1993 Legislative Session: 2nd Session, 35th Parliament
HANSARD
The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.
(Hansard)
TUESDAY, APRIL 13, 1993
Afternoon Sitting
Volume 8, Number 20
[ Page 5129 ]
The House met at 2:07 p.m.
Prayers.
B. Copping: Hon. Speaker, I would like to introduce to the House today a good friend and constituent, Mr. Gordon Westrand. He is president of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, Canadian area, and vice-president of the B.C. Federation of Labour. Would the House please make him welcome.
K. Jones: Visiting with us today is a group of seniors from the Cloverdale Seniors' Centre in Surrey. They are accompanied by Mr. Ian George. Although they are not seated in the gallery at this time, they are now being conducted around the parliament buildings and will be joining us at around 3 o'clock. Please help me in acknowledging their visit to this precinct and to beautiful Victoria.
Hon. A. Hagen: Hon. Speaker, we are very honoured to have in the gallery today the Ambassador of Canada to the United States, John de Chastelain, who is accompanied by officials. I would like all of us in the House to warmly welcome him on his first visit.
J. Beattie: It's my pleasure to introduce Mr. Allan Okabe, who is in the gallery today. He is formerly of Prince Rupert and now of Vancouver, where he's involved in adult skills training. Mr. Okabe was appointed to the Native Economic Development Advisory Board by the previous government and is still advising the province on native economic issues. I'd like the House to make him welcome today.
AGRICULTURAL LAND COMMISSION REFORM ACT
H. De Jong presented a bill intituled Agricultural Land Commission Reform Act.
H. De Jong: Hon. Speaker, this bill removes from cabinet the final say over agricultural land reserve appeals and transfers it to five regional appeal boards, reflecting climatic differences and the different types of farming conditions in our province. Appeal boards would be selected by cabinet from a list of nominees provided by the Select Standing Committee on Agriculture and Fisheries, a very meaningful role for this committee of our House. Only long-term permanent residents of the region would be eligible. However, those on either side who have a particular axe to grind would not be eligible to hear appeals. The mandate of regional appeal boards would be much broader than that of the present Land Commission and would allow for all relevant factors to be considered, including local planning objectives.
Bill M211 introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.
CLAYOQUOT SOUND DECISION
W. Hurd: My question is to the Deputy Premier. Given the fact that the government currently holds shares in MacMillan Bloedel and had prior knowledge of the decision on Clayoquot Sound -- which amounts to a form of insider trading -- can the Deputy Premier explain why the issue wasn't referred to the Commission on Resources and Environment, given its nonpartisan, independent role?
Hon. A. Hagen: Hon. Speaker, in the absence of the ministers affected, I will take the member's question on notice.
INCREASED COSTS FOR SENIORS IN LONG TERM CARE FACILITIES
L. Reid: I'll pose my question to the Minister of Health. The minister recently announced increases of up to 50 percent for seniors in extended care, which means that those at the lowest income level will need to spend every cent of their pension for room and board. Was this decision taken before the minister hired six new executive directors as so-called facilitators for her new community health care plans?
Hon. E. Cull: Just to correct the record, the executive directors are all staff who have been redeployed from other positions within the ministry. We're eliminating and reducing bureaucracy, not adding to it.
With respect to the question on long term care facilities, there has been an increase in the accommodation portion of those facilities but not on the health portion, which remains universal. One hundred percent of that is paid for by the province. But in terms of the accommodation portion in long term care, we have put those seniors onto the same basis as seniors in subsidized seniors' housing, where the amount they pay for their room and board is reflective of their income.
We took recommendations to six major seniors' organizations in advance of the budget and gave them a number of options to choose from. We talked to them about the problem, and that is the option they recommended we implement.
L. Reid: Again to the Minister of Health. Are we looking at a means test? There doesn't seem to be any way to evaluate the income of those seniors who require accommodation. How is that going to be established, in that they all receive the same pension at this time?
Hon. E. Cull: The rates are currently charged based on 85 percent of old age pension and guaranteed income supplement. The sliding scale that will bring the rates up reflecting their income will be based on the
[ Page 5130 ]
Medical Services Plan premium assistance. There are a number of different levels of assistance that seniors get -- as well as anyone else -- depending on their income, and it will be based on that scale.
L. Reid: Hon. minister, you're talking about an increase of approximately $11 per day. If they're already paying 85 percent of their income towards that accommodation and those health care services, are we asking them to now contribute more than 100 percent; and who is going to pick up the difference?
[2:15]
Hon. E. Cull: The member misunderstands what is going on here. No one will be paying more than 85 percent of their income for the accommodation portion plus the health care portion of long-term care facilities. The lowest income that seniors get is OAP and GIS. Seniors who have income in addition to that will pay somewhat more -- on a sliding scale -- up to the cost of paying for their accommodation, just as they would have to pay if they did not require the health care portion of that accommodation but were in a senior citizens' subsidized housing project. They will be on the same footing as all other seniors in subsidized housing.
SALES TAX ON LABOUR
J. Weisgerber: My question is to the minister responsible for small business. Does the minister understand the nightmare that his government has created with the imposition of the sales tax on labour and the way that it's administered? Does the minister understand, for example, that the labour to charge and install a battery is taxable, but the labour to boost a battery is not? Does the minister understand how difficult those kinds of things are for small business people to administer?
Hon. D. Zirnhelt: I'm sure the member realizes that we think the small business people are able to figure that out. If any further guidance is necessary from the Minister of Finance, we'll get that guidance to them.
J. Weisgerber: How much you don't understand about small business comes through each time you stand up. Do you understand that what you're doing is driving our economy underground? Sales tax, according to your budget, applies to the repair of a built-in dishwasher but doesn't apply to a portable dishwasher if it's taken in to a repair shop.
Hon. D. Zirnhelt: The member has to realize that taken as a whole, by stabilizing the small business income tax rate and modestly increasing the sales tax rate, we have been as easy on the business community as possible in the fiscal climate that we face. The best thing for small and large business is to remain competitive with the jurisdictions surrounding us. I am confident that if you look at the analysis we've done of the tax competitiveness of British Columbia, we still are the best place to invest and do business in Canada.
J. Weisgerber: Perhaps the minister could advise us about skate sharpening. If it's done by hand, is it taxable? If it's done in a skate-sharpening machine, is it taxable?
Hon. D. Zirnhelt: I'm pleased to take that one on notice and to provide you and other people with clarifications necessary.
AIRCARE LABOUR DISPUTE
A. Warnke: This is a question to the Attorney General. A few weeks ago the Attorney General indicated that he would deal with the AirCare contract disagreement at the time of a strike. We've been now two weeks into a strike. Would the Attorney General indicate today just what steps are being taken to end that strike?
Hon. C. Gabelmann: That question would be best directed to the Minister of Labour.
A. Warnke: The reason I posed it to the Attorney General is obvious: the AirCare contract is negotiated through that minister.
A supplementary to the Attorney General. By the end of this week the AirCare strike will have cost taxpayers over $166,000, in just a two-week period. Can the Attorney General confirm that under the terms of the contract this government is responsible for recovering that lost revenue to Ebco-Hamilton?
Hon. C. Gabelmann: No, hon. Speaker, I can't confirm.
MAPLE RIDGE-PITT MEADOWS SCHOOL DISTRICT LABOUR DISPUTE
J. Dalton: My question is to the Minister of Education. Late last evening the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows School District strike was finally settled after two weeks of lost classes. Can the minister tell the House if she has been apprised of the settlement in Maple Ridge and whether she thinks that the settlement process was well served in that particular case?
Hon. A. Hagen: The process for collective agreements between school boards and their teachers is well established. Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows School District and its teachers were assisted through mediation available through the Labour Relations Board. It's my understanding that with the assistance of that mediation they were finally able to reach an agreement after what we will all agree has been a very long and difficult period of negotiation for that district.
J. Dalton: Again to the Minister of Education. A Maple Ridge official has commented that they have not yet worked out the total cost of this package because, of course, it was resolved just late last evening. Can the minister tell the House whether she feels that districts should settle without knowing the cost of such settlements to the taxpayer?
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Hon. A. Hagen: The district of Maple Ridge is responsible for all aspects of the budget that is provided to it by the taxpayers of British Columbia through our government. Those responsibilities include collective agreements with their employees. I do not have full details of that settlement from my officials as yet. I'm confident that the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows School District is, as is every board, behaving in a responsible and accountable way in managing the resources that are made available to it to provide education for the children of that district.
MANAGEMENT SEMINAR
V. Anderson: To the Minister of Social Services. Can the minister confirm that 20 employees from her ministry attended a management seminar in Vancouver near the end of March at a cost of $450 per person, for a total cost of $9,000 from her budget?
Hon. J. Smallwood: If the member will provide specific information about which conference it is and the dates, I will be glad to look into it for him and provide the information.
V. Anderson: I will provide it for her.
HAGUE CONVENTION ON ADOPTIONS
Is the minister aware of the international Hague convention on adoptions, and will she indicate whether British Columbia is planning to support this convention in its draft proposals?
Hon. J. Smallwood: Our ministry is involved in discussions with the federal government around the Hague convention. It's my information that it has not yet been concluded; when it is, the government will look at it and make its decision then.
REIMBURSEMENT FOR LANDLORDS
V. Anderson: Again to the Minister of Social Services, and this question comes to us from constituents. When persons who are receiving social assistance rent premises and then leave those premises without either giving notice or paying rent, does the Ministry of Social Services take any responsibility to support the landlord in seeking reimbursement?
The Speaker: Hon. member, the Chair is having difficulty seeing that these are supplementals to the original question. On that basis, although I allowed the second one, I cannot allow the third one. It's not actually a supplemental to the minister's answer.
TAX ON AUTO BODY REPAIRS
L. Fox: My question this afternoon is to the Minister of Highways and minister responsible for ICBC. Can the minister confirm that ICBC will be charged the new provincial tax on labour by auto body repair shops?
Hon. A. Charbonneau: Yes, it will be.
L. Fox: Can the minister then tell us just what the impact of this new GST is going to be, in total dollars, on ICBC, and has it been factored into the grandiose profit picture that this government projects for ICBC in this fiscal year?
Hon. A. Charbonneau: I'll take that question on notice.
BURNABY LOCATION FOR AIRCARE FACILITY
A. Warnke: I have a housecleaning -- or whatever it's called -- question for the Attorney General. Many people have expressed concern about a new AirCare facility being constructed in Burnaby within ten metres of Royal Oak College. Has the Attorney General looked into this, and is he perhaps in the process of reversing his decision?
Hon. C. Gabelmann: The matter of a location in Burnaby is between a private company and the municipality of Burnaby.
CYCLING IN FERRY TRAFFIC
A. Cowie: I have an easier question for the Minister of Highways. Yesterday I took a bicycle trip to the Gulf Islands, and I can tell you that it's very disturbing to ride a bicycle onto the Tsawwassen ferry in streams of big trucks and traffic. I wonder if the minister could tell me if he's doing anything for the benefit of those who want to travel by bicycle in order to cut down on motor use and exhaust fumes -- to get to and from the ferries.
