Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

(Hansard)

THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 1992

[ Page 905 ]

The House met at 10:08 a.m.

[E. Barnes in the chair.]

Prayers.

F. Gingell: In the style of introductions to the House, and although the person isn't here, I would ask all members to join me in welcoming to the world my seventh grandchild, who was born at 3 o'clock this morning, Rachel Elizabeth Gingell.

H. De Jong: Later on this morning, between 11 and 12 o'clock, there will be two groups of students from the Terry Fox Elementary School: 55 grade 5 students with several adults and the teacher Miss Geissler. I would ask the House to give them a cordial welcome.

D. Symons: It is my pleasure to introduce to the House Mr. Al Rycroft, who has been involved for a good number of years with the Victoria Disarmament Group and is currently involved in a litigation with the federal government to challenge the federal government on the entrance of nuclear-powered, nuclear-weapons ships into British Columbia waterways. I wish you would all welcome him to the House today.

Orders of the Day

Hon. C. Gabelmann: I call Motion 26 standing in the name of the Minister of Advanced Education. Motions on Notice

DECLARING BRITISH COLUMBIA A
NUCLEAR-WEAPONS-FREE ZONE

Hon. T. Perry: Be it resolved that the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia declares British Columbia a nuclear-weapons-free zone. With the generous support of the member for Richmond Centre, I'd like to hand the Clerk the motion and begin the debate.

This is a great day, hon. Speaker, for the province of British Columbia, for members of this Legislature and for thousands of other British Columbians who, like this member, have been waiting at least ten years for this moment. It gives me a great feeling of pride and an enormous sense of privilege to be a member of the Legislature on a day like this, when we can bring the thinking of Barbara Ward to think globally and act locally to our own Legislature after many years of being out there on the outside with people like Mr. Rycroft and his colleagues throughout the province hoping that this day would come.

It gives me particular pleasure to know that so many members on both sides of the House not only feel comfortable but are enthusiastic about supporting this resolution, and are prepared to stand in this House and explain why it's so important to our province.

Mr. Speaker, I know that it's important to you as a representative of the Vancouver-Burrard riding, and also to the hon. Speaker, who is not able to be with us today. Were she able to take her place like ordinary members in this assembly, she as a representative of Burnaby -- one of the first nuclear-weapons-free municipal zones in British Columbia -- would undoubtedly have relished the chance to speak to this motion.

Hon. Speaker, Albert Einstein said many important things in his life, but perhaps the most important, oft-cited quotation of Einstein is the famous remark that "the splitting of the atom has changed everything except our manner of thinking. Thus we drift towards unparalleled disaster. If we are to survive, we must acquire a substantially new manner of thinking." Those were the words of Einstein after the explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945, two explosions which summarily terminated the lives of some 120,000 people and affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of others directly through radiation poisoning, the loss of families, the suffering of permanent disability and economic waste, not to mention the billions of people who have been enslaved since those days, August 6 and August 9, 1945, to the misguided false theology that worships the nuclear weapon as the salvation of humankind.

Einstein, the key scientist to pave the way for nuclear fission, was also the first scientist to understand the fault in the logic -- the false theology -- that led our society and the competing ideologies of the Soviet Union, China and many other countries and, sadly, of developing countries to worship the nuclear weapon as if it were somehow a benefit to human beings and a source of protection or security.

[10:15]

That false sense of security led the world to a situation in which some $1 trillion (U.S.) is spent every year on the global arms race. It's an amount so astronomical and so completely incomprehensible that it must be reduced to a smaller figure and a smaller time-frame so that we mortal human beings -- ordinary taxpayers -- can begin to understand. It's easier to think of it as $1.9 million (U.S.) per minute, or more than $2 million per minute -- amounting to some $10 million consumed in global arms expenditures already while I've been talking today.

Einstein was appalled at that extravagant waste, even though he had only the faintest glimmer of understanding of where it would lead in the immediate post-war period. He was even more appalled at the waste of human talent in the 80 percent of engineers and scientists who have worked since the war primarily in weapons or weapons-related research, rather than in research for the benefit of human beings.

Einstein would have found a kindred spirit in one of the disabled delegates to Independence '92: Joshua Malinga, a city councillor in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. He was quoted in this morning's Vancouver Sun

"Disabled people throughout the world are still fighting tremendous discrimination just to get basic human rights and services that able-bodied people take for granted. It gives me great sorrow, because the lives of disabled people in many ways have changed very little (during the past decade). Disabled people are still starving by the thousands in many countries. They still lack access to basic community services like education, housing and transportation."

[ Page 906 ]

What he says in today's Vancouver newspaper is a small metaphor for the 2.4 billion people in the world who lack access to safe water; for the millions who are at this moment, as we speak -- in the Horn of Africa and elsewhere -- in danger of imminent starvation; for the hundreds of millions of children who lack access to the routine immunization that we take for granted for our own children; for the scientists, physicians, nurses, occupational and physical therapists, engineers, in the case of sanitary water supply, and other health service workers who would gladly work to resolve those problems, but who are starved for money by the global arms race.

At the same time, $2 million Canadian per minute is being spent on this false religion, this false search for security which has in fact eluded us since the end of the Second World War, in a time when at least 20 million people have been killed and hundreds of millions of others have been rendered homeless or disabled or brought to the verge of starvation -- if not starved -- because of ongoing wars.

That's the background which has led to the nuclear-weapons-free zone movement worldwide. It's the background that led cities like Burnaby, whose nuclear-weapons-free zone sign and declaration I noticed as recently as 10 days ago as I returned from Coquitlam through Burnaby, proudly displayed on a brown sign on a telephone pole as one enters the border of Burnaby. My own city of Vancouver on April 19, 1983, declared itself a nuclear-weapons-free zone and has continued to declare so quietly and peacefully through those small signs one sees when one enters the city from Stanley Park along Georgia Street or enters from the airport over the Arthur Laing Bridge.

They are signs which many people perhaps fail to notice in their hustle to get to wherever they're going, but which declare something very important -- a faith in the principle that Barbara Ward enunciated 20 years ago at the first United Nations world conference on the environment: "Think globally, act locally."

We're not helpless slaves to that false religion, the worship of nuclear weapons. We do have the ability as citizens, as municipalities, as provinces and even as a country to stand up and say we will not worship that false god any longer. We will not commit our precious resources to that inexcusable waste. We will not live in that fear permanently, the fear that continues to trouble children and many of the members of this House that we might even by accident, even by the unilateral accident of one inebriated, intoxicated drug-using individual, be obliterated, annihilated at any instant. We will not worship that religion or philosophy, because it leads us inexorably towards catastrophe, as Einstein told us at the end of the war.

What can we do about that? Citizens throughout this province have been working at that question: troubling themselves, attending conferences, symposia, study sessions, church group socials, international conferences and listening to sermons. Some members opposite and many on this side of the House have joined this member in all of those activities. They have attended -- as the Leader of Opposition did in the days long before it was popular -- meetings of the Vancouver City Council and other councils to support the notion that we do have some power.

We've already produced 60 nuclear-weapons-free zones in British Columbia at the municipal level. We've produced 200 in Canada, including the province of Ontario -- our largest province -- the province of Manitoba, Yukon Territory, the Northwest Territories, and today, I'm very proud to say, the province of British Columbia. Worldwide there are 4,000 such zones. Somehow individual citizens have kept that faith, exemplified by Barbara Ward's maxim, to think globally and act locally - oftentimes when it was very difficult, if not unpopular, and when you had to have almost a certain sense of humour as well as courage to carry it off.

