[ Page 4707 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Oral Questions

Logging road into Stein River valley. Mr. Harcourt –– 4707

Waiting-list for special needs assessment. Mr. Cashore –– 4708

UIC benefits for forest fire fighters. Ms. Edwards –– 4708

Pesticide regulations. Mr. Lovick –– 4708

Logging road equipment. Mr. Miller –– 4709

Kettle Valley School District. Mr. Jones –– 4709

Vancouver Stock Exchange. Mr. Sihota –– 4709

Infrastructure rebuilding. Mr. Blencoe –– 4709

Ministerial Statement

Royal Commission on Electoral Boundaries. Hon. Mr. Veitch –– 4710

Mr. Rose

Regent College Amendment Act, 1988 (Bill PR401). Second reading

Ms. Campbell –– 4710

Committee stage –– 4710

Mr. Clark

Third reading –– 4711

Committee of Supply: Ministry of Transportation and Highways estimates. (Hon. Mr. Rogers)

On vote 67: minister's office –– 4711

Mr. Lovick

Hon. B.R. Smith

Mr. Rose

Mr. Vant

Mr. Michael

Mr. Blencoe

Mr. Jacobsen

Mr. Stupich

Mr. Williams

Royal assent to bills –– 4733

The House met at 2:05 p.m.

[Mr. Pelton in the chair.]

Prayers.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: B.C. has lost a friend and an often controversial and colorful citizen with the passing of Judge Les Bewley. We will miss his firm views and his interesting ways to express them, but most of all we will miss a friend. We extend to Mrs. Beth Bewley and family our deepest sympathy and sincere condolences.

MR. HARCOURT: I too would like to express our regrets at the passing away of Judge Bewley. He was indeed one of the colourful characters in our province's history. I recall appearing before him on a number of occasions on behalf of obviously innocent clients. He had a way about him, and I may say that he had a sense of justice that Was unique in the way he dispensed sentences. He dealt with people who had unfortunate problems, most of the time quite fairly and, on occasion, controversially. He was always colourful and an enjoyable member of the bench and the bar, and he will be missed.

HON. B.R. SMITH: I would just like to add to the excellent remarks made by the Premier and the Leader of the Opposition about Les Bewley. He served for probably longer than any Provincial Court judge now living in this province, and he had a career which was often controversial, sometimes stormy. He had a reputation for being an enfant terrible, but he was really a very compassionate pussy-cat. Many of the young lawyers and people who worked in the courts and came into contact with Les Bewley realized that he had a good heart and that he cared deeply about the justice system. He did from his days as a lawyer and right through into his retirement years where he unstintingly gave his time to various organizations and spoke at many functions - police dinners, regimental affairs - and he always gave unstintingly of his time. He will be greatly missed by people in the province who have worked in the justice system.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Chair will arrange for appropriate condolences to go forward from the chamber to the family.

HON. MR. VEITCH: In the members' gallery today we have a very distinguished visitor. I would like the House to welcome His Excellency Mr. Leonidas Mavromichalis, the Ambassador to Canada from Greece. His Excellency is accompanied by Mrs. Mavromichalis and by Consul-General Yannis Lacatzis.

HON. MR. ROGERS: Mr. Speaker, in recognition of this being National Transportation Week, a group of grade 5 students at Cilaire School in Nanaimo have prepared a massive mural depicting all methods of transportation used in our country. That mural is on display in my office, and anyone who would like to come and see it this afternoon is welcome to do so. It's a marvellous piece of work. They are led this afternoon by their teacher, Mr. Ray Matthews, and accompanied by Marlies Winands, Margaret Dunlop, Kelly Seib and Lisa Hagar. Would the House please make this group of students and their teachers and instructors from Nanaimo feel welcome.

Also in the public gallery is my predecessor by four - I believe it's four - the former member for Prince Rupert, Mr. Graham Lea. I know all members will want to make him welcome. I'm sure he's here to watch the deliberations of my estimates.

My final guest this afternoon is Penny Richards from Fort St. John.

MR. HARCOURT: I would also like to welcome His Excellency the Ambassador for Greece.

Also, because he will shortly be leaving, I would pass on our regards to the consul-general in British Columbia, Yannis Lacatzis, who has served the people of Greece very ably over the last four years in relationships between our province and Greece. We will miss you, Yannie. We look forward to seeing you later on this afternoon with Their Excellencies.

MR. LOVICK: I would like to offer my welcome also to the class of students from Cilaire School in Nanaimo and to point out that this is a group of grade 5 students, all of whom are not normally allowed in the gallery because they are too young. They are here by special permission and also because, like all people from Nanaimo, they are well-behaved. Please join me in welcoming them.

HON. MR. REID: Speaking of well-behaved, I bring congratulations to the member from the Columbia Valley and the community of Kimberley who this week finalized the Festival of the Arts which was held there. The community was superhost to 2, 000 artists from around the province, creating a real cultural component for an industrial town called Kimberley. Kimberley and its citizens can be extremely proud of the hospitality they provided for the 2, 000 artists from around the province of British Columbia.

[2:15]

MR. BLENCOE: Would the House please welcome today Mrs. Muriel Overgaard and a young relative visiting from Denmark - Bjarke Overgaard. Would the House please make them both welcome.

MR. DE JONG: Together with the first member for Central Fraser Valley (Hon. Mr. Dueck), I am pleased to introduce Mrs. Ellie Onderwater from Abbotsford, who is accompanied by Mrs. Theresa Vollebregt from New Zealand. Would the House please give them a welcome.

MR. BARNES: It just occurred to me that the former member for Prince Rupert, Mr. Graham Lea, was sitting over there the last time he was introduced. I notice he's over here. It seems that in the last week or so, he has attended the House more than he did when he was an MLA.

Oral Questions

LOGGING ROAD INTO STEIN RIVER VALLEY

MR. HARCOURT: My question is to the Premier in regard to the Stein Valley. The government's Wilderness Advisory Committee has recommended that no logging road be built into the Stein without the consent of the Lytton band.

[ Page 4708 ]

I'd like to ask the Premier if he could confirm that that recommendation is the basis for negotiations with the native leaders involved.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I'm very pleased to defer to the Minister of Forests and Lands.

HON. MR. PARKER: Yes, we are addressing the concerns and the recommendations in the WAC report.

MR. HARCOURT: My question wasn't whether they were being addressed; it's whether that was the basis for the negotiations with the native leaders involved.

HON. MR. PARKER: We are meeting with the Lytton band on the matter of access to the Stein River valley. One of the reasons we have been meeting with the Lytton band is the recommendations in the WAC report.

MR. HARCOURT: The minister still has not addressed that question, but I will ask about some other disturbing events. There has been very little progress in the talks on the Stein. The minister seems to be casting blame and accusations in all directions. Now we have a report that the Ministry of Forests has sent a threatening legal letter to the Lytton band ... if they carry out the maintenance of their traditional tribal trails in the valley. Can the minister confirm the existence of this letter, and can he tell the House how this letter, if it does exist, could possibly be part of a good-faith negotiating strategy?

HON. MR. PARKER: We're discussing matters with the Lytton band on the construction of a logging road into the middle of the Stein Valley. We haven't been throwing accusations at anybody, as the hon. Leader of the Opposition has suggested to this House. On the matter of construction of trails on vacant Crown land in the province, that can only be done under permit, and all British Columbians have to abide by the law.

WAITING-LIST FOR

SPECIAL NEEDS ASSESSMENT

MR. CASHORE: My question is to the Minister of Health. Will the minister confirm that over 150 children in the Coquitlam area are waiting for special needs assessment for speech impairment?

HON. MR. DUECK: To the hon. member, if you have something specific you wish an answer to, I think that report should come to me and I'll get you an answer.

MR. CASHORE: Supplementary to the Minister of Health. When my office called the Simon Fraser Health Unit, we were politely told that the staff were not permitted to say how many children were on the list. Why won't the minister permit his staff to answer a perfectly reasonable question concerning the number of children on the list and the length of the wait?

HON. MR. DUECK: As I said just earlier, I think that answer can be given to you provided you give me something specific. I will get that answer to you as to how many children are on the waiting-list, whether any. We can't provide health care for everyone at a given time; however, the health care system in British Columbia, I have to tell you, is excellent. There may be times when we can't do everything we wish to do, but by and large the health care system in this province has got to be the best in Canada. If you want to find fault with it, give me specifics and I'll find out for you.

MR. CASHORE: I asked the minister a very specific question: why he has told his staff not to confirm whether there are 150 of these children waiting? Mr. Minister, these are our children. It is simply wrong to silence your staff when these children cannot speak out for themselves. In the minister's estimation, what is a reasonable length of time for our children to wait for assessment? How long are they and their parents to endure this stress?

HON. MR. DUECK: I believe there were two questions, and I can't answer them. I can't tell you how many are waiting at this particular time, and I'll take that on notice.

UIC BENEFITS FOR FOREST FIRE FIGHTERS

MS. EDWARDS: My question is to the Minister of Forests. The Ministry of Forests has hired a SWAT-like team of well-trained firefighters for the summer to complement regional attack crews that reach the fire first. Can the minister confirm that the members of the SWAT team will be building up UIC insurable weeks while the regional crews will not?

HON. MR. PARKER: Mr. Speaker, I'll take that question as notice and reply to the member direct in writing.

MS. EDWARDS: Has the minister decided that all the members fighting forest fires this summer will be able, because of ministry action, to receive UIC for the time they spend employed by the Forests ministry?

HON. MR. PARKER: No.

PESTICIDE REGULATIONS

MR. LOVICK: A short and direct question to the Minister of Environment. The ministry has recently announced new pesticide regulations. Will the minister confirm that these new pesticide regulations will cover only some 30 pesticides, despite the fact that we are now dealing with some 5, 000 pesticides used by growers?

HON. MR. STRACHAN: I thank the member for his question, Mr. Speaker. The pesticide issue is again being addressed by cabinet, for a couple of reasons.

MR. ROSE: That's where all the pests are.

HON. MR. STRACHAN: Termites in that old oak, I guess. Those old, oak doors, yes.

The only thing I can tell the member now is that we're dealing with future policy. As soon as we have the policy finalized, the Legislative Assembly and the people of British Columbia will be made aware of our new pesticide regime.

MR. LOVICK: Another question to the minister that I hope won't receive precisely the same answer. Can the minister confirm whether products such as diazinon will not

[ Page 4709 ]

be covered and, in fact, will be able to be sold across the counter by virtually anyone, i.e. people who haven't received any training?

HON. MR. STRACHAN: With respect to the specific product, no, I can't. With respect to the question in general. the former answer applies. We're reviewing the whole pesticide regime in terms of both retailing and who can retail it, and we'll have that information forthcoming, following subsequent cabinet meetings and briefings to cabinet by the pesticide branch.

MR. LOVICK: It seems clear, Mr. Speaker, that the new regulations are going to amount to some relaxation of restriction. Will the minister not agree with me that it is difficult to reconcile that relaxation of restriction at the same time we are apparently loosening the control by privatizing the environmental testing lab? How can we reconcile those two things happening at the same time? Can the minister answer that question?

HON. MR. STRACHAN: There's absolutely no connection between the two, Mr. Speaker. First of all, the classification system for pesticides in Canada is a federal matter, and the feds have changed the classification system a bit and we have followed in place with that. We had some questions ourselves about how we're going to train people who are selling these pesticides with respect to the category of pesticide. That question is one that I've indicated to the member will be forthcoming as soon as we've rationalized the whole selling regime ourselves, and also the category regime.

In terms of any relationship to the Environmental Lab and its possible sale, there's no connection. Pesticides are tested by the feds before they're allowed for sale in Canada. We have no control over what is allowed and what is not. There is really no relationship whatsoever between the sale, or regime of sale, of pesticides and the Environmental Laboratory.

LOGGING ROAD EQUIPMENT

MR. MILLER: A question to the Minister of Forests regarding the road recorder; the minister knows what that is. Would the minister confirm that there is no budgetary provision to maintain this sophisticated piece of equipment within his ministry and that in fact he's decided to give away this equipment to the Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada?

HON. MR. PARKER: Mr. Speaker, I missed the first part of the question. What is the apparatus?

MR. MILLER: The apparatus is a road recorder. It's a fairly sophisticated piece of equipment developed by your ministry for work on forest roads.

HON. MR. PARKER: Mr. Speaker, I'll take that question as notice.

KETTLE VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT

MR. JONES: I have a question for the Minister of Education regarding the Kettle Valley School District. Is the minister aware of the concerns expressed by the district to the

Premier and to the minister of state regarding what they consider is an arbitrary designation within the Kootenay economic development region rather than what they see as their historic and traditional links with the Okanagan development region. Is the minister aware of those concerns expressed by the school district, and is he prepared to intervene with the minister of state on their behalf?

HON. MR. BRUMMET: Yes. I am aware, and the matter is being reviewed. I have not made a decision about intervention at this time.

MR. JONES: Will the minister in his review of that situation with respect to the Kettle Valley School District take into consideration the Premier's words with regard to these economic development regions: that they will be tailored to the unique requirements of the individual regions?

HON. MR. BRUMMET: In any review that I do, I take into consideration all factors, including some misinformation, and try to come up with the best decision.

[2:30]

VANCOUVER STOCK EXCHANGE

MR. SIHOTA: A question to the Premier. We've witnessed in the last week or so the ineptitude of the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Couvelier) in terms of reacting to the Carter-Ward situation on the stock exchange. It's the largest stock fraud in the history of this province, and the government has taken nominal action to date.

Given the international repercussions and the way in which this damages our reputation on the financial markets around the world, is the Premier prepared now to strike a legislative committee to look into the matter of the exchange so that we can develop the best venture capital exchange in the world, as we would like to see on this side of the House? Is the Premier now prepared to acquiesce to the establishment of this type of committee?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I think it was well explained by the Minister of Finance. He obviously has a process in place, and we're following this proper process, as always should be done. The damage might be more by way of innuendo when, in fact, the process is still in progress.

INFRASTRUCTURE REBUILDING

MR. BLENCOE: I also have a question for the Premier. During the estimates last week the Minister of Environment (Hon. Mr. Strachan) admitted that the sewage treatment facilities in Victoria are primitive - and I quote the minister - and that there are concerns throughout the province for infrastructural problems - sewer and water facilities. Yet the Minister of Finance has said no to an infrastructural program, and yet the Minister of Municipal Affairs (Hon. Mrs. Johnston) has said it's necessary, and in April last year said that she needs more than $100 million to rebuild the province's infrastructure. Would the Premier please tell us which minister he agrees with, and will we get the infrastructure rebuilding this province requires?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I understand Victoria is, already addressing some of the problems they are experiencing

[ Page 4710 ]

I think we all see it when we drive down some of the streets and see the work progressing.

I think the Minister of Municipal Affairs also said that we have a major challenge facing us when it comes to infrastructure. It's been said not only by this Minister of Municipal Affairs but by previous ones and those in other provinces across the country. It was raised at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities meeting, and a proposal was put forward that provincial governments, with local governments and the federal government, develop some sort of program to assist. We already have a program to assist, but this is certainly of much greater magnitude, and we've expressed our willingness to consider such a proposal from local government when we know what the federal government participation might be. This will be a matter for future consideration, I'm sure.

Ministerial Statement

ROYAL COMMISSION ON

ELECTORAL BOUNDARIES

HON. MR. VEITCH: Mr. Speaker, members of the House will be aware that the Hon. Judge Thomas K. Fisher, who was appointed to be a commissioner under the Inquiry Act to recommend the appropriate number of members of the Legislature and the proposed boundaries for the electoral districts, released his preliminary report on May 27, 1988. 1 tender herewith a copy of that report to the House.

The report follows an extensive round of public hearings on these matters. Public hearings commenced on June 22, 1987, and after receiving 374 oral and written submissions from all parts of the province, the commissioner concluded that the terms of his commission ought to be elaborated upon to avoid various conflicting interpretations as to his mandate. This was done by order-in-council dated September 17, 1987, and further public hearings were held, at which a further 676 oral and written submissions were received.

Under the terms of the commission's mandate, it is anticipated that the interim report - which was released Friday last and which I tabled today - would be given the t widest distribution so as to obtain the greatest possible reaction from members of the interested public. Moreover, under his mandate the judge is required to hold a further round of hearings.

Now that the preliminary report has been released, it seems abundantly clear to the government that the commissioner can best be assisted in his further work by having formal input from the members of this House, who, after all, are very - some might say most - affected by the commissioner's recommendations. Some input, we believe, would greatly assist the commissioner in his subsequent public hearings and ' the formulation of his final report.