Hon. A. Charbonneau: I'm delighted that the member opposite has noticed the incredible amount of economic activity in this province brought about by this government. After having to fight his way onto the ferry, I will provide the member opposite with a copy of the interim cycling policy which, for the first time, the Ministry of Transportation and Highways has developed.
Hon. A. Charbonneau: Hon. Speaker, I call second reading of Bill 3.
BUILD BC ACT
Hon. A. Charbonneau: As a member from the interior, I'm particularly pleased to lead off the debate on this important bill. For too many years there have been two British Columbias. While we have had prosperity in the lower mainland, the greater Vancouver regional area and much of the Island, much of the interior of the province has suffered from high unemployment rates and limited opportunities -- particularly for our young people. This bill will go some way toward redressing those situations.
Hon. Speaker, Bill 3 sets out a government initiative for economic development and diversification in British Columbia, an initiative for building British Columbia's
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future. The bill is a cornerstone of B.C. 21 -- Building Our Future, which was announced on March 29. The bill establishes or facilitates three of the four B.C. 21 components, namely: the Build B.C. special account; the B.C. Transportation Financing Authority; and focusing Crown corporation investment activities so that they meet the government's economic development objectives. The fourth component of B.C. 21, the acceleration of investment in social infrastructure such as schools and health centres, will be undertaken under existing legislative authority.
[E. Barnes in the chair.]
Bill 3 provides for overall government direction of B.C. 21 by establishing the committee on building British Columbia's future. The committee will be comprised of members of the Legislative Assembly and will be chaired by the Minister of Finance and Corporate Relations. The committee on building British Columbia's future will provide advice on economic, regional, sectoral, equity, employment and training goals. It will also have the responsibility for overseeing expenditures from the Build B.C. special account. And as B.C. 21 grows over time, the committee will develop new initiatives to further develop and diversify British Columbia's economy.
[2:30]
Bill 3 also creates the Build B.C. special account, another component of B.C. 21. Build B.C. will direct an additional $100 million in new expenditures in 1993-94 to develop innovative approaches to investment and job creation. The focus will be on projects with an economic return, combining job creation and physical asset investment with regional economic development, diversification, employment equity goals and training.
Build B.C. funds will be put toward productive economic investments, such as a new silviculture project which combines forest enhancement with a comprehensive training program and greater community participation, a new housing pilot project to address problems of homelessness while providing training for young people, and a new community initiatives program for cost-shared small-scale capital projects at the local level. These are only a few examples of the types of economic development activities that will be developed through the Build B.C. special account over the coming year.
Bill 3 also recognizes that investment in transportation infrastructure is crucial for long-term economic prosperity. Because there has not been the appropriate level of investment in infrastructure, we're facing some loss in our competitive edge in overseas markets. With many of our commodities the transportation cost composes a very significant portion of the selling price of the product, and the more efficient we can make our transportation system, the lower our prices will be in the international marketplace.
There is also the threat to the Canadian transportation system of leakage into the American system. We already see that grain can be processed out of Alberta or Saskatchewan and moved along through the American transportation network. There's a threat of it flowing even out of the B.C. system. As well, some of our other commodities could be moved out of American ports, or products could come into Canada through American ports. If we are not going to respond with an aggressive building policy for transportation in British Columbia, we will see the ongoing threat of the loss of transportation employment and income to American ports, railways and business.
We have congestion all over the province, but it is particularly severe on the Island and in the lower mainland. Ask anyone who comes out of the northeast suburbs of Vancouver about the congestion that is faced at Pitt River; the people coming in from the eastern suburbs of Surrey and Langley; the ongoing congestion at Port Mann; the congestion on the Alex Fraser Bridge; the congestion at the Deas Island Tunnel; the lack of good highway infrastructure along much of Fraser Port and along the North Shore in Vancouver. All of those are impediments to commerce.
Transport 2021, studying the transportation needs and community needs in the lower mainland, will be coming forward this year with recommendations. It is already clear that between now and 2021, we will see the influx of about an additional million people in the lower mainland. If we have some degree of congestion and gridlock now, you can only envision in your worst dreams what the economic gridlock could be by 2021 if we don't start to solve the problems.
Out of the lower mainland, there are problems and congestions in the Okanagan. As well, we should look at the Trans-Canada Highway and the need to improve it all the way to the Alberta border. For over a year I have been arguing in favour of a capitalization approach. With much of our infrastructure that we, as government, build -- schools, hospitals, courthouses and ferries -- we borrow the money, build the asset and then amortize the cost of that asset over perhaps 20 or 25 years. In highways, our major projects, we have been doing it on an expense basis -- pay as you go. Thus if we need a $200 million bridge someplace, we must find it out of current expenditures within the budget.
The fact is that all over Canada and North America, in every political jurisdiction of every stripe, infrastructure has gotten the short end of that investment stick -- for good reasons, because there are pressing health and education demands. In the long run, if we're going to afford all of the other things that we want and need, we've got to have a sound economy. One of the principal legs of a sound economy is a sound transportation system. It is proposed under Bill 3 to take a new and more businesslike approach to transportation investments in essential future developments. Bill 3 establishes a new B.C. Transportation Financing Authority to finance the construction of new highway and other high priority transportation projects.
Much of the budget in Transportation, of course, relates to maintenance and standard rehabilitation. Those can be handled within the budgetary system, and minor capital can also be handled. But major infrastructure projects such as the Island Highway just cannot be efficiently handled within the regular budgetary system. We must take a new approach. I'm very pleased to see the Transportation Financing Authority within B.C.
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21. The financing authority will enable government to take a long-term approach to financing highway construction and other transportation infrastructure. We will be able to proceed with high-priority projects with better matching of expenditures and benefits over the life of the asset constructed.
Another key element that I have been speaking to over the past year is the dedicated account. In my experience in speaking to groups around the province, if funds are coming into a dedicated account that people know will be tied to transportation, there is less resistance to the notion of paying into that fund. They want to see some return for their dollars; they want to see some improvement in the transportation system as they use it.
The authority proposed in Bill 3 will be self-financing. It has been authorized to borrow funds and given powers to raise revenues. The revenues will be invested directly in improved transportation facilities throughout the province.
Interjections.
Hon. A. Charbonneau: I hear members opposite saying: "More taxes." I must explain to the member opposite that at the present time people are paying tolls in our transportation system, but they're hidden tolls. They're paying tolls of personal time lost in traffic jams; an environmental toll for the cars caught in stop-and-go and parked for half an hour at a time in our system; the business costs of commercial vehicles being caught up in jams -- it turns up in consumer goods; and worst of all, they're paying the toll of accidents in our current system -- of harm, injury and death. Families are paying terrible tolls related to the congestion within our current system. So there are heavy tolls there now that we're going to replace.
Revenue from a one-cent-a-litre fuel levy, effective September 1, and a levy on vehicle rentals will be dedicated to the transportation authority. In the future, revenue may also be raised through tolls on facilities constructed by the authority. The tolls will also permit the application of traffic demand management, and that can be very important in encouraging people to move from their single-occupant vehicle to either car-pooling or van-pooling, or to use public transit.
In keeping with the government's view that Crown entities should be fully accountable, the transportation authority will be required to submit business plans to Treasury Board for approval. The business plan will outline proposed projects, revenue sources which will fund the projects and a borrowing plan.
A third feature of B.C. 21 addressed by Bill 3 is the development of new mechanisms to focus the investment activities of Crown corporations in order to meet regional economic needs. Crown corporations will invest more than $900 million during the coming year in every region of the province, including $500 million in new projects. Coordination and guidance are necessary to ensure that these expenditures generate the maximum possible return.
Bill 3 will help to accomplish that purpose by requiring every Crown corporation, including the new transportation authority, to provide the government with strategic plans, business plans, capital and operating budgets, and any other requested information. This provision will help to ensure that Crown corporation investment activities are focused on meeting regional economic needs, complement other government and private sector investment activities, encourage the use of B.C. goods and services, and make the greatest possible use of the contributions in developing the skills and talents of British Columbians.
To summarize, the measures contained in Bill 3 will bring together key investment activities to develop a new and more effective approach to economic development. Over the long term this approach will generate significant economic benefits for B.C. communities.
Hon. Speaker, I move second reading.
D. Symons: I have the pleasure of speaking first in response to the motion for second reading of Bill 3. I do have some concerns with the bill. I tend to agree somewhat with what appears to be the intent of the bill. [Applause.] Save your clapping until later. But I appreciate it -- thank you.
"Coordinating the government's activities to achieve overall economic development and job creation goals" -- a great goal. "Ensuring that all regions of the province benefit from economic expansion and diversification" -- a great goal. "Encouraging public and private sector investment and job creation activities in an innovative manner" -- a great goal. However, the problem I have is that I'm not quite sure how this bill addresses those particular purposes in a way that they can't already be addressed by the legislation and ministries currently in place. It seems that all of those things should already be incorporated into the way that government operates and that this bill adds nothing to what is already there. Maybe I shouldn't say "adds nothing," because it seems to me that it adds another layer of government, another layer of bureaucracy and expense.
[2:45]
As I said, it seems to be good on the surface, but when we examine it more carefully, there are some pitfalls that we must be very careful of. There are certainly some items that we will be delving into more deeply during third reading, in committee stage. The real question is: why is this bill needed? When reading the bill over, I'm not at all sure that I can find the answer to that question. It seems to simply create more bureaucracy.
The Crown corporations of this province don't do a good job of operating efficiently and inexpensively. We found some figures that I think need examining. In B.C. Ferries, for instance, administration costs have gone up 45 percent over last year, and losses are up 48 percent over last year. That Crown corporation is not doing that well. And we're going to create another one? In B.C. Systems, another Crown corporation, administration costs have increased by 38.7 percent, and profits have been reduced by over $4 million. In ICBC -- which was mentioned earlier during question period -- administration costs are up 14 percent, but ICBC rates have been increased by 28.5 percent since the NDP won office.
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I'm beginning to wonder why we want to create another level of bureaucracy, another Crown corporation, when there's a track record like that for Crown corporations. It seems to me that we are not looking at a wise use of the taxpayer's dollar. The Ministry of Transportation and Highways should be a clearinghouse for government contracts. It should be reducing its paperwork bureaucracy, not adding to it by the creation of another Crown corporation. This, again, is the main thrust of my remarks.
Another area that concerns me somewhat is with regard to the responsibility for seeing that each thing is properly accounted for and put before this House for scrutiny. I do not see how that would be the case in this bill. There seem to be two things built into the bill. One is the ability to remove money from the estimates procedure and from the direct deficit and hide the actual deficit of the province by having highways construction covered elsewhere, under a Crown corporation rather than under the Highways ministry.
There also seems to be an opportunity here for the government to avoid the scrutiny of this House regarding its spending and its decisions. We're setting up a new committee to discuss these; and this will be a cabinet committee, no doubt, by the wording of it -- and I'll get into those issues a little later on. But I'm very concerned that we are going to lose something for the people of British Columbia in setting up a new corporation that will not necessarily have the House scrutiny we have had before for Ministry of Transportation and Highways spending.
