1994 Legislative Session: 3rd Session, 35th Parliament
HANSARD

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.

Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

(Hansard)

WEDNESDAY, JULY 6, 1994

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 17, Number 10

[ Page 12811 ]

The House met at 2:08 p.m.

A. Warnke: It is my pleasure to introduce to the gallery today, in addition to my wife Geraldine, her sister Marilyn Patricia Byers of Thornhill, Ontario, and also her son James Willcock, who is exhibiting work at the Community Arts Council of Vancouver this week through Saturday. Would the House please make them very welcome.

J. Sawicki: It is my pleasure today to welcome some relatives from Fort St. John -- actually, the constituency of the member for Peace River North. They are Kent and Erla Billey and their children, Sabrina and Brennan. I would ask the House to make them welcome as they enjoy their visit to the Legislature today.

Hon. P. Priddy: It is a pleasure for me today to introduce to the House a group of people, some of whom have been part of my life before. I think that all of us learn from people who have shared our lives, and a lot of my learning has come from spending time with people with disabilities and their friends and family.

The people whom I would like to introduce are here today to meet with my colleague the Minister of Social Services. They are: Jane Donegani; Ralph White and his daughter Dessa, who will be joining them; Jeff Moulins and his friend Janet; Al Etmanski; Jeanette Holder; Claudia Meyerman; and a good friend of mine, Linda Perry. Because of people like this, the lives of people with disabilities in this province are better. I ask the House to make them welcome.

D. Mitchell: Visiting in the public galleries today is a person who is very important to me. She runs my constituency office. Her name is Norma Graydon, and she wanted to come over to see the session before we adjourned for the summer. I hope she hasn't come much too early. Would members please welcome her here today.

J. Beattie: I just recently, in the last half-hour, discovered that I have four constituents visiting in the House today. They are Rick and Sina Richardson, the parents of Sabrina and Blake, and I think they are sitting up behind me someplace. Would the House please make them welcome.

Introduction of Bills

MISCELLANEOUS STATUTES AMENDMENT ACT (No. 3), 1994

Hon. C. Gabelmann presented a message from his Honour the Lieutenant-Governor: a bill intituled Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act (No. 3), 1994.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: This bill contains amendments to nine statutes: Estate Administration Act, Industrial Development Incentive Act, Infants Act, Insurance Act, Legal Services Society Act, Notaries Act, Securities Act, Tobacco Tax Act and Trustee Act. I will elaborate on these amendments during second reading.

Interjection.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: It's housekeeping, entirely.

Bill 55 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.

Oral Questions

NANAIMO DETOX CENTRE CONTRACT

L. Reid: My question is to the Minister of Health. Last week U.TV ran a story alleging that Matthew Brown was profiting from his relationship with the Nanaimo Care Unit Society. The story alleged that Mr. Brown misled officials when securing a $129,000 contract with the government for a detox centre by representing himself as an employee of the Salvation Army. Would the Minister of Health indicate whether the contract for the detox centre has been renewed, despite allegations of the misappropriation of taxpayers' money? If it has, why would the government enter into a second contract with a society whose management and financial practices are currently being questioned?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I've asked officials in my ministry to investigate the situation at the detox centre in Nanaimo, and I will be glad to share the results of that investigation with the member when it's complete.

The Speaker: The member has a further question?

L. Reid: Once the investigation goes forward, I would ask you to come back and tell this House who from the government and who from the detox centre signed the contract for the pilot project.

GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING

W. Hurd: A question for the Premier. The New Democratic Party is sending out direct mail pieces quoting various forest stakeholders concerning the government's forest plans. One of the quotes is from Peter Bentley, the chief executive officer of Canfor. I wonder if the Premier is aware that Mr. Bentley was also quoted in the New Pacific magazine as saying that the Premier "has never been a decision-maker and I think there's a great element of doubt that he leads the government and that he's Premier other than in name." My question to the Premier is: why is the government quoting Mr. Bentley in its forest renewal ads when clearly his impression of the Premier's leadership skills doesn't match up with the forest renewal information that is being peddled by the government?

Hon. M. Harcourt: It does indeed come as a great shock to me that Peter Bentley would say something negative about a New Democratic Premier. I might say that I did not ask for, nor do I expect, Mr. Bentley's vote or campaign contributions, which the leaders of the opposition parties are probably now wooing him for. All I asked Mr. Bentley to do is participate in the Forest Sector Strategy Committee and to participate in putting together one of the most imaginative and innovative forest renewal plans anywhere in the world. Mr. Bentley can say whatever he wants about me personally, but he said that this is the first government in 40 years that has been willing to look at the long term of our forests.

[2:15]

The Speaker: Supplemental, hon. member.

[ Page 12812 ]

W. Hurd: I am certainly glad the Premier talked about campaign contributions, because this fundraising letter -- sent out under the name of the Minister of Forests -- was dated June 1. It invites $100 and $500 contributions to the New Democratic Party. What kind of government would send out a partisan fundraising letter and tie it to a partisan advertising campaign paid for by the taxpayers of British Columbia?

