed, in commitment. So the first thing that I did after that report came to me was to search for and find a new director of this program, and we have appointed Mr. Murray Stewart, who has excellent credentials. We've started on reorganization, increasing the geographic representation from five to nine regions located throughout the province, to improve immediately the training content and the method of delivery, to place more emphasis on planning and to try to beef this whole program up. We're in the process of doing that.

The director of the program has been instructed to implement the recommendations of the report, which he has authority to implement. These include the organizational structure, communications, support and training for volunteers, search and rescue on land, sea and air, and joint planning funding — to mention some.

I'll tell the member that as of April 1 of this year, an emergency operations centre at headquarters has been operating on a 24-hour basis with a toll-free number, which will ensure that emergency information such as warnings of tidal waves and so on can be disseminated more effectively. This operations centre has dealt with a number of emergency incidents in the short time that it has been in existence, and that's just since April 1: eight search-and-rescue operations on land; two with downed aircraft; 41 dangerous-goods complaints; four motor vehicle accidents in which Jaws of Life were required; and a number of miscellaneous calls. So we've done those things, and we've also improved our regional operations considerably and worked with the RCMP in that regard; and a number of workshops, seminars and training courses are being planned to try to do a better job of public education.

I think that right now as we're debating these estimates a major crisis management exercise is being conducted at the Justice Institute by the police branch along with the emergency services people. Together with the Canadian government, which has a major role to play in this, we intend to address those concerns and try to make a stronger commitment for emergency service in 1988-89.

MR. SIHOTA: I want to deal with the issues that the Premier raised in the course of his comment, and to try to flesh out some of them — not all of them — because there is at this time no provincewide emergency plan for British Columbia; there is no governmentwide plan, in the event of a disaster, for all ministries of government; 30 percent of the municipalities in the province do not have emergency plans; and rural areas are not covered by plans at all.

The Attorney-General made reference to the role played by the federal government, and it's my understanding that shared-cost funding has been available from the federal government through a joint emergency planning program since at least 1985. An agreement is now in the works, and I don't know if it has been executed or not. The regional office of Emergency Planning Canada, when I contacted them, were reluctant to comment as to whether B.C. has received any money under this program.

The provincial emergency program report states that "other provinces are applying for and receiving substantially more than British Columbia" under the joint emergency program planning program. Can the Attorney-General explain why his government has been so remiss in applying for federal funds available for emergency planning?

HON. B.R. SMITH: The agreement was just recently signed, and we will be getting federal money this year.

MR. SIHOTA: I appreciate that this is a new item within the Attorney-General's ministry. It's been here as long as I've been here, I guess. It came on in November 1986. I'm still at a loss to understand why it took the government so long to enter into that type of agreement. I realize it's something new in your ministry, so it may not be answered. I'd like to have some understanding as to why it's taken so long.

HON. B.R. SMITH: I guess it has been the philosophy of governments, going right back through the seventies, not to give this a high priority. I think it's quite obvious that we haven't done so. It has not been a high priority. We have, I guess, basked in the belief that the nuclear stalemate was going to protect us from a war, and that these other matters were not things we could plan against. I really don't take ownership of that. I guess your explanation would be as good as mine. We just haven't put our dollars into emergency programs.

I can remember when I was in municipal government.... I'm sure the member had the same offer. Many times I was asked to go visit the big bunker outside Ottawa, and to see what we were going to do if we had a nuclear disaster or some kind of disaster in Canada. I was never reassured by the fact that the heads of government, the parliamentarians and the bureaucrats in Ottawa were going to be in that bunker, but the rest of us weren't. I never availed myself of that freebie when I was in municipal government. I never went and saw that bunker. It wasn't an idea that appealed to me. I'm not too keen on the bunker mentality. I think we should be doing educational programs and community programs, and that's what we hope to do here.

MR. SIHOTA: I want to get to that information program in a second, but I must confess that when I was an alderman in Esquimalt I was never invited to go to the bunker. I don't know what I did wrong. But I do remember the days in elementary school when we used to practise duck-and-cover. We used to hide underneath our desks and cover our eyes with books. I don't know if the Attorney-General remembers the

[ Page 3958 ]

days when he was in elementary school, if they had duck and-cover exercises then, or if that's something new to those of us who were elementary kids in the sixties. If he doesn't remember, it was a lot of fun because it broke up the routine of school to play duck-and-cover for a while. I see the Chairman may have been involved in duck-and-cover, because he's smiling.

The concern here isn't exclusively with nuclear incidents. Obviously there are all sorts of things, as you've mentioned in citing your statistics, transportation of dangerous goods being just one of them.

You are correct that it hasn't been a priority. It's my understanding that there are only 29 full-time equivalents, FTEs, certainly an inadequate number to perform the task. Alberta has over three times the staff assigned to its program. The Attorney-General has indicated that the budget will not be increasing. Will the budget mean that there will be layoffs in this already understaffed program?

HON. B.R. SMITH: No.

MR. SIHOTA: For emergency plans to work, there must be widespread and adequate public information about the plans and the plan must be practised. This point was made very forcefully in a recent report on nuclear accidents that I have seen, by Prof. Jackson Davis. Will the minister confirm that the provincial emergency program has no public information officer on staff, and no public information program apart from the occasional publication of pamphlets?

[4:30]

HON. B. R. SMITH: That's right, it doesn't, and it hadn't been doing that. That comes out in the report. I guess I turn over these reports prior to estimates at my peril.