What I would like to do is just quote here from the member for Nanaimo when he was the opposition Transportation critic, when the previous Social Credit government brought in a bill called Freedom to Move. That member for Nanaimo brought up some very pertinent facts, and I think they're worth revisiting today because these facts apply equally as well to the Build B.C. account as they did to the Freedom to Move account.
He says: "We're a little concerned, then, about the whole area of accountability -- indeed, a little concerned that the public will be informed by its representatives in this chamber as to just how much money is in fact being shifted from one account to another, because, of course, that's one part of the discretion this particular bill gives to the minister." In this case it gives it to a committee. These comments were made July 16, 1990, so they're not that old. And he also mentions, on the same date: "I'm also a little concerned that there seems to be rather too much discretion, too much latitude, allowed the ministry with this particular bit of legislation." Well, I can say amen to that with this particular bit of legislation.
"If I can quote to the minister from the 1990 budget, where the fund is described, you will recall, as the Freedom to Move special account fund, it says the fund will 'allow the government to reallocate funds from one transportation mode to another as priorities and opportunities change.' The obvious question...is whether priorities and opportunities are indeed going to change very much if capital construction is being done on the basis of measurable, specific, defensible criteria as opposed to political ones."
Again, amen to that, because I think that is getting at the nub of the matter of Bill 3. It's going to allow the government, politically, to move the spending of the ministry from the estimates -- those things that are receiving scrutiny in this House -- to a Crown corporation that can be discussed by a committee which is a subgroup of the cabinet. This committee simply will not have the scrutiny of the House, the responsibility that other ministries have of coming back here and seeking the approval of this House for their spending. That's the first issue. The second issue is, of course, that it is going to allow them that opportunity to shift money about, again without the scrutiny of this House.
The member for Nanaimo, when he was in opposition, went on: "We have difficulty then with this particular measure, because it looks as if what we're giving the ministry is something like a blank cheque to spend hundreds of millions of dollars without detailed legislative scrutiny. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm not convinced that I am wrong." Those words are as true today as they were three years ago, and that is the problem with this particular bill.
The minister spoke earlier, in introducing the bill, about a dedicated fund, and talked about this fund being self-financing. I have some difficulty with that, because I believe we're going to find that what they have dedicated is 1 cent per litre of fuel. That's an increase in the fuel tax for the people of this province, and we already have a 12-cents-per-litre B.C. government fuel tax in British Columbia. So if they want to use money that's dedicated to highways construction, rehabilitation or whatever, the money is already there, collected from the motorists of this province, yet not going there but going into general revenue. So if they want to dedicate money to highways, they have the money already collected. Last year they collected $585 million in fuel taxes from the motorists of this province. That money would pay more than three-quarters of the estimated budget for the Highways ministry this year. On top of that, they've collected $240 million and anticipate collecting $253 million this current fiscal year from motor vehicle licensing permits -- again, money collected from the motorists of this province. We've collected $33 million this year from the Coquihalla Highway, and they're forecasting $34 million next year.
If that money had been dedicated to the Ministry of Transportation and Highways, it would more than pay for the current year's estimates, including the money they're planning to spend through the Build B.C. program that they're setting up this year with a $100 million start-up fund. The moneys in the transportation component from people paying fuel tax, licences and other taxes are already paying the costs of the ministry. Why, then, do we have to milk the people of this province for another 1 cent per litre? Fifteen minutes ago you told us that the reason you're putting on the 1 cent is that we need it to dedicate funds for the building of highways in the province. You've already collected large sums; this is only a small dribble compared to what you're already taking out of the taxpayer's pocket.
Also, if the Island Highway were to cost $1 billion, as the minister has commented in the past year when I've asked questions about it, the interest on that money at 5
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percent, which is a pretty good interest rate, would work out to $50 million a year. If you don't compound it -- you're not going to pay off all of the $1 billion in one year -- then the interest is precisely the amount of money you will collect from a 1-cent-per-litre fuel tax. In other words, all you would be able to do is pay off the interest charges on the loan to build the project. You would not be paying down the principal, and you would not have money available for any other project in the province.
That brings me to my next concern, which is that as a political entity, rather than as a necessary financial entity, this particular project will allow the government to buy votes in the next election. By the time they get this whole thing built up, they'll have started a magnificent roadbuilding program with the money that supposedly is in Build B.C. but is actually another BS fund. They will then embark on a great highways building project to show people how marvellously they're doing. In the process, they'll bankrupt the province and, when they lose office, leave the next government with the problem of cleaning up the mess. We've heard over and over again ad nauseam in the last year and a half what a mess was apparently left by the previous administration, and that's why this particular government is having to give it to people in the province now -- "It was their fault." We don't want to be put in the same position down the line. We want proper fiscal responsibility now, not three and a half years from now, when we turf this government out and bring in responsible government.
Interjection.
D. Symons: The member to my left, who's actually on my right politically, says it won't be that long. We can only hope, for the sake of this province, that he's correct.
An Hon. Member: Only 931 days left.
D. Symons: Counting the days -- very good.
If we look at the figures, we can see the sort of thing that's happening here. The total expenditure budgeted in the 1991-92 estimates for the Ministry of Transportation and Highways was $1,270,851,000. Moving to 1992-93, the last Highways budget by this particular government, we find that they cut the vote to $822,849,000 -- let's say $823 million. And what are they budgeting for this year? We find the figure is $762 million. Year by year, under this government, the Ministry of Transportation and Highways has reduced its expenditures. At the same time they've cut back in capital construction to almost nil. They are now bringing in a new Crown corporation so they can start up what they stopped, and they've reduced the expenditures in here. We're finding that it's simply a bookkeeping trick or a hocus-pocus shell game by removing things from the ministry estimates which, I repeat, used to -- until now and until this bill -- receive scrutiny by this House. We can go down the page and see where they are spending it, why they are spending it, whether they are increasing it or decreasing it, and how the money is being spent. That's what the whole estimates procedure, which we will be going through in the next month or so, does. This money and a large sum of money from the Ministry of Transportation and Highways will no longer appear under those circumstances. They will appear under a Crown corporation, which is a power unto itself.
[3:00]
Hon. Speaker, as you may gather from the concerns that I've raised, I have serious doubts as to whether the imposition of another level of bureaucracy in this province will serve the purposes which this bill appears to address in its introductory sections. Basically, tolls and increases in gasoline taxes are more taxes on the people of British Columbia.
H. Giesbrecht: How are you going to vote?
D. Symons: How are we going to vote on it? You'll have to find out when we get to that stage. I assure you that we will be looking after the interests of the people of this province when we vote on it.
We find as we examine it that the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council will establish a committee on building British Columbia's future, as it's called. I assume it will be the Minister of Finance and some other ministers who will form that committee. We'll have another committee.... By the way, the committee is going to provide advice to the executive council -- that is, to cabinet -- respecting appropriate economic, regional, sectoral, equity, employment and training goals for government spending. I would hope that these things are already taking place. I would hope that's part and parcel of what being cabinet and a responsible executive council for this province has meant all along, and that it's not suddenly coming in as some grandiose new thing in Bill 3.
We also find that they are going to have an opening balance of $100 million. That will not even replace what they've taken out in this one year -- let alone in the previous year -- from Ministry of Highways capital spending. So it's a very modest beginning.
However, as we read further on, we find that they will have borrowing authority. There's a section here that I was rather intrigued by, because it talks about the limits of borrowing. I'm just flipping pages to find "Borrowing powers." Then we have "Sinking funds" and "Limit of outstanding debt." It's got this heading, "Limit of outstanding debt," and as I read it I find no limits. In fact, section 25(2)(d) says "...adding or subtracting other amounts as prescribed by the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council." Let the cabinet decide. They can increase the debt or decrease it; they can do whatever they want with it. How on earth they can call it "Limit of outstanding debt," I'm not quite sure. That seems to be a bit of semantics; it's certainly a play on words.
What we have in this bill, then, is a sham. It's nothing more than a hoax on the people of British Columbia in order to increase the provincial deficit in a sneaky way that will not appear as direct debt or as a $10 billion debt, which we currently have on the books. It has been increased by 59 percent in the last two years of this
[ Page 5136 ]
government. The deficit will be even more when you take into account that they are going to be spending money through this Crown corporation. It will not appear as that direct debt but will be included in the indirect debt, and therefore will be part of the 28 percent increase in the debt of this province during the term of this government. They've been in office less than two complete years, and look what's happened to the province already. They're trying to do it in another way, and it's a sham.
I will conclude by saying that this bill is not what it is purported to be. This bill is simply a shell game perpetrated on the people of this province in order to increase government spending without those people having the proper authority of the Legislative Assembly here to scrutinize that spending and decide whether it's being done in a non-political and responsible manner.
W. Hartley: I am pleased to speak to Bill 3 and about B.C. 21: our government's comprehensive economic strategy; our long-term, multi-year investment plan. The B.C. 21 initiative is one of the most creative, innovative concepts to come out of government in a long time. By accelerating investment in community infrastructure and social capital, and spreading out the payments over the long term, we will bring on economic renewal in communities throughout the province. This isn't a program that will benefit only certain regions of the province. Communities all over B.C. which need new schools, health centres, recreation centres, or highway, road and bridge construction will enjoy the benefits of B.C. 21.
Like so many other areas of the province, my constituency of Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows is experiencing an unprecedented population growth: 31 percent in the last five years, and growing. With that tremendous growth is a demand for services. We all expect access to education, health care and other services. Residents east of the Pitt River are no exception. The people of Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows have told me in no uncertain terms that we must maintain our high-quality health care and education services. That is why -- even faced with the calls for savage restraint from the opposition -- I was pleased to see budget increases in operating grants to hospitals, schools and colleges.
Government members know that a healthy and educated population enhances the quality of life and long-term economic performance. Having a less healthy population or a less educated workforce is no way to face the upcoming challenges of the twenty-first century. Having hundreds of children educated in portable classrooms is not acceptable. These conditions are not conducive to learning. Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows children, their families and their teachers are having to deal with that situation now. Those children are not getting the full value out of their parents' tax dollars spent on education. That is why we must find a way to accelerate the capital construction of schools and initiate a major program to replace portable classrooms with permanent facilities; and B.C. 21 does that.
There are four components of B.C. 21 that I wish to describe today. The first component of B.C. 21 -- Building Our Future is accelerated investment in social infrastructure. The government will increase its investment in construction of new facilities such as schools, colleges, health centres and courthouses. We will also launch a program to increase the number of child care spaces in the community, in schools and colleges, and in health care. These projects will create jobs in the private sector and build a healthier, better-skilled, more productive workforce. In this fiscal year the government will spend $1.42 billion on construction of community facilities, a 30 percent increase over last year, to meet the increasing demands on government services.