Hon. M. Harcourt: I would dearly love to invite the hon. member for Surrey-White Rock to a real fundraiser at the Pink Pearl Restaurant at $25 a ticket for a 13-course Chinese banquet. Those are the kinds of fundraisers that I like to put on, unlike the big corporate machine over there that invites people to beam in from around the province, at $175 a crack....

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order, please, hon. members. I presume this reflects on the imminent closure of the Legislature, but we still have some time to go yet.

EFFECT OF BILL 44 ON WAGE EARNERS

J. Weisgerber: My question is to the Minister of Finance. Last night we passed Bill 44, which dealt with amendments.... [Applause.] Just a minute, you may not be as happy. It dealt with amendments to taxation acts. The effect of that was to put government tax collectors ahead of wage earners in bankruptcy proceedings. Will the minister confirm that that is the position of her government -- that indeed taxes should come ahead of employee wages and other benefits?

Hon. E. Cull: I would be glad to invite the Leader of the Third Party to join with this government in urging the federal government to reform its bankruptcy laws so that they are fair.

The Speaker: Supplemental, hon. member.

J. Weisgerber: It is indeed incredible that this government would put tax collection ahead of workers. In 1992 the federal government recognized how inappropriate the practice was, and it made amendments to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. This government has changed that with the shameful bit of legislation that was brought in in the middle of the night last night.

Hon. E. Cull: Since banks are ahead of everybody, I'm sure the Leader of the Third Party will be there along with me urging that that change be made as well.

PROPOSED LEGAL AID SYSTEM CHANGES

J. Dalton: I have a question for the Attorney General. As a result of the Attorney General's mismanagement of the legal aid system, legal aid lawyers are now boycotting it and not taking any new clients for July. The criminal courts of this province will grind to a halt as a result of this. There will be a gridlock, and it's the responsibility of this Attorney General. At the same time, the Attorney General is trying to find $9.7 million to fund his untested public defender proposal. How does the Attorney General defend spending public money in order to produce less service for the public?

Hon. C. Gabelmann: I think I heard several questions. I'll answer the first question and then see whether the member has any further ones.

There are about 3,000 lawyers in British Columbia who provide legal aid to the Legal Services Society -- which, I should remind the member, is independent of government. There are about 500 members of the Association of Legal-aid Lawyers of B.C., leaving about 2,500 other lawyers who are still available to do the work they always do.

The Speaker: Supplemental, hon. member.

J. Dalton: I think it's also noteworthy that the Attorney General's miscellaneous bill -- another one -- contains some amendments to the Legal Services Society Act. The Attorney General has appointed the directors who are pushing this untested plan, and his government is going to cut the cheques in order to implement it. Will the Attorney General stop playing politics with the legal aid system so that the public can be assured that people accused of crimes are not walking the streets, but are being processed in due course?

Hon. C. Gabelmann: The efforts being made at the present time are designed, in fact, to ensure that we can keep legal aid in this province. The increase in cost in the last few years created a real doubt in many people's minds as to whether that level of spending could be sustained.

The other part of the question relates to an alleged government scheme. In fact, this is a proposal of the Legal Services Society board, seven of whom are appointed by the government and seven of whom are appointed by the Law Society of British Columbia. In February of this year that board voted 12 to nothing in favour of this so-called untested scheme.

RELEASE OF REPORT ON BAMBERTON PROJECT

L. Hanson: I have a question for the Minister of Municipal Affairs. Four months ago the minister promised that the MacKay report on the Bamberton project would be released to the public as soon as it became available. Since it was completed over a month ago, can the minister explain to the House why she has not tabled it as yet?

Hon. D. Marzari: Although it's not the practice of this House or this government to talk about future practice or future policy, I would like to tell the House today that the MacKay report on Bamberton and the ministerial decision arising from that report will be available on Monday of next week.

The Speaker: Supplemental, hon. member.

L. Hanson: I might point out to the minister that there's a possibility we may not be here next week.

In any case, has the minister been keeping the report from the CVRD because she has some concerns that some of the present government's friends are involved in the development? Why won't she table it now, while the House is in session?

[ Page 12813 ]

Hon. D. Marzari: As much as this House would like to think that the business of the province closes down when the House is not in session, that is not the case.

I would like to inform this House once again that in the case of the Bamberton decision, I have done everything I possibly can and government has done everything it possibly can to ensure that normal protocols are observed and normal procedures are carried through. That is what has happened here. In due course, on Monday, the Bamberton decision and the MacKay report that goes with that will be made available in the form of a press release, and it will be available in the form of ministers having an opportunity to speak to the press. There will be a full technical briefing for anyone who wishes to participate, and I will ensure that every member of this House receives a copy of the kit that goes with the Bamberton decision.

WORKERS' COMPENSATION REVIEW BOARD CHAIR

A. Warnke: My question is to the Minister of Labour. In September 1992, Dave Van Blarcom -- another longtime NDP friend, by the way -- was appointed chair of the Workers' Compensation Review Board. While the minister has announced that Mr. Van Blarcom has resigned, apparently this NDP friend is only on leave while another government job is found for him. Is the minister aware of that? And could the minister explain why B.C. taxpayers are footing the bill for yet another NDP patronage appointment gone bad?