I think of Councillor Libby Davies of Vancouver. In a recent book she writes of her experience in 1989 when she was one of a group of long-distance swimmers who circumnavigated -- swimming -- a visiting large aircraft carrier equipped with approximately one hundred nuclear weapons. She writes of that experience:

"In August 1989, when the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Independence dropped anchor in Vancouver, with approximately 100 nuclear weapons on board, I joined a group of swimmers to swim around the warship in protest." This is Councillor Libby Davies of the city of Vancouver. "It was only a small action, which I knew wouldn't of itself stop these floating fortresses of death from being in Vancouver. But it gave me a sense of the vast human chain of events and actions that I was part of, that will inevitably be more powerful than nuclear warships."

Some will ask, undoubtedly, inevitably: is this an anti-American declaration? Perhaps they will ask: is it an anti-Russian declaration? Now that the Soviet Union no longer exists, some might even ask: is it an anti-Ukrainian sentiment? Is it anti-Iraqi, anti-Korean, anti-Israeli, anti-Argentinian, anti-Brazilian, anti-French, anti-British? I don't think so. As Canada, we have a unique place in the world. We were the first country capable at the end of the war of producing nuclear weapons; instead we chose the civilian route. It remains controversial, but we deliberately chose a route to produce civilian nuclear power and to eschew nuclear weapons.

Whether or not one supports the civilian development of nuclear power, we have much to be proud of as the first country, followed by such other countries as Norway, Sweden, most of the western European countries and many of the eastern European countries -- although perhaps they had less choice about it at the time, but hopefully they will continue to follow our example -- capable of producing nuclear weapons, and we chose not to because we saw no benefit. Our diplomats, our statespeople recognized early the false religion. Hon. Speaker, I think we have a proud and a brave tradition there, and it's time that we honoured it more in the observation than in the breach. In the years since the end of World War II when Canada made that 

[ Page 907 ]

fundamental decision, we have fallen increasingly under the influence of that dangerous and false religion: the worship of nuclear weapons.

During the 1980s we succumbed to the irrational temptation to test cruise missiles. I know many members on both sides of this House were concerned that we were giving up much of what was symbolized best by former Prime Minister Trudeau in his strategy of suffocation announced at the United Nations special session on disarmament in 1982 when we made that decision.

At the federal level, our government has continued to welcome nuclear weapons into the country under the pretence that they're not our nuclear weapons; we keep our hands clean and somehow these weapons, as part of the nuclear deterrent, protect us from war. I wrestled long and hard with that question. Do they really protect us?

Faced with the fear that they might annihilate us, one must answer the question: is it possible that, after all, the 50,000 nuclear weapons -- more than enough to blow up every human being on the earth many times -- really do protect us? In the end, my answer came down to the same answer given by most of the thoughtful scientists not directly connected and benefiting from the military industrial complex who have faced that question. Nuclear weapons are inherently unusable because the very use of them would destroy the society they are meant to protect, and therefore not only are they useless; they do not in fact form the real deterrent that we have always falsely thought they did. In that sense, our position as a country, as Canada, has been hypocritical in that we have continued to worship that deterrent even though we ought to have known that it was not serving us.

It did not protect us from the Gulf War. It did not protect us from the war in Afghanistan. It did not protect us from the Iraq-Iran War. It does not protect us from the wars in the Horn of Africa. And it was, perhaps more than anything else, the nuclear arms race which brought the Soviet Union to its knees and ultimately to collapse. Not the nuclear weapons. It was the waste -- the grandiose waste of expenditure and human talent -- which destroyed, as much as anything, that country and leaves it still in ruins today; something that could yet happen to us if we don't recognize how false is that religion we have continued to worship.

What will the nuclear-weapons-free zone mean for British Columbia? Let me just return, lest there be any lingering question that somehow this represents an anti-American sentiment. The librarian, working late last night or early this morning, found for me a beautiful quotation from one of the greatest of American presidents, Thomas Jefferson, who said in 1809: "The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government." That was one of the greatest Americans who said that, and he was right, Mr. Speaker. Perhaps you also learned that phrase in high school, but somehow I doubt it. Perhaps that part of Jefferson was kept from you in your early upbringing in the American south, but it was true nonetheless. Jefferson said it because he meant it, no doubt, and he was true to the spirit of the American founding fathers who would not themselves have worshipped this false god, because they had a much higher ideal than the nuclear arms race.

What does it mean to us in British Columbia? Some might say that the nuclear-weapons-free zone is purely symbolic. Of course it's symbolic, and it's symbolic of hope. As I was heading toward Victoria this morning, I heard Maureen Forrester on CBC Stereo singing Handel or Bach, I'm not sure which: "Hope has come into the port." I thought it a very appropriate metaphor and a very appropriate omen for today's debate. Hope has come into the port if we give it the chance, rather than death and destruction coming into our ports.

[10:30]

On that note -- I know many other speakers wish to address this question -- I would like to close by asking that rather than mock us, our federal government think first. The natural reflex will be to say this is purely symbolic. British Columbia does not control its air space or its ports; it can't prevent the nuclear weapons from entering this country. Why bother? Why are they wasting the public time in the Legislature? Hon. Speaker, members know we're not wasting our time. We hope that Ottawa will, in its turn, think through the greatest traditions of Canadian diplomacy -- the traditions of Lester Pearson, Louis St. Laurent, those statesmen who made the decision at the end of the war not to worship the false god of nuclear weapons, not to pursue the militaristic course but to develop the United Nations peacekeeping forces and that spirit and philosophy -- and to think again.

It's time for our country, as well, to become a nuclear-weapons-free zone and to help steer the world back from the brink of destruction and toward a new hope. Let hope come into the ports, Mr. Speaker.

D. Symons: I am pleased to endorse and to second this motion. I have known the Perry family for a good number of years now, and worked with Tom's father with the Veterans Against Nuclear Arms and his mother through the End the Arms Race, and know the dedication that that family has had to the cause of peace throughout the years. I suspect Tom's father became moved to this support of peace, and looking for other ways of solving problems, through his experiences in the Second World War, and he was terribly involved throughout his lifetime. It's only too bad that he's not able to be here today to witness this House discussing this particular matter and, I'm sure, passing it.

I've been involved in the peace movement, relative to the Perry family, for only a short period of time. It's been only about the last nine years that I've actually realized the dangers presented to mankind in the use and production of nuclear arms. It is through that revelation I received a few years back that I have become involved with the peace movement and joined Mr. Perry there today in seconding and wishing that this motion would pass.

I'm very concerned, although this might be considered symbolic, that symbolism has a great importance, because it is necessary that people know where we stand. Even though putting a sign up saying "Nuclear-

[ Page 908 ]

Weapons-Free B.C." may not stop nuclear weapons from coming into our country by other methods -- through water and so forth that are not within our control -- it is a message that the people of B.C. feel that nuclear weapons have no place in our province here. In that sense, it's very important that we make this statement, be it symbolic or be it more than that.

It is also important that we send that message out. Although the Soviet Union is not our enemy now as we used to think it was, the dangers of nuclear weapons are still there. It is very important that we realize that this is the case, and that we react in such a way as to indicate to the public that we realize that, and we want to do something about it.

In this nuclear age the concepts of peace and security are much more complicated than they were in the past. Our human rights, justice, poverty are all problems that threaten peace in the world. Our security is threatened not only by the weapons of some designated enemy, but also by our own weapons through the possibility of an accident or a warning-system malfunction. I would like to dwell on that thought for a moment or two.

Over the years there have been -- you must remember that the military is not too fussy about letting its accidents out and telling us about it -- accidents. In the late fifties an American Air Force plane dropped an atomic bomb. I believe it was in one of the southeastern states; I think it was Kentucky; I'm not quite sure. That bomb had six arming devices on it. When they found the bomb, five of those six devices had gone off. If the sixth one had gone off, there would have been an atomic explosion in the United States.