On June 19, 1987, the opposition critic for the Election Act, the hon. first member for Victoria (Mr. G. Hanson), recommended that an interim report, once received, be referred to a committee of the House. I quote from Hansard:

"We asked that the commissioner hold a series of hearings throughout the province; that upon conclusion of those hearings, an interim report be submitted to the Legislature, and then to an all-party committee of this House; that the interim report be reviewed by the all-party committee of this House with the under standing that the committee may order a further follow-up hearing by the commissioner; that a final report be submitted to the same all-party committee of the Legislature; that in order to ensure integrity and full confidence in that report, it receive the unanimous consent of that committee; and that upon unanimous approval of the committee, the report be referred to the House and implemented in the Legislature. Those simple provisions would make the members of this House equal partners in the development of the rules of the game. "

I have carefully considered that view, and accordingly I wish to announce to the House today that the government will strike a special bipartisan committee of members of this House to consider the preliminary recommendations of Judge Fisher and to report to the House its findings with recommendations. I am confident that the committee will wish to give this matter its fullest consideration, and I'm also sure that the result of its work will greatly assist the commissioner and help to achieve fair and proper electoral reform in the province of British Columbia.

MR. ROSE: Thank you to the minister for giving us an advance copy before question period. I am sorry that the hon. member who raised this issue and made the motion quoted here was not present to see how he got hoisted on his own petard. Nevertheless, I'm happy that the minister has taken this advice. I'd like to congratulate also His Honour Judge Tommy Fisher for having submitted to the Legislature a very honest, decent and clean report. I hope, too, that this committee that's going out into the boondocks to parallel Judge Fisher will not somehow muddy the waters.

The reason that the motion was put forward by my hon. colleague the first member for Victoria was that he was afraid the interim committee might disappear into that great maw called cabinet and never appear again, so he suggested an allparty committee of equal partners. We'll be waiting to see the composition of the committee, because the details are not here. We want to make certain that it is, to quote my hon. friend, "an equal partnership, " and that they come up not with some majority report and some minority report which resulted from a lot of people coming to these hearings desperately trying to keep their jobs, but a unanimous report hat we can all live with, one that's fair and decent and honest, for once in about the last 25 years. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Orders of the Day

REGENT COLLEGE AMENDMENT ACT, 1988

MS. CAMPBELL: With reference to private members' Bill PR401, Regent College Amendment Act, 1988, 1 move that the bill be now read a second time.

Motion approved.

MS. CAMPBELL: Mr. Speaker, by leave, I move that the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House to be considered forthwith.

Motion approved.

Bill PR401, Regent College Amendment Act, 1988, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration forthwith.

REGENT COLLEGE AMENDMENT ACT, 1988

The House in committee on Bill PR401; Mr. Rabbitt in the chair.

[ Page 4711 ]

MR. CLARK: We'd like the sponsoring individual to give us a brief explanation of the bill, please.

MS. CAMPBELL: Mr. Chairman, in third reading discussion, may I have leave of the Chair to address both of the sections at once that are the subjects of this amendment act?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Please proceed.

MS. CAMPBELL: Mr. Chairman, Regent College is a private college that has been established by statute of this Legislature. So to amend its own constitution, it requires an amendment of that statute.

The Regent College Amendment Act deals with two fairly minor amendments to their constitution. Section 1 will amend section 10 of the act to establish as the maximum term of service for a member of the board of governors "nine consecutive years" as opposed to the current "three consecutive years. " The college is now in a major era of planning, development and building. It is the view of the members of that college board that three consecutive years is too short a time, or that it confines members of the college board. They have requested that they be allowed to serve nine consecutive years during this period of rebuilding.

The second section of the act simply changes the terminology by which the head of the college is designated from I 'principal" to "president. " That is the import of the act, Mr. Chairman.

Sections 1 and 2 approved.

Title approved.

MS. CAMPBELL: Mr. Chairman, I move that the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; Mr. Pelton in the chair.

Bill PR401, Regent College Amendment Act, 1988, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed.

HON. MR. STRACHAN: Mr. Speaker, I call Committee of Supply.

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

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF

TRANSPORTATION AND HIGHWAYS

(continued)

On vote 67: minister's office, $280, 361.

HON. MR. ROGERS: There were a number of questions brought up in our last meeting of this committee to discuss the estimates of this ministry, one of which I'd like to touch on right now, which is the summary of the meetings between the privatization working group and the employees of contract area 1.

I have in my notes five particular meetings that took place. The first ones were between February 1 and February 15, when employees organized to meet the validation requirements. The majority of the regular affected employees joined a group and signed up so that they would be shareholders.

On February 19 a project team went with the employee group representatives and presented them with proposal call documents to explain the pre-qualification requirements -two days training by a consultant, followed by five days of consulting time, with the help of business planners. On March 3 there was a bidder meeting. The project team met with the employee group representatives to answer any of the questions and to clarify anything they didn't understand about the proposal call. They asked three questions. On March 17 the employee group submits pre-qualification papers; they were inadequate. The privatization implementation committee instructs the project director to give them another three weeks to correct the weaknesses. The project director met with them for several hours with the employees' spokesman, explaining the various weaknesses of this particular submission. On April 7 the employee groups provided an additional submission, which was also found to be inadequate. The employee groups were disqualified. It was agreed at that time that all materials submitted would remain in confidence to protect the employees' opportunity to bid in the competitive process.

[2:45]

1 told you on Friday, Mr. Member for Nanaimo and other members of the committee in attendance, that I felt they had done a fairly detailed job. In speaking to the group, I wasn't able to get the specific dates. I am joined today by Mr. Mitton, who is with the privatization working group and might be able to address specific questions you put to me on this matter today. I believe that gets us started, at least, with the leftovers from the weekend.

MR. LOVICK: Well, that's the first leftover we'll deal with.

On the basis of the information the minister has just presented to me, I really have only one question. I would like him to elaborate on the reason given as to why everything suddenly became confidential. You're suggesting we wanted to protect the interests of the party that made the bid; yet if that party made a bid and was rejected, why then are we any longer protecting those interests? It seems to me they're no longer in the game. Could you elaborate and clarify that for me?

HON. MR. ROGERS: I'm advised by staff that it was an agreement that took place between the members of the privatization working group and the others. I would think that for a whole host of reasons they would want to have the matter remain confidential.

I was also asked a question by you on the 27th, and my deputy minister has assured me that the recent dismissal of the Highways district manager - and I quote - "had nothing to do with his voicing concerns or apprehension about the privatization of highways maintenance." This matter relates to a number of local management issues that arose over a period of some weeks. I have his assurance, which I now pass on to you and the members of the committee, that the question that you raised has been dealt with.

MR. LOVICK: I thank the minister for that information. I'm sure a number of people will feel much happier to learn

[ Page 4712 ]

that that is indeed the case. I hope the answer will be well publicized - "nothing whatsoever to do" was, I believe, your phrase, and I think it's an important one.

Now I want to turn to the whole area of B.C. Ferries, as t promised, and pick up from where we left off on that. To start t I would like to simply make a few comments. I haven't spoken at any length thus far, nor do I intend to here, but it seems to me a few comments are in order.

On this side of the House we hold the view that ferries and ferry operations represent an essential service. We've argued that for some time, and we suggest that accordingly a very predictable approach to ferry financing and service levels ought to be established. When changes in scheduling or service or routes are announced, we suggest there ought to be a routine consultation procedure coming before those t announcements; that there ought to be a policy of full information supplied to the public; and that that process ought to be an open one. Unfortunately, evidence would indicate that that is not the case: even though we have made some steps towards consultation and discussion, the process t does not seem to be unfolding in the manner I just outlined.

Let me try and substantiate that claim with a little bit of evidence specifically to do with financing, to begin. The larger picture demonstrates that over the last five years the provincial subsidy has been reduced from $43 million in r 1983 to $40 million in 1986. That figure may sound confusing on the face of it, because it's based on factoring out the transfer of the freshwater fleet. Factoring out the increases in costs associated with the operation of the old Highways saltwater ferries - about $18 million a year according to the 1986-87 ferries report - suggests that a further cut in the subsidy was made on the main routes to $39 million in 1987 and to $33 million today.

Ten years ago the Ferry Corporation attracted a public t subsidy of $46.3 million. The subsidy was apparently based t on the costs of building and maintaining a provincial high- t way; I believe that was referred to as the highway equivalency formula. The government at that time apparently recognized the importance of the ferry system in the lives of coastal residents. If the subsidy had been maintained consistent with inflation, over $86 million would have been paid this year to operate the fleet, excluding the old Highways saltwater ferries, an increase of over $53 million on the present rates.

There is a clear temptation to conclude that the present government is out of touch. The present government does not seem to recognize that ferries are an essential component of a transportation system and network. The government has moved to nickel-and-dime the users to death, with the result that in the five years ending March 31, 1987, users put in t some 50 percent more; expenses, though, went up only about s 30 percent and the government then put in proportionately less money.

I note, Mr. Minister, that in your opening statement in your estimates you pointed with some pride and drew our attention to the fact that "we" - i.e., government - "have enabled government to reduce the subsidy to the corporation by $6 million to $51 million in fiscal '88-89." You also pointed in your opening comments to growth that is "nothing short of phenomenal": the fact that on routes 1 and 2, which represent, of course, the major part of the operation and t indeed the major source of revenue, the growth is up; that those things are indeed a paying proposition or making money.

The problem, however, is that despite that increased growth pattern, we are nevertheless apparently involved in a pattern of constant, bit-by-bit, incremental increases in service costs. Apparently, moreover, the plan is to decrease the operating subsidy - Lord knows to what extent. Are we talking about removing the subsidy entirely? In short, are we talking about continuing to increase the fares until such time as no subsidy whatsoever is required?

Certainly that seems a fair conclusion to draw, given the statements that have been made by the minister. For example, he stated in a press release that the most recent batch of increases on the system was necessary to reduce the subsidy. Moreover, it was estimated by the minister that the new charge - the increase in ferry rates charged - would generate some $6 million. Lo and behold, perhaps not entirely coincidentally, what has happened, of course, is that he subsidy was reduced by $6 million.

I want to ask, then: is the pattern, as it seems to be, that we are going to continue to increase the fares in order to decrease the subsidy? There seems to be a very clear cause and-effect relationship between those two factors. Perhaps he minister would like to respond to that to begin with.

HON. MR. ROGERS: First of all, let's talk about the growth. The largest growth has been in the trucking sector -a lot more than on the passenger side of things, especially on routes I and 2. Routes 1 and 2 would not make an operating profit if they were run on a commercial basis. They would only make an operating profit if there were no allowances made for depreciation. Just as any vessel needs to be depreciated, that factor comes into play. Most of the vessels in our fleet are of the order of eight or nine years of age, so replacement and costs of allowances for depreciation have to be taken into place.

Yes, it is the government's objective to gradually reduce he subsidy to the B.C. Ferry Corporation. I don't anticipate hat we will ever get to a position where we would eliminate he subsidy totally, but I would suggest that other social service requirements of government in health, education and human resources would have a higher priority for government spending than an increased subsidy to the ferry system.

We have gradually tried to increase the rates . . . . When we've made rate increases, we've tried to do it on an annual basis, or every 18 months, so that people aren't used to major shocks when they come. If you postpone making a decision for four or five years and then make a catch-up increase, which has happened in the past, then there's some major disruption. I can recall that when I first became a member here, I think it was $2 per passenger to go from the mainland o the Island, and $5 per car. Those rates had been in place since '62. By today's inflation rate, those numbers mean nothing.

The tourism industry and others on the Island have told us they'd like predictability. They don't mind minor adjustments as they are required from time to time, but they don't want to be faced with people who are their traditional customers finding very substantial increases. So where we have to have a revision of the rate structure, I would hope that we'd do it on an annual basis. It's my desire to try and do it in the fall after the busy tourist season, so people have some time to go through it.

In terms of consultation, we often consult with industry groups who purport to speak for all their members. The industry group agrees with what we're going to do; then we do something and, of course, all the members of the industry who don't happen to pay attention to their association news-

[ Page 4713 ]

letter immediately come along and tell us they haven't been consulted. I dare say that if you asked anybody about the suggestion that you're going to increase rates, you aren't likely to have a lot of people lined up at the "pro" microphone; you're always going to have everybody lined up at the "con" microphone.

From the Ferry Corporation's mandate point of view, we try to look at this as something that's owned by the people of British Columbia that we run in as efficient a manner as possible. Quite frankly, the MOTH fleet has caused B.C. Ferries more problems than our own fleet. That's what it's referred to as: the former Highways vessels, many of which, I guess, were not run to the same standard of maintenance and maintenance planning incorporated in the Ferry Corporation. I think the government made a very wise move in incorporating that, because the engineering and training expertise that exists in the major parts of the corporation have been of some asset. Of course, there are those who much preferred the system when it was run by the Ministry of Highways, but that decision was made some time ago.

In terms of groups that correspond with the Ferry Corporation on structures of rates and scheduling, we have a pretty good idea who they are. We have consulted with them on a reasonably regular basis. The Gulf Islands, interestingly enough, have more experts on Ferry Corporation business than almost anything else. Of the mail I get . . . . I would think probably 100 people take the mainline ferries for every one who comes off the Gulf Islands, and my mail would be in the direct inverse of that: 100 letters versus one from the mainline. The mainline letters often compliment things or give minor suggestions for service improvements, whereas the letters from some of the Gulf Islands are not necessarily as complimentary as that. That should answer your question.

Before you get up, I should probably go through my little idea about the islands. The people who live on the islands are desperate that there be excellent service for them to have access and egress, but they wouldn't want the ferry service to be so convenient that people who don't live on the island would choose to live there. I think that's just the nature of living on a small island. I live on one, so I'm familiar with the phenomenon.

MR. LOVICK: It strikes me that that additional comment was with a view to correcting the impression that you weren't sympathetic and sensitive to the needs of islanders, and I admire your prescience, because I'm sure you picked up on something that could get you in some difficulty with Gulf Islanders.

HON. MR. ROGERS: And neighbours.

MR. LOVICK: And neighbours, yes. The large question - and I detect from your words that you have indeed answered it at least by implication - is that we are going to continue to be committed to reducing the subsidy, and therefore ferry users should be prepared to accept as part of their planning that approximately every 18 months or two years there will be an increase in ferry fares. Is that the case?

[3:00]

HON. MR. ROGERS: It depends. If our costs go down - and in certain areas our costs have gone down quite substantially. - perhaps we'll hold the line, but it would take some kind of miracle of deflation, the end of OPEC and most of the prices coming down for all the commodities we purchase. But no, I would expect that you'll see modest increases in the ferry rates every year to 18 months, as there have been for many years.

MR. LOVICK: Obviously the cynics among us will suggest that we can tell which years there won't be increases: I think they're called election years. I'm sure we can agree with that.

The issue, however. is that yes. indeed, we are apparently committed to that decrease in subsidy, i.e. increased cost to users. The users will pay more for the foreseeable future, and that will go on and on until we can dispense with a total operating deficit of some $50-odd million. I'm not sure that's much comfort; I'm not sure it is even justified.

I struggle also with your reference to the fact that we'll see whether our costs go down, because I note that when we talked, you gave the illustration of the Sunshine Coast. You talk about a passenger increase of 4 percent. a vehicle increase of 65 percent and an increase in revenue of 17 percent, while costs have declined 5 percent. Despite that, we're still talking about increasing ferry fares with a view to reducing the subsidy. I'm wondering if we can provide any comfort to the users of the service or whether they have to face the prospect of continuing increases.

The subsidy, as 1 say, is also problematic because a number of people - and I'll perhaps touch on this a little later - are wondering how we got that in the first place. They're wondering whether that transfer of the fleet from Transportation and Highways, the so-called MOTH fleet, perhaps stuck us with a bill rather larger than it should have been in the first place, and whether the some $60 million cost involved was in fact used for other purposes rather than given to the corporation. Therefore the corporation was saddled with a debt load and had to borrow money. Perhaps we can touch on those things too, because I think that large question of subsidy is a complex one that generates a number of other questions.

I want to touch on some other dimensions of this - the large questions, as I described them earlier, about the overall operation of the ferry fleet and ferry system. I might note that one thing a number of consumers have said . . . . You're quite right, by the way, that certainly those who express their opinions most regularly are on the smaller islands simply because they are probably more aware of their dependence on the ferry as part and parcel of their culture, their existence.

One of the comments and complaints made frequently by ferry users on routes 1 and 2, as well as the smaller ones, has to do with the fact that they perceive there arriving, there developing some kind of reduction of service, some situation wherein things are not as good as they used to be. Indeed, various people have raised questions, publicly and in private correspondence to me. suggesting that perhaps we want to let the ferry system not be the pride of B.C., as it once was; that we want to let it deteriorate somewhat so that it becomes a candidate for privatization. I am going to give the minister a marvellous opportunity to reassure us once and for all that -for the foreseeable future, of course - nothing could be further from his desires or his planning than the privatization of the ferries. Would the minister like to give us that assurance?

HON. MR. ROGERS: You've given me an opportunity to correct some of the other things.

Every year we have a budget introduced in this House, and every year the budget indicates the subsidy that my

[ Page 4714 ]

ministry has for the B.C. Ferry Corporation. You talk about the foreseeable future; I think you'd have to predict that every year, depending on what the Minister of Finance and the people at Treasury Board decide to offer to the corporation, we will have to work within those bounds. We are advised by Treasury Board of the amount of the subsidy that we'll be getting, and we have to adjust our rates and fares accordingly. If Treasury Board, in its wisdom, sees the reason for not doing that, then we won't have to increase the fares.