Hon. D. Miller: Before the members opposite engage in the all-too-easy character assassination that they do, if they have any respect for individuals in society, perhaps they would check their facts. The member is absolutely dead wrong.

A. Warnke: A supplemental to the Minister of Labour. The fact is that Mr. Van Blarcom was appointed for his NDP credentials, not for his administrative experience. As a matter of fact, it's been a mess ever since he's been running that place. Many complaints have been received as to the administrative incompetence of his leadership. Could the minister explain why this NDP friend was hired in the first place? How many more NDP friends are going to be supported by B.C. taxpayers before this government finally hires on the basis of merit and experience rather than on NDP pedigrees?

Hon. D. Miller: Well, the member opposite has simply borne out my response to his first question. The member is wrong. Mr. Van Blarcom was hired through a public competition. He won the job quite honestly.

Secondly, having debated the Liberals over WCB issues, it's all too apparent that they didn't understand them in the first place. Issues at the review board are not in a mess. The member simply has to read the annual reports to discover that.

Finally, I would repeat that it is quite easy in this House to make allegations against individuals that are not borne out by fact and to not have any responsibility for the consequences of your actions.

RELEASE OF REPORT ON PERRAULT CASE INQUIRY

D. Mitchell: I have a question for the Attorney General. The report of the Prowse commission of inquiry into the very serious Danny Perrault case has now been completed. A copy of that report is in the hands of the Attorney General. Can the Attorney General tell us if he is prepared to table a copy of that report in this House today? It is a serious matter dealing with confidence in the corrections system of British Columbia. If he is not prepared to table it today, now that it has been completed, the only possible suggestion I might make is that the Attorney General may be withholding it until later in the summer when the Legislature is no longer assembled.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: The report of the inquiry was given to me the day before yesterday. It will be released as soon as possible. I haven't even had an opportunity to brief cabinet on its contents. I intend to do that at the earliest opportunity, and I intend to have the report released at the earliest opportunity as well. One of the things I'd like to do before I release it is have it printed.

[2:30]

Hon. A. Edwards tabled the 1993 annual report of the British Columbia Utilities Commission.

Orders of the Day

Hon. G. Clark: I call committee on Bill 33.

MISCELLANEOUS STATUTES AMENDMENT ACT, 1994

The House in committee on Bill 33; D. Lovick in the chair.

The Chair: I note that there are more members here than is normally the situation, especially for a miscellaneous statutes act, and I wonder if members would like a moment to depart these premises for their other duties.

On section 1.

J. Dalton: It is appropriate that we are dealing with this amendment to the Correction Act today -- the day the Prowse report was handed to the Attorney General. As he just said, once he gets it printed he will be sharing it with us. I might remind the Attorney General that it was the official opposition who called for the Perrault inquiry. We are happy that he saw the good sense to accede to that request, and we are certainly looking forward to the results.

This investigative office is allegedly going to be independent from the corrections branch. This is an office under the Correction Act. I don't understand -- and hopefully the Attorney General can clarify -- how the office itself will be independent from the corrections branch.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: As members know, the inspection and standards branch was very much a part of the corrections branch of the ministry, thereby under the responsibility of the assistant deputy minister responsible for corrections. The decision that the House would be implementing -- should it choose to pass these amendments -- would take the inspections and standards investigations out of the corrections branch altogether and 

[ Page 12814 ]

make that component responsible to the deputy minister, but reporting to the minister of the day. It is designed to establish in the minds of the public, in a very real way, a clear separation from the corrections branch.

J. Dalton: That does indeed clarify the concern that I had over the independence. Will people who are prepared to come forward -- whether working within the system or the general public -- have the assurance that any criticism or complaints that may be directed and investigated by this office will have the protection of things such as privacy and other considerations, if need be? As the Attorney General well knows, many corrections officers were concerned about coming forward to the Prowse inquiry for that very reason. Quite frankly, I don't know that some of those concerns were properly addressed and satisfied.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: As the member knows, the inspection and standards branch regularly reviews hundreds of reports and looks at hundreds of issues every year. That will continue. I have a very clear policy in the ministry that no one will be penalized in any way for coming forward as a public servant and reporting matters that require investigation. No one has been disciplined in any way for that to date; nor will they, as long as I am responsible for this ministry.

K. Jones: You are saying that corrections officers are protected under your operation. Punishments are being meted out -- and have been over this last year -- by officers who are under the direction of your ministry. Two corrections officers have spoken out. People are being transferred from one facility to another against their wishes because of the simple fact that they spoke out and expressed a concern about the way things were being operated. How can you make that statement?

The Chair: Just an observation to the member before we proceed. Please direct your comments through the Chair rather than directly to the minister.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: Transfers and promotions are a regular feature of government life; they happen every day. No one has been transferred, demoted or disciplined in any way for simply speaking out against a particular decision -- that has not happened. In any event, that's not part of this legislation.