Also in the sixties there was a situation where a training tape was accidentally patched into the NORAD system, and this warned of a Soviet attack. The American government responded by putting their planes in the air, and were responding to what they believed was a real attack, not realizing that this was simply a training tape that somehow had gotten patched into the system. We were within six minutes of launching an atomic attack on the Soviet Union based on the false information that their system was giving us. The planes had been sent out, and if another six minutes had elapsed before they discovered the mistake, those planes would have been sent on a no-return mission; radio contact would have been stopped with them, and we would have been into an atomic war by accident.

There are many people who will tell us that those sorts of accidents don't occur now, but the problem is, you see, that over the years we have become more technically sophisticated, and now that the warning time we have of an attack and the warning time our systems take to tell us to retaliate is much shorter, we don't even have that six-minute window of opportunity now. We have a very short period of time. The opportunity for accidents happening is very great.

The thing that concerns me most is if our systems.... We're considerably more technologically advanced over the countries that we may consider our enemies. I wonder what has happened in those countries to their systems and how many warnings they have had, and how many close calls we've had because of the failure of their systems? That worries me greatly.

We are not safe from accidents, and it is for this reason that it is very important that we pass this motion, be it symbolic or otherwise. It is important that we declare to the world that British Columbia feels that nuclear weapons no longer bear a place in our security systems. It is important that we send that message out strongly and clearly to the public.

Security is threatened by these non-military accidents. We can see that Chernobyl was an accident that occurred; Three Mile Island, another accident occurred -- granted, not through nuclear weapons but through nuclear reactors. Environmental disasters of this sort have a great effect upon the citizens of the world, and we must do something to make sure that these sorts of accidents do not occur.

All these factors must be considered when we are discussing peace and security in the world. Global peace is Canada's best security. The spending of tax dollars on human needs such as education, health care and social programs will be much more beneficial to Canadians in the long run than spending on planes, ships and weapons that are frequently obsolete before they are off the drawing-boards. It is very important, then, that we consider those factors when we consider this motion.

I believe, however, that there is another aspect besides simply declaring B.C. a nuclear-weapons-free zone that must be considered, because the British Columbia government does not have control over the waterways; it's a federal matter. For that reason I have an amendment I would like to make to the motion. The amendment reads, just carrying on from the previous motion: "and be it further resolved that this assembly calls on the government of Canada to conduct a full public environmental review of the dangers involved by the presence of nuclear-weaponed and nuclearpowered vessels in British Columbia's harbours and waterways."

This is seconded by Val Anderson.

On the amendment.

D. Symons: I mentioned before that waterways is not contained in the original motion in that this comes under federal jurisdiction. I mentioned during introductions Mr. Al Rycroft, who is still in the gallery, I believe. They have launched a suit against the federal government insisting that the federal government carry out, as contained in federal law, an environmental review of the safety to the public of B.C. of these vessels in its waterways. This is what this amendment is intended to address.

There have been numerous visits to Canadian ports of ships carrying weapons, or capable of carrying them, because the United States, which is the main visitor, refuses to tell you whether its vessels contain nuclear weapons. There were 45 visits to Canadian ports last year -- to Halifax, Nanoose Bay and Esquimalt -- by nuclear-powered ships, and currently they are now going to go through the Dixon Entrance to an American testing station in those waters. During the same period 

[ Page 909 ]

the year before, there were only 32 visits. Of those visits, 58 of the ships were capable of carrying nuclear weapons and quite possibly were carrying nuclear weapons.

On average, a submarine collides with a surface vessel once a week somewhere in the world. Since 1982 there have been eight collisions involving serious casualties to surface craft from submarines in Puget Sound, Juan de Fuca Strait and Strait of Georgia waters. Those waterways are in our immediate vicinity, and it is for this reason that I believe we should have a full federal government public environmental review of the safety to our citizens of those vessels being in our waterway.

There are 15 visits per year planned from the American nuclear-powered submarines, including the Ohio-class Trident ballistic submarine vessels, and they are capable of carrying 192 nuclear warheads on board to enter through the Dixon Entrance, which is a very restricted and dangerous waterway. The Americans plan to use that waterway as a testing ground for their sonar and other submarine devices. It is important that we go on record as seeing that the safety of Canadians is secure by having this amendment passed. Thank you.

Hon. J. Cashore: I am very pleased to take my place in this debate. I'd rather say "dialogue" with regard to an issue that is certainly important to all of us and has been for many years. It's interesting, when we think about our role in this House and our particular manifestation of democracy, that my thoughts are forced -- as I'm sure yours are -- into the arena of what the roots of conflict are in looking at the peace and conflict contrast in our lives. Indeed, our Legislature is two sword-lengths apart, and we're set up on this kind of a model, which I think has in many ways served democracy well. But in many ways, too, it's the symbolism of a very deeply rooted part that is all of us, and that is the roots of conflict.

I think that many of us are fond of pointing to, say, religion and saying that it is the source of all the world's conflicts. We can point to religious wars that have taken place in the world. Or we can say that politics or greed is the source of conflict. But unless each one of us, as legislators, can set the example of looking inward, how can we really expect the body politic to begin to take a look at the kinds of toys we buy for our children or at the advertising that people who do advertising know works because they're able to tap into that conflictual part of our nature?

[10:45]

I find it quite ironic that we are addressing this issue, which has been referred to at times as the "military industrial complex." We have to ask the question, when the Cold War is no longer with us: why does there continue to be this, if not proliferation, then presence, as well as the dangers that have been very well outlined by the previous speaker and by my colleague the Minister of Advanced Education? As well as the dangers that we know, what about the ways in which the earth's resources are being deployed in order to feed this beast?

Isn't it ironic that some of the estimates that we have interrupted are the estimates that have to do with assuring well-being for children and for disadvantaged people in our society? Again we have to be asking ourselves: where your treasure is, there will your heart be also? If the majority of our treasure is going into a military establishment, in maintaining patterns that just don't work, then on the other side of that equation we have to be asking ourselves in what ways we're failing such things as our children and our environment.

I want to say that the government in essence agrees with the amendment that has just been proposed. I would like to read into the record a letter that I wrote on behalf of the government of B.C. to the Hon. Jean Charest, Minister of the Environment, on March 27 of this year. In that letter I stated:

"On behalf of the Premier and the government of British Columbia, I write to you concerning the federal government's recent decision to grant passage of nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed vessels through the province's coastal waters, as well as visits to our harbours, without conducting a review of the possible potential health, safety and environmental risks.

"Given the possible serious human health and environmental impacts associated with nuclear submarine traffic in coastal waters and harbours, I request that the government of Canada employ its own environmental assessment review process -- EARP -- guidelines order to hold a complete and public hearing on this matter. The application of the EARP would have full support of the government of British Columbia.

"While we have made some progress to establish better mechanisms for cooperation on international environmental issues through the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment, more work is needed in this area. Therefore, I also request that representatives of the government of British Columbia be given the opportunity to participate in the development of any future agreements or federal policies regarding the use of the province's coastal waters and harbours by nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed vessels. I look to forward to receiving the replies to these requests."

I want to say that the essence of that amendment is something that we in the government agree with and have already taken initiatives to support. It's not often, hon. Speaker, that I quote the Bible when I'm speaking in this House, but I think that if we look at all of the writings of major faiths that inhabit this earth as well as the legends of the aboriginal peoples, we will find there is a very strong theme that recognizes the concept of stewardship of the earth. In Amos, we read: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations shall not rise up against nations, neither shall they wage war any more."

That's a yearning that goes back in very different manifestations in different faiths to the very earliest times that we can relate to human experience. We who are leaders, recognizing our role, have failed to address this issue, which is a burning issue for all of humanity. I think we need to reflect on the fact, as has been pointed out, that technology has made it possible for us to do truly amazing things. For two decades now someone has walked on the moon. When we put our minds to it, it's amazing what we can do with the results of science and technology.

[ Page 910 ]

But science and technology of themselves are not of value; they do not have minds of their own. They are instruments in the hands of men and women of either good will or ill will to be used for whatever purposes they are used to address. Obviously when we're thinking of the nuclear presence in warships, we think of the way that human interest has been deployed, and it has been deployed in a very destructive way.