I might point out to you that had fares stayed . . . . During the entire time that the NDP were government, I believe it's correct to say the fares were not increased. But that wasn't a particularly high inflationary period. I'm sure the government of the day postponed the decision to raise the fares when they knew the fares had to go up~ because of course the company was starting a little financial hemorrhaging. In fact, it fell upon my colleague who is now the Minister of Energy (Hon. Mr. Davis) to raise the fares, and they doubled. It was very controversial. They doubled the fares to $10 for an automobile and I think $4 for a passenger, and it was considered outrageous. It was the magnitude of the change that offended the people on this island more than the fact. They all knew the change was coming, and they said: "Why did it have to be doubled? Couldn't you have done it a third this year, a third next year?" I think we're trying to took at it that way.

I haven't detected anybody complaining to me about deterioration of the service, and there is certainly no instruction to the corporation to have any deterioration in order that this service may be privatized. I believe that the only private ferry operating in and out of B.C. is the Coho, which operates from Port Angeles and is owned by one individual. I would have to hope that their accountant has fully depreciated the vessel; it's been in service a long time. I gather it makes a profit, but it runs under very spartan conditions. I gather that most of the people who use it are tourists, and some commercial truckers, but it's certainly not the kind of volume we handle on our ferries.

As a matter of fact, we're looking at quite the opposite of the things you suggested. We're looking at expanding on the V-class and the Cowichan-class vessels and putting in some of the amenities that we now find on modem European ferries, especially provisions for a children's playroom. As the smoking area seems to get smaller - and if I had my way it would be eliminated entirely - areas can be converted into places where the kids can go and horse around and their parents can keep a watchful eye on them.

We get more and more complaints from people about not enough commercial space on the vessels to do a bit of shopping in the little kiosks that we operate there. You would be highly amused if you knew the dollar volume that we handle and how fast the merchandise turnover is. The gentleman who runs that particular department of the Ferry Corporation has an eagle eye. If it doesn't move, it's gone, and we do very well. It really does help our bottom line.

The other thing I was going to point out to you is that as a result of a little softness in the oil industry, fuel costs have come down somewhat, but it's still a very competitive business out there. I actually have a little internal competitive spirit going between B.C. Rail and B.C. Ferries to see who can tell me what their best price on diesel is. B.C. Ferries is actually second this week. I think B.C. Rail has managed to beat somebody down a little bit more. In other words, they're both working that hard at it.

1 have no intention of recommending that the corporation be privatized. In fact, I think that would be met with all sorts of political opposition from people who view it with some degree of pride and also some degree of necessity. In terms of the island, I believe you pointed out that from your position it's an essential service. It has, as I said on Friday, become more essential as the warehousing component has virtually disappeared from the island. So I don't anticipate that there will be any move to privatize the ferries.

We run some minor vessels that don't carry vehicles. They are contracted passenger-carrying vessels that are privatized. Port Simpson is one of them. In those particular cases - Port Simpson, Kitkatla, Hartley Bay and Kincolith ferry system - the four native bands put together a proposal to take over and operate the service which would serve their communities. Hartley Bay and Kitkatla currently aren't serviced. The director of the corporation from Prince Rupert has put together a proposal - which they have all agreed to -that we will look at. That's the kind of thing we're doing, but no, not at all in terms of the mainline ferries.

We do move vessels around from time to time. People in the Gulf Islands get emotionally attached to a particular vessel, and when it goes in for annual refit we get a great storm of protest from people wanting assurances that it will come back. We try to be sensitive to those feelings and needs of the people.

MR. LOVICK: I thank the minister for that answer. It's worth noting, however, that when we talk about ferry costs, we can all understand the advisability, indeed the desirability, of having costs that are more or less predictable and phased in, rather than happening all at once. We can also, I am sure, appreciate and understand that ferry fare increases based on increased costs are one matter, and we can accept that. The predicament is, though, that we seem to be saddling ferry users with another cost, over which they have no control, because the government is bound and determined to reduce the debt as quickly as it possibly can. In other words, besides being subjected to the inevitable increases in the cost of operation and the normal increases in the cost of living, there is also another set of costs confronting the ferry users which, needless to say, exacerbates the situation and causes them some extra anguish. I hope the minister will at least appreciate that point.

Our position, Mr. Minister, in contradistinction to the one that you have sketched out in terms of user-pay - the self-sufficiency of the ferry system - is that the old system introduced by a Social Credit government in the mid-seventies of subsidizing ferries to the same level as provincial highways we thought was fair both to the highway users and to the ferry users, not to mention the taxpayers. Unfortunately, it seems that those days are no more, and I still do not quite understand why we have changed that. Are we saying that at one time ferries were apparently more essential or were a more necessary service and somehow they are less essential and have something like a frill quality to them? What is the rationale for scrapping that old formula? Perhaps the minister would like to explain that to me.

HON. MR. ROGERS: It predates my time as the minister responsible for it, but I can tell you this much: if you want to do it for some ferry routes, you would have to use the worst section of the Coquihalla as your highway comparison and throw in a whole bunch of snow and extra grading in terms of

[ Page 4715 ]

actual operating costs. It sounded great, and perhaps there was some validity to it, but no, I think right now we just look at it as a straight subsidy to the Ferry Corporation.

In terms of the MOTH fleet . . . .

Go ahead, if you've got important business.

MR. ROSE: It's just a matter of a point of order of what follows this.

HON. MR. ROGERS: Sure, go ahead. I'll just ad-lib here for a minute and talk about something probably not terrible germane to the subject while my colleague across the way is able to listen to his Whip with rapt attention.

MR. ROSE: Did that go into Hansard?

HON. MR. ROGERS: Absolutely; every word of it. Some of my best are this. Peter Hyndman did this for 35 minutes one day when you didn't know that we didn't have anything else on the order paper, and he was marvellous.

The MOTH fleet. Part of it is that the taxpayers were paying for it anyway. Now it's probably a little more actuarially honest. I think we have got it whipped into shape. We do have some vessel replacements to do. We certainly have some on the Quathiaski Cove to Campbell River thing, where a regular vessel cannot be pulled out of service to be put on that particular run because of the currents and some of the other problems with it.

In terms of the subsidy and what happened in the past with the highway subsidy, I'll just take the subsidy given to me annually by Treasury Board and make do with it. We wouldn't want to get caught with our pants down, so we want to make absolutely sure that our vessels are out there sailing. We are going to operate the thing as efficiently as possible. It doesn't make us money, but, quite frankly, if the government has extra revenues, my colleagues the Ministers of Health, of Education and of Social Services have a better call on it than I do - to come along and say I haven't got the courage to be honest with the users and tell them that our costs have gone up.

We do a very good job of trying to keep the costs down. I struggle with the federal Transport minister on a whole host of his regulations to make sure that they don't become more onerous, because many are applicable to the ice-floes of the Northumberland Strait and don't really apply to the lower Gulf Islands and the balmy waters of British Columbia. The battle continues. Ottawa bureaucrats like to add to our bottom line in terms of their own mandarin way of viewing things.

[3:15]

MR. LOVICK: As I listened to the first part of that answer, it suddenly struck me that I was no longer sure that the minister is committed to reducing or getting rid of the subsidy entirely. It now sounds as if the subsidy is going to be accepted as an ongoing obligation. Is the minister telling me that, yes, he wants as much money as Treasury Board will give him, but he is somehow, paradoxically, going to continue to increase fares so he won't have to get as much money from Treasury Board? I am sure you can agree with me that there was some confusion; that testimony is a little different.

HON. MR. ROGERS: Perhaps you were busy listening to the House Leader, or perhaps I didn't make myself abundantly clear. The Treasury Board gives us an allowance every year, and between what we get and what we have to spend, we'll raise that amount of money. If the member for Saanich and the Islands becomes incredibly benevolent and sees the wisdom of finally giving the amount of money to this ministry that it deserves, then of course we won't raise the rates. In fact, we'll be busy paving everything. But I have a feeling that my colleague the Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. Dueck) and others seem to continually get in the queue ahead of me. I think, quite frankly, they deserve to be in terms of the projects and jobs they have to do.

MR. LOVICK: Fair enough, and yet you are committed, apparently, to being rid of the subsidy. You're suggesting that a goal of the B.C. Ferry Corporation is to operate sans subsidy. Otherwise, you wouldn't point with pride to the fact that you're reducing that amount of subsidy each year and you're getting better. Clearly, your objective is to be without subsidy. Is that not the case?

HON. MR. ROGERS: My objective is to operate the Ferry Corporation with the subsidy we're given from government and the fares that we raise, balancing the cost of the operation of the fleet. It will be a determination of government and Treasury Board as to the degree of annual subsidy. Having said that, I want to run that corporation as tightly and efficiently as possible so that every conceivable profit centre, especially ones where the customer has the option, is there and operating as well as we can for our operations.

There are a whole host of people who would like to operate commercial enterprises within the ferry terminal compounds. We don't think that's our business. We think that's the business of the private sector and the surrounding communities. Once we have them on-board, if they wish to use the amenities that are on board and purchase commercial services, as far as we're concerned, that's the bottom line because people are free to bring their own lunch if they want to or eat in our dining rooms. We want to try and make every one of those services as much a small profit centre as we can.

I make no commitment to try and eliminate the subsidy. I will only operate on a year-to-year basis based on the instruction I'm given from Treasury Board. I don't want to stick it to the ferry passengers - or anybody, for that matter. What I really, genuinely want to do is make sure that this company doesn't get into the kind of situation where we have to come back and pass an order-in-council and raise the rates by 30, 40 or 50 percent, which causes an enormous outcry on the Island and for everybody. I'm told by the commercial truckers that what they want is predictability.

In terms of other things within the corporation, our on-time operations, our efficiencies . . . . Any airline in the world would be envious of the number of people we move and the frequency with which you can virtually set your watch by the way our vessels operate. That's the kind of pride that this organization has that, quite frankly, I want to see maintained and do not want to compromise on any issues, especially safety. We'd like to see the reputation we've established be enhanced.

MR. LOVICK: I take some comfort from that. Certainly the minister and I have complete agreement on that - no difficulty whatsoever. Obviously we want to provide that good service and to maintain a high level of service. Moreover, we ought to congratulate and appreciate all those people who have been providing that service so very well. Fine, that's not at issue.

[ Page 4716 ]

1 don't think I'm going to get any further with the subsidy issue, so I'm going to let that one waft away into the air.

I want to touch on some allegations or complaints that the Ferry Corporation is also, unfortunately, nickel-and-diming the consumers to death. I'm sure you have lots of correspondence on the little fees that continue to rise and the little extras that seem to be being sought by the ministry in terms of giving an extra bill to the consumer. Let me just list a few examples, and then I'll allow you to respond, Mr. Minister.

First, the refusal to waive the vehicle fare for disabled passengers who have to use their cars to travel independently on the ferries. That was a request, you recall, made by the B.C. Coalition of the Disabled; a request, I understand, rejected somewhat peremptorily, I gather. Second, the implementation of user fees for emergency runs to those islands which do not have private carriers such as water taxis. I'm not sure I explained that very clearly. Fees, as we know, depending on location, could range from a relatively modest fee of $100 up to, apparently, in more remote areas, about $700 for that kind of service. It also depends on the time of day when the service is required. The fees, of course, might be covered by emergency health services, but they are obviously going to be an additional factor in medical premium increases and so forth.

Another area is that students who used to ride free on the old Highways ferries now pay 75 cents for the same ride on the ferries. Quadra Island, for example. The elementary students there have their sports facilities in Campbell River and have to make regular trips there. They now have that as an extra cost, apparently, added to their education, if you like.

Hiking the auto fare between Swartz Bay and Tsawwassen by 50 cents, which came into effect, of course, on April 1, despite the fact that fares on that route apparently more than covered the cost . . . . I think I can anticipate the answer there: "We're saying that yes, indeed, that's simply an economy of scale across the system, and therefore we may be able to pay for it by that part of the system. To cover our losses at another part, we may do it that way. " Perhaps that's the answer. As I pose the question, I realize I may know the answer.

MR. R. FRASER: Why did you ask?

MR. LOVICK: I want to be sure. I am in search of certainty, I would inform the first member for Vancouver South, just as he rides through life searching for truth, Mr. Chairman.

The last question, of course, has to do with the business of eliminating and then later restoring the vehicle discounts for commercial vehicles after the truckers protested. I'm going to have occasion to talk a little bit more about that, Mr. Minister. But let me just dwell for a second on it, if I might, to emphasize the pattern. What the pattern seems to be - and this is certainly the case in the northern gulf; and I can't blame you for much of this, because you weren't involved in some of the earlier examples I could enunciate here - is one of imposing the fee, listening to the protest, and then retracting the fee or withdrawing from the field of combat. Needless to say, that calls into question the entire legitimacy and the entire budgetary procedure in the first place. In other words, we impose a fee; we take a little heat; suddenly the fee is no longer apparently quite so important. It would seem to me that that point is illustrated by the commercial vehicle discount controversy we recently came through.

I'm wondering if the minister would like to respond to any of those questions.

HON. MR. ROGERS: On the disabled, we have a very good relationship, quite frankly, from the B.C. Ferry Corporation. It does present a bit of a problem. We now allow the disabled person to travel for free and the person traveling with them goes at full fare, so the disabled person travels in fact at half fare.

What has happened, though - discussing this matter with the pursers - is that quite often the disabled person and their escort are . . . . The escort takes them as far as the purser's office, and leaves the person at the purser's office, and then the escort, who has paid half fare, leaves and goes back to their automobile. We don't really have the crew capability to be able to look after disabled persons, although the crew go out of their way to do so. We then have to find someone at the other end, one of our regular crew members that has a normal job to do, to escort the disabled person from the ferry docks to whomever they're being met by at the other end. There's quite a bit of abuse of this.

We also had quite a problem with the wheelchairs disappearing off the ferries, until we moved to the airline style of wheelchair, the kind that you see in airline terminals, which are awfully difficult to take away. But we were using the kind that were collapsible before, because we do have wheelchair access to the vessels. Many people would ask for a wheelchair while on board and then leave with the wheelchair. We've tried to put an end to that, and I believe we've been successful on it.

In terms of user fees and emergency health services, this has been in place since before I became the minister. One of the things that we wanted to do . . . . If we start running unscheduled trips, it's got to come either out of the government subsidy, out of the fare box .... We have to pay the crew; we have fuel costs; we have overtime costs. We have all those things. Those are legitimate costs. If it's a legitimate emergency health services cost, we believe the proper thing to do is to bill it to emergency health services. The ambulance dispatch people who have the right to call on the ferry service to operate this service understand this business.

Again, we expect regular passengers on a mainline run to be paying an extra 25 cents or 50 cents per trip, so that people living in the Gulf Islands could necessarily have the call on the ferry. It's just the way the thing has been set up.

You're right. Students pay less than the equivalent of bus fare. In Nanaimo, I think it's about $1. 10 for a standard bus. That's probably legitimate. We don't make money on the Swartz Bay run, but we don't lose a lot of money. We make money if you don't assume depreciation, but I can assure you that on the main island runs, the Long Harbour to Tsawwassen run and the Saturna Island run - Saturna is our biggest money loser - we do lose money on every single one of those runs. There has been a blending of the fares.

If we were to charge the actual cost of the Saturna Island ferry, I think the federal minister in charge of the Treasury Board - who is a resident of the island and one of my constant pen-pals on this issue - would be most exercised. We don't have any preferential rate for the fact she's there.

The vehicle business of charging a premium on the Friday and the Sunday wasn't a revenue measure. That was a measure to try to move traffic. This is a case where we talked o the industry and said: "Look, we're going to do this. Is it acceptable?" We had correspondence. Everybody had been

[ Page 4717 ]

written to. Everybody who was a regular user - because we know who all our regular users are - knew about it in advance. They all screamed: "We never knew." Well, they failed to read their mail. They had, in fact, all been advised. They did scream; they threatened to do all sorts of things to US.

After having run it for a month, we found that it didn't move the traffic. I became much more aware of the fact that warehousing had ceased to be a major issue on the island. People tell me that these vehicles - they don't mind what the rate is - are going to sail on those ferries. We actually got quite a concession out of them, in terms of our operational ability to change from a priority loading where they were guaranteed three-quarters of the lower deck space on any particular run to a change in procedure where now the terminal manager gets to make that call. If we have an undue rush of campers who have been waiting in line for an hour and a half, and somebody arrives with a truck 45 minutes before sailing time, he no longer has priority. That's a trade-off they were prepared to make.

Quite frankly, we'll wait and see what happens. At least we got a concession out of them. We tried to move the trucks with a slight discount. It didn't work. I think the highest and best use of that vehicle space on Friday and Sunday nights is to get visitors to and from the Island. I think you probably agree with that. If you didn't, I would beg you make that statement in Nanaimo and in other areas of your riding where the tourist industry is affected. Those are the answers to your questions.