The legislation we're dealing with should give the member greater comfort if he has any concern about how it operated in the past, because the inspection and standards branch heretofore reported to officials within the corrections branch, and those reports went internal within the corrections branch. Now they will come to the minister, not go to the corrections branch. I think that should give greater comfort if the member has any concern that somebody might be disciplined for reporting a matter that requires public attention.

K. Jones: I've been informed just this week that actions have been taken against persons in the corrections process who, out of frustration, have spoken out. I have information from people who are representing the workers in that area that they have had people moved and disciplined. I'm asking you to make an amendment to bring in some protection for those people. When you're making it separate like this, there is also a need for some vehicle for those people to come forward without fear of reprisal.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: The member knows my position on this issue. I have stated it a few minutes ago and on a number of occasions both in the House and in the hallway. I've been quoted publicly as saying there would be no reprisals for people coming forward. So the member knows what my position is on this issue and how strongly I feel about it. Now the member suggests that for the last week he has had information that my policy has been violated in some way, but the member has never come to me with any details or any information to back that up and asked me to have a look at the issue. If the member isn't going to do his job and come to me when he has that information, then he shouldn't be raising it here in the House a week later.

The Chair: Before I recognize the member, I just want to suggest that we are directly dealing with amendments to legislation. In this case, the amendment is fairly straightforward, member. It is not an occasion or an opportunity to talk about cases that one has to deal with in one's constituency. The proper venue and avenue for that is, of course, to deal directly with the minister. I offer that simply as a caution, member. We are not going to have a long debate on what is alleged to be happening or not happening.

On the amendment to section 1 of the bill, member.

K. Jones: I accept that. I was led in that direction by the minister saying that there was no action, and I was trying to respond to the fact that there were situations where this is not the case....

The Chair: Thank you, member. Shall section 1 pass?

K. Jones: Speaking to this issue, I would like to ask the minister: under what deputy minister is this process reporting? It doesn't define which administrative deputy minister -- you have two in your ministry. Is this coming under the administrative or the operational deputy minister?

Hon. C. Gabelmann: First of all, there isn't an administrative and an operational deputy minister; there's one deputy minister in the Ministry of Attorney General, and there is the Deputy Attorney General, who has responsibility for the criminal justice branch and the legal services branch. The deputy minister is like any other deputy minister in government and is responsible for the operations of the ministry outside of those two branches. The deputy minister is also the commissioner of corrections, as defined in the Correction Act.

K. Jones: If that's the case, since you're saying that the deputy minister is going to be in receipt of this report, and this new structure is going to be reporting to that person, that person is also responsible for the corrections process. There would therefore be a self-interest and preservation factor involved there. Would it not be more appropriate to have this office report to the other side of your ministry rather than a party that is also going to want to make sure that their downstream operations also reflect positively because it will reflect on their future paycheques?

[ Page 12815 ]

Hon. C. Gabelmann: We're on section 1, hon. Chair. When we get to section 3, and when the member actually reads section 3, he will realize that the branch we're establishing reports to the minister, to the Attorney General, not to a deputy or the commissioner of corrections. Any reference to the deputy is administrative and is not a reporting relationship.

The Chair: May I suggest that we deal with section 1 before we go on to the others? Do you have further questions on section 1, member?

K. Jones: I was just reflecting the statement by the Attorney General that this branch or office was reporting through the deputy minister to the minister -- and yes, we can take it to the next step.

Section 1 approved.

On section 2.

D. Mitchell: When I raised the issue of the Prowse inquiry with the Attorney General earlier today, he may have been annoyed by the manner in which I raised it. He will know that I'm annoyed that I can't get a copy of the report yet. Having said that, the minister knows that I applauded his appointment of the Prowse commission of inquiry.

Under section 2, a new, separate, independent office of investigation, inspection and standards is being established in the Ministry of Attorney General alongside the corrections branch. Can the Attorney General tell us if this office is intended to fulfil the kinds of obligations and responsibilities that the Prowse commission of inquiry had as its terms of reference? Will the establishment of this office mean that we won't need to have independent commissions of inquiry looking into these issues in the future? Will this office have the ability to conduct an inquiry similar to the one the Prowse commission just concluded?

Hon. C. Gabelmann: There may be occasions in the future when a government will feel it necessary to appoint an independent judicial inquiry into some matter. I won't say that that won't ever happen again as a result of these changes. Because it's not just inspections and standards but also investigation, these changes create some independence. Members of the opposition might argue that it's not independent from government, and that would be true, but it is independent from the branch itself. I think there will be greater public confidence in investigations undertaken by this branch. Where that public confidence doesn't exist for whatever reason, or where there is a public issue of some great magnitude, then I think it's conceivable that inquiries could be appointed in the future.

[2:45]

All of us in this House have to be cognizant of the cost of inquiries. There are huge costs for taxpayers, and if we can deal with issues before they get to that stage by making these kinds of amendments and saving a lot of money, then I think we're doing the taxpayer a real service.