New residential growth concentrated in certain areas also puts new pressure on existing transportation corridors. The second component of the B.C. 21 initiative is a more businesslike approach to building new transportation corridors. Many people told us during the prebudget period that they preferred to see taxes dedicated to specific services or investments. Under our plan a new B.C. Transportation Financing Authority, with dedicated provincial revenues, will finance new highways and other high-priority transportation projects. A new 1-cent-a-litre levy on gasoline and a $1.50-a-day levy on car rentals will go directly to the new authority, starting this year.
The hon. member for Cowichan-Ladysmith, in her response to the budget, talked about the promise of an Island Highway made 30 years ago by the previous government. Well, we also have heard 20 years of Social Credit promises to address the transportation needs of people east of the Pitt River. During the last election campaign I promised relief to those thousands of commuters who sit frustrated and fuming at the Pitt River, and I assured the business people who rely on the movement of goods and services that our government would find a way to provide proper transportation infrastructure. B.C. 21 provides the way. The B.C. Transportation Financing Authority makes it possible to fast-track highway and transportation construction.
The third component of B.C. 21 is a new approach to investment. Our new focus for Crown corporations will target their activities more effectively than in the past. With B.C. 21, we will ensure Crown corporation investments are sensitive to regional needs, encourage B.C.-based business and incorporate job training and skills development for British Columbians.
The fourth component of B.C. 21 provides $100 million of new money to improve the skills of young people and to support communities with cost-shared funding for small-scale capital projects initiated at the local level. A new silviculture initiative is aimed at combining forest enhancement with a comprehensive training program and greater community participation. A new summer employment program for students will direct some of their positive energy to the development of the tourism industry at the local level.
B.C. 21 will complement the outstanding work done by the many volunteers in our communities. B.C. 21 provides for cost-sharing of local projects, greatly assisting the efforts of our good citizens. We all need to recognize the growing needs of seniors: in addition to special health and housing needs are their recreation and leisure requirements. Young people need alterna-
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tives to life on the streets. B.C. 21 can work with volunteers, service clubs and municipalities to fulfil those needs.
The B.C. 21 initiative is designed to provide both short- and long-term benefits. The package represents a direct contribution of $1 billion to the provincial economy in 1993-94. With spinoff effects, this spending will generate increased economic activity and jobs well in excess of the initial contribution. Furthermore, by focusing on infrastructure and related projects, B.C. 21 will provide significant long-term benefits. That is good news for B.C. and good news for my constituency of Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows.
To conclude, B.C. 21 is the most important part of the provincial budget: a budget where one in four British Columbians will benefit from tax reductions, and where the overall B.C. tax rate is the second-lowest in Canada; a budget where taxes are reduced for 600,000 households through a sales tax credit, where the basic homeowner grant is increased by 4 percent for most homes, and where MSP medicare premiums are eliminated for 430,000 B.C. families. B.C. 21 is a comprehensive economic strategy for the future. It complements the 1993-94 provincial budget, which sees a reduction in real per capita government spending and a deficit reduction of $415 million this year -- a 25 percent deficit reduction. B.C. 21 is an investment in our children's future to stimulate jobs in B.C. communities and to develop a strong provincial economy.
D. Jarvis: As you can probably appreciate, I'm not going to be supporting this new bill. It may be a surprise to you all. However, I look back at a few comments that have been made today and over the last few days, and then I think back to April 1990, when the hon. Minister of Finance said: "...we will, in our first budget, reduce the tax burden for all middle- and lower-income British Columbians." He never said anything about the following budgets, and here we are again -- a tax-and-spend government, and away they go. The Build BC Act is proposed by this government as an initiative for economic development. Nothing could be further from the facts.
[3:15]
This bill is ostensibly giving the government the authority to spend taxpayers' money on major building initiatives throughout this province, and it is not economic development. This is a spend program. There's a slush fund -- nothing but a slush fund. We'll see it come down the road, where they're going to build a road.... They'll probably end up going over to the area surrounding my riding, in the Westview Shopping Centre. The day the bulldozer comes down to straighten it out, I know we're into an election mode by this government. That's what they're going to do. They're going to have to protect their blatherskite member for North Vancouver-Lonsdale.
We are back to the Gaglardi politics of this province -- roads and more roads. We all remember "Flying Phil." However, the difference between then and now is that we had no extensive system of roads throughout this province then. When the Social Credit government put in those roads, in a lot of cases they were necessary in order to encourage development into the extremities of this province where our resources were, and we had to extract those resources. We are again today in a position where we have to build roads throughout this province to extract our resources; else where are we going to get the moneys to pay for all these grandiose social programs this government is putting in?
Today we have the basic infrastructure already in place, but our development and investment is slowly being discouraged. Therefore why are we putting roads into all these areas when there's already a system in place? What we require is a plan or strategy to encourage investment and development throughout our province in order to encourage business to come in to look after our resources; or to start secondary industries so they can hire our unemployed, so our unemployed can be taxed, so we can run the basic social services that are required. We are ostensibly a free enterprise province; the majority of the people in this province are free enterprise. However, there's always a certain element that cannot compete out in the free marketplace, so we have to look after them. Therefore we have to bring in more taxes to look after these people. This is not what this plan is going to be doing.
We do not need a renewal -- a slush fund -- in our highway system by a very desperate government in their sunset days. That is appearing, and the sunset days are gradually depreciating. Every day we see the life of this government slowly getting lower and lower. They are desperate to do something to attract the voters -- which will never happen. If they went to their full term, at this moment the people of B.C. will have 931 days left of this NDP government. Even at that, 931 days is a tragedy, because it's going to cost us more and more money, and we're going to be in desperate straits.
Instead of creating some type of economic development -- ostensibly by the use of this bill -- this government is just recirculating the existing taxpayers' money. Instead of bringing in new moneys to help develop this province and create taxes and jobs, they are taxing the people more, borrowing more, adding to the debt, and they call that an economic development plan.
You will hear from members of the government how creative this government is, how courageous and how wonderful this bill is. What we are doing in this bill is creating more bureaucracy and more patronage -- the hundreds of friends of the party who are being paid. As a matter of fact, how can they create any more patronage? Does this government have that many friends that they can possibly give them more jobs?
Interjections.
D. Jarvis: Probably what we're doing, sir, is recirculating their friends as well.
The next NDP speakers who get up and tell how courageous their government is are probably going to be telling the people of B.C. that the purpose of this new act is to coordinate government activities to achieve overall economic development and job-creation goals. My God, what does that mean? So we now have another bureaucratic set of people appearing on the government patronage rolls, and this is going to be their coordinat-
[ Page 5138 ]
ing committee for the government activities. What have they been doing up to now if they haven't had any coordination? It's obvious that this province is in desperate straits because this government has not coordinated what they were supposed to have done 18 months ago. What do the individual ministries do? Each ministry that is going to be involved in this new situation is a ministry that should be looking after the economic development of this province as far as their ministry's area is concerned, but not this government.
The next thing they are going to do in this bill is ensure that all regions benefit from economic diversification. I assume that this government is intending to build this new infrastructure of roads into areas in this province where we desperately need jobs in the resource areas north, east and southeast of Vancouver. If those resource industries are slowing down and closing, why do we need to put new and better roads into this area? The industry is falling apart anyway. The Elk Valley has a road system, and every day we hear of problems there: the mines are closing down; the price of coal is going down; the contracts that we had before with the Japanese and with the Koreans.... Every time the Minister of Mines goes on a trip, or every time the Premier goes on one of his Club Med tours to Southeast Asia, he comes back with either a drop in the price of coal -- this has happened twice now, $2 a tonne....
D. Streifel: What's this got to do with the bill? Will you get on the point?
D. Jarvis: We are discussing an aspect of it. Not only does the Premier come back with a reduction in price, but he comes back with a reduction in the volume of coal they're prepared to take from us. So we have to adjust.
So here we are -- we're going to build more roads into these resource areas. Yet they, in their wisdom, have said at times that the mining industry is a sunset industry. So why build more roads in those areas? Why do they need new schools? Why do they need rec centres? They're having a problem paying their taxes in those areas. The government has already sent the job protection commissioner to those areas to try to bail them out, and here we're going to spend more money on roads there.
Another purpose of this act is in section (c): to encourage public and private sector "innovative" job creation. Now if we have to build roads into the resource areas and towns that are having economic problems, what more could they possibly do that is not being done already? When I say that, I mean that we already have a Ministry of Economic Development. Why do we have to have another superministry? I wonder where this superministry is going to come from and who's going to run it? Another large patronage job is appearing on the scene.
Silviculture. The minister stood up there and said: "We are going to have a silviculture program." Oh my goodness, gracious me! Have we not been planting trees all this year and all the years before this? Is silviculture something new that the NDP government has invented? Why do we have to go out and make the people pay tolls and taxes for the silviculture industry that's already in place?
Deputy Speaker: Pardon me, hon. member, the Chair accidentally pushed the button.
D. Jarvis: Well, Mr. Speaker, I can only assume that the bells went, and that means for whom the bell tolls. It doesn't toll for thee.
Anyway, this silviculture was taken off the books just a short while ago by the Minister of Finance when he toured the province, wasting the taxpayers' money, to say: "Look, we are making budgetary savings." That's one of the things he removed, and he told people he was saving money. But no, all he was doing was pulling it back and stalling it. These moneys will have to be paid eventually because the silviculture industry is paramount to our province if we're going to have a forest resource industry. Now they're saying that this new bill is going to start a silviculture industry in this province. Well, that's a very Pecksniffian attitude, Mr. Speaker, and I think by now you know what I mean when I say Pecksniffian.
Another aspect of silviculture is: why do we have to create another superministry, through another bill, to look after silviculture when there's already a ministry set up to look after it, and that is the Ministry of Forests? Why shouldn't the Minister of Forests look after silviculture? He is responsible for it anyway. That's going to be another boondoggle, a situation where they're going to give a friend of the government another paid job and create another mini-superministry. So now we have the mixing of all the old promotions of the ministries into this new ministry -- mixing up the omelet for Mr. Bob Williams to create another portion of his slush fund.
Section 2(d) says "...promoting training and investment in people...." Well, what the hell is the Advanced Education ministry about? Isn't that what it's supposed to do: promote training and investment in people?
Section 2(e) says "...targeting...traditionally disadvantaged individuals and groups." What the heck does that mean? I assume it means that the disadvantaged individuals and groups are those in the affirmative action program, which this government so often says they are looking after -- which they should.
So we ask you: who is going to do the work? Are all the people in the affirmative action program going to be doing all the construction of the rec centres, the schools and all the rest?
Mr. Speaker, this bill also allows for tolls or charges. Well, everyone knows what tolls and charges are. They're taxes -- more new taxes. The tolls and charges they're going to bring in -- or new taxes -- are to be used on any property of this authority that they're now creating.
[3:30]
I have some more rhetorical questions. Are these new taxes for the new roads and bridges? Or are all the roads and bridges that now exist in British Columbia as well as the ones to be built going to be taxed by this tax-starved government, which has no idea how to make any money whatsoever? That's not the way to
[ Page 5139 ]
develop our country: by taxing the people who exist here. You encourage industry and development to come into the province so that if they make money, you can tax them. Not this government; these are new taxes.