[3:30]

MR. LOVICK: Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the answers to the questions.

Let me touch on another large area in terms of questions about B.C. ferries; these again, I would emphasize, are general questions. I will get to some much more specific things in a while.

Changes in service is another whole area that seems to generate large numbers of complaints. My mail - and I'm sure it's the case with yours also, Mr. Minister - features large numbers of letters that are all common in one way: namely, they are all complaining about the fact that no one ever consults with them or tells them anything. Acknowledging for the moment that perhaps there is some slight exaggeration there, one nevertheless has to grapple with the perception of a reality. The perception is that yes indeed, there is not any consultation. That is not happening.

Let me again outline a few specifies to make that point: first of all, the plan to close the Long Harbour and Fulford Harbour terminals and establish a terminal at Isabella Point. I know that Saltspring Island probably by itself generates about 70 percent of most complaints about ferry service. Certainly that's the case. But Mr. Minister, I really have some sympathy for Saltspring residents, because I visited that island at one point, and I listened to a whole bunch of people who were frankly frustrated because they had been promised consultation and discussion, and in response to all their queries, they had not received any. The rumour mill was burgeoning and flying, if that's allowed; if rumour mills can fly, this one certainly was.

A whole bunch of people had said they understand that Isabella Point is there, and that there had been special aircraft flying over. There were even rumours of submarines or some such thing checking it out. You know what can happen with rumours on islands. They go rather quickly, and of course the longer they're out, the further removed from reality they come to be.

In any event, the whole story about Isabella Point and what might be happening there, in terms of changing the terminal and the impact on B.C. Ferry Corporation employees and on the population of Fulford Harbour and so forth - those questions are alive and well on that island. The people of Saltspring would love to hear what the plans are for Isabella Point or Fulford-Long Harbour, if any - another example of changes in service apparently sans consultation.

As nearly as I can make out, the business of diverting Squamish Highway traffic by ferry to facilitate construction of the highway was simply a plan - who knows whether good, bad or indifferent - that people up there and employees, moreover, felt they had no understanding of whatsoever.

Increased fares on the Gulf Island runs, reduced service .... For example, on the Mayne Island run recently, the upper lounge was closed for lack of staff. As we know, the Ferry Corporation has had various meetings. They've met with groups of Gulf Island residents to discuss schedule changes, but the predicament is that the message is: "Yes, we will talk to you, but the plan is already made. " The fix is in - if I can use that phrase.

I want to commend your predecessor, the former Minister of Highways, who made a point of visiting Gabriola Island in my constituency and listening to the concerns. I'd also like to commend Ferry Corporation staff for making the effort to go and talk and listen to the concerns of those people. However, the problem is that the pattern still remains that yes, we'll go through a kind of pro forma consultative process, but then our words are not being heard and we wonder why we go through the exercise in the first place.

Let me make just one point and then I will yield, because I understand that the Attorney-General wants to make an introduction or some such thing.

HON. MR. ROGERS: He wants to speak on the estimates.

MR. LOVICK: He wants to speak on the estimates. I gather he wants to do a brief statement with a view to a mail out to his island constituents. 1 shall yield in just a moment.

Another illustration of the same point, Mr. Minister: the cancelling and then later restoring of the Sunshine Coast morning sailing after some 12, 000 residents signed a petition. I'm delighted, and I'm sure everybody here is delighted, that the ministry and the corporation are responsive to the concerns of their constituents, but surely that kind of 180-degree turnabout on policy would indicate that the policy was hardly well thought out or carefully contrived in the beginning if it can be changed so rapidly given some heat and opposition.

The argument from the Saltspring residents was that had there been any consultation on the issue, the Ferry Corporation would have discovered that the cut they were proposing made no sense whatsoever, was absolutely unsatisfactory and was impossible to the residents of the area.

I'll offer those few observations, Mr. Minister, and an invitation to you to respond to them should you wish.

HON. B.R. SMITH: At the risk of prolonging a colleague's estimates, I am nevertheless going to make a few

[ Page 4718 ]

comments about ferries, because not only do I represent an island constituency very much dependent on the main service between Vancouver Island and the mainland, as is the member who just spoke, but in that connection I also want to say some positive things.

I happen to think that the main service between Vancouver Island and the mainland is second to none in North America. Any ferry service I've had the pleasure to sample, whether in Nova Scotia, Maine, Washington State or a number of other places . . . . If you go to Prince Edward Island for a visit in the summer - as the member for Coquitlam used to do when he was on his federal committees - and try and get off or onto that lovely, little jewel of an island, the lineups and delays at Borden and other places to get on those ferries that aren't half as well run as our ferries when you do get on them . . . . Our service is second to none and our people in the B.C. ferry system do a marvellous job of streamline loading and running excellent vessels for our citizens. I think we should remember that, because we always bring to committee the kaleidoscope of complaints, problems and suggestions for better service or lower rates. I'm saying that it's one of the best services in the world.

I also use the Gulf Islands ferries a fair amount; I'm very familiar with them. For the people who use them, they are highways, as important as a bridge in a northern riding. There is no alternative for moving from Saltspring Island to Vancouver Island or Saltspring Island to the mainland with your goods, family and vehicle. You can't take an alternative route. You can't drive around Castlegar and come upon it some other way. That's your highway. That service is the absolute lifeblood of those people. We've got to keep those rates down to a reasonable amount; we've got to protect commuters who live on those islands and who are forced to get on and off those islands; and our ferry system has always got to be sensitive to the needs of people on those islands.

I regularly use the ferries to Denman and Hornby, and the crews that work on those ferries and the service that they give year-round is absolutely exemplary. I've also used the Quadra ferry and the ferries to all the lower Gulf Islands on a number of occasions, and they give excellent service. So I'm going to inject a positive note on the employees who work on those systems, and also say that as long as I'm elected as a member in this Legislature, I'm going to fight for good service and good rates for people who live on islands in this province, I'll tell you.

HON. MR. ROGERS: I must speak on the issues of prisons, drug addiction and other things during the estimates of the Attorney-General.

Consultation. I have been Minister of Environment on more than one occasion, and every fish and wildlife club in the province wants total consultation with the ministry in terms of what the game quotas are. When you actually go to the meetings, they really want it for themselves, and "please restrict the area for others."

MR. LOVICK: Cynicism.

HON. MR. ROGERS: Just a little bit.

Saltspring Island and rumour control. I often think that I should take a quarter-page ad in the weekly Gulf Islands Driftwood and list rumours that have sort of been out that week, and the official response to them, because virtually every week there is someone with yet another suggestion. I often think that the management of the Ferry Corporation is not even allowed to think about changes in service without committing an offence in the minds of some of the people on the islands.

We've talked about it occasionally. In fact, we had a good two-day workshop on this issue. There are some interesting choices. No decisions have been made on Long Harbour, Isabella Point and Fulford. For example, if we move the ferry out of Fulford, we actually take the heart and soul out of that little community. It is the little shops there, the little businesses along there, the people that cater to the early-morning people that come and need a coffee or something, or the evening people . . . . Apparently there's also a place down the road where, if you are inclined that way, you can stop for a libation in the evening.

However, from the purely mechanical point of view, Fulford Harbour is about twice as far from Swartz Bay as Isabella Point. In fact, on that run the ferry is spending about half its time paralleling the coastline. So from 10, 000 feet it looks pretty simple to make a decision to move the ferry terminal. But it's not that simple, and it's not actively being considered at this time.

Long Harbour is a somewhat different story. We run a vessel into Long Harbour which is one of the original Vancouver-class vessels from Tsawwassen. I think. I'm correct in saying that it stops first at Mayne Island and then at Pender. This is the third stop on its ride - it could stop at Galiano and Pender, or one of the others. This vessel is one of our older vessels and will be retired at some time in the future - not this year, and probably not next year; but at some point it will have to be retired. It's a particularly awkward terminal to land in, and it does present some difficulties from the point of view of the skipper. As the amount of recreational marine activity taking place in Long Harbour increases every year, we have greater difficulties. If you're on a small boat in Long Harbour and the ferry goes by - it is a very large vessel. Unfortunately, a number of intrepid mariners anchor at night in Long Harbour, which also presents some interesting problems for the skippers. But at the present time it's going to continue.

We have proposed . . . . By the way, there's a committee set up with Captain Partridge from the Ferry Corporation, the MLA from the islands and a number of people from the islands. Mind you, if pick a committee from the islands and you're on the committee, first of all, there are questions as to how you got on the committee and how someone else was left off. So I would almost want to have committee cross representation of everybody on the islands. Nonetheless, we do have a working committee. We have proposed and are just examining a system whereby Long Harbour-Tsawwassen traffic that went instead from Fulford to Swartz and Swartz to Tsawwassen, and could be guaranteed that route, would have a shorter sailing time. We can't convince them of it, but it's true; it could be done. But for the foreseeable future, we're just looking at it.

There's also Vesuvius to Crofton. I don't see a change there.

We run three ferries to Saltspring Island. Part of it's also the dynamic of what happens on Saltspring, because you have people who live on Mayne Island and on Pender Island, some of whom go .... The Pender Island people tend to go to Sidney for services, but the Mayne Island people often go to Saltspring for services. From the point of view of the merchants and the people living in Ganges, it should be hub and

[ Page 4719 ]

spoke; Ganges should be the centre of the universe. You drive out of town and get to one of the ends of the spokes and drive off to your other destination. That's terrific. That's strictly from the perspective of the Ganges merchants' association, or whatever name they use.

From the point of view of the Ferry Corporation, if you're hemorrhaging on all of these things, you try to provide the service with the smallest amount of hemorrhaging. Of course, if you put commuters on there, you have a 7 o'clock or a 6:30 ferry, and maybe an 8 o'clock, which are full, and then you have other ferries that have lighter loads - which brings me to the Sunshine Coast ferry. We are running that ferry with very little load on it. It's a Cowichan-class vessel. It had very minor loads on it. All of a sudden the community said: "Wait a minute. We always meant to use the ferry but we never did. If you put it back on, we will use it. "

[3:45]

We will try it for a year and see if in fact the use is there. We shall see, because every year all schedules are reviewed.

MR. ROSE: Which one are you talking about?

HON. MR. ROGERS: I'm talking about the one from Horseshoe Bay to Langdale. There was a 10:30 sailing that had been pulled off for the winter. It's back on for the summer, in any event.

The last one I want to talk about is the ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Squamish. What we asked for was an examination. If we had a catastrophe on that highway in terms of a major slide that shut the highway and the railway down for two or three weeks, or however long it would take . . . . The geography of that area means that that could happen. What would we do? Are people going to have to drive out over the Anderson Lake road, the road by D’Arcy, and come out that way? Could we move emergency supplies by ferry? Could we move the reefer trucks that Squamish and other places need up into that area?

There is a ferry slip on the Woodfibre side. I've forgotten its name; it's one of the MOTH-fleet things. It's only an emergency contingency. It was certainly never proposed that we would do anything else but that. If we have a fleet of vessels and the highway is shut down and we have vehicles trapped in Squamish, would we make the effort to get them out? That's all we're interested in. Of course, the Chairman would insist that all these vehicles drive up over that Anderson Lake and Seton Lake road and come back down through his constituency, so that the commercial activity that takes pl ace in Lillooet and Lytton would happen in the normal course of events.

That was something we looked at, and just for having looked at it we caused all kinds of apprehension. We will not be paralleling any highways where possible.

MR. ROSE: My question is a relatively mild and moderate one. I do a lot on the Langdale ferry, and we really did miss that 10:30 ferry for the winter. I don't know anything about how much it was used, but it seems to me that most ferry stuff is peaks and valleys anyway. I suppose you have to concern yourself with how you fill those peaks and valleys.

The run that interests me more than any other, I think, from a tourist promotion standpoint is the beautiful trip across to Victoria, up-Island by car, across to Comox, down the Sunshine Coast to Langdale and back to Horseshoe Bay. I think that needs a lot more promotion. I was wondering if you ever considered a kind of excursion thing through the Ministry of Tourism on that. going either way. I think it would be a boon to the people in Powell River and all along the Sunshine Coast. It may or may not be. I haven't studied it, but it seemed to me to be a natural.

I would like the minister's comments if he would care to give them.

HON. MR. ROGERS: We have had some promotions through the Ministry of Tourism on that particular run. I haven't looked at a fare that would allow people to get on in Horseshoe Bay and come all the way around and get off again in Tsawwassen or . . . .

MR. ROSE: It's about $60 now.

HON. MR. ROGERS: We could put a package together for that. I would look for that to come from the tourist industry, saying: "We're going to put a package together with hotels and restaurants. " If they wanted to do that, then we would probably co-venture with them. In fact, that's a route that we could do more tourism promotion on than with the Queen of the North.

The Queen of the North is going on her positioning cruise tomorrow morning and will be running between Port Hardy and Prince Rupert. Quite frankly, while we advertise it, we hope that not too many people respond to the ads, because we don't have any space left except for deck space at present. We will be looking at trying to find a vessel for that particular run that will have greater capacity. It's a phenomenal bargain.

Again, if you consider what the cruise lines charge to go to Alaska and what we charge to take you through the same scenery, it is outrageously good value for everybody. Or else you have to say that the cruise lines are very good at marketing and taking people's money under false pretences - one or the other. The difference between our fare . . . . I think it's $50 to go between Port Hardy and Prince Rupert, and I think it's $12, 000 or $13, 000 to take the grand tour, which doesn't take you very much further. I guess it takes you up to Glacier Bay,

I will look at that. That's the first time I've had that suggestion made to me. It would seem to me that would get them to the Island and how they'd get back off the Island would be immaterial. Whether they took the Departure Bay to Horseshoe Bay route or the Swartz Bay to Tsawwassen route, the fare is the same, so we could probably put a fare together for a vehicle and passengers.

MR. ROSE: I'm curious to hear that. I really do think it's a very beautiful part, and I won't reiterate what I've said already. Vancouver to Victoria is roughly $21 plus a passenger, the last time I looked. Comox is the same, so the whole circle back to Vancouver in terms of ferry fares, if you don't go over to Texada while you're up there, is approximately $60 or $65. It seems that a summer excursion package in the neighbourhood of a little bit more than the two fares would be suitable. You have the marketing people and you also have the accountant; I don't know what's reasonable.

The other business of up-Island and over to the Charlottes is going to be increasingly lucrative, I think, because of the interest taken in that. I took that trip as well one time. I was very impressed with it, and it was a bargain. You could probably have an excursion and charge them foreign

[ Page 4720 ]

exchange if you don't want to charge them the computer prices. For a tourist, compared to some of these pocket cruises it is under priced. However, you don't have the dancing girls and the in-flight entertainment and all this other stuff that you have on those things. There's no reason, in my view, that that sort of thing couldn't be encouraged as an excursion for tourists.

HON. MR. ROGERS: The chairman of Via Rail and I have had a discussion. He tells me he can deliver as many passengers into Prince Rupert on the run from Edmonton as we can lift out of there down to Port Hardy. That's one of our problems in terms of our current ship capacity, and that's one of the reasons the corporation is examining replacements for the Queen of the North, and moving the Queen of the North to the run that the Queen of Prince Rupert does, which is going from Prince Rupert to Skidegate. I see quite substantial growth going into not only the South Moresby Park, but I'd also like to work on the shoulder seasons.

Everybody seems to want to travel only in the peak times, and in fact, one of the most beautiful times of the year to travel in that part of the country is either in the spring or in the fall, not during the peak of the summer. We pulled a vessel out for refit, and she's going back in tomorrow. She remains the queen of the fleet. We don't have dancing girls on it, but we have a lot more entertainment on the Queen of the North than we do on the regular common or garden ferries.

Interjection.

HON. MR. ROGERS: No, that's definitely planned. Mind you, if we raised the fares because of whatever entertainment we put on, there would be a howl of protest.

I should also point out that the people who live in Waglisla use it as a regular commuter service. If we did raise the fares, I think what we would do is ticket people who wanted to get on in Bella. You'd have to buy your ticket in Bella Bella, and it would have to be a round-trip ticket. We'd probably have a rate structure so they could get access to getting out.

I'm joined by Mr. Morrison from the Ferry Corporation, who 1 thank for coming here. We have these detailed questions on the ferries, although so far we've been able to handle most of them.

MR. VANT: Being from the Cariboo, I don't want to continue this discussion on ferries, although we do have the Marguerite ferry crossing the Fraser River just south of Quesnel. It's a well-run, well-maintained ferry, so I've no questions to the minister regarding the ferry service in the Cariboo.

The nature of our riding. Of course, I could run a great long wish-list asking the minister for all kinds of very worthy projects. 1 do have one priority project concerning Highway 97. This is not just a constituency project; this is the main north-south route in our great province. One of the worst sections, I'm convinced, of Highway 97 is the section between mile 86 and mile 93. This is just south of the village of 100 Mile House. There was a great improvement project through the Mount Begbie summit which was completed in 1986. The Mount Begbie summit is the highest point on Highway 97; indeed, it's about 4, 000 feet up so it's a very severe climate there.