D. Mitchell: This question might deal with sections 2 and 3, but it will prevent me from asking it in the next section. I think I reflect the same concern as the Attorney General on the cost of these inquiries. For instance, it has been suggested that when the final bill is in -- we don't know what it is -- the Prowse inquiry may cost up to $1 million. We don't know what it is. For a short inquiry that took little more than a month to complete, I hope it's not. I think the Attorney General is right to be concerned about those costs. Lawyers are awfully expensive, as the Attorney General will know.

As far as this independent office is concerned, could the Attorney General tell the committee.... It's my understanding that the office will report to the Attorney General, but when a complaint comes forward, either from within or outside government, and it is directed to this independent office, who will the director of that office make a report to? Will it be to the Attorney General? How will the public learn of a complaint and how it has been dealt with by this office?

Hon. C. Gabelmann: Varying situations will produce varying results. There will be investigations on a regular basis into issues by members of the branch and perhaps by members of this independent body. They may undertake them on their own initiative in order to deal with a perceived problem. It would be up to the Attorney General of the day to make public whatever concerns he or she wanted to make public. If, however, a complaint were received by this new body -- from an MLA, let's say -- or if an issue were raised in the House, then it's in the public domain and it's for the Attorney General to decide whether or not to make public in some form the results of the investigation by this body.

I think that it's one of those issues where it's FOI-able in the long term, so it gets dealt with that way. But to me, that's not the way to deal with it. From my perspective, if it's an issue of public concern, then you put it out to the public. I've done that with every report I have had in my entire time at this job. Giving the material to the public is the appropriate thing to do.

D. Mitchell: I have one final question on these sections. There has been a concern -- the Attorney General is familiar with it -- of officials coming forward from within, for instance, the corrections system. An official may wish to come forward with a complaint, but may under some circumstances be concerned about coming forward for fear of reprisals or repercussions to the individual's career with the corrections system. Can the Attorney General tell us whether or not there will be any protection for government employees working within the corrections system who wish to come forward to this new independent office? Can he assure the committee today that there should be no cause for concern or apprehension that coming forward to this independent office with a complaint will mean significant repercussions to one's career within the public service?

Hon. C. Gabelmann: I will say again that there should be no fear whatsoever. The member for Surrey-Cloverdale raised essentially the same question. The members should know that over the years the inspection and standards branch has received "complaints" from people within the corrections branch that have then been investigated. That has not led to anybody being disciplined for having brought it forward in the first place. Public servants are interested in having good public policy established, and if they see something happening within a part of the branch where this may not be the case, they will want to bring it forward. They do, they have and they should in the 

[ Page 12816 ]

future, and no one should ever be disciplined for that kind of initiative. As far as I'm concerned, no one ever will be.

Section 2 approved.

On section 3.

K. Jones: I just want to get a little more clarification on the process of initiating the investigation that is indicated by subsection (c). It says that it can be initiated on the director's own motion, and that's understandable. Is the commissioner in this section the commissioner of the corrections branch?

Hon. C. Gabelmann: The proceedings can be initiated, as I think the member said, by the commissioner of corrections, who is the deputy minister, or by the minister, or on their own initiative. So it's wide open.

K. Jones: Does this mean that this is an internal investigation organization? If it's initiated by the commissioner, does it still report to the minister, or just to the commissioner?

Hon. C. Gabelmann: In all cases, it is reported to the minister.

K. Jones: It's really pleasing to note that that will be the case. Now, what about the initiation of an investigation? You've indicated that if it comes to your attention from the public.... Can the public take it directly to the director of this commission?

Hon. C. Gabelmann: If a member of the public has a concern, they could contact the director in writing, by telephone or by a meeting and express the concern. Then, yes, the director could, on his or her own initiative, launch an investigation.

K. Jones: If a member of the public initiated an inquiry, or asked for an investigation through the director, would the director have to get the minister's permission to proceed with that? Or does the director have the authority to proceed on whatever investigation information is brought to their attention?

Hon. C. Gabelmann: The director can do it on his own initiative. It says so in the bill, where it says: "...or on the director's own motion."

K. Jones: We just need a little clarification on this regarding the process of a public inquiry or, say, an employee concern. I presume these investigations would be done in confidence and that the director of the institution being investigated would not be informed that he was under investigation as a result of a complaint from members of his staff?

Hon. C. Gabelmann: The well-established fairness tests that exist in our society would have to be followed by this branch, as with any investigating body. Police, for example, have rules within which they have to operate, and they mostly have to do with fairness. The same would apply here.

K. Jones: I understand that when an audit is done, the people who are being audited are not informed prior to the audit. That would really preclude the audit being impartial or formed on a valid basis because they would then have a chance to sufficiently prepare themselves to make sure they came through the audit looking good. Would that not also be the same basis upon which this type of investigation would have to be done? It would have to be done without giving people prior notice of the investigation; otherwise, it would have some question as to its validity.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: Well, the member wants to talk about the day-to-day procedural operations of a branch that hasn't yet been established. In fairness, I think we should allow that to develop. The agency will develop its own way of doing business, under rules of fairness. If the member has any concerns about how that's done, I would encourage him to contact the appropriate officials and have a discussion about it to make sure his concerns are properly dealt with.