MR. SIHOTA: That's not really true. Your peril is that not only did you turn it over, but you gave my research staff a chance to work on it. I must confess that, unlike all the other areas we've debated, this is one where I'm working totally off my notes, as the Attorney-General is. So there you have it.

From the point of view of the community I represent, there is a nominal — and I want to emphasize that — risk of an accident involving nuclear material. There is not enough information, supply or manpower to adequately respond to such a situation. As I understand it, there are only three or four volunteers in the entire province qualified to detect and monitor radioactive material. Could the Attorney-General indicate whether that is true?

HON. B.R. SMITH: No, I can't confirm that. I think that would probably be close to a ballpark figure, but I can't confirm it.

MR. SIHOTA: I want to deal with training. It's my information that the Alberta public safety service has a training division with 14 full-time employees, including a separate dangerous goods control training branch with a staff of three. In B.C. the total training staff is three, and I understand this will be transferred to the Justice Institute. Is it true — given the Attorney-General's earlier comments about the importance of training — that the total training staff is three, and that it is to be transferred to the Justice Institute?

HON. B.R. SMITH: Yes, and that's why the report was critical of it.

MR. SIHOTA: The Attorney-General in his opening comments made all sorts of assurances with respect to training, public information and adequate staffing. What we've been able to establish so far is that, given that there's no increase in the budget, there's obviously going to be no increase in staff — fortunately no reduction either — and therefore inadequate staffing, and that there clearly is inadequate training and certainly no public information. It would seem to me that a pivotal component of this program would be access to public information. Could the Attorney-General again explain to me how an accident involving hazardous goods can be dealt with, when the government has no experts on hazardous goods on its emergency program staff?

HON. B.R. SMITH: They're simply not in this ministry; they're in other places. They're in Highways or Environment. They're not in Transportation, and they're not with my ministry.

As far as training is concerned, we will be doing that through the Justice Institute. I outlined earlier what the plans are arising out of this report. If you want to go over that some more, that's fine. We recognize that the program has not had adequate support — that would be an understatement.

MR. SIHOTA: With no increase in budget, it will not receive any further support. That is also understood and underlined, in light of the fact that if there is a commitment to do all those things, you're going to have to fund this. I don't think it makes any sense to have a facade of a program to deal with in this instance.

If there ever was any type of incident in southern Vancouver Island, there is only one way out, and that is over the Malahat. If something happened in the Western Community, even that would be eliminated as an option for a way out. There would have to be some program of public information, which is clearly lacking. It's almost scary, and I'm not talking about a nuclear incident. I'm talking about a spillage of a toxic dangerous good which could have a poisonous effect in terms of gas released into the air. It wouldn't take very long to clog up the escape route over the Malahat.

It's also my understanding that the program maintains a 24-hour telephone line — which the Attorney-General commented upon — at its headquarters in Victoria, and I am told again that it is staffed by commissionaires with no training in emergency preparedness. Could the Attorney-General confirm my understanding?

HON. B.R. SMITH: Yes, they are not crisis counsellors; it's an information line. They don't go to the Justice Institute before they go on that line. I am told they are commissionaires.

MR. SIHOTA: So now we've got people staffing this 24-hour line with no training. The province is divided into nine zones for the purposes of emergency planning. Each of these is a one-person office with only half-time support staff, which I think again underlines the inadequacies of the program. Because of our limitations on time, and appreciating the fact that this is something that's new to the Attorney General in some ways, I think my comments will remain on record in terms of our concern. We look forward to next year's budget to see whether or not there is further movement from the government with respect to a provincial emergency program.

[ Page 3959 ]

I want to turn now to a different topic which the Attorney-General, I know, is far more familiar with than provincial emergency programs, and that is the matter of corrections. The other day we engaged in this lengthy discussion about privatization of medical services within the prison system. Last year when I asked the Attorney-General about the privatization of correction programs, I think the comment that was directed to me was similar to that which was directed to me a couple of days ago — that the government does not intend to privatize any further the component of the corrections service which relates to direct security.

So I want to focus on incidental matters that may not be seen on the surface as direct security matters within prisons but which clearly are matters of concern to me. I want to ask, first of all, what the government's intentions are with respect to the privatization of shops. There are, of course, woodwork shops, metal shops, hobby shops, laundry shops, tailoring shops and rehab programs. I wonder if the Attorney-General could indicate what the government's intentions are vis-à-vis privatization of these types of shops and programs.

HON. B.R. SMITH: It's simply under examination. It's one we're looking at. The volunteer coordinators, arts and crafts, woodwork, tailoring, recreation structures — we're looking at all of them. No decision has been made. None of these people perform security functions. Security certainly is a consideration when you look at any of these positions. An assurance that that isn't going to be affected would be something we'd be examining. We're also looking at the cost benefits of private contracts on those as opposed to in-house, but we've made no decision on that.

MR. SIHOTA: Perhaps the Attorney-General could tell me how far along the government is in terms of its investigation into whether they wish to privatize or not.

HON. B.R. SMITH: We're not far advanced at all. We haven't made any feelers to outside agencies or organizations; we're simply in the process of identifying these and asking for the views of our regional managers as to the suitability of these within their region and what their views are on it. We haven't made a decision even to move to the cost-benefit evaluation stage.

MR. SIHOTA: I guess I want to tell the Attorney-General what my concern is with respect to these programs, and I think there are two in particular. First of all, if I heard him right, the Attorney-General said that these are not "security functions." I think that ought not to be the reason why these areas should be privatized or not privatized. In fact, let me suggest that perhaps they ought to be security functions, in that if there is a problem elsewhere in an institution, I take it that.... Let me start a different way. It's my understanding that these positions used to be security officer positions. Is that correct?