This section between mile 86 and mile 93 is very winding and there are pot-holes, and several transports lose control on the sharp comers and leave the road. Just last Sunday as I was heading down to the Clinton Rodeo, I noticed the very wide cracks across this very poor piece of highway. It's almost like driving down a railroad track. The new route for this very small section of Highway 97 has been surveyed and cleared. I believe it could be completed and paved at very modest cost. Is there any chance this very overdue and most worthwhile project could proceed this year, since it was shelved last year?

HON. MR. ROGERS: I'm just having staff look up that particular section of highway. I might point out that there are members of this House who have never heard the member of Cariboo actually ask for highways. In previous years, of course, the minister was always from the Cariboo, and there's always been some suggestion that there couldn't possibly be any stretch of road in the Cariboo that wasn't paved at least once or twice. I actually drove that highway not so long ago, and I agree with you: there are some areas in the Cariboo that were missed and need to be repaired.

Interjection.

HON. MR. ROGERS: It's hard to believe, isn't it?

The fact of the matter is that there are lots of areas of the province where we need to spend some money on highway improvements. I have endeavoured to spread the money we have available among the more pressing problems of the province.

If you don't mind, I'll get back to you when I've heard from my critic again and we've had a chance to look this up, but I appreciate your bringing the matter to my attention. I occasionally get off the saltwater ferries and drive up into the interior, but I wear my boots, so I feel at home.

MR. LOVICK: Before we leave the general area of ferries and subsidies, I want to give the minister an opportunity to respond to what has been referred to as the Vaughn Palmer thesis. I'm sure it must ring a bell. I'm referring simply to the perception that one of the reasons we have the predicament with subsidy, why that subsidy amount is as large as it is and why ferry users are paying for that, has to do with the transfer of the fleet from MOTH - Ministry of Transportation and Highways - to B.C. Ferries. Specifically, Palmer's suggestion, backed up by some Treasury Board notes and other documents which I've had occasion to look at, is that B.C. ferry users are paying for other highways by their higher tariffs, most specifically the Coquihalla. I'm sure that the minister is familiar with that thesis and I needn't spell it out in any detail here, but it is all connected essentially with the transfer to the Ferry Corporation of the Ministry of Transportation and Highways fleet. I'm wondering if the minister would like to comment on the argument on that case.

HON. MR. ROGERS: I'm not sure that I want to argue with you about it.

To get back to the question from the second member for Cariboo (Mr. Vant) - he's left - there is a paving project taking place just south of that spot on the highway, but there will be no construction on that particular portion of the highway this year.

In terms of the Coquihalla Highway and the MOTH fleet, I don't see the correlation between the two. I just think that the people who work at the Ferry Corporation probably should have been looking after these vessels from the incorporation

[ Page 4721 ]

potation of the company, or maybe should have had them transferred 15 or 20 years ago, because there is a whole host of economies that can be made. To say the least, none of the ferries being run by the MOTH fleet came anywhere close to making their expenses. It contributed to our loss - that's correct - and we have made some efficiencies and changes in fares which have substantially reduced that loss, but I don't subscribe to the theory that that was in some way to look after the costs of the Coquihalla. I'm afraid the B.C. Ferry Corporation subsidy to the MOTH fleet wouldn't be significant enough to make that much effort for anything that went on in the Coquihalla. It's just that we were assigned that particular portion of the work.

[4:00]

MR. MICHAEL: I'll be very brief, but I would ask the minister that when he hears remarks along the line that there are only tariffs on saltwater ferries and none on freshwater ferries, he please bring to the attention of those who make those statements that indeed there is a tariff on the freshwater ferry on Shuswap Lake. It is probably the ferry that makes the longest runs. It carries a lot of passengers and serves a community of significant size, Seymour Arm. He does charge a tariff and receives a minimal subsidy from the provincial government. I would ask the minister to please make that point when we hear people talking about the lack of tariffs on freshwater ferries, because indeed on Shuswap Lake we do have a tariff.

A couple of short requests to the minister. First of all, the area of the Trans-Canada Highway just east of Salmon Arm. I understand that there will be no major improvements between the Hospital Road area just east of Salmon Arm and the Larch Hills comer. It's a stretch of about four miles or so. It's very important, because of the need for commercial development along that stretch, that the plans be finalized quickly, and I would urge him to please see what he can do about having those plans finalized within the next two or three months so that we can expect the project to be considered very seriously for next year's budget.

The other and perhaps the major request I have to make to the minister in my constituency has to do with a bridge. It's a very famous bridge, very well known throughout the province and particularly in my constituency: the Squilax Bridge. It's very old and in dire need of repair. It's a single lane bridge servicing a very large and growing area of my constituency, a lot of new construction and development going on on the north shore of Shuswap Lake. I know the minister has visited that area and is aware of its tremendous potential. It's also the area that hundreds of thousands of people visit, particularly every four years during the famous Adams River salmon run. It's a very congested area because of the single-lane problem.

I thank the minister. I know some serious considerations were being given to spending a significant amount of money on repairing that current bridge. I'm pleased to see that the minister is now not planning any major capital expenditures on repair. I would urge him again to get on with the planning, the consultation with the native Indian band in the area. And please give consideration to having that bridge as a very high priority when drafting the budget for 1989-90.

With those few words, Mr. Chairman, I would just ask the minister to give those items serious consideration for next year.

MR. LOVICK: I saw the minister gesturing in such a way, when he was looking around, as to ask the entire House: does anybody else have anything to put on the table? I want to assure the minister that I won't put my particular requests on the table until the end of this estimate's discussion; I'm saving them. At that point I know you'll be happy to hear the end of my comments, and you'll therefore be much more willing to listen to the final part of this continuing saga.

Fm not going to pursue the matter about that subsidy money and the transfer of the fleet from Transportation and Highways to the corporation. But I will give the minister notice that I intend to write a letter to him in which I will pose some rather specific questions about that, rather than take up the time of the House right now. I think there are some legitimate questions to be raised. So I'm telling the minister that I shall indeed do that, and he can look to receive such a letter.

I want now to turn to some much more specific kinds of questions, in the majority of cases probably fairly straightforward specific questions: first, about the overall operation; second, about specific routes. At that time I'm sure a number of other people will have questions to raise too. First, though, Fm going to step back and let my colleague the second member for Victoria offer a question about his constituency.

MR. BLENCOE: The issue I wish to raise with the minister is one that has plagued this side of the Tsawwassen Swartz Bay ferry run for some years: the lack of parking at Swartz Bay. I have corresponded with Mr. Long; indeed, I think I have copied the minister on a number of occasions. The problem, which is growing, is the lack of parking for those who wish to park their automobile at Swartz Bay and walk onto the ferry. It's particularly a problem on weekends.

I have had a fair amount of correspondence from constituents who have been forced to park illegally because of the lack of adequate parking at Swartz Bay. Indeed, one family, the Ravensdales, were so incensed at the attitude of the Ferry Corporation that they decided to contest the ticket; they won, and didn't have to pay the $35. Unfortunately, that doesn't resolve the issue. This is not a new issue. People who contact the Ferry Corporation say they're told, "It's in hand, " or, "We're studying it, " or: "We're looking into the problem. " Unfortunately, my constituents, along with many other south Vancouver Islanders, continue to be plagued by being ticketed, and if they wish to fight it they have to go to court. There's great frustration.

We need more parking at Swartz Bay. We have been told that it's in hand and is being studied. Can the minister tell me whether adequate parking facilities are imminent? Are we going to construct more parking so that my constituents and others don't have this frustration of going to Swartz Bay and being forced to park illegally, knowing they're going to get a ticket for having taken the weekend off to go wherever they go? Then they have to deal with the Ferry Corporation saying: "Well, we're still studying it." Perhaps the minister can give me some answers.

HON. MR. ROGERS: To deal with the question from the member for Shuswap-Revelstoke (Mr. Michael), I agree with him about the Squilax Bridge and about Trans-Canada Highway improvements near Salmon Arm. We feel those are very high priority and hope we're able to deal with them in the very near future when budgetary constraints allow.

The second member for Victoria asks a good question about parking. Nature has not been kind to us in terms of the location of ferry terminals. We have never been in the

[ Page 4722 ]

commercial parking business. Our rates for parking are not anything like what you would pay if it was a commercial lot. We have a problem at Horseshoe Bay, we have a problem at Departure Bay, we have a problem in Tsawwassen, and we have a problem in Swartz Bay. We're looking at all of them at the same time. One of the things we've considered is building commercial parking structures, but it costs a lot of money. It's a big investment. We've looked at park-and-ride situations.

We have been towing cars that park in loading zones and go away for the weekend. That's a change of policy that I instituted. The reason simply is that one or two people who choose to neglect all the signs and the postings that are there inconvenience all the rest of the people for the rest of the weekend or for as long as they are away. It only happens infrequently, because once the word got out that we actually towed them - those people who leave their vehicles in passenger loading zones; it inconveniences everybody -we've seen a fairly substantial decrease in that. But we do not have sufficient parking to meet the weekend requirements of those passengers who wish to come to Horseshoe Bay, Departure Bay, Swartz Bay or Tsawwassen and park their vehicle. By the way, I could say the same thing for many of the other terminals as well. We have the same problem on the Sunshine Coast.

If we are to make capital investments to make a parking structure, in many cases it would be unsightly and there would naturally be neighbourhood complaints, because most of our terminals are located in very attractive areas - in fact they all are, in a way. We would have to deal with that cost. At Horseshoe Bay we are looking at a subterranean operation. Of course, we can only excavate in the wintertime; our loads in the summer are too great. We have difficulty finding accommodations to park for crews. So we are not in a position to offer to those who want it a guarantee that they will be able to drive out and park their car in a parking lot at one of our ferry terminals. It is something we are working on and it continues to grow in terms of a problem for the corporation.

MR. VANT: I hope the minister has had time to reflect on the Highway 97 urgent project. Further to that, I would like to say in appreciation that there is currently paving going on between the Clinton overpass up to mile 83. 1 am wondering if while that paving plant is near The Chasm the minister would consider paving south of that overpass to the village of Clinton, a distance of four miles. I noticed last weekend that that section of road was getting very rough too.

I would like to ask the minister a question of clarification. I understand that in the privatization of our road maintenance the proposal has now been reduced to three-year contracts instead of five-year contracts. I'd like the minister to comment on why that contract term has been reduced.

Also, I understand from one of my constituents that a successful bidder has to purchase all of the shop tools in a Highways yard. In the particular 100 Mile to Lillooet contract area, this would amount to about $241, 000 for things like wrenches, drills and signs. That person naturally asked if, after his first three-year contract - if he was successful -the government would be purchasing back those shop tools ' because if a person wasn't successful in regaining the contract, he probably wouldn't have too much use for all those shop tools.

HON. MR. ROGERS: I'm sorry the member was out during the answer to his previous question. I'm sure he will refer to the Blues and be able to pick it up.

In the post-Coquihalla period - I guess we have to refer to that in this ministry - we are just going to do those things which we are absolutely entitled to do. Just because we have a paving crew in the area and there is some work that needs to be done, we're not going to just continue doing it. We will do it based on allocations. So at the present time I cannot commit to do that extra little paving into town that you would like to have done, tempting though it may be. I think that the Legislature votes money in these very estimates and those funds have to be spent in the manner in which they have been voted. I anticipate that there will be rather close scrutiny on the expenditures of this ministry for some years to come.

There never was a proposal in privatization for a five-year contract. That is a myth. it was always a three-year contract, and that is consistent. Secondly, I am advised that, yes, shop tools must be purchased. In the event that after three years the employee group or whoever is not the successful bidder on the next go-around, they will have the option of selling off the tools. Yes, shop tools must be purchased by the proponent.

MR. BLENCOE: I appreciate the minister's response and recognize that parking is not an easy issue at any of the terminals. I would remind the minister that this is not a recent problem. It's going to get worse as the rates are raised and people take the option of parking and not taking their automobiles on the ferry. I think also, Mr. Chairman, there has been some encouragement by the Ferry Corporation for people to park and ride. Yet in the years I've been here, I've heard every year: "We're studying it. We're looking at it." I would suggest that we need a park-and-ride system for Swartz Bay. We had it during Expo 86, and I think maybe we should look at that on a permanent basis. I think we're getting to the level where we should take a look at a multi-storey parkade concept for the Swartz Bay site.

[4:15]

[Mr. De Jong in the chair.]

The other thing I bring to the minister's attention . . . . When I got the first letter on this particular item, I said: "Well, maybe it was just an accident. " I've had a number of letters from people who arrived at the ferry terminal to find no attendant in the booth. They could see empty spaces but could not get into the lot to park, and the ferry was about to leave. They had to park illegally, because the barrier was down. When the staff were told about this, they said: "Well, the person was either having a break or was in the lot. " But when I get a number of letters all saying the same thing, then I have to wonder.

If you're going to control that lot and you've already got a problem in the area, then we'd better take a look at at least making sure there are staff who can tell people . . . . One of my constituents also suggested some sort of message or tape system on weekends that shows if there's a particular problem with parking at Swartz Bay, so people can make other arrangements. All I know is that the problem grows. We hear about more studies, but thus far we have seen no results in terms of trying to moderate the impact on my constituents on south Vancouver Island who are constantly getting these tickets for parking illegally because they have no alternative. Maybe the minister could respond.

HON. MR. ROGERS: Park-and-ride did work successfully during Expo, but if we're to institute it, it's going to cost money. It's either going to be cost-effective and make us

[ Page 4723 ]

a profit, or it's going to be one more cost that we're going to have to absorb. I presume that as the number of people who wish to drive to the terminals and leave their vehicles there increases, you will see somebody wanting to get involved commercially in the park-and-ride concept. Perhaps it's time we re-examined it.

In terms of the booth, manpower is expensive in the Ferry Corporation. We're trying to run it as efficiently as possible. There are areas where we occasionally drop the ball. I've queued up and sometimes been frustrated with manpower shortages, but then you've got to look at the mandate of the corporation. They've got to try and run it as efficiently as possible. It does have peaks and valleys. A lot of people plan to get on a sailing leaving at [7:00 hours, and they drive up to the wicket at five minutes to the hour, expecting to slip right on. You get away with it sometimes, but certainly not all the time. We work on it, and we continue to try to improve the situation, but sometimes we just haven't got the capacity to handle it. For those leaving from downtown Victoria, there's excellent service on the commercial bus, which gives you that priority and saves you that hassle.

In terms of going with an electronic taped message, we get really good cooperation from the commercial radio stations on the southern Island and in the Nanaimo area in terms of advising people of sailing waits, what time the next sailing is going and all kinds of information. We have an excellent degree of cooperation. It has almost become part of the regular news broadcast, with the tides and all the other things they put on it. I wouldn't want us to get involved in doing our own taped message when we have that good relationship which doesn't cost us anything right now. I presume it's part of the way they keep their listeners.

We don't get that level of cooperation on the mainland at all; it's strictly a service provided on the Island - although I can't say that, because I don't monitor all the stations on the mainland. But I think all the commercial radio stations on the Island do a pretty good job. If that's where people turn to get their ferry information, I don't see us going with any more details than that at the present time. I wouldn't want us to lose what I consider is a pretty value ally in our marketing.

MR. BLENCOE: The minister says that all these things cost money. But one of the difficulties of living on an Island, of course, is that the frustration level mounts. I think the fact that it is not a new thing and that we continue to hear that we are studying it and we're going to be doing something about it . . . . I've been hearing that for a number of years. I wonder if the minister could give us something definitive that might be happening in the next year for parking at Swartz Bay.

HON. MR. ROGERS: No, I can't. But I can tell you this: if we charged the same to park there as people pay to park in downtown Vancouver or downtown Victoria, then people wouldn't use that facility. They'd find their way around it. So if I go ahead and build a $20 million parking structure that will accommodate the number of vehicles that normally want to park on the causeway or somewhere else and charge a break-even rate for it. You know exactly what would happen: people would park a mile or two down the highway and walk to avoid it, because they may leave their vehicles there for 24 or 72 hours and expect to have it there when they come back.

I can recall when you used to be able to go out to the airport in Vancouver and park probably a five-minute walk from the terminal. Was now a 20-minute walk from the terminal. That's just part of the growth that we're experiencing. We encourage people, if they want to do that, to either travel by bus or take their vehicles. I can't give you a firm answer except that we know it's a problem, and we're working on it.

MR. JACOBSEN: I will make a couple of comments to the minister now and hope that the previous speaker was not right that the minister will hear only the very last requests made of him. I know that the ministry has a great many demands placed upon it for roads all over the province, and it's not possible to meet all of those demands at one time. 1 also understand that the ministry is looking carefully at the demands placed upon them and the work that has to be done over the next few years in trying to ascertain how much that might cost and how that work should progress.

I think that's the right way to go, because ideally we should have a program that provides for a fairly equal amount of highway work each year, and that would assist in getting the demands met. It would also encourage a road-building industry that could rely on work being available each year. That would result in some cost-savings to the province, rather than trying to do a great deal of work in one year and not very much in the following two or three years.