K. Jones: Going back to an investigation that's initiated by the public or members of staff, would those people be given a copy of the report of the investigation so that they knew what came out of their enquiry? Or is this going to have to go through to the Attorney General who could actually sit on it without them being aware of anything that has transpired.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: Neither the old process nor this new process sets out by statute or regulation the procedures involved. Members need to remember that in many of these issues, there will be a report, a phone call will be made, and that will be the end of the matter. For the most part we are dealing with routine activities on a daily basis. It's not up to the statute to determine the procedures that are used by this branch. It has never been the case. There has never been the need for it, and I don't see one now.

K. Jones: The Attorney General hasn't given us much confidence in the process if he is going to hide the results of investigations from the people who have initiated the investigation. What I get from his response to that question is that he's going to hide it.

The Chair: Shall the section pass?

K. Jones: I'm very disappointed that the minister is not prepared to give us an answer to something that is very critical. It really is a question of whether this whole process should be acknowledged as a suitable answer to the concerns that have been expressed about there not being a good process for handling concerns and complaints. It certainly hasn't been independent in the past.

We thought the minister was bringing forward an independent process that allowed the whole area of corrections to be better administered, based on being an independent organization within the branch. Now the minister is not willing to say that the people who initiate an area of concern are going to be able to find out whether that area of concern has been addressed. How do they have any confidence in that?

Hon. C. Gabelmann: I thought I'd answered the questions earlier. First of all, this is not within the branch; it is independent. It operates procedurally under rules of natural justice, and it reports to the minister.

[ Page 12817 ]

The member says he is disappointed with my answer. I am disappointed in the line of questioning, because the member is not dealing with the amendments; he is dealing with procedures that have been in place for years and years and have never been questioned.

What we're talking about now is changing two things, essentially. We're adding the opportunity for this group to do investigations, and we are requiring that the reports be made to the Attorney General rather than to the commissioner of corrections. The member is asking questions that should properly be asked at a meeting with officials.

K. Jones: I think the whole question is one of accountability and confidence. I believe the minister has given a direction that is intended to give the public confidence that there is an independent branch of his operation that will be overseeing this. Yet we really don't have a complete piece of legislation here; we have part of a legislation. It's a sort of mirrored piece of legislation that only part of it is visible through; we don't see the rest of it. I think it is incumbent upon the minister to give us all the information on how this is going to operate. You've made a good start; you have part of a piece of legislation. Let's see the rest of the legislation before we put this through as full authority for you to act. I think you have be honest with the people of British Columbia in the full range of the operation, not just one portion of it.

The Chair: Member, excuse me. I must remind you, lest this be a harbinger of things to come, that this is a miscellaneous statute. We are talking about an amendment to one small section of a much larger act. To suggest that the minister isn't putting on the table everything that should be put on the table is simply an unreasonable and illegitimate request.

[3:00]

Again, I certainly have no desire to impede the normal flow of debate that ought to be allowed in miscellaneous statues discussion, but I must caution that we should stay in order. It seems to me that we've canvassed section 3 at considerable length, and the question would be in order. Surrey-Cloverdale, I hope you have something new.

K. Jones: I don't wish to belabour the item, but I do find that your comments at this time, hon. Chair, actually appear to be in the area of debate. I think you may have gone beyond your role as Chair. You may want to caution yourself.

The Chair: Member, please be careful. I would just ask you to please read standing order 9, and you will discover precisely what my obligations are and what yours are.

Section 3 approved.

On section 4.

G. Wilson: I did serve notice in second reading that this was an area -- in fact, the only area -- in the bill to which I had any substantial objection. I served notice then that it was a section that I would want to call division on, and I serve notice to those who may be listening that I think we need to do that. Unless the minister is prepared to yield on this section, or reconsider, I don't know that there's too much more we can do to debate it. We should just simply move to vote on it.

But it is important to recognize that what this effectively does is to remove section 17 of the Election Act, which requires the government to have enumeration every three years, and puts into the hands of the chief electoral officer whether or not enumeration should occur. It removes from now forward any statutory obligation for enumeration of the voters list. I think that is completely unacceptable, because the voters list is the basis of our democracy.

Having said that, unless there's some provision to yield it or amend it, then we might as well go to division.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: Just before going to a division, let me say a couple of words. The member is right, there was a statutory obligation to conduct an enumeration in May of this year, an enumeration that would have cost about $8 million.

Interjection.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: What price has democracy? No price is too high -- I understand that. But nonetheless, it would have been $8 million, and what we would have had then is a voters list that would have been current in May 1994 and out of date again by the time an election comes some years from now. That's argument number one.

Number two, more importantly, is the fact that the chief electoral officer and the branch are developing what you might call a continuous list, or a rolling list, one which is constantly updated by a variety of mechanisms. It's my intention, in order to supplement and assist the branch in making sure that that continuous voters list is up to date, to make further changes to the election law, hopefully at the next session of the Legislature. Every jurisdiction in the country is moving to this kind of approach. The old notion of conducting either an enumeration in the first three weeks or whatever of a campaign or a full enumeration at a fixed time between elections is rapidly disappearing. Given technology, given the ability to put voters lists together, this is now seen right across the country as an outmoded approach.