If we take a look at our ability as human beings to develop technology, which has been wondrous, we should also take a look at our ability to think ethically. I would say that as human beings, we have developed a technological capacity that's running at the rate of a bullet train. Our ability to think ethically and act morally is way back in the horse-and-buggy era, and we simply have not attended to our ability with regard to values clarification and ethical decision-making to enable us to make the most appropriate use of what science has achieved. Not only have we allowed that to happen, but we've allowed those in charge to use science too often as a panacea to lull us into thinking everything's going to be all right; science can fix it for you. Anytime decision-makers abandon their responsibility for making decisions with regard to the production, for instance, of nuclear weaponry and nuclear vessels, we abandon a very important and significant part of our responsibility. This has happened because we've abandoned our significant responsibility in making ethical decisions about how the technology produced by humans should be used.

I think of people who have stood as beacons and have tried to get us to address this issue. I think of Jim and Shelley Douglass and that community they represent that has lived for many years down at what they call Ground Zero at Bangor, Washington. When the white trains came in, bringing the weaponry to the nuclear subs deployed from Bangor, they would be there, a silent witness, bringing together people of many different faiths, bringing together people who, for very understandable reasons, say they have no faith because of what they have seen happening in the world, bringing together people of different perspectives, and saying: "It's got to stop here; we have to be able to do something about this." I would hope that for their diligence -- and that of others like them -- they would feel that this dialogue taking place in this Legislature at this time is something that is moving that concern forward in a significant and meaningful way.

Hon. Speaker, this is about the environment and peace, the environment and the economy; it's about Canada and the United States; it's about a lot of contrasting things. We think about the waters of B.C., but we also think about the waters in the United States. It wasn't so long ago, when George Bush was running for President the first time, that there was a bit of a story going around: "Yes, George Bush wants a kinder, gentler country -- and that country is Canada." We can't afford to be in a position of taking a look towards our neighbours to the south that is a put-down, but we have to approach this in a partnership way and understand our mutual commitment.

Hon. Speaker, I know that you and I have had many conversations where, because of your background as a football player, we've talked about these contrasts in a violent sport such as football, and the way it has had an important part in your life, but also in the way it has helped you to reflect on the way conflict functions in our society. I know you sent a note to the hon. Minister of Advanced Education, pointing out that you actually attended Thomas Jefferson High School, and that many of his thoughts were fundamental in your thinking.

As we approach the decision that we are making today, this is really a small step in a long journey. Let us hope that, not so much in our act of voting today.... It's a vote for something that we want to do, but perhaps it's also a commitment for something that we are going to address in terms of looking inwardly to our own lifestyle, to the way in which we deal with conflict in our own families, to the way in which we address conflict in our communities and the way in which we seek to carry that forward.

The hon. member for Okanagan West reminded us yesterday of that Pogo story: "I've seen the enemy, and it is us." I think, hon. Speaker, if we do anything today, it should be to recognize that either we're going to be part of the solution or we're going to continue to be part of the problem. There's a long struggle -- a long journey -- ahead of us, but it behooves us as legislators, who are elected to positions of leadership, to exemplify that we are truly moving in that direction.

G. Wilson: Hon. Speaker, I'm pleased to rise in support of both the motion and the amendment. In speaking to it, I want to address two primary areas of concern that I have with respect to the whole proposition of proliferation of nuclear weapons, and how those nuclear weapons may find their way into Canadian waters and onto Canadian territory.

It has been said that the purview of those opposed to nuclear weapons seems to lie only in those people who would be categorized by those who observe politics as being on the left of the spectrum. That is not so. People from various political parties, from various walks of life and from various countries are working diligently not only to end the proliferation of weapons but to make sure that the transportation of those weapons around the globe no longer continues.

Hon. Speaker, it makes sense not only from a strictly practical point of view in terms of world peace and the maintenance and protection of humanity -- something that all of us are charged with as we are elected here to look after our constituents -- but it also makes eminent sense economically, if one looks at the budgets expended by our neighbour to the south and by the former Soviet Union. If we look at the billions and billions of dollars that are committed to the maintenance and development of these weapons, it is ironic that this money is expended for the production and maintenance of goods that will never be used, we hope, and that will never be there to function and discharge the very reason for their construction. Nowhere else in the economy in the world do we produce goods in such a manner: we produce, maintain and stockpile -- at the cost of billions and billions of dollars -- commodities that we know will never have a functional use.

[11:00]

[ Page 911 ]

Furthermore, once these weapons are seen to be obsolete and no longer a functional part of something we hope will never be used in this world, they must then be disposed of in a manner that is safe and sound. In the transportation and final disposal of this weaponry, we again have an enormous cost and an enormous demand upon the tax dollars of people in those countries where these weapons proliferate. We have spent billions of dollars creating these weapons, only to find that we should never use them and therefore have to spend billions more on safe and adequate disposal.

Hon. Speaker, economically -- for those who wish to preoccupy their minds with economic matters -- this has to be the most senseless expenditure of dollars that humankind has ever embarked upon. We are finding that even in the former Soviet Union, where there are bread-lines, people in serious poverty and governments struggling with building new and different systems of delivery of government service, one of the major issues facing those countries is who has control of the buttons of those weapons. Once this empire is destroyed, those weapons are still there. The conflicts in Europe today rage with only conventional weaponry, and we must hope and pray that they never rage beyond the point of being able to control the conventional weaponry in the same way that we can no longer control nuclear weaponry.

Hon. Speaker, on the proliferation of nuclear weapons, let me say that one of the great fears in the so-called Desert Storm war was that in one country, where the people lived for the most part in abject poverty, billions of dollars were committed to a nuclear weapons program that would have provided a ruler -- ruthless as that ruler was -- with the ability to provide weapons of such mass destruction that all humankind would be in jeopardy. It does not make sense economically to have these nuclear weapons proliferate; it does not make sense politically to allow the proliferation to move to countries where the kind of concern, commitment and dedication to the maintenance and protection of individual rights and freedoms and to matters of humanity...exist. Therefore how can we, in Canada, not take a strong and firm stand against the proliferation, transportation and movement of nuclear weapons?

Furthermore, I would say that it makes no sense socially for us today, when we are trying to build greater harmony among the peoples of the world, to allow the weapons of mass destruction to still be here like a gun to each of our heads. The new world order that we are told is emerging from our neighbour to the south is an order in which the economic inequalities are not enough, but the inequalities in terms of military might and wealth are so great that, in the final analysis, all of us are going to be subjected to one view of a new world order that may not take into consideration the commitment we have toward fundamental freedoms, fundamental equalities among people. All people must be free to live, to see their families grow and to know that their communities are safe from the kind of mass destruction these weapons can bring about.

I grew up in a country where there were many people who had less reverence for life, who had the desire to see their individual power expand and build, and who, on the basis of simple tribal difference, found that there was discrimination and segregation involved. As a young boy I, like so many other youths, looked at the films that were coming out of Hollywood and the post-World War II scripts that showed how magnificent it was to be a soldier -- to go forward and be able to put out tremendous power in the defence of flag and country. I had a strong sense of nationalism and a strong sense of fervour. It was a time in which the Vietnam conflict was high, and in East Africa -- the country I refer to -- there was not a lot of reporting on Vietnam. I read only what I saw in magazines such as Time and Newsweek, and I thought there must be some glory in war.