HON. B.R. SMITH: No. I think maybe only in the collective agreement sense would that be true, but they were never hired with an operational security intention nor did they perform any of those duties.

MR. SIHOTA: I guess I meant that in the collective agreement sense they were clearly security officers. I want to just say further that it's my understanding that if there was an incident in the prison, and if these people were security officers in the collective agreement sense, they could be utilized to attend to an incident; whereas if the area is privatized, they cannot be used to attend to an incident. Is that correct?

HON. B.R. SMITH: Certainly, yes.

MR. SIHOTA: What I wanted to say, then, in terms of my concern with the issues of public safety and risk to the public and to staff, is this: if these people could be deployed as security officers prior to privatization, they are then available in the event of an incident; otherwise they will not be available in the event of an incident. I don't want to get into the Oakalla incident, because it's under investigation, but if there had been — and there wasn't — a program in place at the time, the person there could have been dispatched to attend to the problem.

As you begin to privatize, you begin to remove security officers, in the collective agreement sense, from the prison system. When you begin to remove them from the prison system, it places that much more stress on the staff who are inside and potentially exposes them to that much more risk, and eliminates a potential backup assistance that was present before. It is from that angle that we on this side of the House express a concern about the privatization of those programs.

[4:45]

Furthermore, apart from the stress level of staff and the public safety matter, there is a problem caused when these security officer positions are removed from some of the shops. To drive home my case, let me give the Attorney-General one example of what transpired.

The Attorney-General, I'm sure, was aware that at one point I talked about all sorts of escapes that had gone unreported, from Oakalla and other institutions. In the case of Oakalla, there was once an escape involving two inmates by the name of Guitar and Williams. They were active in the metal shop at Oakalla. The metal shop there used to have one security officer, which position was removed due to a staff shortage and cutback decisions on the part of the ministry. The position was removed, and instructors were then brought in to do this. The inmates used the tools from the metal shop, cut their way through the fence and escaped for one or two months. That may or may not be a significant incident.

The point here is the risk to the public, and I think it underlines our concern of risk caused either through the privatization of these programs or staff shortages. It seems to me that that example, together with the comments that I make, serves to highlight our concern about the removal of these positions.

I don't know if the Attorney-General has any further comments in respect to what I've had to say.

HON. B.R. SMITH: I might better put these concerns to rest if I said that, as with the other privatization, we don't have anything actively under consideration for Oakalla right away. We're going to wait and deal with Oakalla differently, because the Oakalla problem is temporary. I think it very unlikely that we will do any privatization of this kind in the secure facilities; but I do think it's very possible that we will in the facilities that aren't secure — not the six secure ones —and in the youth facilities. If we can do it, again, on a sensible basis which has some benefits, I think we will, but I think it unlikely that we'd go forward with that plan in the secure

[ Page 3960 ]

institutions. I should have said that at the outset, because it would have saved some of the debate. We may not have a difference.

MR. SIHOTA: I want to go on and talk particularly about rehabilitation programs and other types of program activity. Correction facilities, as the Attorney-General knows, can often be powder-kegs. Indeed, the elimination or the cutback of rehabilitation programs and staffing of rehabilitation programs adds to the powder-keg atmosphere of an institution. Just to use a simple example of Wilkinson Road, as there is a cutting back of rehabilitation or other programs at that institution, the inmates are of course required more and more to spend the time in the living units. As that transpires, tension builds up because prisoners with idle hands think of all sorts of mischievous activities. It also places a greater level...on the one or two — and I think that's an inadequate number — staff attached to these living units, who then have to keep their eyes on activities with even greater vigilance, both in front of and behind them, to make sure that they are secure. That, again, adds to the stress there.

I'm wondering if the Attorney-General would care to comment on the government's intentions with respect to reversing the reduction in funding for rehabilitation programs and other program activity at facilities such as Wilkinson Road.

HON. B. R. SMITH: I just don't know what he means by cutting back on rehabilitation programs. If he wants to give me some examples.... The one that comes to my mind is the one in his riding, which is Wilkinson Road.

Interjection.

HON. B.R. SMITH: The one that he's most familiar with, closest to his riding. It has had an increase of $140,000 over the past couple of years, each year, in programs of this kind, which has gone for Camosun teachers, wood and metalwork programs and community programs. So that's had an increase. If there have been reductions, I think you'll find that they've been reductions because of a reduction of demand, and that when we have had new secure facilities built, such as Wilkinson Road, we have increased the program money. We have not diminished our support for rehabilitation by programs. We think that's the best way to bring about rehabilitation.

MR. SIHOTA: Depending on when we finish today, I will provide the Attorney-General with further information on those. I notice it's pushing 5 o'clock. If we finish today, I guess I'm not going to be able to come back to that.

I want to ask the Attorney-General some questions with respect to privatization of camps. It's my information that some of the camps are being eliminated in some areas, and there are certainly some concerns with respect to mixing of inmates. I want to ask the Attorney-General, in a general sense again, what the government's intentions are.

HON. B.R. SMITH: If he has some ideas in mind, I'd be glad to consider them. I wasn't planning to privatize any camps or to close any of the major ones anyway.

MR. SIHOTA: I want to thank the Attorney-General for that comment. In that general area of consideration, of course, we had the situation with Hedley. I've read the report. Perhaps we'll leave it at that.