Having said that, I feel obliged to tell the minister that the people of Dewdney are certainly very disappointed that the budget has passed this year, and there is apparently no allowance for capital works in that riding. It has been a longterm problem, as the minister knows. I think it was mentioned in this House in the throne speech in 1972. I'm talking about the widening of the highway between Maple Ridge and Mission. It's been talked about since then on many occasions. There have been small amounts of work done, but the majority of it is still to take place.

We thought that it would proceed a year ago; that was our understanding. We were certainly very hopeful that it would proceed this year, at least a portion of it; that didn't happen. It places the community of Mission, in particular, in a very difficult situation. The growth of that community is virtually stifled, and it appears that the overriding factor for that is transportation..

I have copies of two letters from major developers who own several hundreds of acres within the municipality. They were in response to the municipal council, which asked the companies to advise them of their plans for the future. The companies wrote back and said that the plans they wished they could incorporate would be to begin developing some of the landholdings they have, which is some of the most beautiful residential land in the lower mainland. It's all predominantly view property on the north side of the river, so it has a southern slope. It's an excellent place for people to live and own their homes. I think it would probably come on the market at fairly reasonable prices.

The companies have said that they're not prepared to proceed with the development of those properties at this time. Although these properties are on the western side of Mission almost touching the Maple Ridge boundary, they can't proceed because they feel there are not adequate facilities for people to move back and forth between where these properties are located and where these people would have to work. The properties sit undeveloped, and until the highway is upgraded, I don't expect very much will be happening there.

The community of Mission has tried very hard to attract industrial development. They have had a bit of success, but

[ Page 4724 ]

not as much as they hoped to have or should have had. Again, the most common answer is that their transportation to Mission is inadequate. It's too difficult for companies to move goods back and forth, so they are not prepared to develop there at this time.

It's a matter of urgency for the community, and there is a great demand for housing on the lower mainland. This land does not affect the agricultural land reserve. It's not agricultural land, so it's a good place for people to live. It also has another benefit that I think is worth mentioning. It is one of the few supplies of residential land in the lower mainland that does not require a crossing over the Fraser River. These people can get back and forth to the Vancouver area without crossing the Fraser. That is a worthy consideration too.

Hopefully the upgrading of the Lougheed Highway will happen in the near future. I know the minister is aware of the problem, and hopefully we will be able to proceed with that in the not too distant future.

I think I also should mention that although the road needs for Dewdney are often referred to as the upgrading of the Lougheed Highway between Mission and Maple Ridge, a problem is now developing for access from Maple Ridge into Vancouver. I regret having to bring in two problems, but it's a very real one, and something that's going to have to be dealt with. Maple Ridge, as you may know, is the fastest-growing municipality, by percentage, of any size in British Columbia. There is tremendous growth out there. The majority of the people have to commute back and forth to work, and the growth on that highway in the last year or two has been phenomenal. It's something that's going to have to be looked at too.

About ten years ago, when I was involved with the district of Maple Ridge, there was talk about the northern bypass, a freeway that was to run on the north side of the Fraser River and connect to the Haig Highway at Hope. It was discussed by the Ministry of Highways. They're the ones that brought it to the attention of the municipality. They're the ones that wanted an alignment. The reason they wanted it was that there were two highways at that time - the Trans-Canada Highway and the one to Manning Park coming into Hope. There was talk then about the Coquihalla. The feeling of the Ministry of Highways was that once the Coquihalla was developed we would have three highways coming into one at Hope, and there needed to be another access along the north side of the Fraser to distribute the traffic.

The municipality spent a lot of time with Ministry of Highways staff - I had many meetings with them - trying to develop a location for it. Since then, I don't think a great deal has been said about that particular highway bypass or that freeway, but it's apparent that it's something that will have to be renewed in the not too distant future. While perhaps all of it doesn't have to be developed at this time, certainly I think there is a need to begin developing the first phase, which would bring the traffic from Maple Ridge to Vancouver. As I said, the facilities there at the present time are inadequate. The congestion is building up at such a rate that within a very short time it will be literally impossible to handle more traffic on the available highways.

I wonder whether the minister could advise me of any plans, first of all, for the upgrading of the Lougheed Highway between Maple Ridge and Mission, and also any thoughts on the northern bypass that has been talked about.

HON. MR. ROGERS: The northern bypass predates my time in the ministry, and I would have to go back and look almost in our archives, I guess, to find out about it. As I announced some time ago, we are looking to do a five-year plan and a ten-year plan of the provincial load demands for highways. There's no question that the growth east of Vancouver is going to be very substantial. When that report is finished, a number of recommendations will come forward.

[4:30]

Clearly, the four-laning of the Lougheed Highway or the improvements on the highway from Mission into the city will have to occur. It's interesting to note that people living in Mission actually don't work in Vancouver. Some of them do, of course, but what they do is come in as far as the Coquitlam's, and the people that live in the Coquitlam's often go into Vancouver. So from the planners' point of view, they often say: "Well, a vehicle leaving Mission is certainly going to go downtown." They don't go to Pacific Centre usually; they usually go into the Burnabys or the Coquitlam's, and the people from there move on in.

As the pressure grows for housing in the lower mainland, we're certainly going to have to make sure that our highway capacity is able to meet it. We'd like to direct the growth of population away from areas that are involved in the agricultural land reserve in terms of housing. That area will indeed receive greater attention.

There's also the issue of another crossing of the Fraser somewhere in the vicinity of Albion. Unfortunately - or fortunately, depending on your perspective - that's still considered navigable waters by the government of Canada. Therefore any structure that we build has to be able to accommodate an aircraft carrier with all its masts up, such as we have now, despite the fact that they couldn't get through New Westminster, where the railway bridge would prohibit them from going through. We still have to build these things in case some barquentine wants to go up and visit the upper reaches of your constituency. I think Mission is the end of it; beyond Mission, I think we're okay. So somewhere down the road we have to build that kind of structure.

The highway construction industry is very pleased about the possibility of having some idea of what kind of work is going to be available for the next three, four or five years. We will probably get more effective bidding and better prices if they have some idea of predictability. If you buy machinery based on one or two major projects and then have the iron sitting around rusting, you have to factor that into the cost of your bid. If you have an idea that that equipment is going to be working, you can be much more effective in your bidding process, as you would know from the industry you come from. We would like to see that happen. It doesn't behoove us to have the construction industry sitting around on pins and needles, waiting to see what's going to happen, and making determination as to whether to dispose of equipment by sale or auction or anything else, only to have to turn around and buy it back six months later because they have to do it. I'm advised by Ritchie Bros. that their record is 12: they have seen the same piece of equipment cross their auction lot 12 times. I don't think it really does the taxpayer much good if that piece of equipment is largely used in doing government work.

MR. JACOBSEN: I have just a very quick comment. I appreciate the remarks the minister has made. He obviously has a good understanding of the problems faced by the construction industry on short-term work. It is very expensive. There's no question that long-term planning and a consistent amount of work would be a great saving.

[ Page 4725 ]

1 didn't mention the bridge across the Fraser River at Maple Ridge. I'm glad you did, Mr. Minister, because I forgot that one. That's really an important one for Maple Ridge. Now r don't know how many millions of dollars I've just brought to your attention, so all I can do is hope that you will not forget us the next time around, and that you will recognize that there's an area that has long been forgotten, and it's time now that we got serious about doing something in providing transportation into Dewdney.

HON. MR. ROGERS: Failure to have reminded me of the bridge did not save the government a whole lot of money. I'm sure the matter would have been brought to my attention. I thank the member for his remarks.

MR. LOVICK: Mr. Chairman, I think we ought to perhaps clone or tape the last three sentences from the hon. member who just spoke, because I'm sure every member in the House would love to make that statement as a matter of record. I want to return now to the subject of the B.C. Ferry Corporation, if I might, Mr. Minister. I've enjoyed that interlude and that break.

I have a number of specific questions. The first one I want to pose has to do with the tax-exempt status that ferry terminals have in the municipalities in which those facilities are located. As I'm sure the minister is aware, there have been representations from those particular municipalities. I can list them briefly: Campbell River, Nanaimo, Port Hardy, Powell River, Prince Rupert, West Vancouver, Victoria and North Saanich. Each of those municipalities has indeed expressed its concerns about the fact that the municipality is apparently being stuck with a bill because of the tax-exempt status afforded the corporation.

I recognize there may be an argument from the corporation to the effect that obviously a certain amount of benefit will accrue to the local municipality. Perhaps I could start by simply asking the minister if he would apprise me of what that argument is. On the face of it and from the perspective of my own constituency - the city of Nanaimo - the council there believes very strongly that it is on the losing end of the proposition and therefore has asked for relief from the corporation.

HON. MR. ROGERS: Historically, Mr. Chairman, this has been considered part of the highway. The ferry terminal has been considered part of the highway, and therefore whatever grants governments may make to municipalities would accrue to this particular account. If again, like the park-and-ride suggested by the second member for Victoria (Mr. Blencoe), we are to pay taxes for the terminals, we have no choice but to ask for an increase in subsidy or in fares. Again, we keep battling them.

I had an issue with the ministry of lands and parks wanting to charge us for our water lots. They looked at it as a revenue source; I don't. I think $1 a year is more than adequate for our water lots, and we battle with those.

If we acquiesced in every particular demand for increased costs, then I'm going to have to bring back an order-in-Council asking for a higher rate increase. At the same time, though, where we have used municipal services, I believe we have an obligation to compensate the municipalities for those services. Clearly, services provided on a highway are not expenses to municipalities, and where we have asked a municipality to provide us with services, then we should compensate them for the specific costs that we incur.

MR. LOVICK: I appreciate the answer.

Let me pursue the first part. Of course one can understand the basic economics of saying that if you have to pick up the cost for a tax to be paid to a particular municipality, then obviously you're going to have to somehow distribute that cost - either by decreased subsidy or higher fares. There is no question. The predicament is that it would seem, on the face of it, that we're talking about assigning a benefit to particular constituencies or municipalities that obviously redounds to much more than just a single municipality or those particular municipalities. Obviously, for example, the terminal in Nanaimo does not service only Nanaimo; it services a number of other municipalities around it - at the very least, the Regional District of Nanaimo. The predicament, as the city council would explain it, is that the city of Nanaimo is carrying the entire cost even though all those others are benefiting. The argument they present is that the tax argument is not entirely valid, simply because they are being made to pay more than they deem their fair share. I think the argument has some validity.

Perhaps we could deal with that one before we talk about the second part. the services provided.

HON. MR. ROGERS: We can't move ferry terminals easily. I can assure you that there are a number of communities on the Island that would be thrilled to have the employment base and all the economic activity that go with the ferry terminal if Nanaimo didn't want it. But it's in Nanaimo and in Nanaimo it will stay, or at least in Departure Bay, which is part of Nanaimo.

Nanaimo receives benefits from the employees who are there. The Ferry Corporation is a major economic generator. Where we use services we will pay for those services. The Nanaimo city council has made this motion. I guess we will consider it at the board of the B.C. Ferry Corporation. I correct myself: the members of the board will consider it; 1 am there only as an observer.

MR. LOVICK: Again, Mr. Chairman, I want to emphasize that this is not parochial on my part. I am speaking for a number of municipalities, and I made a point of adumbrating those municipalities in the beginning. There is a list of them. Curiously, they all seem to come to the conclusion that they are being hard done by. I understand they presented a report at the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention some time ago. Has the minister reviewed that report? Has he addressed the case they present? It would seem to me that they must be doing something other than merely saying: "This is costing us more than it's benefiting us. " Surely they must have presented some hard and specific evidence to suggest why those costs are, as they perceive them, unfair. Has the minister seen the report" Have the concerns been addressed, is he aware?

HON. MR. ROGERS: I haven't seen the report. I'm sure someone has looked at it from the point of view of the Ferry Corporation. The matter will be considered by the board of the Ferry Corporation. I haven't seen the report, but the volume of my mail does not allow me to do all these things.

It's amazing, you know. Ferries are such a difficulty for these municipalities, but they all want one named after them. The mayor likes to give us a brass plaque and have the city council on board. We're going to be prepared to name ferries after those municipalities that guarantee us no more hassles.

[ Page 4726 ]

MR. LOVICK: A number of us assumed that that was the model you'd been using in this government for a long time, so it comes as no surprise.

If I might pick up briefly on the other part of the answer, your assurance that if the corporation uses municipal services it should pay, can I ask if that is indeed the current policy, and what specific services we're talking about? Water, sewer, fire?

HON. MR. ROGERS: Let's suggest that it was a change of policy brought about by the incident that took place not long ago, when I made the suggestion to the board that perhaps we should be paying for the things we use. They thought the suggestion deserved consideration and have treated it accordingly.

MR. LOVICK: I don't intend to belabour the point, but I want to make sure I understand that correctly. Is the minister saying that it is now under review, it is going to be changed, or it is already in place? What's the status quo at the moment?

HON. MR. ROGERS: At the last meeting of the Ferry Corporation I suggested that we consider this policy, and it's now policy. It's initially just to cover emergencies, fire and other things. I could get you a detailed answer on the other services. Where a municipality has direct expense in providing a service to the Ferry Corporation, at the very least they should be compensated for those direct expenses.

MR. LOVICK: I appreciate the answer.

Let me turn to another very simple question concerning the transportation of dangerous cargo on the ferries. I refer specifically to agricultural products: hay. I understand that people carrying hay from the mainland to the Island . . . . As you know, the Island doesn't grow enough hay for its own use. Those truckers have recently been informed that the cargo they are carrying is classified as dangerous, and therefore they must now apparently get tarpaulins on their trucks to cover the crop entirely. I understand it may be a fairly significant extra expense for the trucking industry. I further understand, from conversations with officials at the corporation, that it's not new policy; it is existing policy, but only now is the policy being enforced. Is that the case, and would the minister care to elaborate?

HON. MR. ROGERS: Transport Canada inspectors are enforcing their regulations, which if actually enforced to the end of the line would probably prevent anybody from going anywhere. We no longer have the open vessel, as the Queen of Alberni has been made into a more multiple-use vessel. I guess Transport Canada people are concerned about it, as well they should be. There have been fires with the hay vehicles, and while we have firefighting equipment on board, we'd certainly want to make sure that every effort is made to reduce that risk. Any regulations that we have promulgated in this area are a direct result of inspectors from the government of Canada, in their transportation division, looking after it.

[4:45]

MR. LOVICK: Just to clarify, if I might, 1 understand that we're talking about routes 1 and 2. We're talking about traffic from Horseshoe Bay to Departure Bay in Nanaimo, and that the hay must be completely covered. I guess I don't understand enough about the volatility of hay, but it strikes me as passing strange that it is considered dangerous cargo -that it is suddenly about to break out by spontaneous combustion or something. Is there any effort made on the part of the ministry to ask Transport Canada to justify and explain that policy, or is it something we simply have to respond to regardless of the financial impact on those who have to transport the goods?

HON. MR. ROGERS: It's ironic; I think the Chairman could probably answer the question about the volatility of hay, but certainly it's not something that they grow a lot of in Vancouver South.

No, I'm sorry, I can't .... This is just a regulation of Transport Canada. It comes, surely, out of one of their safety things. Perhaps they had an incident somewhere else. On a highway it's not a particularly severe problem; you can pull the vehicle off to one side. But in a relatively congested area, hay produces an enormous amount of smoke.

Gasoline is remarkably difficult to ignite under the right circumstances, and I would think hay is remarkably easy to ignite and something that people wouldn't necessarily treat with the right degree of safety. If the hay was loose and it were to catch fire, it would present a big problem for us. We have to be ever mindful of these things. A rupture of a gasoline tank on a ferry is not nearly as severe, for example, as a rupture of a propane tank.

There are people in Transport Canada who worry themselves about these things on our behalf, and we just follow their regulations.

MR. LOVICK: I thank the minister for the answer.

A very discrete and specific question. Some time ago we were talking about rumours we have known, and I thought I'd share with you another and see if you would care to squelch this one. There was talk some months ago, and I've had a couple of phone calls subsequently, about whether the bookstore and the gift shop concessions on the B.C. Ferry fleet might be going to private operators, either contracted out or sold outright. Can the minister give me any report on that? Is anything happening?

HON. MR. ROGERS: We've had proposals from a whole host of people, but from the corporation's point of view, we would very much like to control the quality of merchandise and the quantity . . . . Well, not the quantity; we don't as much care about the quantity as about the quality and variety of merchandise that's there. This is not a neighbourhood convenience store; this is a public facility on a vessel, so we throw the constitution out the window and choose what magazines we offer for sale to the general public. I'm sure we offend the Charter on many occasions by deciding in the best interests of B.C. Ferries what we're going to make available to the public, and we've had no complaints from people except those who might be wanting to vend things that we do not choose to vend on our vessels.

No, I have no intention of privatizing it. Yes, I would probably receive once very six weeks a proposal by intrepid entrepreneurs who would do a much better job than we would, in their own opinion.