A very close family friend, Eduardo Mondalane, who was the head of the freedom movement in Mozambique, where the African people were struggling against the Portuguese colonial empire, heard me say one morning how much I revered the sense of war and how much it might be fun to be a soldier -- yes, fun to get out and fight and see my flag fly high among the ruins of those that I had just subjected to my violence. He asked me if I wanted to see war, and I said: "Yes, I want to see war; take me to war." He said: "Come down with me to the camps among the Frelimo movement, and I'll show you war." He took me down, and he showed me dismembered women, dead infants, men who had lost their sight. He showed me the violent actions of war, and I was furious. I was angry, because what I wanted this man to show me was war, not death and despair among people. This man turned to me and said: "Mr. Wilson, that is war. That is what happens when we have these conflicts. Do not believe that what you see on the screens from Hollywood is in any sense reality -- when we, as people, lose the very fibre of humanity to recognize the fundamental need that each of us has a right to live freely and to grow and to expand our families and our communities in a society that embraces peace, not war."

Hon. Speaker, I can tell you that that had a profound effect on me, because for the first time as a young lad I had seen the realities of war. While I never had to hold a gun -- and I hope that I never have to -- in defence of my country, should I have to, it will be with a sense of knowledge of what goes on when those in positions of power and authority discharge our people into conflict and war. It is more than simply defending a nation for the sense of the preoccupation of our democracy. It is also one step backward, in the movement of humanity toward a world that embraces peace and decries war.

When I see these new societies emerging and new worlds that are developing in various countries, I become extremely concerned. When I see the technology -- referred to by the Minister of Environment earlier on -- that has advanced the potential and possibilities for nuclear-weapon development in the hands of people who do not have the reverence that many of us do here in this free democracy in Canada, I despair. I despair when I see the kind of weapons of mass destruction so freely transported and available, because it is not just for me and for British Columbians that we must start to think and to speak out; it is for all humanity that we must start to take a stand.

[ Page 912 ]

Let me come back to my first point on the question of where the so-called peace movement fits in the political spectrum. This is not a movement that is dedicated to those on the left, the right or the centre. This is a movement to those who wish to stand and speak out for humanity. We have a world that is shrinking, a globe that is becoming smaller by virtue of the fact that our global populations are expanding rapidly. If we are to believe the United Nations' statistics, we will have a population of roughly ten billion by the year 2035. That's four billion more than we have today.

I believe we are in the first year of the next major global migration of peoples. The lines that divide us nationally will become less and less rigid as we see more and more people move in this globe. The divisions that we find between us that are based on race, language, religion and philosophical tradition in our politics are going to become less and less rigid, because by necessity we are going to have to realize that there is no such thing as a First World, Second World and Third World. There is but one world, and it is our world. We are all in a sense a part of it equally, and we must all equally stand and speak out so that all people, regardless of their country of origin, live with the knowledge of safety being there.

I have no problem with the motion. I do support it, and I support its amendment. Canada has always been a leader as a peacekeeper. Canada, certainly in the latter part of the sixties and the early 1970s.... I think that all the members of this House would respect the traditions of Lester B. Pearson, who was very much a Canadian and wanted to move forward Canada's role in the United Nations as a peacekeeper. We have always been a nation that stands strong and firm and committed to world peace.

What we are doing in this motion today does not weaken our position; it strengthens it. It does not weaken this country's resolve to make sure that all nations have an opportunity to build their economy, to grow and to become strong; it strengthens it. This motion today is not the purview of a small group of people preoccupied because of some hysteria or some paranoia. This motion advances those people with a vision to a future world, a world where humanity can coexist peacefully so that our economies can thrive, our communities can build and our families can live together, knowing that every individual is equal to every other and that there is a sense of dignity among humanity and people that is respected by all countries, Canada included. I believe that this country has an opportunity to take the lead. I believe that this province has a real opportunity to lead this country. I stand in support of this motion and its amendment, and I urge all members of this House to vote for it.

M. Lord: It gives me a great deal of pleasure to rise in support and indeed in celebration of the motion before the House today. It's a motion that could effectively remove these weapons of mass destruction from British Columbia. Hopefully it's one of the first steps that will see the removal of nuclear weapons from across the country. The world has changed, hon. Speaker. The rationale for nuclear deterrence of a Soviet invasion has evaporated. Peace is breaking out all over the world. The Cold War has ground to a halt.

In the face of this, the cost of these nuclear weapons is tremendous. While poverty continues to spread across Canada, across British Columbia and around the world, the fact that we are spending billions and billions of dollars to hold our place in the nuclear arms race is a blasphemy. Critical environmental problems go unaddressed while big industry continues to test so-called new and improved nuclear weapons. Factories continue to manufacture them. Nuclear-weapon-equipped ships continue to visit our ports in increasing numbers -- in Nanoose, Esquimalt and Vancouver. We must take action against these weapons of genocide at every possible level.

Across British Columbia, hundreds of thousands of citizens have protested the presence of these nuclear weapons in their communities, in their province and in their offshore waters. In some 60 towns and cities across British Columbia, people have freely voted in referendums to declare their city, town or community a nuclear-free zone. This Saturday we will see hundreds of thousands of British Columbians in peace walks across British Columbia -- in Vancouver, Victoria and other communities -- coming out and saying loudly and clearly that we will no longer tolerate this dangerous and constant menace in our midst.

I am so proud to be part of a government that is willing to stand up to the most powerful motive forces that are pushing the arms race in this world today, and that is the forces of the interrelated institutions of the military, the arms industry and weapons scientists. It is this military, industrial and academic complex that is the most difficult to influence and the most difficult to stop. Why? Because it grosses billions of dollars annually from the manufacture and sale of nuclear weapons. This government is taking a very important step in stopping that process.

[11:15]

We all know that living in peace in this world, this country and this province obviously encompasses more than just the absence of nuclear weapons. Few would describe the terrible strife in Iraq, in the aftermath of the war, as peace. Few would call the constant strife, turmoil and bloodshed in the occupied lands of the West Bank and the Gaza as peace. No one could say that the 20 million people in central Africa who are facing the threat of starvation are living in peace. Who could say that the thousands of people living in abject poverty and misery on the streets of Canada and the United States are living in peace? Can we really consider this world at peace when the very fabric of life, the ecological balance that keeps us alive, is threatened by the negative impact of our actions? Clearly the vision of a world at peace encompasses much more than a lack of conflict. Peace must include the broader issues of human rights, social justice and environmental protection, as well as the very important nuclear disarmament.

I would like to end, hon. Speaker, by sharing with the House a letter to the editor that appeared in the Times-Colonist on Remembrance Day last fall. It is from a gentleman in Kelowna who shares with us the 

[ Page 913 ]

wisdom and knowledge that he has gained in 83 years of life and his participation and observation of wars around the world. He begins with a quote: In Flanders fields the poppies grow beneath the crosses row on row which mark our place.... He goes on to say:

"Miles and miles of white crosses. Each cross marking the end of a life, the end of a generation. And these crosses beside the roads in Flanders fields mark only a tiny contingent of the hundreds of millions of lives destroyed by the First World War and in the horrifying wars which have followed.

"During the 83 years of my life, there has never been a single year when, somewhere in the world, savage wars were not being fought. Human beings, the finest young men and women of all nations involved, were and are being slaughtered, and with them civilians: men, women, children, babes born and unborn, massacred. Not only has the world lost the contribution that they as individuals would have made, we have lost the children that they would have parented. The contributions those children and their children would have made are destroyed, forever lost. All wasted lives.

"No war has ever been won. No war has ever achieved those goals proclaimed by its instigators to win public support. There may be, and there have been, heroes and heroic deeds during wars, but there are no heroic wars. We must face the terrifying, awful truth that all wars have been, and will continue to be, defeats for the human race. Every war is a crime against humanity.

"For the Christian, those who claim to follow Jesus the Lord, war is the crowning, the ultimate blasphemy."

Those are words from an 83-year-old gentleman in Kelowna. His words make it even more compelling that all of us in this House stand up and support this motion that will put an end to the presence of these terrible weapons in our midst.