With respect to the Baldy Hughes camp, I believe in the Prince George area, it's my understanding that that has now been given to Circle J of 108 Mile House. It has the same attributes of a religious camp. It's my information that that is owned by one of the large TV evangelical shows.

I'm somewhat concerned about the proprietors of these types of camps, and I'm wondering if the Attorney-General would care to confirm my understanding of the situation in Baldy Hughes, and comment as to whether this is a trend that we're going to be seeing in the future.

HON. B.R. SMITH: No, we're not involved with Baldy Hughes, so far as I'm informed. That was the federal radar station. So if there's a camp being operated out of there, it is a private organization doing it for its own purposes; it's not one of ours.

MR. SIHOTA: Is the Attorney-General telling me that there are no provincial inmates or any contract entered into with the provincial government with respect to that facility?

HON. B.R. SMITH: I am so informed, that's correct: there aren't any.

MR. SIHOTA: For those members on the government side who are anxious that I get through this information, believe me, I am trying to tailor my comments accordingly.

I want to make some general comments on staffing levels at correctional facilities. Although I had originally intended to go through a whole series of incidents that I was aware of, that I have also dealt with publicly in the past.... When I investigated, at the time of the Oakalla incident, the matter of escapes at various institutions, including Oakalla, one of the things that struck me was that the staffing levels were unacceptably low. There were particular situations that caused me a fair bit of concern.

If I can use Wilkinson as an example because it's nearby, the type of problem that we come up with at an institution like Wilkinson.... I could be somewhat off in these numbers because I'm functioning from memory, but according to the organizational chart and how the facility was to function, you required somewhere in the neighborhood of 118 full-time equivalents. There were at times as few as 100 full-time equivalents working at Wilkinson Road. If I recollect correctly, there were 18 or 20 people below.

What would often happen at these facilities, and certainly at Wilkinson Road, was that the problem they were experiencing was that sick time would increase beyond the budget allocation for it. Often the reason why sick time would increase was stress levels felt by officers. In fact, from what I was able to determine, it seems to be a disproportionately high level of sick-time-for-stress leave at facilities such as Wilkinson.

What would happen then was that as the budget for sick time was exhausted, the administrators at the facility could not replace staff, because there was no budget provision available to cover staff. Then what happened, of course, was that given the staff shortage, other staff members would have to pick up the slack, and their responsibilities would be greater than would otherwise be the case, to the point where they were stressed and the job just wasn't being done adequately. I was wondering if the Attorney-General could

[ Page 3961 ]

advise me as to what steps are being taken to resolve this problem, a problem which, I may say, seemed to be particular to some institutions like Wilkinson Road and not others, such as Oakalla — if I recollect properly the conclusions of my investigations.

HON. B.R. SMITH: I don't think I could do justice to it really, any more than you have been able to, but I believe that numbers do go down and up. But they go down and up not on the basis of some perceived problem with sick time but of the inmate population. At any given time, you may have different numbers of staff at Wilkinson Road, which relate to the number of customers. If the number of customers is down, then the staffing levels are down, but they don't go below a safe level. That's certainly the information I have.

MR. SIHOTA: I would challenge the Attorney-General on that. I would submit that in an institution such as Wilkinson Road, that has occurred. All I can say is that I've met with both staff and administrators there, and it struck me as being a problem. Sure, the numbers go up and down; they also go up and down on the basis of shifts. Certain shifts have a higher number of people than other shifts. What is of concern to me is that at a number of facilities, it certainly is evident from my investigation of the matter that the proportion of staff on the midnight shifts throughout the province seems to be disproportionately low, given the severe stress caused by limited budgets. Again I'm wondering what steps are being taken by the Attorney-General's department to provide additional funding of these budgets to address that problem.

HON. B.R. SMITH: I have severe stress due to limited budgets also, particularly at this time of year. The night shift staff would certainly be less than the day shift staff because it is assumed, usually correctly, that most people are sleeping. I know that's one of those great revelations of truth which at this hour of one's estimates are dangerous; but I think all I can say is that you have made your comments and I will certainly be happy to review them because we're going to be receiving, in addition to your comments, the report of Commissioner Drost very soon on an institution where we have had some difficulties.

I would note that the difficulties in Wilkinson Road have been very few and far between. I too have been in that facility and I have noted good conditions, good people working, good morale, and it's been virtually free of incidents. I think there was one escape which came about by somebody using a drainpipe or a roof which was supposedly designed to collapse under the weight of a very small person, which he wasn't and it didn't, and so the design was wrong. But not much else. It's had a very good early record.

[5:00]

I'm not saying there isn't some concern. I'm sure there is. I'm sure that even when you work in a model institution like Wilkinson Road and have to go through that kind of routine, that confinement and everything else, morale is constantly a problem. So I don't minimize it or pooh-pooh it or shrug it off because it's late in estimates. We hear it, and we will review very carefully Judge Drost's comments too, because while they are made in relation to a Dickensian institution that we're in the process of closing, it still will contain useful information about the plight of people who guard these institutions, which is not a happy job.

MR. SIHOTA: Several comments flow from what the Attorney-General has to say. Obviously you don't expect shift levels to be the same during the day as they are at midnight; you just expect them to be at acceptably safe levels. I don't think that's the case.

Secondly, my reading of the morale is that it's not good. I don't speak just of Wilkinson Road; I speak of other institutions.

Thirdly, I don't think that the Drost report, as it relates to Oakalla, will be of that great a benefit in light of the government's commitment to close down the facility, in light of the flaw — really from the Premier, not from the Attorney General, I would say, but at the Premier's insistence — that the commission investigate only that one incident at Oakalla.