[H. Giesbrecht in the chair.]
Mr. Speaker, this is another new move of this sunset government. This is not an economic plan; this is another slush fund to prepare for the next election. This is a tragic example of a socialist government that is bankrupt of any economic plan or strategy whatsoever. Building roads is not an economic plan. It was done years ago, and now this government wants to rehash an old ploy. They feel that this old ploy will expose them on a higher profile, and that the people of the province will think that they're doing something for them.
What they're doing is developing an old highway system that we already have and putting taxes on it. They're going to raise taxes on gasoline. Mr. Barlee said on March 22 that the provincial gasoline tax is probably the most draconian tax in British Columbia. Here's a minister of this government calling it another draconian tax, yet they don't listen to him, of course. He has probably never talked to Mr. Williams.
The people of this province will see through this farcical new bill that they're putting through, which is supposedly the start of their economic and development system.
D. Symons: Smoke and mirrors.
D. Jarvis: As my friend from Richmond Centre said, it's smoke and mirrors again. All they're going to do is create a debt in the next 900 days that will probably exceed $30 million.
As I said, Mr. Speaker, we have a responsible highway system that's in place now. We don't need more roads that will create more taxes. We have recreation centres and schools in place. If we need more of those types of things, that's what initiatives are for. Municipalities can put those forward, and taxpayers in those areas will pay for them.
Of course, this government is afraid of initiatives, because the people of this province voted over 80 percent in favour of the recall initiative.
An Hon. Member: What's your position?
D. Jarvis: I am in favour of recall. Most of us in our party are not afraid of recall. We're not stalling on recall like this government is.
Simply building more roads, schools and recreation centres and pretending that is an economic strategy is not a responsible way to build this province. We are just going to build another blacktop society. This will be the second blacktop society in my lifetime, and I don't think I can take it anymore.
In any event, sir, I thank you for your time and for letting me speak. I want to reiterate that I am unable to support this bad bill, which is another tax bill for the people of British Columbia.
D. Lovick: I listened with interest to the comments of the preceding speaker, and all I heard was an iteration of the words "slush fund." When I hear "slush fund, slush fund," as a substitute for reasoned debate, all I know for sure is that we are getting a snow job. Absolutely so!
This is second reading debate on the principle of the bill. All of the three or more speakers I have heard from on the other side have apparently not read the bill or paid any attention to the stated intention of it. Rather they are using this as an opportunity to castigate the government for every sin imaginable. That saddens me, because I like to think that debate in this chamber ought to be focused on the particular measure before us.
This particular measure, I would humbly suggest....
An Hon. Member: Humbly!
D. Lovick: I know that the member opposite doesn't believe that "humbly" is associated with me. But with all humility, I would offer that this is indeed an exciting measure and an interesting proposal, and it is certainly worthy of support.
I would add to that, however, that my colleagues and I are perfectly prepared to defend the measure and to explain each of the sections in detail so that we can satisfy those who have some apprehension and misgivings about what this bill might do or fail to do. I am sure that we will succeed, even beyond their wildest imaginings, in simplifying matters so they will in fact understand what it's about.
I had the pleasure the other night of going on the CBC free-time broadcast, the provincial report. I am sure all the members opposite are sorry that I didn't give them advance notice so they could have not tuned in. In any event, in that brief amount of time -- it's only four minutes and 20 seconds, as members here probably know -- I tried to give a very brief overview of B.C. 21 -- Building Our Future. The predicament, of course, is that with only four minutes and 20 seconds, one couldn't get very far in explaining what that was about. I am therefore delighted to have an opportunity today to say something about that particular measure.
The Build BC Act, Bill 3, has a very simple explanation. I want to draw to the attention of members opposite part of the bill that you perhaps haven't discovered yet. It's on the second page and is called the "Explanatory Note." Whenever you're caught and you don't have time to do elaborate research or don't have people helping you, you should simply open the bill to the second page and look at where it says "Explanatory Note," and in short form you'll discover what it's about. Now am I going too quickly for you, or did you get that? Second page, "Explanatory Note," is where, for the benefit of these folks, you'll discover that the purpose is indeed very straightforward and, I think, defensible. It says that the bill sets out a government initiative for economic development and diversification in B.C. From that, it logically follows -- I realize that's a tricky adverb for members opposite -- that you ought to measure the bill and base your criticisms on how well or effectively the bill does what it purports to do, not on
[ Page 5140 ]
whether you slept well the night before, not on whether you've had adequate attention in your respective caucus, etc. -- that huge plethora of comments we heard not too many moments ago which seemed to have nothing whatsoever to do with the bill.
Let me be serious; I don't want to just have fun with members opposite, however tempting that may be.
This bill has, I think, a good and legitimate, and indeed necessary, purpose. We are being attacked on a regular basis by members opposite for being -- I can quote some of their lines -- a government without imagination; all we do is tax and spend, etc., etc.
Interjection.
D. Lovick: I'm inviting you to offer criticism, believe me.
This is our effort to suggest ways in which we can provide some kind of economic stimulus to this province. If you listened to the Minister of Transportation and Highways, who led off the debate earlier this afternoon, you'll note that the primary raison d'�tre for this particular measure is a response to the regional reality of B.C.'s economy. Members opposite from regions in the province, like the member for Peace River, who is nodding -- I can hear him -- will recognize that it goes almost without saying that our economy is not based on one centre of activity; we are a set of regional economies. A number of us have been saying this for a very long time. We're attempting to grapple with that particular reality.
We recognize that one of the features of a regional economy as opposed to one economy -- and it's something that others perhaps haven't been so quick to pick up on -- is that it doesn't respond to the same kinds of stimuli that are normally provided by the marketplace working by itself. That's why we have the anomalous situation in B.C. today of a rather successful and buoyant and dynamic economy in the lower mainland but major problems by the time you get to Kamloops. That's the predicament. This particular piece of legislation attempts to provide some regional solutions to regional problems, and I think it's an excellent idea.
I continue to hear various sounds and emanations from the other side, some of them even in sentence form, apparently, and I want to try to understand their opposition to this. Sadly, from what I've heard, I don't think there is much. Predictably and legitimately, they're doing what opposition does -- namely, opposing -- but they're not really addressing this measure. They aren't attacking the measure and what it consists of. I propose shortly to go through an outline of the particular parts of the measure, but let me just respond by saying that in terms of what I have heard from the opposition thus far, I am amazed that there isn't any substantive argument against the philosophy, the theory, the idea, of this measure; rather it is simply an attack on the budget. They're using this measure as a means to attack the budget. They remind me of exactly what we saw in the so-called rally on the steps of the Legislature. Some of you may have seen the rally. What you may have noticed in the rally was quite interesting. Various people carried signs that were in many cases mutually contradictory, such as: "I'm for X" and "I'm for Y," which were two opposite things.
An Hon. Member: That's democracy.
D. Lovick: That's a good definition, Mr. Member Opposite. I hadn't heard that one before.
One sign there really struck me, and I loved it. The sign said: "Cut spending and cut services." The person taking part in the rally was out there for one primary purpose: to protest the fact that the service of the homeowner grant had been cut. Isn't that fascinating? Cut spending and cut services, but not my services. That is precisely the problem with the opposition and its arguments here.
The only clever and well-put arguments I heard from the opposition were from the member for Richmond Centre. I listened to him and I thought: what a well-modulated, careful, rational and reasonable statement I hear coming from him. Then I discovered he was quoting me. Amazing! What he did, of course -- and he did exactly what an opposition member should do -- was look at what government members and other folks who have been in this House for a while had said in the past and discover whether there were contradictions. I congratulate him on having the wisdom to go and look. Unfortunately, he didn't read closely enough. If he had, he would have discovered that my colleagues and I expressed reservations about the Transportation Financing Authority. We suggested an amendment that was ruled out of order on a technical point, and we voted for the measure because we recognize that, despite our reservations and all things considered, it deserves support. I would commend the same strategy to members opposite. Take a look at the document -- the bill. Find out what it actually says and what it doesn't. You may come to the same conclusion as we did.
I would also draw members' attention to the fact that one of the reasons I expressed my reservations about the apparent lack of accountability and the difficulties I had -- and I was speaking for my colleagues at the time -- with that measure was that the Transportation Financing Authority's ability to transfer money, which is what it was all about, came directly in the wake of the MacKay commission's inquiry into the Coquihalla. MacKay pointed out that with the existing accounting procedures used by the Ministry of Transportation and Highways, they didn't know. They weren't, in fact, in control of spending. They didn't have a firm hold on the public purse. That is what MacKay pointed out.
[3:45]
What I have been suggesting, ever since I have been in this chamber, is that we need to improve those procedures. I don't claim that uniquely; I think most of us have. I'm happy to note that, to its credit, the ministry has done that. They took steps, in fact, in the last government -- to give it its due. I think it's safe to say that most of commissioner MacKay's recommendations are now in place. Therefore much of the fear, reservation and concern I had in the past has been allayed by those measures. Again, I don't criticize the member opposite for what he did. But if he looks a little
[ Page 5141 ]
closer, I think he will discover that I expressed reservations, as we all should. But ultimately, after looking at it carefully, I voted for the measure. I think the measure was a good one, and I think this measure is an equally good one.
Let's look for a minute or four at this measure and what it specifically does. I think everybody knows that what it's ultimately about is building for the future. When you're dealing with difficult times now -- when you have a capital crisis and you don't have the money available -- that doesn't mean, if you're at all responsible, that you can let everything fall down. We also learned from our hon. friends in the Social Credit caucus and their past government that we don't want to make the mistake they did in '83-84 -- namely, starving the public sector -- because all of us had to pay the price for that. Highways is a classic example. The highways infrastructure in this province was allowed to fall into disrepair, and we had to pay more then for repairs to bring that infrastructure back to a level.
What we have done, then, is recognize that it is economically shortsighted in the extreme to say: "We can't afford to do anything now; therefore we'll wait until we can afford to do so." In the same way, most of us recognize that if you can't afford to buy a house now, that doesn't mean you live in the street in a tent for 20 years. Rather what you do is you find a way to take a mortgage on the future; and you recognize, of course, in doing so that you're building an asset that will effectively pay your debt and then some. That's the reality, and that's what lies behind this particular approach. We recognize, in short, that the key to becoming more prosperous in the future is to make significant investments today in the people of B.C. and in communities throughout the province. That's what B.C. 21 -- Building Our Future is really all about.
There are four components to that program -- just four, but each of them worthy of some comment. The first is accelerated investment in the social infrastructure. The second is a more businesslike approach to building new transportation links -- the transportation initiative that has been referred to by a number of members opposite. The third is a new approach to investment, making use of Crown corporations. The fourth is a new approach to training and to jobs. I recognize that only two of those initiatives are specifically addressed in this bill, and therefore one ought not to talk about all those other things as well.