J. Tyabji: I stand in support of this motion, and I find it encouraging that both the government side and the opposition are united in the sentiment against having nuclear weapons in British Columbia. I'd also like to speak in favour of the amendment to keep nuclear weapon and nuclear-powered vessels out of our waterways.

Hon. Speaker, in this day and age the people of B.C. are very happy to see politicians stand on points of principle, which is essentially what this is about. I'd like to commend the Minister of Advanced Education for bringing this forward, and commend our member for Richmond Centre for working on this very important matter of principle. For too long we've seen our economies driven in a wasteful way by the perceived need to be investing in weapons of mass destruction.

On the one hand, we say: is this a credible way of setting up our defence system? Will we ever use these weapons? On the other hand, we say that we hope there will never be a point where we will have to defend ourselves or a point where we will even consider using the weapons. In a way it was like putting money into something that you would never want to use, because it's not even in your own best interests.

We ask ourselves how we ever got to the point where there was so much waste and so much attention being put into nuclear weapons, which have such incredible power to destroy. I would say that it is basically because we have been driven by a lot of fear and greed. When we have our possessions, when we draw lines and try to confine the things that we identify as ours and not yours.... Those are the things that we feel we seek to defend. It is in seeking to defend those things that we decide what price we will pay to defend against a not even yet perceived threat, but a potentially perceived threat.

We have been continually paying, to the point where now in North America both the American economy and our economy are facing such incredible economic burdens because we have focused so much of our research and development on areas that we will never use, on things that are of no use to us in our daily lives, but are there because we choose to draw lines to protect possessions from a threat that is yet to be perceived. It doesn't even make logical sense that we would spend so much time.

I'm hoping that the fact that we're having this debate today indicates that it was just a temporary insanity -- trying to draw artificial lines for possessions that weren't yet threatened. In Canada we've been very lucky to never have had our borders threatened by war. The reality of today is that we're moving to an economically based competitive system. In past historic times we did have possessions where people would feel a very real threat and then feel that the only way to answer that threat and protect their possessions was on the basis of force. When you take that to the extreme, you have nuclear weapons with such incredible force that the use of them would actually run contrary to the best interests of the people using them.

We now have a global economy, where lines that have been drawn in the past are starting to become less relevant. We're starting to have freer trade. Any kind of competition that's being done in terms of country is being done on an economic basis. There's no point, if you follow the logical line of having to try to protect anyone's possessions, in taking any of that economic resource and funnelling it into something that would run contrary to the interests of the country if it were ever used.

The unfortunate thing about this as well is that in funnelling our economic resources into nuclear weapons technology, we have actually wasted so much brainpower that could have gone into solving some of the really critical situations that we're facing.

To get back to the notion of global economy and the world village, we should take responsibility for the fact that there are people starving, for the fact that there are ex-colonial countries that are now in a very difficult situation because of the historic ways in which the economy and political structures were set up. We are in part responsible for that. Much of our affluence is indirectly resulting from the exploitation of other countries.

At some point some people would say we have to defend ourselves from them making any demand on us that we don't think we should have to meet. In fact, we 

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should anticipate that the demands are coming and that the demands are relevant, and instead of putting money into some kind of weapons to protect ourselves from demands that may come, we should put that money into meeting the demands before they're put forward, building up those countries. It's in our best interest to have a strong global village, to not have parts of the world that are suffering at our expense. We should put our resources where they're most needed, and that is in eliminating poverty, in dealing with health issues, in building up strong economies around the world, in building our own strong economy so that it will have spinoff benefits to other parts of the world.

The nuclear weapons race was really such an obscene waste of resources and money that it is very good to see that the mind-set of many decision-makers today is moving toward eliminating the development of nuclear technology and eliminating nuclear weapons.

If we can get down to the nuclear-powered vessels, there is currently no mechanism in existence for dealing with nuclear waste. Now why would you produce something so potentially damaging to the environment -- which, of course, we are all living in -- without any mechanism for dealing with the waste, when there are alternative ways of producing that energy?

We have nuclear-powered vessels, and to me the most obscene thing about it is: in the event of an accident, what do we do? It's not fail-safe. There is no way of dealing with it when it happens. We had an Exxon Valdez spill that we weren't ready for, and let me tell you, hon. Speaker, if we had some kind of accident with a nuclear-powered vessel in our harbours, it would make us look like we were well prepared for Exxon Valdez

Some people who criticize the idea of trying to ban nuclear-powered vessels on principle will say: "Why are you objecting to nuclear-powered vessels?" Well, I'm objecting to it because it's a potentially hazardous substance and we have no mechanism to dispose of the waste, so why would we allow this into our waters? As we all know, any kind of hazardous substance in a waterway is easily translatable throughout the waterway. We're trying to move to greater environmental responsibility. On the basis of environmental responsibility alone, we should not have nuclear-powered vessels in our waterways.

I would like us to be moving in the direction where we say we don't want any kind of transportation in the long term that contributes, or potentially contributes, to environmental degradation. We all know that if you have nuclear power, it's going to produce waste. We can't continue to bury containers in the ground or put tin drums in the ocean and hope that they don't corrode -- which in itself, I'd say, shows a lack of logical consistency, because metal will corrode. If you put nuclear waste in a metal bin on the bottom of the ocean, it's going to corrode; you're going to have a problem at some point, and it's going to be a very expensive one.

I think it's very important that we stand here on principle. It's very important that we recognize the need to take this very essential first step by passing both the motion and the amendment. I think we have to recognize our responsibility to the global village and the diversion of our economic resources to enhance the situation of all humanity, not just the humanity on our side of the border.

Obviously we have a responsibility to the people of B.C. and to the people of Canada to send out the message that we will be very aware of every dollar spent and that every dollar spent, particularly on things like technology, is going to go into the kind of technology that actually furthers the interests of the people of B.C.; that we will be developing the kind of brainpower necessary to actually stimulate the economy in a way that we can make use of -- not to be putting money into some kind of technology that's creating weapons of mass destruction that we can only hope will never be used.

We saw a situation in Hiroshima that ended World War II. Standing here today, it's very difficult for me to comprehend it, because I wasn't there, obviously, and it didn't affect my family directly. But when I see the evidence on the news and when I see the destruction that was wreaked by two bombs that were so weak compared to what we can produce today, I find it staggering that we ever put another dollar into that kind of technology. We should have tried to move away. We should have tried for some kind of treaty where we say that if we recognize that there needs to be some kind of defence of our boundaries, that is not the direction we want to go in. Instead, we put so much of our energy into that.

[11:30]

Too often we get distracted by the romanticism of war, as alluded to by the official opposition leader. We saw a situation last spring in Kuwait where we had a video-game display on CNN every night. The amount of money it cost us -- today we are still feeling the impact. We can have all kinds of arguments as to whose interest that was in. Why were we there? Why did we contribute to that? How on earth can we possibly calculate the human tragedy that it eventually translated into in terms of where that money could have gone instead, and whose interests would have been served by diverting that money?

I hope that this is just the first step, and that we will all, as responsible citizens united in this very important matter of principle, continue to take the further steps necessary, both in terms of economic and environmental responsibility and in the recognition of the changing parameters under which we conduct ourselves in the global village.

C. Evans: Hon. Speaker, it is truly an honour to rise on this particular motion. For me it's certainly the most meaningful event thus far in this House. It is not simply on the election of this government that this is now possible, but as other people have mentioned, the world is changing with increasing rapidity.

Only last week, the French government suspended the testing of nuclear weapons and called upon the other governments, one of which is our neighbour, to do the same. I think, as the neighbour of the United States, it behooves us today to support the French position and to make a statement about the place where 

[ Page 915 ]

we live. We no longer want nuclear weapons transported through our province.

It isn't necessary for me to reiterate the reasons for the importance of this motion in this House. The leader of our party, the leader of the official opposition and many members have done that very well.