I think the public would have been better served, both in terms of the time expended by that commission and the need to get some information, if that commission had looked at the system in British Columbia as it is and made some comments and suggestions with respect to staffing levels, organization, programs, and that kind of stuff, at our correctional facilities in British Columbia.

I would say that I think the Attorney-General at one point was very close to making that decision, that if it had not been for the interference of the Premier's office, that would have occurred. I can remember headlines in the Vancouver Sun where the Attorney-General had said or had come very close to saying that there should be a provincewide analysis of the system.

I think that provincewide analysis is warranted. We have some facilities like Oakalla which are antiquated and full; we have other facilities such as Wilkinson Road which are modern and not full. There needs to be — to use just that example as well as several others I could cite — some rationalization of the system. The problems that relate to staffing are not solely due to minor administrative matters, and I used the example earlier on about midnight shifts.

At Lakeview Camp, just outside of Campbell River, we saw a whole bunch of teenagers in detention who were unsupervised at midnight, to the point where some of them were driving a car and going back into town and coming back in the early hours of the morning before the first shift arrived. It was totally unsupervised at night. At Terrace I know there was, again, inadequate staffing at the midnight shift, so much so that the RCMP were required to call in on an ongoing basis to make sure that everything was okay. I think that the commission — and I don't want to pre-guess it with respect to Oakalla — will also come to the same conclusion with respect to (a) the lack of staff as playing a role in that incident, and (b) the nominal amount of training provided those who were in charge that night.

I want to deal with another issue because I think it's fairly important in the overall scheme of things. I don't know to what extent the Attorney-General wishes to comment on this, because it is also a labour-management matter. But it seems to be particularly important, to my way of thinking. I want first to draw an analogy, because it's one that I'm well aware of. My wife, for example, is a registered nurse. She goes to work at the Royal Jubilee and does not walk onto her floor cold. She spends 15 minutes at the commencement of her shift talking with other nurses, getting a report and finding out exactly what's transpired, what kind of patients she's dealing with and what's happened in the eight-hour shift before she went on, so she's not walking into a cold situation.

The government has insisted on eliminating the 15 minute shift overlap at correctional facilities in this province, to the extent that workers who go onto those correctional

[ Page 3962 ]

floors now do not have a briefing period. They have no idea what's transpired. They don't know what's happened with the inmate population; they don't know whether the situation is tense or not. They don't know if, for example, a prisoner has been denied the opportunity to phone his mother throughout the eight-hour shift for a good and valid reason. Then when the new chap comes on, the person says, "I want to phone my mother," and the guys says, "Fine, go ahead," not knowing what had happened before, and it interrupts the continuity of the program.

You have staff who are now walking into a situation where, as I've said already, (a) the environment is understaffed and (b) you have staff without the opportunity of a shift overlap to get some kind of reading or report on what's transpired. It is inevitable that with that type of situation — understaffing and lack of knowledge — the prisoners will very quickly get the upper hand on staff. And when you begin to have prisoners in control of the facilities, you begin to invite all sorts of problems.

One of those problems, as I said earlier on, manifests itself in incredibly high levels of stress leave for those on staff. It is not a healthy situation. I am wondering, therefore, if the Attorney-General would care to comment on the matter of reinsituting the shift overlap at some of these facilities. Again, I know it is an acute problem at Wilkinson Road.

HON. B.R. SMITH: It is doubtful whether shift overlaps are the only way that you can inform people coming to a new shift about the essential things they have to know about the old shift. Surely it is not a necessary attribute of management that you have a paid bridging overlap of 15 minutes, when you have managers who overlap and requirements that staff going off shift note certain things in manuals, journals and diaries. I can understand that this overlap was something the staff members wanted to keep, because it amounted, I'm told, to an extra eight days off a year in accumulated time. So naturally it is something they would like to get back. But that's all negotiable in the contract coming up.

Let me just go back to the problems with institutions and the need to staff them safely. I think that with the new institutions we're building and the commitment we've made, which we've demonstrated, to build new institutions, you're going to find that morale is going to.... It will be better. I have no doubt that it's better; it's certainly been better in Vancouver Pretrial. That institution has had no shift overlaps since it opened, so never having had that procedure, it's not something that people are groaning and moaning they'd like to see returned. The morale's good there.

I believe that with the completion of our prison program we'll have not only more efficient and effective use of manpower, but better and improved morale. As the member knows, the Prince George institution, with 48 beds, will be completed very shortly, probably within a matter of weeks; it's just about built. Kamloops, which is under construction, will be completed in December of this year, and that will be 160 beds. I just was at the sod-turning ceremony yesterday for the Maple Ridge institution. That will be 250 beds, and it will be completed in 18 months.

We've made a very strong commitment, but it's true that during those years of restraint — 1982, '83, '84 and so on — these programs that we had on the drawing board and that we had plans to go ahead with got put on hold. But we're off that now. We're on our way, and these things are actually in the construction stage. I think it will make quite a difference to the morale of the very good correctional officers who work for us.

MR. SIHOTA: I don't think it's adequate to turn around and say: "We've got managers and we've got reports." Look, the problem when you have staff that are overstretched is that reports just don't get done. You're attending to too many other things to give any type of detailed report. More importantly, when you come on shift you don't have the opportunity to actually sit down and read the report, because you're obliged to be doing something else. It may be halfway through your shift before you begin to find out what's happened in the previous shift and before you begin to even contemplate writing about what transpired on the existing shift. I don't think that is an adequate answer, nor is it an adequate answer to say that there are managerial people who will fill the gaps. That just doesn't seem to be happening. One only needs to talk to the people that are involved.