Nonetheless, there will be occasions and there will be areas of the province where a door-to-door enumeration is an appropriate vehicle, and there may be occasions when, in the judgment of the chief electoral officer, it is appropriate to have a provincewide enumeration in advance of an election campaign. It is still possible for that to be done, and spot enumerations will be done for sure.

So we're simply keeping up with the changing technology, the changing principle, which is not to have a fixed-in-time voters list once every four years but rather a continuously updated voters list. That's what this is in aid of, and I think it's very much in tune with the times across the country.

G. Wilson: Quickly in response, from a strictly philosophical point of view, the other problem we have with this bill is under section 284(2). It says that "the chief electoral officer may arrange for and conduct a general enumeration of all electoral districts or a limited enumeration...." Well, clearly, if there is a decision taken that some ridings will be enumerated but others will not, or some areas within ridings may have enumeration but others may not, my guess is that there are going to be people left off those lists. There may be serious problems with that, and I would argue that it may even be 

[ Page 12818 ]

challenged. I don't know what every other jurisdiction is doing with respect to these enumerations, but the provisions under section 17 with respect to the third year as a time for enumeration may not be right. If that's the case, amend it to provide, again, a mandatory enumeration at some other time.

As the member will know, I have long stood in favour -- and still do, as a matter of policy within the Alliance -- of a fixed four-year mandate, so that we can have a fixed election day. That, in effect, would take care of the larger question, which is the manipulations that often take place -- all kinds of electioneering that goes on in various ridings. So this, to me, is simply removing a statutory obligation. Notwithstanding the fact that the list may be somewhat out of date as we get into the election, at least it's done.

We know there has been at least one court challenge with respect to the voters lists. Those lists are not only used provincially now; they are also used for municipal and regional district elections. We now recognize that those lists may not -- under a different statute that we have just passed in this House -- be released with respect to addresses, phone numbers and what have you. So what we're really doing is weakening the basic tool of democracy, which is to make sure that every eligible voter is able to cast a ballot and that those who are not eligible voters do not cast a ballot. I just don't think this notion of freeing it up and doing as we see fit when the time seems right is a good enough response. That is the reason I take a strong position on it and will move to call division when we vote.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: Once again, the voters list is amended every day. The provision to allow for spot enumerations is to deal with.... For example, if an election is potentially to take place at a time when there are a whole new group of students in a student residence, it may make sense to have an enumeration in that particular poll, in that residence.

The member suggests that failure to have a fixed or a periodic full enumeration may mean that some people will be denied their eligibility. We passed in this House, two years ago now, amendments to the Election Act, which allowed for people to register and vote on election day if they were indeed eligible.

G. Wilson: And if any ineligible people vote?

Hon. C. Gabelmann: If ineligible people vote, then the weight of the law is available to do several things: one is to punish those individuals; another, if there are sufficient numbers of them, is to apply to have that election ruled null and void. The fact is that almost nobody votes when they are not eligible; that has not been a pattern of concern.

However, that's not what we're debating here now. The member and I disagree. I understood that when he made his comments in second reading and again now. We have a difference of opinion, and we can test that and see how the House decides to vote on this one.

D. Mitchell: I have a quick question to the minister on this. I guess I'm not clear: does the cancellation of the enumeration scheduled for this year, 1994, mean that if a general election were called earlier than the Attorney General has predicted...? He's predicted that we're two years away from a general election. That's interesting to hear from him; his boss may have a say in that, and it could be otherwise -- we don't know. Or if this year there were a by-election, for instance, would there be a risk that certain citizens of British Columbia might be disenfranchised -- those who have moved, those who are new -- because the current voters list in a constituency or in the province may not be up to date?

I agree with the Attorney General that we need to move toward a permanent, continuous voters list, as some jurisdictions are now doing. I think that's the way to go, but we're not there yet. Wouldn't it be prudent to wait until we have established such a permanent voters list before cancellation of a enumeration, which could risk disenfranchising some voters in British Columbia?

Hon. C. Gabelmann: The elections branch already operates on the basis of a continuous list. It uses a variety of sources of information in order to keep the list constantly up to date. If there were a by-election and it appeared as if there were large numbers of people not on the list for one reason or another, which I doubt would be the case, then an enumeration could be conducted. The fail-safe, in the final analysis, is election-day registration.

No one will be denied their opportunity to cast a ballot as a result of passing this particular bill. To keep the old system would have meant, as historically it has in this province, that many people were denied their right to cast a ballot because they couldn't get on the list. The enumeration may have missed them, which it often does in any event, particularly in ridings like mine -- and, I assume, that of the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast, where people just don't get caught by enumerations because they're elsewhere. The system now being developed will catch those people and will have them on the list. There will be greater certainty that you actually will be on a voters list prior to an election.

M. de Jong: On the substantive issue dealt with by the section, I probably come down somewhere between the Attorney General and the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast.

Interjection.