I want to name some of the people for whom I speak and whom I am pleased to represent here today. It's quite a meaningful day in the life of my family and of my constituency. Firstly, a person who I think would be very happy with what we're doing here today is my father, who wore a uniform in two kinds of armed conflict and then during the Vietnam time left the country he lived in in unhappiness, never to return.

Next, my brother Lynden, who was a straight-A student and a high school cheerleader. He was a kid with a scholarship to college who in the Vietnam time lost his mental health and never got it back, never got to college and never held a job.

Next, my younger brother Andy, who is a wonderful person and a pacifist. He was dragged four blocks to the paddy wagon that took him to Santa Rita prison over the issue of war.

For my daughters, who at four and five saw the army unroll barbed wire at both ends of their street and said to me: "Corky, Corky, the sky's on fire," as the helicopters flew over.

For the loggers and the farmers of British Columbia and Canada, because it's true that we could literally house and feed the world if the commodities that we have to offer had value in the world market, instead of guns and weapons of destruction.

Hon. Speaker, I'm proud to stand here for the young people of my constituency. They are kids of all different ethnic backgrounds who, during the Gulf War, walked out of their high schools spontaneously. Nobody agitated, nobody asked them to; they just couldn't go to school. On to the roads of Nelson, on to the highway outside Mt. Sentinel High School, kids in grade 9, 10, 11 and 12 in horror at what the world was doing in their time. I want to say to those kids that what we're doing here today will never make what happened better, but it means that maybe it's less likely to happen again.

For the Quaker people where I live, hon. Speaker, for the Russian people, and for the people who took this position -- in many ways legal and illegal, but never stopping through all the decades of this century when many times it was not really popular to say and believe the things people are saying here today -- I am honoured that their representatives have finally caught up with their leadership.

For my friend Philip Pedini, who stopped me on the Winlaw bridge when I went home last weekend and said to me: "Corky, I wrote letters to your government against this spraying in Vancouver." I said: "Philip, why are you opposed to the spray?" He said: "No, Corky, I'm not too opposed to the spray. I don't know if the stuff is bad for people or not. It's just I'll never forget the sounds of the helicopters in Vietnam, and we should never fly over people's heads and scare them again."

And for Irene Mock, hon. Speaker, of the city of Nelson, who has fought the disarmament issue through all of the years I've known her; Sig Askevold of Creston; the Stevensons of Argenta and now of Nelson; the USCC peace committees of Grand Forks, Castlegar, Crescent Valley and Slocan Park; Buddy De Vito, who did his years in World War II and has been standing up ever since begging our generation never to do it again; but mostly for a small group of people who live in a place in my constituency nestled in between some hills beside a creek called the new settlement. These people are Russian descendants, and for many years they've been living on a cooperatively owned piece of land in a tenuous relationship with the government, because these people are religiously opposed to paying taxes for fear that paying taxes might someday in some way connect them to armed conflict.

Hon. Speaker, for many years those people lived there in relative harmony with this government, because through a system of third parties their taxes were paid on that land. I'm sorry to say that delicate system has broken down and those people, with their fear that this government receiving their land taxes might somehow someday put them in a position of having contributed to an armed conflict, are now for reasons of conscience unable once again to pay their land taxes.

Hon. Speaker, their land taxes pay for the school buses, the hospitals, the libraries, for this building, for democracy and for the things we know as good and wonderful in B.C. By this motion today, and I hope by the support of all parties, I want to say to those people nestled in that tiny little place that your taxes paid to this government will never buy so much as a bullet. In fact, your taxes help to pay for this government, for this House, so that we can say through the people and the news media to the federal government that we are opposed to war. We are opposed, on your behalf, to participating in this level of taxation. Whether it is now under our time, or under the Social Credit time, or the Liberal time, this House "ain't going to let them study war no more."

H. De Jong: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Deputy Speaker: I'm sorry, I didn't see the hon. member for the opposition party, which should have been in order. However, if it's okay, we'll proceed. The member for Abbotsford.

H. De Jong: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just want to speak very briefly in this debate.

You know, I'm one of these people who lived through the war years, 1940-45, in the Netherlands, when they were under German occupation. You must recognize, and I think this House has somewhat forgotten it this morning in the debates, that we were dealing at that time with a person or a nation seeking world power at all costs. While it is difficult to talk about some of the specifics that happened in those days, I'll tell you that in the Netherlands during that five years there were perhaps not just hundreds but thousands of people killed cold-bloodedly by power-hungry people from Germany.

You know, I've seen things myself, and my parents have seen a whole lot more as to what actually 

[ Page 916 ]

happened. I've seen people who had been in concentration camps. They were beaten with various things, whips with barbed wire on them, to force them to do a certain function. They were taken out of the concentration camp and taken back to their own community to try to make them do certain things. First of all, these were against their will to do, but also against the will of the community. That kind of slaughter and that kind of abuse to human beings has not been mentioned here this morning.

Now I know we're all against war. There's no question about that, and I agree with the member that spoke just before me. No one wants war, but when you're in a war such as we were in 1940-45, the people subjected to the war are obviously looking for an end to it. I'm sure every person from the Netherlands and from many European countries will always be grateful to the Canadian, American and British soldiers who came to our plight, for freedom again. There is no better thing than freedom. Specifically, we experienced five years of living under a regime that did not allow any freedom of movement, of expression of opinion, or of print or media. It was terrible. There was no way to express.... People couldn't even listen to a radio or the radio would be taken away from them, and they would be put in concentration camps.

Having experienced all that, yes, I would love to see a complete elimination of nuclear weapons; there is no question about it. I think that great strides have been made between the world powers to achieve that goal. However, at this time, to have a motion like this go through the House, I believe it would be better left to our countries who are dealing with this on the national scale to achieve that goal. We have to face reality. For instance, if Saddam Hussein had been allowed to continue the way he had started, which in my opinion was far worse in terms of human suffering than was connected with what he was doing and than it ever was during the war of 1940-45.... I take my hat off to all of those who went and fought in that war to end it, and to end it quickly, because it was the only way.

I simply cannot support this resolution, for the reasons given, because I don't think there's been sufficient thought given to what actually happens during a war, and in particular when people seek world power at all costs. If I may go back to 1945 and the end of the war, I'll tell you there was no one in the Netherlands who said that they should never have dropped that bomb on Hiroshima. I'm sure that every serviceman in the Canadian army, the American army and the British armies that had been fighting that war for five years would have agreed with the people of the Netherlands and, I'm sure, of many other European countries.

[11:45]

V. Anderson: I wish to express my concern for these resolutions, but also my concern for the previous speaker. I appreciate that he is so willing to express an opinion which may not always be in agreement with everybody else, particularly when it comes out of a very personal and deep experience that many of us have not directly had in our own personal lives. I wish to acknowledge that and to thank him very much for doing that.

As a civilized country, it seems to me that we must be against all weapons of mass destruction -- whether nuclear, gas, germ or whatever -- on principle itself. We do need means of reasonable protection, but means of mass destruction are something quite different from that. Nuclear weapons do not discriminate. They kill children as well as adults. They kill seniors as well as youth. They kill the innocent as well as the guilty. The effect of nuclear weapons is not just for the moment, but for untold generations. At present the total effect is still incomprehensible, even with the best scientific studies.

Most religious bodies of the world have a basic ethic which calls for peaceful solutions for personal, national or international disagreements. Within my own heritage, the love of neighbours and respect -- not agreement -- even for one's enemies is a basic tenet. This means that I would not wish to do to others what I would not want others to do to me. My faith, as many others, recognizes every person as a part of the creative spirit, for whom we are all responsible. Granted, we must often overlook this responsibility in our discussions and actions. We often overlook it at our own threat and peril.

The disasters of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were vivid reminders of our carelessness and, in religious terms, of our sins. Unfortunately others, rather than ourselves, are very often the ones who suffer most from our mistakes. Yet to ban the use of nuclear weapons is not an end in itself; it is only the beginning of our responsibility to build a caring and supporting society for all people. This process begins each new day as we look at the person we see in the mirror in the morning and as we go forth in our society to share with others their needs and their concerns.