Believe you me, when I visited these facilities, I did not choose to meet exclusively with that group of the correctional staff which was discontent. I met with virtually all that were on staff when I visited, as well as meeting with management and administration. So these concerns are not sort of biased ones.

Since we're dealing with the morale and resolving these problems through labour-management and collective bargaining processes, let's also not forget that another major downside with respect to morale is, of course, the fact that wage levels for correctional staff have fallen some $5,000 on a per annum basis behind the wage levels of federal staff. There used to be a time when there was a parity there. That parity has evaporated and I trust that will be remedied now that the days of restraint seem to be over, if one is to accept the comments made by the Attorney-General.

Let me also deal with another problem with morale. That really is training. Again, the consistent message that I got as I visited facilities around the province is that training is a problem in that it seems as if, first of all, there is minimal relevance between training and actual work experience. Secondly, there doesn't often seem to be funds for replacement staff to allow people to go on training. Thirdly, the Justice Institute programs are cut back to some extent, and the impression I was left with after I have done my tour was that there are deep concerns by staff as to the availability and accessibility to training programs. I'm wondering if the Attorney-General could advise the House to what extent that issue has been resolved through the budgetary allocations.

HON. B.R. SMITH: The last thing I'm going to say about the labour relations message, which the member has so loyally brought forward into this chamber, is that it may be a surprise to him, but there are some correctional officers who come in a few minutes early in their shift and get that briefing. It wouldn't kill them to do it. I can remember going on shift work and going there a little bit early to find out what had gone on before. We don't all have to punch and watch clocks. What's coming to the service aspect of our jobs? I mean, if it's such a real problem, then they can go five minutes early. I don't see it as a big problem.

The training per capita in correction is, I think, among the highest of any of the ministries in government. We recognize that people have to complete their training before they're put into these positions. There was a time, I think, last year in which there was some training backlog and it pre-

[ Page 3963 ]

sented some problems, but as of January 1, we feel that has been addressed and it will be clear that this training will have to be completed.

[5:15]

MR. SIHOTA: I have some difficulty with that because it's my understanding, since my conversations took place after January 1, that it hasn't manifested itself at the staff level. To what extent does the budget provide for additional assistance on training? I'm wondering if the Attorney-General could elaborate on that.

HON. B.R. SMITH: Well, I'm told we put on three additional courses in the budget which would be approximately $360,000. I'm also told that a new person doesn't go on the tier until they're trained. That was a rule that was put into place in January. The backlog in training has worked through the system. I think it's addressed now, but certainly the steps were taken by January. You may still have seen some of the fallout of the problems. We've done additional training to break the backlog, and we've instituted that rule.

MR. SIHOTA: How many staff will $360,000 provide training for?

HON. B.R. SMITH: That will provide for three extra courses — 25 per course; that's 75.

MR. SIHOTA: We'll let that number remain without comment.

I want to ask the Premier a question as it relates to Mr. Robinson, who has now left....

MR. GABELMANN: He's not the Premier.

MR. SIHOTA: I'm sorry, it is getting late — the Attorney-General. I just had a quick nightmare — a Freudian nightmare. Somehow in my mind I envisioned the Attorney-General as Premier. I'm glad that the member for North Island woke me up.

Mr. Robinson left the employment of the ministry. Prior to leaving the ministry he was recognized as being one of the best and most qualified individuals in the position. He was classified as a corrections officer, which would then allow him to retire at the normal age of 60. Because of the rules and the early retirement provisions, it effectively allowed him to retire at an astonishingly early age of 50. Could the Attorney General advise us whether Mr. Robinson provided the Attorney-General with his own views and reservations with respect to privatization of certain components of the corrections program?

HON. B.R. SMITH: Well, he did at all times. I had gone through some elements of privatization before, in the part of this ministry under Bernard Robinson, and he always gave me very candid views on these. If he told me that something wasn't going to work, and it wasn't on, then I didn't try it.

MR. SIHOTA: Is it true that he was concerned about government initiatives with respect to privatization, and that was his reason for leaving?

HON. B.R. SMITH: No, I don't think that I ever got a philosophical hang-up against privatization from him. What I got from him was that we've got to be sure the service doesn't go down, and certainly security is important. I didn't get a resistance to privatization. We weren't looking at selling prisons to the private sector; that's not what we were looking at, although sometimes those proposals come in. There are some states that have looked at them, but.... No, I would say that he was receptive to sensible privatization, but he didn't have a hang-up against it, completely.

MR. SIHOTA: My question did not relate to the philosophy of privatization but rather to his concerns about the content of what the government was proposing. I will leave that topic, because I don't necessarily want to delve into too many personal matters. I think that's the reason why, quite frankly, I won't pursue it any further.

Earlier the Attorney-General talked about a future facility in Kamloops. I have a question that relates to that facility and its funding. I understand that approximately 25 beds are to be guaranteed to the federal government. Could the Attorney-General advise me as to what the cost-sharing formula is for funding of that facility?

HON. B.R. SMITH: Thirty beds will be for federal male prisoners, and they will pay the full per diem on those, which is $91. I also thank the member for his not delving.

MR. SIHOTA: That's the cost-sharing formula. Is there federal participation in the construction of that facility, and if so, to what extent?

HON. B.R. SMITH: I can't give you the exact dollar amount, but what they paid was exactly the equivalent of the number of inmates — 30 one-sixtieths of the cost — which is the same thing we're going to do with the women's prison in Burnaby.