The bill empowers this Legislature to create a Build B.C. special account. That's a special account that will enable us to proceed with projects and initiatives that will work towards the economic recharging and renewal of this province. The other major measure that's contained in this particular initiative is the establishment of the Transportation Financing Authority. I understand the Minister of Transportation and Highways spoke in some detail on that, so I don't need to say much, except that members like myself who come from Vancouver Island constituencies are especially interested. We recognize, given the economic prognosis and projections for the future, it will be a long time before we have a Vancouver Island Highway that deserves to be called by that name. The Vancouver Island Highway project was originally announced in 1987 by then Premier Bill Vander Zalm. Some of us said at the time that it was a pipe-dream, there was no money and what we were doing was simply engaging in show biz. Sadly, that proved to be the case, because nothing very much happened on that project.
Again, to give the government its due, nothing much could happen given the old financing authorities and mechanisms available. Therefore the previous government introduced the Freedom to Move special account, a new mechanism which enabled government then, in generic terms, to build for the future -- to do some advance planning, to set aside some money and to get the work in motion so we could look to the completion of an important and significant project like the Vancouver Island Highway project now and see work begin on it now, rather than having to wait 15 years before we could even start. That's what this transportation initiative is all about.
I think all hon. members of the House are aware that taxes are, of course, offensive. None of us likes to pay more money; we can all accept that. But people tell us they don't mind paying extra taxes as much if they know that the dollars are going for specific purposes and to specific projects. I think that's the reality. Certainly that's what our Minister of Finance heard in the pre-budgeting process.
That's precisely what we intend to do with this measure. We intend, in fact, under the B.C. Transportation Financing Authority to provide dedicated provincial revenues. Those will be used to finance highway and other high-priority transportation projects. Unlike those people who would suggest that there's something shady or shoddy or secretive about this, we have also said how we're going to do that. And we introduced the fact that there will be a new one-cent-a-litre levy on gasoline and diesel fuel, and a levy on car rentals, which will go directly to the new Authority. We have said that.
An Hon. Member: Where's the accountability?
D. Lovick: Now there's no secret in any of that. I hear a member opposite saying: "Where's the accountability?" We have the same accountability in essence as you've always had; the chamber still exists.
Interjection.
D. Lovick: No, no. When we get to committee stage, we'll deal with those specific questions. Suffice to say that you are sitting here today in the chamber debating this measure. You have a chance to raise the question specifically. The minister who closes debate will respond to your questions. You also have the reality of public accounts, of which, as my friend from Richmond well knows, the immortal Gladstone once said: "...had the responsibility to account for every penny, even to the uttermost last farthing." You still have those responsibilities and opportunities. Please don't pretend for a moment that somehow this is going to be a great secret expenditure of money, and nobody will know where the money is being spent. Absolutely
[ Page 5142 ]
ludicrous; not true. Even though you may try to do some ritual chanting and convince yourselves that is true, it is not true.
The other area I want to touch briefly on is the specific Build B.C. special account, and that is....
K. Jones: Did you say Bilk B.C.?
D. Lovick: I think somebody actually said something witty across the way, Mr. Speaker, but I didn't hear it, so I'm sorry if I missed it.
The special account we are talking about is some $100 million which will be set aside to create new job opportunities and to improve training. Again to give the lie to the notion that this is somehow secretive and we aren't telling what it's really about, we have given also some very specific examples. We have told everybody what we intend to do with that special account. We talked, for example, about a silviculture initiative that includes training in forest enhancement. We made that very specific. It's not a secret.
The hon. member opposite, if I heard him correctly a few minutes ago, was suggesting: "Well, you shouldn't have to do anything with silviculture, because you've already got a Ministry of Forests." He seems, sadly, to have missed the essential point, namely that the forestry budget is very limited, as is the case with most other line ministry budgets. And therefore this creation of a special account in order to enable us to do things.
We also, under that same fund, are talking about a new housing initiative, a housing program aimed at reducing the problem of homelessness while also providing training for young people. We're not, in short, just talking about throwing money out and doing good and worthwhile things. We're also talking about getting extra value for our investment.
Similarly, we're going to put some money towards the B.C. Trade Corporation to help it develop markets for B.C. producers.
We're also looking at a program to encourage community development -- specific worthwhile and necessary projects at the community level -- by establishing a cost-share, small-scale capital program. Those, I think, are good and worthwhile things. Again the economic argument for those.... People may want to argue, and that's legitimate. There are differences of opinion, obviously. We on this side of the House accept the proposition that government can't simply sit back and wait for the private sector to miraculously do it, because lord knows, hon. Speaker, we have all the evidence in the world that we have to wait too long and also that the private sector isn't going to do it in all the areas that it needs doing in. The private sector does a number of things wonderfully well, but as any economist will tell you, it does a number of things badly indeed.
Government's role, then, is to make sure that the weaknesses and the inherent limitations of that private sector investment are somehow overcome or compensated for by some government initiative, innovation and activity. That's what this measure is about -- building our future. B.C. 21 is a good initiative, and I think it's a ray of light in what are otherwise, quite frankly, pretty dark days. Look at the federal government and its budget problems. Look at the other three budgets that have now come down across this country, and hear what's being said about each of those jurisdictions. We in B.C. are considerably better off than our brother and sister provinces across the land in terms of their budget measures. Nevertheless, members opposite want to suggest that the sky is falling and disaster is just around the corner.
[4:00]
I challenge them to look closely at this measure, to offer some real criticisms of it instead of the rather silly posturing that we've had to listen to thus far. I invite them to raise their specific questions during committee stage, because I know we can provide specific answers to those questions.
J. Weisgerber: I rise to speak against Bill 3 because it is nothing more than a measure to facilitate the capitalization of highway construction. All of the other features that have been wrapped into this bill already exist. We have for many years capitalized school construction, hospital construction and university construction. The government knows that; the members opposite know that. The reason for this bill, purely and simply, is to allow government to defer payment of the spending for highways construction onto future generations. That is the only new thing in this legislation, and that's what this bill is all about.
Interjection.
J. Weisgerber: The member for Nanaimo, perfectly humble as he is, says: "Is there something wrong with that?" There is something fundamentally wrong with it. For 125 years British Columbians have paid for highway construction as roads were built. We have a marvellous transportation infrastructure in this province. We have a transportation and highway infrastructure paid for on a pay-as-you-go basis. That is the fundamental difference.
Interjections.
J. Weisgerber: The members opposite howl in protest. But let's consider something. Over the history of British Columbia, for 125 years, there has been a tremendous building of infrastructure -- particularly over the last 40 years or so. At the end of the 1991-92 fiscal year, according to the auditor general, the entire accumulated debt of the province was under $5 billion. So if you want to charge the entire accumulated debt of the province to highway and transportation construction, then there has been a debt incurred something in the neighbourhood of $5 billion over 125 years.
Mr. Speaker, you and members of this House would know, and British Columbians should know, that in less than two years, in two budgets, this government has doubled the accumulated debt of this province. Instead of $5 billion, by the end of this fiscal year the debt of this province will be in excess of $10 billion, and the government hasn't spent a nickel on highway construction.
[ Page 5143 ]
Interjections.
J. Weisgerber: The members howl in protest, and I always know that I'm on the right track when that happens.
With the exception of the member for Nanaimo, the members opposite are all new to this chamber, so I will give them the benefit of the doubt. If they look back at estimates and budgets of previous years they would see in 1989 the budget came down with $284 million for new capital projects on highways. In 1990-1991 the budget for capital projects was over $500 million for new roads and bridges in this province. In 1991-92 the last Socred budget had $388 million in capital construction. In the first NDP budget....
Interjections.
Deputy Speaker: Order, please, hon. members.
J. Weisgerber: I knew that the volume would increase as we came to the first budget of the NDP. The first NDP budget for highway construction was $183 million, less than $200 million.
Interjection.
J. Weisgerber: The member applauds -- the first Minister of Transportation and Highways in the history of this province to applaud a reduction in his budget.
They cut the budget in half, and as the government sought to reduce its overruns for social services and other areas -- the 6 percent increase to government workers -- it cut more money out of the Highways budget. And this year the government introduced a budget with less than $100 million for capital construction. Is the government proud of an 80 percent reduction in the capital construction budget of this province?
The government has no commitment to highways; indeed, they haven't built one new road in the short time they have been in government. They have grudgingly finished some projects that were already started by the previous government, and these folks now ask us to believe that this government has some new commitment to highways construction. We are asked to believe -- after hacking and slashing the budget for two years in a row -- that this government has seen the light; they've seen the benefit of highways construction. The only thing is, they don't want to pay for it. They want somebody else to pay for it. They want another generation, another government, to have to worry about their expenditures, so they bring down a bill that will allow them -- in addition to having added $5 billion to the accumulated debt of this province in two years -- to borrow and hide another $2.5 billion dollars for construction purposes to be managed by a Crown corporation that won't even report to this Legislature, except in a perfunctory way. There is no accountability under this bill, and this government knows it.
They are seeking ways to disguise spending, to hide the size of the debt and to mislead British Columbians. They have a history of misleading British Columbians, and this bill is just one more step down the road. If this government had any commitment to the construction of highways and to regionalization, they would find the money in their budget. They would find a way to manage their budget, and they would so in the same way that it has been done for 125 years in this province.
J. Beattie: Where would we cut?
J. Weisgerber: We would cut the fixed-wage policy; we would knock $200 million off the budget; we would cut back public sector wage increases to the private sector level; and we would get rid of the Crown corporations secretariat and all the NDP patronage appointments who staff it. That would be a start. Then we would bring back some confidence into the economy of this province, and we would put people back to work and get them off welfare. That's where we would go, and that's what we would do. That's the way we would fund highways' spending in this province.
Interjections.
Deputy Speaker: Order, please. I realize that lively debate and exchange have been a tradition in this House, but it is becoming difficult to follow the debate. Please continue, hon. member.
J. Weisgerber: Earlier on the member for Nanaimo took exception to this being called a slush fund. He didn't like the reference to it being a slush fund, but that is exactly what it is. It's a $2.5 billion slush fund that this government is going to use in a futile attempt to get itself re-elected. When it looks at the public response to its budget this time around, surely even this government will understand that it will take a lot more than $2.5 billion -- borrowed and mortgaged in the future -- to get them re-elected. They have demonstrated so clearly to the people of British Columbia that they can't manage the finances of this province.
Hiding $2.5 billion and letting Bob Williams use it to manage your re-election is not going to be nearly enough. It won't even go a bit of the way. What you should do with it -- if you're looking for advice -- is pick out four, five or six seats that you could win again and pump all the money into those. That is the only hope any of you have for being back here again.
In listening to the debate in the House, the member for Nanaimo always provides some stimulus, some quotable quotes if you like. I particularly liked his notion that British Columbians were not getting a slush job; they were getting a snow job. I thought that was bang on, because that is clearly what this bill is: a snow job designed to hide another $2.5 billion in government debt. Add that to the $5 billion in debt that this government has accumulated in two short years, project it for another two more years of this government, and you will see the debt at $15 billion dollars. We're going to be in almost exactly the same shape, after four years of this government, as Saskatchewan is in today. And I'll tell you what: the people of British Columbia understand this. They understand the damage being done to our economy. They understand that a debt is
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being accumulated which is not going to be paid by this government but will be passed off to future generations, and that it's being done in a formal way of deferring payment. It's a method that allows the government to do some quick spending to try to calm the turmoil in B.C. and demonstrate that they're doing something other than simply running up a huge deficit.