Whether we vote for or against nuclear weapons, or for a nuclear-free zone, we must carry with that vote concern for the cleansing of our whole society, for in the long run, the person who suffers and dies under a local bridge cares not whether his or her death was caused by a nuclear bomb or by some other indifferent action. I urge us to vote not only for the nuclear-free zone as part of our community, but to also work for a free, sustainable and wholesome life for all here in Victoria and in every community in our world.

J. Beattie: I just want to stand and say how pleased I am to be able to speak to a motion which has preoccupied a great deal of my time in my constituency of Okanagan-Penticton. At the same time I want to mention how pleased I am at the speeches from all members of the opposition. I'd like to say that I'm honoured to follow the articulate speech -- well-spoken words -- by the Minister of Advanced Education, who has represented himself so well on this issue.

I want to speak particularly about the people in my constituency, because I believe that the peace movement and the nuclear-free movement are people-driven initiatives. I'm thinking back to the days in 1981, when I stood in the orchard on a ladder with my dear friend Peter Dannhauer, and he said to me: "Jim, I want to start a peace group in Penticton." I said: "Peter, why don't 

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you put an ad in the paper?" He put an ad in the paper, and we had our first meeting at the community recreation centre in Penticton. So many wonderful people turned out: Dr. Peter Quandt, John Cameron, Kitty Wilson and Dave Cursons. All these people worked for years in my constituency in the town of Penticton to help turn British Columbia into a nuclear-free zone.

There was one other person who had a very intimate part to play in the peace group in Penticton. That was a person named Kinuko Laskey, a woman from Vancouver. She was a hibakusha, a person who survived the bomb blast in Hiroshima. I had the pleasure of picking her up one day at the airport and transporting her to the Penticton high school. There were 800 children there. They'd come between two and three in the afternoon to hear her speak. If you've never heard Kinuko speak.... She speaks in broken English in a very soft voice. I was overwhelmed at the respect that the 800 children in that room paid her as they listened to her tale of crawling from station to station after the blast in her town.

I want to say that I support this resolution. I'd like to sit down at this point and give the final words to any other person.

C. Serwa: Mr. Speaker, are we going to run a few minutes overtime?

Interjection.

C. Serwa: It sounds, from the government House Leader, as though we are not going to be running overtime. It's rather difficult to cover this complex subject. I would have liked to have spoken longer on it, but unfortunately I had another meeting with an important group involving agriculture.

It's not simple, because while we focus on nuclear weapons -- and we all have concerns about nuclear weapons -- we've glossed over some prevailing realities in this short debate. That's why I think it is in fact a short debate. We're all aware, since all of written history, that we have had wars. In all of written history we have had poor people, and it even says in the Bible that we will have poor people until time ends, so it's not as if the symbolic statement here with respect to nuclear weapons will all of a sudden change everything.

I stated my concerns in this Legislature about radioactivity, in 1987, and I've spoken in support of a private member's statement that the hon. Minister of Advanced Education made in support of a reduction in nuclear weapons, hopefully with the ambition -- I have said here -- of finally eliminating nuclear weapons. I stand firm on that. I would like to have gone through this, but I also want to throw in a few other things.

We talk about peace. We've had two world wars where Canadians have fought for peace. Peace isn't a commodity that you can stand out on the street corner and say: "I'm for peace; we want peace." I'm very proud of those people who fought for Canada and for the rights and freedoms that we enjoy in this very Legislature today: the freedom to speak up and enunciate our specific concerns.

My real concern comes up from this. This was written by Martin Niemoller, a Lutheran pastor in Dachau, in the concentration camp. He said that the Nazis:

"...came first for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up for me."

I know that the Minister of Advanced Education had said that there was a false sense of security with nuclear arms, but we can't turn back the clock. The reality is that they are here, and I can't help but support the theme and the concept of both the motion and the amendment. I think that we have to strive in that direction, but there are realities that prevail.

For example, if this government is sincere and committed to doing something, it could actually do something potentially more beneficial environmentally to the people of British Columbia. It could impose a ban on uranium mining in the province. We know that the radioactive emissions from the waste dumps are certainly more hazardous than any of the components produced for electricity or nuclear weapons or anything else where advanced technology can contain them. But we have a real problem here. Here is a government committed to doing something which they themselves admit is symbolic. I'm saying, put your money where your mouth is. If you really mean something, if you have a real concern about environmental issues, if you have a real concern about nuclear radiation, then for heaven's sake impose a ban on the mining of uranium in British Columbia. That will do a great deal more than would simply a symbolic statement.

I would have like to have gone on, but I recognize that time is short. It is with some trepidation, because of my concern that we are our brother's keeper and that the doors that are knocked on are not necessarily the doors to the left side of our residence or to the right side of our residence. We have a responsibility to kindred souls all over the world to make sure that we stand up and protect them. They have rights. They should have that assurance of freedom, opportunity and security, and I see our role as Canadians as being able to stand up tall and strong.

I'm particularly proud of all the people of all ethnic origins who fought in both world wars. Our aboriginal people fought in the First and Second World Wars; Chinese people, who didn't even have the right to vote in Canada at that time, fought for the defence of the rights and freedoms that we enjoy. I think that's imperative and important. The symbolic statement is 

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not going to be a Valhalla. It's certainly important to encourage movement in that direction.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I will take my seat and say that we will support the symbolism contained both in the motion and in the amendment to the motion.

[12:00]

K. Jones: I rise with great pleasure to support both the motion and the amendment. I feel that it's a real honour that the minister who is bringing it forward has been as dedicated to this cause as many other people who have been working for many years to address this issue. I'd like to pay tribute to his mother and late father, who have been real leaders in the movement to bring about the freedom of our communities from the threat of nuclear annihilation and nuclear accident. It is indeed one that they have worked so hard on. It was my pleasure to have the honour of leading the Liberal Party some ten years ago into the End the Arms Race movement, which has been supported by so many different organizations -- a true coalition of concerned people.

In that regard, recognizing the hour, I will take my seat, because many of the things I would like to have spoken on have already been said.

Amendment approved on the following division:

On the motion as amended.

Hon. T. Perry: Hon. Speaker, I will be very brief, in the interests of concluding this discussion. The Minister of Environment referred to it as more of a dialogue than a debate.

I want to thank all hon. members who participated and even those who did not, by foregoing the chance to speak today -- many others would have liked to -- and allowing us to get on with other business of the House.

I want to thank the two opposition parties, including those who expressed reservations about the action. The member for Okanagan West asked, citing Pastor Niemoller: "Who do we ask to stand up for us?" I think Pastor Niemoller would have probably agreed with the majority of members that the nuclear weapons do not stand up for us. They do not protect us from torture, from worldwide war, from hunger, from famine, from suffering or from inadequate clean-water supplies.

What Paster Niemoller was talking about, to my mind, was that every citizen -- not only political leaders; perhaps least of all political leaders -- must speak up on every occasion against injustice, suffering, torture, killing and any sort of injustice. That is the real defence -- not only in our nation, where we have that privilege enshrined in law, but worldwide -- against suffering and injustice, in the defence of freedom. I think that hon. members will agree with that.

I feel it has been a very happy day for the House -- one of those rare days when there is so much consensus and respect for dissenting opinion as well. I'd just like to close the discussion by reminding hon. members how many people around the province have been spoken for by members from throughout British Columbia and will be happy, particularly because of the walks for peace coming up this Saturday. I urge hon. members to participate along with citizens in the defence of peace.

Deputy Speaker: Hon. members, is it agreed that the waiting time be waived?

Leave granted.

Motion 26 as amended approved on the following division:

Hon. C. Gabelmann moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 12:13 p.m.

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