MR. SIHOTA: That's fair enough. I then want to ask the Attorney-General about programs intended at that facility. Obviously the federal inmates are going to be there longer than provincial inmates. Programs for provincial inmates are geared, I believe — and I'm working from memory here — on a 90-day cycle, whereas programs for federal inmates are geared on up to a five-year cycle. The question to the Attorney-General is: what arrangements will be made with respect to programs? Will there be federal-related programs provided to the inmates, or will they go through the boredom and tedium of 90-day repeat programs offered provincially?

HON. B.R. SMITH: We've got about 30 in our system at present, and they fit into our programs. They fit into our cycle, which is a shorter cycle, because our people are all serving less than two years. They do that without a problem. That's one of the considerations they have if they decide to.... I'm thinking of the women prisoners particularly. When women prisoners decide they want to transfer here from Kingston, they know that the program organization and range is different, and they also know that they may not get in the women's institution exactly all the range of possibilities that they have in Kingston. But we have not had great difficulty in fitting them into the provincial cycle of training.

MR. SIHOTA: It would seem to make sense that if they are going to be federal inmates they should be offered federal programs. I am again wondering who is going to be paying

[ Page 3964 ]

for those programs for federal inmates. Will that be paid by the federal government? Is that included in the $91 per diem, or is there a contribution over and above that?

HON. B.R. SMITH: No, that's what it costs for provincial prisoners who avail themselves of the full range of programs. That's all included in that $91 a day. Also, no federal prisoners transfer into these provincial programs and institutions except by their own volition. They are not transferred there by some federal corrections officer.

MR. SIHOTA: No, I realize that.

I want to just talk about a couple of other facilities around the province. First of all, I have some questions that relate to fences. We talked earlier on about Wilkinson Road and the escape from Wilkinson Road; the person climbed up on the gutters and over the roof and out. When I investigated that issue, things that struck me which could have played a role in the prevention of that escape were, first of all, that there was no outside patrol at that facility — that had been eliminated through the cutbacks — and, secondly, that there was no large fence around the perimeter and particularly along the front on Wilkinson Road. I'm sure the Attorney-General has driven by there and seen the small stone fence that's very easy to scale. My understanding is that in the original construction design of the facility it was intended that there be a fence there. It seems to me that you'd want one there for reasons of public safety. I'm wondering whether the government intends to put one there.

Since I'm talking about fences, I'll also ask the other question, so you can answer them both at the same time. We've now seen the relocation of a major highway next to the Prince George facility, and, again, no new fencing. It's irresistible, when you're an inmate and you want to escape, to know that there are no fences. I wonder what the intentions of the government are with respect to both those matters.

HON. B.R. SMITH: Those things maybe make a difference if you're dealing with an institution out of the Oakalla era, where it's much easier to get out. In these institutions, the principle is that you're going to have a very unlikely chance of getting over the wall. We haven't got a moat beyond the wall and an electric fence beyond the moat and dogs patrolling, but those are some of the things that it turned out that we did need at Oakalla. You have to look at the Wilkinson Road record. With the exception of a design flaw in the drain pipe, it's been pretty effective, security-wise.

MR. SIHOTA: I'm not necessarily challenging the record. I'm challenging the need for reassurance to the public, in terms of public safety. I put the concern on the record. I would hope that one day the Attorney-General will stand up in this House and make one of his ministerial statements, and assure me that fences have been built. I think we'll both feel a lot better if that happens.

I want to ask a question. I guess it relates to the Prince George facility. There was a root cellar constructed at that facility at a cost, I believe, of $280,000 and there was special air-conditioning put in there to make sure the root cellar worked. In it were kept vegetables which were sold to various companies — companies, incidentally, owned by Mr. Toigo. Nothing turns on that except to say that they were being sold to him at very nominal prices, and they were being sold back to the prison in the form of food at increased prices. It seemed to me a very ingenious way of making a profit.

I also understand that that root cellar is broken now and not working. Probably the air conditioner doesn't work properly. The vegetables are getting totally ruined, and Mr. Toigo now has to go out and buy vegetables from somebody else. We've had a $280,000 government investment on it, if my number is right. I don't have my notes here in front of me. I'm just wondering, again, if the Attorney-General will be able to one day rise in this House and make a ministerial statement to comfort me and let me know that that problem has been resolved, or do his officials tell him it has been resolved?

[5:30]

HON. B.R. SMITH: I think you've stumped all of us. We'll have to get to the root of that problem and get back to you.

MR. SIHOTA: Fair enough. I'm only telling you problems that came up here in the course of my tour of the province on these matters.

Again, just going back to Wilkinson Road. There are five empty units there at Wilkinson Road, and it would seem to me that one of these units is perfectly suited for women. I'm just wondering if the Attorney-General could comment on the government's intentions with respect to opening some of those units, particularly with respect to any units for women at Wilkinson Road.

HON. B.R. SMITH: We don't have plans to integrate these facilities. We still follow the recommendations of Madam Justice Proudfoot. We do believe that we have an obligation to build a decent women's prison in this province, which we don't have now in Burnaby. That is not an admirable facility in any way, shape or form. You've probably toured it; I did, and I am pleased that we're finally going to make a start on that construction with the feds. But no, we don't have integration plans.

MR. SIHOTA: What about plans with respect to opening for male inmates those five units that are closed?

HON. B.R. SMITH: Yes, they will be opened for male inmates as the demand is there.

MR. SIHOTA: Or, I take it, as the funding is there.