The people who work in the concessions are part of the safety crew of the vessel - they have all taken the safety drill - in the event of any mishap at sea. Of course, they are required to be part of our system.

It's not my intention at this time, nor is it something we've considered. But I would caution you that I receive 20

[ Page 4727 ]

or 30 submissions a year from people who would love to run the business on the assumption that they have a captive audience, which is quite correct. We treat them all with the same dispatch.

MR. LOVICK: I thank the minister for that. Certainly you are going to allay and assuage a certain number of fears. I'm sure you'll be pleased to hear that.

The next question I want to pose, again a very specific one, concerns the decision recently made regarding the elimination of commercial vehicle discounts. A press release was dated March 21. You've already spoken to that earlier, Mr. Minister, and I appreciate that you've given me some of the information. What I want to do, though, is just remind you of a point I made earlier about the pattern that seems to unfold; namely, that we make particular announcements, we say that decisions must be made and that these are firm, and then some consultation, apparently after the fact, takes place and the decision is modified accordingly.

I'm referring, of course, specifically to the commercial discount rate for truckers and the fact that you are quoted in at least one newspaper as saying that this decision would not be reviewed. Then we had threats of a blockade, suggestions that, "We weren't consulted; we are being unfairly treated, " and lo and behold, suddenly the policy changes. I'm wondering if the minister would care to respond to that, because the evidence seems very clear.

HON. MR. ROGERS: I responded to the question earlier. We tried the system for a month. It did not work. The industry that says it was not consulted was indeed consulted. We know who they are because we sell them the script they use to obtain their discount. By the way, it is not a commercial discount in the normal sense of the word; they are able to buy .... We have the use of their money before they use their script. Those who budget very carefully have a modest discount; others have a somewhat less modest discount. But it saves the trucking industry some hassle in that they can give their drivers a script as opposed to cash to deal with the Ferry Corporation.

No, we tried it for a month and a half. I wish we could have tried it longer, but we were under some pressure to change. Again, the industry, which had been consulted and advised ahead of time, did not come forward in a timely and forthright manner until this took place. I don't particularly like being bullied, and I don't like to see the other ferry users being bullied, but occasionally it happens. Occasionally we make mistakes in our decisions about how these things are done. We try to profit from each of them and see that it doesn't happen again.

For this particular system, the peak and valley growth that your House Leader spoke of earlier presents us with this problem of trying to do what we can to alleviate the peak pressures that we foresee and will now have throughout this summer until at least two or three weekends after Labour Day. There will be some people wanting me to revisit the decision. We shall wait and see on that one; that remains as future action.

MR. LOVICK: I don't challenge the resolution of the conflict. It was probably appropriate, and I'm pleased to see that some accommodation was indeed worked out. I'm concerned, though, and I deliberately posed the question all over again even though we had covered some of that ground earlier, because I want to be sure that I understand the minister's comments correctly.

He has said on two occasions now that people were indeed advised but simply didn't read their mail or didn't respond. Your phrase was: "a timely and forthright manner." In other words, these individuals, despite the fact that their livelihood depends on the ferry and that their costs were going to go up very significantly, apparently did not respond, even though they were told, until they decided to threaten to blockade the ferry. Is that the case? Is that what the minister is saying? I want to be sure I understand that.

HON. MR. ROGERS: First of all, I don't subscribe to your substantial increase. In the case of the one particular operator, it may have amounted to $4, 000 a year. We only asked that during a portion of two days of the week that particular rate was there. You are aware of and have enunciated the resulting discussions that came back.

They were advised in writing, and if you'd like, I could get a copy of the letter and table it, because we did advise everyone. They chose not to deal with us in the normal manner but in what 1 guess has become a normal manner for some people, in another way. I think we've canvassed this matter as much as we can. The problem will remain for you and your constituents this summer, as it will for all members from the Island. This was one effort that we made from the Ferry Corporation's point of view, a recommendation by the technical people in the corporation who felt that it was a solution to the problem. It wasn't. In hindsight, we learned a few things.

MR. LOVICK: I thank the minister for the answer. I appreciate it, and I don't need to do anything further with that. I would appreciate seeing that letter simply because I do receive various complaints and comments from people bemoaning the fact that they haven't been advised, etc. I would appreciate the ammunition.

The other part of that question has to do with the other announcement made in the same press release on March 21. As you know, that was a kind of omnibus release and covered a number of things. I'm referring specifically to the statement concerning the standardization of ferry rates throughout the system and the introduction of the over height rate on the northern Gulf Island ferry routes.

[Mr. Rabbitt in the chair.]

The minister, I know, received some correspondence on this subject and is not entirely unaware of the kinds of questions I might pose. The concerns that people expressed had to do with: "We have a ferry that does not have a roof, yet we are being forced to pay over height rates. " More importantly, though, is the fact that when I ask questions of the corporation - which, by the way, has always been most cooperative and most helpful and I have no complaint whatsoever - the answers seem to me rather curious. What they seem to translate into is this: over height rates really weren't about height; they were about width. And over height vehicles weren't really what we were talking about; instead, we were talking about recreational vehicles. I had the sense that I was reading Alice in Wonderland or something. What do these words mean? What is this policy statement about if, in fact, something else is apparently meant? Perhaps the minister could explain to me in language that all of us can

[ Page 4728 ]

understand what exactly the rationale is for that new over height or over width regulation.

HON. MR. ROGERS: We used Lewis Carroll and Associates to do a very detailed look at our structure, and things became curiouser and curiouser, Alice.

Getting back to this thing, the real difficulty is that we are dealing with over width, and there is some argument within the corporation. The position they put forward - one which I subscribe to - is that we want to have fleet standardization, and while there are vessels that, admittedly, have no deck limitation on them, we have a limitation on the Vancouver class vessels in terms of height. We are restricted in where we can put the so-called over height vehicles, but in every case that I can think of - and you are welcome to visit one of our terminals - every one of the vehicles that we are dealing with that is over height is also over width - that is, wider than the standard vehicle. When we are dealing with a truck with a camper on it or one of these vans that has been converted to a mobile home, the vehicle is wider and higher than normal, and we are trying to deal with that on a fleet-wide basis to be standard. Admittedly, if you are carrying a giraffe on a ferry to Denman Island, it does seem a little absurd, but in the operation and the schedules that we set down for the whole fleet, it makes eminently good sense.

MR. STUPICH: It makes eminently good sense to the minister, but it doesn't to the people living on Gabriola Island who are driving vehicles that are over height - where the sky is the limit in height - and yet are required to pay more because they are deemed to be over width, simply by virtue of their height. Now they aren't over width - some of them.

Interjection.

MR. STUPICH: The minister is asking for some specifics and statistics. I'll undertake to get those. From what he's saying, if I can show him that there are a number of vehicles involved where they are not over width simply because they are over height, then maybe he will take another look at this policy with respect to Gabriola Island. I see his nod, and it's a friendly nod. I'd like him to say so on the mike as well.

[5:00]

HON. MR. ROGERS: I have no objection to that at all. I asked the same question you did. How do we charge for over height on a vessel with no roof on the top of it? The answer comes back in every case that what we're dealing with is a vehicle that is wider than your conventional automobile, and your small Winnebagos van or anything else like that takes more deck space and requires us to have greater capacity in order to move that vehicle.

At one time, in the Gaglardi era, it was suggested that we measure each individual car and start looking at it at that length. Now, thanks in large part due to the energy crisis, most vehicles are about the same length and take up about the same amount of space, but that's not the case with campers. They are bigger and require us to significantly juggle the loads. If you are going to be fair, you have to charge people a rate that is commensurate to the amount of space they take up on the vessel. If we are unfair to anybody, it is perhaps to motorcyclists, because we charge them quite a premium compared to the amount of space they take up, but then sometimes they cause us other difficulties as well. Cyclists almost never cause us the kind of problems we have with motorcyclists. They both seem to be out in the fresh air, but maybe they hit the bugs at different speeds. I'm not sure.

MR. STUPICH: Since I can't think of anything positive to say about motorcyclists, I won't say anything at all.

If I don't get back to the minister with the specifics that 1 have threatened to bring back to him, it's because I haven't been able to find them.

MR. LOVICK: I can't resist divulging what the Page just said to me: "If they mean over width, why don't they just say over width. " Out of the mouths of, etc.

Next question, again, a very discreet and specific one. A number of people have - I gather for some time now -expressed concern about whether we might find it economically advantageous to do something to encourage greater use of the ferries mid-week by senior citizens. Certainly the policy as far as passengers is concerned is to give them that reduced rate. The suggestion has also been made, however, concerning whether it might be possible to do something by way of giving a reduced rate for vehicles of seniors, obviously also with some kind of restriction imposed to ensure that those seniors weren't taking over cars that would be paying the full tariff. I wonder if the minister or the corporation has given any thought to that kind of policy.

HON. MR. ROGERS: As you are aware, on Mondays to Thursdays seniors travel free. We haven't looked at it in terms of vehicles. What we then find is that the seniors would be ferrying the vehicles over for their colleagues and others. We are constantly being asked by people to find a reason to allow somebody or other to have free passage on the ferries. Every time we acquiesce to those kinds of requests, it comes down to the regular taxpayer and the regular fare-paying patron. If we can move loads into off-peak times, I will do what I can to encourage it. I really want to try to keep the system whole so that the poor regular middle-income, tax-paying, wage-earning British Columbian who has to use the service doesn't feel that everybody else is getting a break and they are not.

We are trying to keep the thing as fair as possible. From that point of view, we occasionally charter these vessels to groups. We do it on a money-making basis, because again, how can we justify going back to the regular person coming up with their cash, paying at the wicket and saying: "How come I'm never in the lineup that gets a break?" We want to try to keep it as consistent as possible.

MR. LOVICK: I don't disagree with anything the minister just said in answer to that question, but I am thinking, given that the corporation has operated for a rather long period of history, that we know very well what the traffic patterns are on routes. I think we have also done some economic analysis to know just how elastic the demand might be.

We are also confronted with the predicament that some of our costs on particular routes are a result of insufficient usage for particular parts of the day. Given, moreover, the fact that we now have the computer ability to do some projections and so forth, might we be able to save some money for the corporation by getting increased rider ship on the ferries at particular times by setting up that kind of special arrangement for seniors, a group for which we might also consider some target marketing?

[ Page 4729 ]

HON. MR. ROGERS: The studies we have done indicate that the discounts have to be so substantial to convince people to travel at off-peak times that when you confront them with what they would regularly have to pay, again you get the great complaint. It's very difficult to have one passenger on the ferry . . . . The family next door traveling on the ferry may be every bit as needy or even more needy than the senior citizen, yet we require them to pay the regular commercial tariff.

I will examine your suggestion, and I will probably get back to you in writing, because some of the stuff we've done in terms of how much of a discount you have to offer to fill that space up gets pretty significant. Ten percent doesn't do it, I can assure you of that. It requires considerably more than that. We then end up having to get into a process of identification and a host of other activities, which we don't want to do.

One of the scourges of the airline when I was there was that if the passengers sitting in a row ever compared their ticket prices, somebody might find out that . . . . Whatever it is, you're always the one who pays the most anyway. There's usually a freebie or two riding behind you who have had too much to drink, and somebody else bought their ticket a week in advance, and someone else is traveling on the wrong airplane. All you end up doing is getting everyone upset. I'd just as soon we not get involved in that process, if we could avoid it.

MR. LOVICK: Gosh! When I hear that kind of answer from a former pilot . . . . It sounds as if you were serving as a steward or something, based on that kind of answer.

Interjection.

MR. LOVICK: Come fly with me - is that what the other minister is saying?

The last of the very specific questions, fleet-wide, before I turn to some very specific route questions . . . . Let me put the question this way: did the matter of a reduced rate for escorts accompanying students on field trips and other such things that were part and parcel of the curriculum ever get resolved? I am referring specifically to the Sunshine Coast, where there was correspondence with the corporation.

HON. MR. ROGERS: Yes.

MR. LOVICK: To the satisfaction of the parties?

HON. MR. ROGERS: Yes. Students and their escorts on official school parties travel free.

MR. LOVICK: I thank the minister for that.

I'd now like to turn to some very specific questions about specific routes; there may well be others representing island constituencies that are served by ferries that have questions here. The first one has to do with the Campbell River-Quadra Island ferry. On April 21 in question period, my colleague the member for North Island (Mr. Gabelmann), who isn't here, posed a question to the minister concerning "the continuing crisis on the Campbell River-Quadra run" and asked whether one of the new vessels that was perhaps being considered would be considered for that particular run.

The minister's response at that time was: "I think we're going to do my estimates in a couple of days; we might wait until we do that. " The time has arrived, Mr. Minister. Perhaps you'd like to respond to that question now.

HON. MR. ROGERS: We will be transferring a 70-car vessel there on June 20. There have been waits as much as one hour at the present time, which is about the same kind of waits we have in other parts of the system. But the current vessel only holds 50 vehicles.

MR. LOVICK: Will the new vessel be one used only for the summer months, or is it planned to use it for longer?

HON. MR. ROGERS: Just until the fall, at this point. We have fleet utilization to worry about, and also that particular run requires specific capacity from a power point of view that's not available system wide.

MR. LOVICK: I have a specific question to the minister concerning the Texada situation. I don't think I need to outline at any great length the concerns of the Texada residents. As you know, they have recently formed the Texada transportation committee. Curiously enough, it seems that that committee did not exist about a year ago when all the other northern gulf committees were established. At that time everybody was having a committee and demanding satisfaction from the corporation. I'm wondering if the minister might give us an update on what has happened in terms of the meetings with the Texada transportation committee and the questions they pose in their brief.

HON. MR. ROGERS: We equipped the vessel with sponsors, so it can handle overweight vehicles, which is part of the problem.

I have an occasional house guest who is a resident of Texada Island, so there perhaps wasn't the necessity for them to have a lobby group~, with the fact that I was personally lobbied - usually at breakfast - by my house guest who wanted to tell me the problems.

One of the problems with Texada Island is that when you leave Vananda and go across, if you're going to connect to the ferry that's going down the Sunshine Coast, you would like the ferry to leave at one time, but if you're going to connect with a ferry that's going across to Comox, you'd like the ferry to leave at another opportunity, and if you just happen to be going to Powell River to go shopping, there's a third time you'd like to have the ferry leave. It's very difficult for us to juggle all these ferry schedules to necessarily suit the wishes of the people on Texada Island, although there has been some improvement since the whole mandate has come under the Ferry Corporation. Before, you had the Ferry Corporation running the Earls Cove to Saltery Bay and Highways running the other ones. At least there's some consistency there now.

On Texada Island, like all the other islands, we try to be in touch with the people involved. Fitting of sponsors, has made a difference in the capacity of the vessels. The frequency that logging trucks are now using some of our ferries has caused us to have to work on flotation on that vessel, and I believe the Howe Sound Queen is another one that requires flotation to be done to it.

MR. LOVICK: Is there a plan to have a formal meeting with the Texada transportation committee? I believe that's what they have been requesting. Will that happen?

HON. MR. ROGERS: Yes.

MR. LOVICK: I take it that they have been given those assurances? Good.

[ Page 4730 ]

I'm going to move to turf somewhat closer to my own, Gabriola Island. By prearrangement I decided I would let my colleague the first member for Nanaimo start the questions regarding Gabriola.

MR. WILLIAMS: They're putting in a bridge.

MR. STUPICH: I hear a comment from my colleague behind me to the effect that they're putting in a bridge. I've heard a lot of talk about that.

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear!

MR. STUPICH: I hear the minister saying: "Hear, hear! "

I recall discussing this with your predecessor - two back, I guess - the first member for Cariboo (Mr. A. Fraser), and he said the real problem in establishing the third link would be what to do with the traffic when you hit the mainland. He said: "How would you route the ferry traffic if you landed somewhere around the Iona location or something like that?" That was his comment. I guess he was sitting in his seat when I was talking to him. I don't know if the minister wants to comment on those proposals or not.

HON. MR. ROGERS: Mr. Chairman, we discussed this at great length on Friday. I'm not sure if the member was there, but I walked through all the options of building a single-purpose bridge just to access Gabriola Island across Mudge, which would not be for a short link but merely to assist. I think Gabriola Island has sort of been whipsawed between, "The short link's coming, so wait for the bridge, " and, "If it's not coming, can we examine the possibility of building the kind of bridge that joins the two Penders?"

I've asked my staff to come forward with what it would cost to build a relatively inexpensive bridge just to serve Gabriola Island. If we were to build that bridge, what are the savings to the Ferry Corporation? We could replace that ferry with a toll-bridge. The bridge would have a limited life; the toll would have a limited life, if the government even chose to put a toll on it. At least we have those finite numbers to work with. But it seems to me every time we've looked at putting a bridge to Gabriola Island, we immediately go out and say that if you're going to build a bridge to Gabriola Island, then you're going to have to build a six-lane one across Surge Narrows, and then you're going to have to build a new terminal, and then you're going to build a short link.