We haven't heard anybody explain how a one-cent-per-litre gas tax and $1.50 a day from car rentals is going to service a $2.5 billion debt. There's a little bit of a gap there, folks. In case none of you have sat down with pen and paper to try to calculate how much gasoline British Columbians would have to consume and how many cars we would have to rent in order to service a $2.5 billion debt, it boggles the mind. It is again, to quote the perfectly humble member for Nanaimo, part of the big snow job. It's a little bit of a side issue. We're going to put this little bit of money into this huge debt and somehow believe that a Crown corporation is servicing its debt? Nonsense. The taxpayer, the government of British Columbia, will be the major contributor to the repayment of that money. The member nods his head; the member knows that it's true.
[4:15]
D. Lovick: Ramsey, would you buy a used car from that guy?
J. Weisgerber: At the rate taxes are going, the member for Nanaimo's colleague will be lucky to buy any kind of an automobile. British Columbians are being taxed and taxed and taxed. They're being taxed on automobiles when they buy them. They're being denied a tax credit when they trade in a vehicle that they've already paid taxes on. They see sales tax increases on vehicle repairs. We see, in this bill, an admission of defeat by the government. We have seen the government admit that it can't balance its budget, that it has no hope of ever balancing its budget.
To again quote my friend from Nanaimo: "Balancing the budget is nonsense; no one should even try to balance the budget."
Interjection.
J. Weisgerber: The member has had a bit of a memory lapse. It was last week that he was waxing about how nonsensical it is to even try to balance the budget. The member now wants to forget.
This government has acknowledged that it can't balance its budget; it has acknowledged that it can't manage the affairs of this province; so it has set about establishing a Crown corporation to borrow and hide its debt. All that this bill represents is a futile attempt by a Minister of Finance who didn't understand the reaction he would get from homeowners around British Columbia when he started to take away the homeowner's grant, when he started an attack on home-ownership in British Columbia. That same Minister of Finance does not understand the implications of what is proposed in this bill. And the poor Premier, we find out, only got a look at the budget three days before it was tabled, so we can't hardly blame him. He didn't have any involvement in the budget. Undoubtedly he had no involvement; we're going to give him the benefit of the doubt and imagine that he had no involvement in this decision either.
Mr. Speaker, I'm going to vote against Bill 3. I expect the members of the Social Credit caucus will also, and I expect the members of the Liberal caucus will. I hope that any of you in the NDP ranks who has an independent thought in your head will go back and have another look at this bill and then join my friend from Matsqui in voting against this most unacceptable piece of legislation.
J. Pement: I'm rising in support of Bill 3, the Build BC Act. It really surprises me that the member opposite is going to vote against this bill, because it is his area of the province that will benefit from this bill. It is the regions in the north of this province that will benefit from this bill. I am also equally surprised that the official opposition cannot see beyond the southern portions of our province. I would suggest that they do look up to the north and out to the interior and think in terms of what this bill can do for this province. This is a good-news bill; this is good news for British Columbia. And this is a good-news bill for Bulkley Valley-Stikine, and I am looking forward to the implementation of this bill and the initiatives that will come forward for some sustainable development in our communities and for some sense of future for workers and community members in Bulkley Valley-Stikine.
Hon. Speaker, the regions particularly in the north have been important contributors to British Columbia's economy in the past, and they are even now and will be into the future. It has been through resource extraction and hydroelectric development that our communities have been developed. Unfortunately, past governments have not recognized that to have a good economy we have to also have the word "sustainability" with it. It is unfortunate because our communities in the north and in the interior of this province are beginning to go through some restructuring in their industries and through some transitional times that I think have not been recognized by the members of the opposition at all. When they speak against this bill, they don't recognize what's happening in the communities of the north and the interior. They don't recognize that the past government's policies haven't provided sustainability to these industries. It was open season on our forests, it was open season on our mineral resources and open season on hydro development -- to the point that they forget what happened to the communities that were involved. They forget that the communities of the Columbia, the communities of the Peace and the communities around Ootsa Lake, for instance, did suffer from some of the development of megaprojects in the province.
I think it's time that we recognized some of the difficulties that these communities have, and Bill 3 will help these communities in terms of projects and in terms of skills acquisition. It will help these communities to start developing again and to continue to be thriving communities. These communities of the north and in the interior did provide wealth and continue to
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provide wealth. These communities have grown and people want to stay in our communities now. People aren't leaving to retire outside of the community, and our young people are now beginning to look for work within their community. Our communities have grown in the sense of culture and social well-being, and also with some firm economic basis. But there's a "but" there, and that goes back to the fact that we have to look at the restructuring that is happening, and we have to recognize that our communities are in a transitional time. This government has recognized that these communities are in transition, and this bill is going to help with that transitional time.
It really surprised me when the member in the official opposition said: "We don't want any more community projects or any more community facilities." Well, I'll tell you, in my constituency we do want some facilities, we do want some projects and we do want some construction. I'll tell you about the village of Telkwa, which is looking at developing a larger fire hall. They are looking for some assistance in that area to provide jobs, to provide a facility and to provide a service.
Burns Lake and Houston are two communities which are looking at further buildings for colleges. These communities want to enlarge the colleges, because people are becoming more involved in training and education. Those communities want to see these projects go, and this bill will allow this to happen. It really surprises me that the members opposite don't want to see these communities thrive. These are people who are supposed to have been community leaders at one time and who worked for these sorts of things. They're not there with us now, and they're going to vote against it. What a surprise!
This bill also has a Build B.C. special account. This account will start off with a balance of $100 million and will help long-term investment, with skills acquisition and projects. I find it important that we recognize that skill acquisition has to be part of our future development. If we don't have people prepared with some background in skills that we need for the future, we're in trouble. We have to recognize what technologies are going to come in in forestry and in mining that will enhance development. We have to ensure that these people have some further job skills training.
Also, I'm really excited about this part of the bill in terms of the silviculture projects that will be coming up. I know that the people in my communities will be very interested in any of the silviculture projects not only for the enhancement of the forests but also for the jobs that will be created with silviculture.
The naysaying from the opposite side surprises me again -- that they will not recognize the value of such projects. We are also always looking for further infrastructure initiatives.
Interjections.
J. Pement: The members opposite are howling; it's their turn to howl because they know this is a good bill. They have to vote against it. They have to go with their party, vote against this bill and not stand up for their communities. It really surprises me.
Infrastructure initiatives are going to be really important to Bulkley Valley-Stikine -- Highway 16 being one, which is the Yellowhead cross-Canada highway, and, more importantly, Highway 37, which the members opposite in the official opposition don't know anything about. Highway 37 goes from Hazelton to Atlin. There are lots of projects to be done there, and we're looking forward to some influx in that area as well.
Our community leaders in Bulkley Valley-Stikine have been asking for a long time. Even with the past government, which is now the third party, they asked for some of these projects to come in and asked for some influx. I'm pleased that this government actually listened to the regions and to the north. No other prior government has done that. They just focused in on their own big business pals, and that was about it.
I think, too, that this government has shown responsibility and accountability with this bill by adding the committee structure to develop criteria and give advice to cabinet on what type of applications, money and projects are going to be important to our communities. I don't think it's patronage to have projects happen in my communities. I think that the members opposite have somehow lost a little common sense, because this is only going to enhance communities such as Vanderhoof, Fort St. James, Fraser Lake and, in my constituency, Burns Lake, Smithers, Dease Lake and Telegraph Creek.
Hon. Speaker, let's look at what this committee can do in terms of setting up criteria, being accountable to the Legislature and the cabinet and having a set of procedures for communities to know what is possible to access the money that is set aside. That has never happened with other governments that we've had. It has been a case of: whoever has their foot in the door gets in. Now we're going to have some procedure and criteria, and I think those are really important. It's important for our communities to know how they fit into the scheme.
I'm really happy that we're fast-tracking the infrastructure, because it's going to be very important -- the transportation side of our constituencies and the regions -- in order to have better trade and better business within our areas. If we upgrade our highways or have new highways, it's going to enhance that situation. This bill looks to the future of our communities and develops a climate for investors to come into.
[4:30]
I think it's an innovative approach to looking at the way that the financing plan for highways is set up. It surprises me when the members opposite say that they're the only ones who can figure out a budget or a financing plan. This government has set up a way to deal with the infrastructures, to bring up our highway systems to a higher level and to pay for them at the same time. I applaud the government's approach. I think it's great; it's a super thing to have happen.
Crown corporations. Why shouldn't they invest in the north? Why shouldn't they invest in the regions and in the interior of the province? Again, I'll go back to
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hydro development. Many communities were affected -- and unfortunately adversely -- as those developments occurred. I think that Crown corporations should focus on sustainable development in the regions. Jobs, skills, construction -- any sort of project that will bring some work into our communities is welcome. I would think that the members opposite wouldn't shy away from projects going into their community.
This bill is really going to enhance the communities in Bulkley Valley-Stikine. Our communities have withstood quite adverse times in the last while. They need to see some sort of plan. This plan will bring the development that they're looking for.
I chair a RAC -- a regional advisory committee -- right now, and that committee is working toward developing an investment portfolio. They will be looking for projects from this bill. They have quite a few projects on tap that they have been looking at. They have some more that they would like to have the opportunity to bring forward. I think this bill will do that for them. It will at least allow them to have the opportunity to see if they can bring some projects forward. They will have to prioritize. We all recognize that we all want everything, but we're going to have to learn to prioritize and decide which are the most important to go for. The members of that committee are willing to do that kind of work. They're willing to prioritize and to work hard in order to invest in their community. They're willing to invest their time, and they're also willing to help projects off the ground in any way they can. It's sort of sad that the members opposite can't support that type of work by supporting this bill.
I'm really excited about this bill. I feel that we are going to do some great things for our communities. I think we're going to build a base for our communities to work from which hasn't really been there. In the past we've had great wealth from the forests and other resources of the area, but now we know we have to use better methods of extracting from our forests. In that process we're going to look at a smaller industry -- not a sunset industry, as some would think. This bill will provide the base to help us transcend into value-added or other diversifications -- other technologies and other areas of manufacturing.
L. Fox: It's a dream.
J. Pement: Well, you have to start off with a dream, and this is the solid base that's going to make that dream happen, as far as I'm concerned. I've been in the north many years -- I hate to say how many; it's about 35-plus.
An Hon. Member: Plus how much?
J. Pement: We'll let you figure out how much. But I'm really proud of the area that I'm from -- proud of the people and proud of the country. It's beautiful country. We need very desperately the initiatives that are going to come out of this bill, because I want my children to stay in the community that they're in right now. I'm lucky, all my children are in the community and are working well within that community. I want to see them remain and my friends' children remain because they want to and because the jobs are there. Bill 3 will do that. It's really disheartening that the members opposite will vote against the future of my children.