It strikes me as peculiar that we would house certain prisoners in antiquated facilities when we have this modern facility sitting around underutilized. I see the Attorney-General is conferring with staff on that, and I'd be interested in knowing, for the sake of my own learning on this matter, what the explanation is.

HON. B.R. SMITH: It may well be that we will, you know. It's not a bad idea. When we're allocating prisoners to an institution, we do take a number of things into account. One of the prime things taken into account is to try and keep them in their own region of the province. The other is security and so on. But it wouldn't be a bad idea to move some people out of outmoded institutions into those units, for sure.

MR. SIHOTA: Finally, in relation to Wilkinson Road, could the Attorney-General tell me what the government's intentions are with respect to the Blue House and whether its funding status is secure — if the government intends to

[ Page 3965 ]

privatize or eliminate that much-welcomed facility in the Victoria area?

HON. B.R. SMITH: The plan is to rebuild it, hon. member.

MR. SIHOTA: When?

HON. B.R. SMITH: In the planning process, future government policy, when the beneficent hand of Treasury Board should descend on us, etc. etc.

MR. SIHOTA: In the interim, is it safe to say that the current status funding will remain, and that it will remain as a government-funded facility?

HON. B. R. SMITH: No, it is something that we will do, but we can't do everything at once. We have a new prison there, and we have this very active prison program which will allow us to close down Oakalla. I can see the minister of state for one-fifth of the galaxy looking at me with pride. He knows this is the achievement that he's worked on for all these years.

MR. SIHOTA: I don't think the Attorney-General heard my question with respect to the Blue House. Is it safe to say that the facility will remain in government hands and be funded between now and the building of a new facility?

HON. B.R. SMITH: Yes.

MR. SIHOTA: Leaving the matter of prisons and moving quickly to two other areas, I want to deal with the matter of interpreters in civil cases. Of course, the Attorney-General knows that 100 percent of the costs with respect to interpreters in criminal cases is paid. That is not the case in civil cases, as the party is required to pay for interpreters in their own case. I have a note to myself that says a task force has recommended otherwise. I'm wondering what the government's intentions are with respect to funding of interpreters in civil cases, and whether or not there would be government assistance provided in this regard.

HON. B.R. SMITH: No, I really can't comment on that. I would have to look into it.

MR. SIHOTA: Perhaps we can do that by correspondence.

Secondly, I want to ask a question with respect to funding for Charter cases. As the Attorney-General is aware, there is funding for Charter challenges of federal legislation at the federal level. There is no such funding for groups wishing to challenge provincial legislation through the Charter. Could the Attorney-General advise us whether the government intends to provide some government- assisted funding in this regard?

HON. B.R. SMITH: No, it's not been our policy to fund groups to take Charter challenges. I know the federal government has provided some funding, and so has the government of Ontario. One of the best, probably, and most intelligent organizations in the country.... They came to see me re LEAF, and what I did say to LEAF was that while we would not fund them, I thought that there were some Charter cases that might appropriately be dealt with under the Legal Services Commission, and if that was the case, that we would provide funding that way to the commission. And I'm speaking again of civil; I'm not speaking of criminal, because, of course, the legal services budget — I've never had a study done but I wonder what proportion of that budget is going into the Charter. That would be an interesting study. But that has been our policy, that we don't. Provinces have gone different ways on it. We just simply don't.

MR. SIHOTA: Let me just say for the record that I do regret that. I think that there should be a provincial participation in a program designed to encourage and invite litigation with respect to the provincial legislation as it relates to the Charter.

I want to conclude by first of all telling the Attorney-General that he's lucky we never did get into a debate on food services. I intended to do it but given the pressures to conclude, it probably is not the highest priority. But maybe next year we'll have to deal with it in some depth because I refuse to believe that you're ahead by 12 percent. I've gone through the articles on it and on one hand I've spent so much time looking at it that I don't feel great that we're not going to deal with it.

I want to thank the Attorney-General for his candour throughout the course of this debate, as well as thank his staff for their availability. I'm certainly, like everybody else, looking forward to Mr. Hughes' report, and also the report with respect to Oakalla. I'm sure that over the course of the year those two alone, let alone other issues, will generate more than an ample amount of debate.

The only area that it's regretful that we didn't get more candour, of course, was on the Toigo issue; but again, I don't think I really expected more in terms of answers than what we received.

So I want to thank the Attorney-General for his replies throughout, and I want to thank his staff. That concludes my comments on the Attorney-General's estimates.

HON. B.R. SMITH: I'm not going to make a response to any of that except to express my appreciation as well for the manner in which issues were raised and questions brought, but I would say in relation to the last matter you raised that I have been absolutely candid in all the answers I have given relating to that matter, with the limitations that I have as a justice minister, and I think the member knows that. I have been perfectly candid at all times, and I also have been with the media.

MR. SIHOTA: I'm going to regard that with more tongue in cheek than anything else.

Vote 14 approved.

Vote 15: ministry operations, $301,463,304 — approved.

Vote 16: emergency assistance, $2,403,500 — approved.

Vote 17: judiciary, $20,125,002 — approved.

Vote 18: corrections, $130,920,494 — approved.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF LABOUR
AND CONSUMER SERVICES

(continued)

On vote 48: minister's office, $272,097.

[ Page 3966 ]

HON. MR. STRACHAN: I move that the committee rise and report resolutions.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

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

HON. MR. STRACHAN: Mr. Speaker, I advised the Legislative Assembly last week that we would not be sitting on Wednesday this week. With that, I now move adjournment.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 5:44 p.m.