If you go back to the period of time when Mr. Strachan was the minister of transport, those Cowichan-class vessels were actually designed for that particular purpose. Those vessels are really not suitable for a crossing of an hour and thirty minutes; they are suitable for a 40-minute crossing.

There's also the problem of what you do on the other side, because Mr. Siddon and his people in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans are very insistent that there be no further intrusion into the very critical area that acts as the exchange between the salt and fresh water for the salmonids that are going out to sea. We know much more about the intertidal and estuarian area than we did, I think, during the time when they built the Sand Heads structures or any of these other structures. That plays a very critical role in the fisheries management of the province.

[5:15]

Even assuming those problems could be overcome, we then get into the problem of what we do with the vehicles, and where the vehicles .... They are not all people going from Nanaimo to Vancouver; we know that. What are their destinations? How many of them are we forcing over the Second Narrows Bridge and through the Cassiar connector and out to the 401? How many of their destinations happen to be the United States or someplace up the valley or somewhere else?

It's part of that five- and ten-year plan that I've asked the ministry people to come forward with so we can have a look at it. We've asked B.C. Ferries to be part of that program so it becomes a coordinated effort in terms of where they think the future growth is going to be. If the crossing can be 40 minutes, it seems ideal. But the amount of money involved is very substantial. It's not as substantial as whatever Dr. McGeer's program was - I think he was going to do a bridge and tunnel combination - but it's still a very expensive structure. There are some very substantial environmental concerns on the mainland side. Perhaps there are also some social concerns on Gabriola Island.

You know, that rather pastoral nature of Gabriola Island would change quite significantly if we were to build a super terminal there to handle all that traffic. It probably would also significantly affect the Swartz Bay-Tsawwassen traffic. The people at B.C. Ferries think that for the foreseeable future - we're talking about 10 or 12 years -Nanaimo-Horseshoe Bay will be the route. I am therefore reexamining a simple structure to Gabriola Island just to see what we could do in building a bridge that would service Gabriola Island only. That's something the ministry is looking into.

MR. STUPICH: I'm sorry I missed the minister's statement on Friday, and I appreciate his going into the detail he did right now. He mentioned the social pressures on Gabriola Island. I would just ask him that, even if he is going to go for the simple structure, the Gabriola Island people be brought into the discussions before that, happens. Of course, one of the bridges would have to be over navigable waters, which makes it not just a simple structure.

There was another question that came up on Gabriola. If this has been canvassed, just say so and I'll look it up in the Blues. For a time last year, the Gabriola Island people were afraid they were going to lose their ferry. Rumours were around that it was going to go to the Quadra Island route. The crew at the time said that the vessel just wasn't satisfactory for that route and couldn't be used there. The story on the island is that the crew was ignored and a lot of money was spent at Quadra Island accommodating the wharf to accept the ferry being used at Gabriola, and then it was actually moved there and it was found that the crew was right. They just couldn't use it there and they had to bring it back.

If that happened, I'd like to know a little more about the story. If it has come up already, tell me what day it was and I'll look it up. If it didn't happen, tell me so I can go back and say that there's another story and this one comes from the minister. In any case, more than anything else, the Gabriola Islanders don't want to lose the ferry that they have. They certainly don't want to go to a smaller one, and it's adequate.

HON. MR. ROGERS: The difficulty with our fleet is that we want to have as much vessel flexibility as possible. Captain Partridge, our senior captain, took that particular vessel up to Quadra Island and tried it. There were suggestions that it probably wouldn't work, but we wanted to know. If we have to have dedicated vessels for particular runs, then

[ Page 4731 ]

it causes chaos when it comes time for a vessel to go in for refit. That's been a major decision in whether to sponsor stretch or repower vessels, because they may have enough power to meet the schedule on one. particular run, but if they don't have the flexibility to be changed and we've got to change them between all the Gulf Islands .... The more flexibility we have, the more we can have a standby vessel that . . . .

The people of Gabriola Island don't want the one vessel as their only vessel, because one day it's going to have to go in for refit. The corporation has been trying to do a much more systematic rotation. So it's really in that regard - fleet standardization, to try to see that everything can fit. The Quathiaski Cove terminal is not going to give us that flexibility, because we would not want to install that much power in all of our other vessels and the sophisticated Z-drives that they, require.

In all other matters we've tried to be as consistent as possible. We don't have very many mechanical breakdowns, but we occasionally do, and we inconvenience an enormous number of people who were not planning to be inconvenienced. That's part of the systematic maintenance program and fleet rotation. So vessels will move between runs. We will try to do that as much as possible, because people attach a degree of nostalgia, and there's part of the community.

I will give you the undertaking that before any bridge is constructed to Gabriola Island, there will be some discussion. But as you know, I'm constantly being asked by one faction on the island to build a bridge, and I'm constantly being told by other factions on the island not to build a bridge. At least we should know whether it's feasible within the realm of fiscal responsibility to even consider the matter, and that is still being looked at by the ministry.

MR. STUPICH: For years I've been saying that they're 60 percent in favour of a bridge and 60 percent against. I think maybe it should be 70 percent each way now.

I could find this out elsewhere, but can the minister tell me if the Vesuvius-Crofton ferry is back in operation?

HON. MR. ROGERS: Yes, it was about 40 days ago, I believe. Again, that was the result of a rather tragic fire. We have vessels that we can move between routes; we can't do very much about terminals.

MR. LOVICK: I expected the Chair to say: "Shall the vote pass?" But he wasn't quite that precipitate.

There are some other questions about specific runs, but I'm going to hold those over, because some of my colleagues and perhaps others on the other side of the House may have those to raise, Mr. Minister. Instead, 1 want to offer just a few final comments about B.C. ferries and leave it at that and move on to something else.

I raised this point during the estimates debate last year under Transportation and Highways, albeit very briefly. However well run it may be and however efficient we like to pride ourselves on that operation functioning, I don't think we recognize B.C. Ferry Corporation as the kind of mechanism it is having possibilities as an economic generator or as a contributor to economic development. I'm certainly not about to spell that out at any length here. But it seems to me that's the kind of debate and discussion we ought to be having in the province at some point. I hope that when the minister talks about a ten-year - or more - transportation plan involving all sectors and all parts of the transportation field, ferries will be (a) part of that plan and (b) that when we talk about a transportation grid or a network, we think of it in terms of having a kind of economic development function rather than simply a response to perceive needs now. Rather, we see that as having perhaps capacity for generating new industry and new developments - largely, of course, tourism-based, but also some others.

What few studies I've looked at under the heading "transportation" tell me and anybody who bothers to look at them fairly clearly that transportation has this marvellous generative capacity - the ability to make all kinds of things happen that otherwise would not be. I understand the great debate in most transportation economics textbooks is: which came first, the transportation connection or the industry? That's a chicken-and-egg kind of argument. If that's the case, then it seems to me that we ought to be looking about accepting the premise that transportation does indeed generate the economic activity and therefore ought to be used accordingly. I hope that we will be able to have that debate and discussion and pursue those kinds of avenues at some point.

HON. MR. ROGERS: Yes, I think it's healthy. There's also the argument, of course, that too efficient a ferry service has stymied industry which once existed on the Island and which might have continued to grow. I suggest that the breweries are one of the people that found, for example, the ferry service to be so efficient that they closed their major brewery on the Island and used those other things - although I have no love for the beer industry, so it doesn't concern me one way or the other.

I think that you are quite right - that the service grows one on the other - and that's one of the reasons we have tried to do some very detailed forward planning in this corporation, to get into the situation that we don't constrain the Island, Despite all the aircraft that are flying here and all the tugs and barges moving back and forth, the vast majority of the people are still going to transfer back and forth from the Ferry Corporation, and we just want to have it as very much an efficient part of that organization as possible.

The change in the size of vehicles, trucks and campers. We are now building vessels that accommodate the vehicle rather than squeezing vehicles into the vessels we have designed, as we discussed on Friday. In terms of where the company goes, we've examined computerized loading and what that means. The airline industry will certainly tell you the grief that that involves, in terms of predicting the number of no-shows at a particular time of the week and the crisis it causes over the holiday season, etc., so we work at that all the time. I'm very impressed with the long-range planning that goes on at the corporation, not only from the technical people but from the board that does a pretty good examination of it.

If these are your final questions on the Ferry Corporation, I think I can handle anything else that may come up during the estimates. I would like to dispatch Mr. Morrison, and thank him for having joined us today. But if there are other questions, I'll certainly ask him to stay.

MR. WILLIAMS: I want to say a few things about the Ferry Corporation and its planning, but it doesn't require any backup I don't believe.

It seems to me that generally in the ministry it has been proven there is inadequate capability in terms of economics.

[ Page 4732 ]

When you think of the capability internationally, even the kind of talent we send from Canada to the Third World in terms of transportation economists, that kind of input really, as far as I'm aware, is not operating on a sophisticated scale in this province.

As an aside from that, if you look at the ferry system, the intriguing thing for me is the whole question of following up what our critic said just a few minutes ago: how can we be more creative with this instrument as a development tool? You can't help but think that in the shoulder seasons, at least here on Vancouver Island, a tremendous amount could be done with respect to the tourist industry if you started looking at pricing as an instrument instead of doing what appears to be a fairly simple exercise in terms of living with a subsidy, coming, up with a number and meeting the bottom line. Working creatively with tourism and the tourist industry on Vancouver Island, and looking at pricing in the shoulder seasons, you might, even in spots like the Sunshine Coast and Powell River, really have a significant economic impact on communities that already work on a pretty tight peak in terms of the tourist season. I think the ferry service could do quite a bit in stimulating the local economy in small towns here on the Island and on the Sunshine Coast and in Powell River.

It then starts raising the question about peak pricing, which I don't think should be readily ignored. Politically it's easier to say we're not going to look at peak pricing exercises, but it seems to me that it is worthwhile getting the economic talent that can be obtained and starting to look at peak pricing questions, and then shoulder seasons and so on, and looking at it as a genuine stimulus to the economy. I don't have any easy answers, but it seems to me that it's an area that deserves some good technical work, and I'm not sure that we actually make use of that kind of talent at the moment.

HON. MR. ROGERS: We've had all these same arguments internally. You advertise an April or May rate. People get used to that, and they come here in the summertime and they think you're ripping them off because you're charging them what's actuarially correct. If you're making an economic argument on one route . . . .

We have social routes and we have economic routes. If you try to apply some standardized benchmark to the two of them, it's impossible to do. We have outer Gulf Islands within commuting distance, and we have outer Gulf Islands not within commuting distance. The ones that aren't within commuting distance are virtually hopeless in terms of loads, except Fridays and Sundays, when everybody wants confirmed reservations.

[5:30]

If the majority of the traffic coming here were tourists in the off-peak period, maybe that deserves some consideration. But I'd like to see it as a package. The "Big E" across the street could put a package together where they discounted a room, and someone discounted something else, and we were part of that package so that our fare wasn't identified and broken out, and somebody who sits beside you on the ferry says: "I got on for this rate." That's getting more toward the airline package routes. We're prepared to go ahead and do that, but we want to get them in the off-peak hours. We want them to travel on the 11 o'clock ferry and the 2 o'clock ferry. We don't want them to travel on the 7 o'clock and the 9 o'clock. How we structure that . . . . We have the flexibility to do that.

But for the tourism industry to say that the season would last another month if B.C. Ferries would drop their rates in half strikes me as being not terribly imaginative. We are constantly deluged with people asking for special deals, but no one is coming together with a package. The Ministry of Tourism is starting to get a lot more of these package things. We know that tourists like to go in a circle; they don't like to backtrack. It doesn't matter what they do, they don't like to backtrack. We've got a couple of little circles we can look at in terms of doing it. I would be receptive to finding something like that that makes sense, but to have a posted fare in our schedule, and somebody can say, "Hey, wait a minute, I work Monday to Friday; how come it's never me?" that just presents a real problem for the regular person.

So I'm flexible - and I know the corporation is - to a package, like an airline package. You know, the hotel room has a little sign on the door when you go out saying what the rate is, but nobody really ever pays that. But that makes somebody feel better, except if you're in a crisis, and you pay that plus 10 percent for the tourism surcharge. So we're prepared to look at it, but again, we just can't build for peak weekend capacity.

MR. LOVICK: I want to turn now to something entirely different. It sounds like a movie, doesn't it? There are moments when one can confuse that environment with this, of course - certainly Monty Python; the circus when it flies.

The topic I want to turn to now is motor vehicle inspections. Like most, I was very pleased to detect in the throne speech that there was a plan for the reintroduction of mandatory basic safety inspections. I emphasize "reintroduction, " and I can't resist the temptation to offer just a brief comment about that.

The tragedy is that we had a rather good motor vehicle inspection program in this province until 1983. At that time, the system was considered to be cost-effective - the fee, you recall, was $5 - and reliable. In fact, as nearly as one can make out, the program was eliminated despite the fact that for a very small additional increase, the program could have continued. Some of us, I am sure, concluded - and I think with justification - that the motives for scrapping the program were more ideological than economic, because it didn't seem to make any sense at all to scrap that program, given that it was working very well.

The only criticism of the service at that time, Mr. Minister, was that it was not available to 100 percent of the populace, and that's a fair criticism as far as it goes. Unfortunately, that criticism fails to recognize just how large a proportion of the populace was serviced by that service: namely some 75 percent of all vehicles by our calculation. The lower mainland, Nanaimo and Victoria all had stations. Collectively, those areas accounted for some 75 percent of the provincial populace. So the argument goes. In other words, Mr. Minister, it seems that we scrapped a very good program for no very good reasons.

More interesting, perhaps, is the fact that we are bringing it back for reasons that seem to have been the original ones for having it in the first place. It isn't as if we have discovered something new under the sun; it's rather that we have rediscovered it. It may not matter entirely; it may not be the biggest issue in the world, but I think you will discover that the change we've made in the program doesn't seem to compute or follow logically from the evidence presented as to why we should bring it back.

Let me just remind the members what that reason is. The press release issued by the ministry announcing - I believe

[ Page 4733 ]

the date of this is March 29, 1988; I'm sorry, my copy is faded and I can't read it - its intention to bring back a mandatory safety inspection program begins by saying: "In response to hundreds of petitions and letters from public, ICBC and BCAA expressing concern about the number of vehicles on the road with visible mechanical defects, the Ministry of Transportation and Highways will be reintroducing the concept of mandatory vehicle inspection. "

In other words, public demand has apparently generated this, as well as - and here is something, I'm sure, for the first member for Vancouver South (Mr. R. Fraser) - some good, quantifiable, empirical evidence, the kind of thing that engineers can even relate to. We also discover in the press release: "Random spot checks over the past two years have indicated that 40 percent to 60 percent of all vehicles have safety-related mechanical defects. " Okay, clearly this is a good reason to bring back the program. We all applaud the deed. An excellent idea.

The first question I want to pose, though, has to do with logical consistency, I guess. What's happening is that the ministry is announcing it is bringing back this program in response to public demand. Implicit in that statement, of course, is that the ministry is responsive to public opinion. I know this may shatter the illusions of some opposite, but your government is apparently listening to what people are saying. I hope you're pleased to hear that. The question, though . . . .

I'm getting signals, Mr. Chairman, that we're apparently going to adjourn early. Is that the case? So I shouldn't get too launched into this marvellous peroration. On that note, Mr. Chairman, I move the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

The House resumed; Mr. Pelton in the chair.

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

HON. MR. STRACHAN: Mr. Speaker, I'd like to advise you and all members of the Legislative Assembly that His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor is in the precinct. Perhaps we could ring the division bells to summon members of the Legislative Assembly, and His Honour will attend us shortly.

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

CLERK-ASSISTANT:

Home Owner Grant Amendment Act, 1988

Horse Racing Tax Amendment Act, 1988

Income Tax Amendment Act. 1988

Insurance Premium Tax Amendment Act, 1988

Land Tax Deferment Amendment Act, 1988

Mineral Resource Tax Amendment Act, 1988

Mining Tax Amendment Act, 1988

Motor Fuel Tax Amendment Act, 1988

Social Service Tax Amendment Act, 1988

Taxation (Rural Area) Amendment Act, 1988

Tobacco Tax Amendment Act, 1988

Tourist Accommodation (Assessment Relief) Act

Budget Stabilization Fund Act

Education Excellence Appropriation Repeal Act

Health Improvement Appropriation Repeal Act

Privatization Benefits Fund Act

Special Accounts Appropriation and Control Act

Provincial-Municipal Partnership (Taxation Measures) Amendment Act, 1988

International Financial Business (Tax Refund) Act

International Financial Business Act

Credit Union Amendment Act, 1988

Petroleum and Natural Gas Amendment Act, 1988

Regent College Amendment Act, 1988

CLERK OF THE HOUSE: In Her Majesty's name, His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor doth assent to these bills.

His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor retired from the chamber.

HON. MR. STRACHAN: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to standing order 2 (2), 1 wish to advise the assembly that the Legislative Assembly will be sitting this Wednesday.

Hon. Mr. Strachan moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 5:44 p.m.