P. Ramsey: I'm pleased to rise to speak on second reading of Bill 3, the Build BC Act. In listening to the member for Bulkley Valley-Stikine and to some of the heckling from the members opposite, I have to say: this must be a hard situation for you guys. I mean, here's something that you'd love to be able to vote for. You'd like to be able to vote for something that says we're going to build B.C. You know that this is going to take some measures that are going to develop economic opportunities around this province. So you've got a lot of envy there and a little bit of jealousy. The third party, I know, recognizes that they were here at one time, and they probably would have liked to have done similar things. Now you get to watch us do it. What can I say, guys? Eat your heart out.
I'm pleased to rise and speak in favour of Bill 3, the Build BC Act. I guess one reason I'm most pleased to speak in favour of it is that B.C. desperately needs building at this time in our history. We have in this province -- as other members have said -- two B.C.'s. We have an interior B.C., where I'm from and where some members opposite are from, and we know the problems that the resource-dependent communities of the interior face. We know that some are faced with a depressed world market for their product -- whether it's the oil industry or the grain industry up in the Peace country or the pulp industry where the member for Prince George-Omineca and I are from. We're faced with some really severe problems. We're faced with a lack of economic diversification. We have one-industry towns and, in some cases, one-industry regions.
We have a different problem, as you know, in the lower mainland. We may have too little development and, in some cases, perhaps too few resources and people in the interior. On the coast we sometimes have too many. People are flocking to B.C. because relative to other provinces we're doing well. In the midst of all that doing well, we need to recognize that we still have severe economic difficulties. We still have unemployment in this province at double-digit levels. We still have 300,000 people in this province who have to depend on income assistance for basic food and shelter. That's not a happy situation. We can do better as a province; we must do better as a province.
Bill 3 is a package of measures. The B.C. 21 initiative will address some of these pressing issues both for the resource communities of the interior and for the superheated population growth of the lower mainland.
One of the difficulties we face as government is that we must do this building of British Columbia at a time of considerable economic difficulty for us as a provincial government. We're faced, as we all know, with the deficit, which we're trying desperately to get under control. When this government was formed 18 months ago we were faced with a deficit approaching $2.5 billion; we were faced with a financial situation where spending had been increased at 10 and 12 percent a year
[ Page 5147 ]
for year after year in an attempt to buy an election -- an attempt that simply didn't work. Here we are faced with this situation of a recession for some of the basic products on which our economy depends. We're faced with record levels of unemployment, welfare at record levels, and a limited government ability to address them.
Quite frankly, in its last years of government the third party abandoned whatever reputation it had for fiscal prudence, threw caution to the wind, spent us into a hole and then went to its rich reward in its six remaining seats. That's where it will remain, I suspect, for the remainder of its existence as a party.
We need to build a new B.C., and we need to build it in a way that recognizes that government has limited resources to build it. I'm not going to talk about the budget today; we've had a lot of talk about our budget in the past week in this chamber. I want to talk about the specific ways that we, as a province, might try to encourage economic growth. I want to talk about three ways that have been tried in this province in the past with varying degrees of success.
The first is the traditional conservative way -- call it laissez-faire, for lack of a better name; I see some adherents of it over on the Liberal benches -- which essentially means that the way to build the infrastructure that we need for economic growth is to wait and eventually, by some magic osmosis, private capitalism will take over, growth will occur, benefits will trickle down, government will take what it gets, and then it will turn around and invest it in roads, colleges, schools, hospitals and so on. The only problem with that is that we simply can't wait that long, and it simply doesn't work that way anymore.
We must deal with planning, not consequences. As a government, we are elected to make plans, not to simply sit around and wait for the consequences of others' initiatives. So while that may be a delightful thing to contemplate.... "We'll simply stay around. Eventually somebody will invest in this province. We won't have to do anything with taxes. Revenues will automatically go up, and then we can do the things we need to do to train our people, to build our infrastructure, to develop sound economies, both in the interior and on the lower mainland."
Adherence to the laissez-faire way of economic growth has been more in lip service than in actuality in this province for many, many years. Quite frankly, the previous government didn't follow that policy either. They followed a second way of trying to develop economic growth, and at their best they thought they were very good at it. Call it the way of the megaproject. Another way the government could, of course, build economic growth is to invest heavily in one or two large structures, subsidize private industry heavily in developing that, and somehow build jobs and an economy through massive investments of taxpayers' dollars, at lot of which flows into private corporations.
This is essentially what happened, of course. My favourite example of this is northeast coal, located just a few short miles and a mountain range away from my home.
L. Fox: It contributed a lot to the economics of Prince George.
P. Ramsey: The hon. member opposite says it contributed a lot to the economics of Prince George. And he's right, it did. The previous government built an entire town.
L. Fox: And you closed it down.
P. Ramsey: It ripped the top off a couple of mountains. It built a railway, punched tunnels through....
Deputy Speaker: On a point of order, the Minister of Municipal Affairs.
Hon. R. Blencoe: Hon. Speaker, I've been in the House a few minutes, and while I recognize that heckling is a normal part of this procedure, I'd like you to bring the member for Prince George-Omineca to order. He should listen perhaps, and maybe learn something. We'd all like to listen.
Deputy Speaker: Hon. member, I don't believe that is a point of order. We've engaged in some very lively exchanges. Perhaps the members would all bear in mind that the hour is drawing nigh when we have to adjourn, and a little more moderation would be useful in continuing the debate. Please carry on, hon. member.
P. Ramsey: The other problem with the megaprojects is that, quite frankly, they almost enhance the boom-and-bust cycle of our resource communities in the interior. Northeast coal looked very good for a while, and currently looks considerably bad.
[4:45]
The final reason we simply can't allow the megaproject mentality anymore is that we simply can't afford it as a government. The recent analysis of northeast coal by a group at Simon Fraser said that the net cost of that project to this province was $2.4 billion that would never be recovered.
L. Fox: Give the whole story.
P. Ramsey: That is the bottom line, hon. member. That is the whole story.
So, for my part, I'm proud to be a member of a party and a government that says: "We reject the laissez-faire, trickle-down approach to economic development. We don't think we can afford the vast megaproject approach in this province anymore. What we need is a package of appropriate tools for government to use in order to stimulate economic growth." That, hon. Speaker, is what is contained in B.C. 21, and that is what is contained in Bill 3.
Let's look at some of the elements of these appropriate tools; I call them that because I think that's what they are. First, this plan clearly recognizes that one of the bases of economic growth is government-paid-for infrastructure. As part of B.C. 21, we will be accelerating our investment in colleges and schools. I know that
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the member for Prince George-Omineca and I share a city where many of these initiatives will be welcomed. Whether it's replacing the portables that dot the outside of too many elementary and secondary schools in Prince George, tearing down the portables that have served the College of New Caledonia well for 25 years, upgrading Kelly Road Secondary School in my riding or building a new elementary school in his riding, these are the kinds of initiatives we need to build infrastructure.
Interjections.
Deputy Speaker: Order, please. I wonder if the hon. members would allow the member who has the floor to continue his remarks with fewer interruptions. Proceed, hon. member.
P. Ramsey: The second element in the B.C. 21 proposal is to turn Crown corporations into what they were designed to be. They have an enormous economic impact on the parts of the province in which they operate. They have an incredible potential for long-term economic benefits. We need to channel those benefits for maximum impact, particularly in the small communities of our province. They must not be just corporations. They must be corporations, of course; but they must be more than that. They must be corporations that -- as their name says -- serve the Crown and the people of this province. That's what this program will turn them into.
The third tool is the Build B.C. special account, which is set off with $100 million for silviculture, small capital projects, investment in people and training, and economic initiatives.
Interjection.
P. Ramsey: The member opposite asks what effect this has on silviculture budgets elsewhere. The Forests ministry budget is untouched this year. I think the member knows that. This is a new initiative for a great need in his -- and my -- part of the province: the need to enhance our forest resource. Another need, which I spoke of earlier, is to address the fact that 300,000 people in this province have to depend on social assistance for food and shelter. Let's put those two needs together and see whether we can build something for the land base and the people of this province. I think we can.
Finally, the Build B.C. special account can invest in small capital projects. I can think of many of them in my part of the province. The Lheit Lit'en people, one of the first nations of our province and a proud people, are looking at an exciting tourism initiative. They want to build a traditional village on the site of one of their first villages in the heart of Prince George near Hudsons Bay Slough, just across from Fort George Park. They had quite a different name for it. The initiative is going to require some capital, and I would hope that the Build B.C. special account is one source they might turn to as they look towards building what I think will be an exciting recognition of their heritage and their contribution to our province, and a way of building their own economy and contributing to the tourism economy of the central interior. There's a variety of similar proposals to enhance cultural activities in Prince George: a new art gallery, for example, and perhaps a cost-shared initiative for a museum at the University of Northern British Columbia. Once again, these are initiatives that I think deserve all of our support.
The final tool that our Build B.C. Act contains is, of course, the B.C. Transportation Financing Authority. I must say, I was amazed to hear the Leader of the Third Party say that this was somehow a measure that he couldn't support. As he pointed out, for over a hundred years this province has relied on amortization as a way of building needed infrastructure in this province. What makes highways so unique? If we're going to do it for the school authority, if we're going to do it for the hospital district financing authority -- which the previous government established -- what makes highways so unique?
Interjections.
[The Speaker in the chair.]
P. Ramsey: Here we have representatives of a government which formed the previous administration, which vastly overspent its operating budget on highways....
An Hon. Member: Right up front where everybody could see.
P. Ramsey: The hon. member says that this was spent right up front where everybody could see it. I urge him to read the history of management and mismanagement of the Coquihalla project -- the deceit, the deception, the hidden costs and the overruns which nobody knew about until long after the fact -- and then the scapegoating of the former member for Cariboo that took place, which you and I know well.
I think we have a better way of building highways, and a way that respects the fact that this province is in difficult economic times. It says: let's identify some clear sources of revenue for a financing authority -- sources that depend on those who use the highways -- and let's give that financing authority the ability to prioritize projects and build the infrastructure that we need, both in the lower mainland to handle the increased population, and throughout the province to deal with the need for an improved transportation system.
So we have in this bill tools which can be used to build B.C.'s future. These are practical tools designed for difficult economic times. These are tools which we can use in the next three years to build the sort of economy in the interior and on the coast that we want for ourselves and our children. I grant you it's not a 50-year Liberal pipe-dream; but practical, hard tools that I think I can support, that I think the people of my riding support and that I think will serve the people of British Columbia well.
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I move that this debate be adjourned to the next sitting of the House after today.
Motion approved.
The Speaker tabled the second interim report of the constituency allowance review, submitted by the Hon. Ted Hughes.
Hon. D. Zirnhelt: I would like to advise the House that there will be a sitting tomorrow at 2 o'clock. With that, I'd like to move adjournment until tomorrow.
Hon. D. Zirnhelt moved adjournment of the House.
Motion approved.
The House adjourned at 4:55 p.m.
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