M. de Jong: He says that's why I'm a Liberal. I'll get to that in a moment.

There's another principle, though, that occurs to me as I go through the section. I recognize that the bill was tabled in April and the enumeration was to commence in May. Now, the Attorney General will say: "We proceeded on the basis that enumeration will never take place." There was a statutory obligation there. The government appears to be saying: "We will ignore our statutory obligations when it is convenient to do so." If it was that much of a priority -- I'll speak to this substantive issue in a moment, and I'm not that far removed from the Attorney General -- we're sending the wrong signal from this House. We're saying the government of the day will ignore its own statutory obligations when it's convenient to do so. The matter could have been dealt with, or presumably the enumeration should have proceeded.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: The chief electoral officer was obliged to begin preparations for the enumeration that was required. He in fact began to do what he had to do to make that happen. We did make sure this miscellaneous bill was introduced prior to the date that had to occur; 

[ Page 12819 ]

and we made it retroactive to that date. The whole House had the information. So that served as instructions to the chief electoral officer to not proceed, because he knew that this provision would be changed to April 30, as indicated in section 12.

So if the member is saying the chief electoral officer should have spent the $8 million, because the Legislature hadn't had the debate and the bill hadn't passed.... I know the Liberals have a history of spending a lot of money when they don't have to; the country is in terrible debt as a result of that overexpenditure. But we weren't prepared to do what Liberals do, which is just to spend money when you don't need to.

The Chair: The member for Matsqui continues on this non-partisan debate.

M. de Jong: Thank you, hon. Chair. I'm terribly disappointed that the Attorney General would respond in that manner. It's not this piece of legislation; it's the principle. Principles only withstand tests if they can be generally applied. The government is saying, by virtue of how it has proceeded with this fairly straightforward section: "When it's convenient to do so, we will ignore our statutory obligations." It's not as if options weren't available. The bill was introduced and could have been dealt with in April. Had the bill passed at that time, the government could have excused itself of the statutory obligation that it was under, pursuant to the existing provisions of the Election Act.

[3:15]

So the Attorney General can get up if he likes and cast aspersions on the official opposition and suggest that we're spendthrift. That is not the issue. He knows that's not the issue I bring up. What I bring up, and the reason I bring it up, is that it sets a terrible precedent. It sets a precedent of ignoring statutory obligations for expediency's sake and nothing else. I think the Attorney General, the chief law enforcement officer, has an obligation to address that issue and not turn it into a partisan political debate the way he has tried to do.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: I so rarely indulge in partisan debate in this House, but, given an opportunity, I can't resist. The member makes a point, which I understand. But the Legislature, on occasion, makes decisions to have a retroactive application of laws. We do it every year with all the budget bills. The taxes are collected as set out in the budget, prior to the passage of the legislation. And we do that with other legislation, in terms of retroactive issues in the Limitation Act, for example. So that's a principle which has been breached often in this House. I acknowledge that in a perfect world, I would have preferred to have brought this in in March and had it debated before the middle of April. But we don't live in a perfect world, and it was done this way.

M. de Jong: I'll make one further point and then move on. I think it bears repeating that citizens in this province aren't permitted to ignore the law in some anticipatory way that the law will be changed. Government members on that side of the House and members on this side of the House would do well to remember that. What we expect of our citizenry is a standard we should be prepared to uphold here in the Legislature.

With respect to the issue itself, initially I think the matter was presented as a cost-saving measure. The figure of $7 million or $8 million was mentioned at the briefing. The information I subsequently received from Elections B.C. officials suggested that aside from that, they seem to be motivated by a concern that door-to-door enumerations just weren't feasible any more; they just weren't working. They cited examples of the reluctance of people in larger urban centres to even come to their doors at night after dark. Sadly, I am obliged to concur that there's probably something to that.

I would be less concerned -- and this is perhaps similar to what the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast said -- if we weren't simply doing away with the general enumeration and vesting absolute jurisdiction in the hands of Elections officials. We've heard about the continuous enumeration, the continuous list. As I understand it, they are moving toward some fairly innovative ways of maintaining the currency of that list. Our society has changed. One thing that I know they did recently, particularly in the two most recent by-elections, was enumerate in the shopping malls. In our society, those are the closest things we have now to a town centre or town square. My discussions with those people suggested that that was an entirely effective means of tapping into the population, and that is something they would explore in the future.

If there were some minimal obligation attached to this amendment to the act which set some minimal standard of enumeration that would assure us that contacts were taking place between the public and the Elections officials, the Attorney General wouldn't be hearing the concerns that are being expressed today. To some extent, he can legitimately say that election-day registration should have the effect of preventing anyone from being disenfranchised. Yet the value in ensuring that people are on that elections list is something that is beyond question and any sort of argument.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: I understand and respect the opinion put forward by the member, and I think there's some validity to what he says. This issue will be caught completely and properly by the Election Act when it's introduced, hopefully next session, as I said earlier. Meanwhile, we had to do something to deal with the fact that we were required by law to have the enumeration. I will undertake to make sure that in the process leading to the introduction of the bill next year, the comments made by the member on this particular point are taken into account by the people doing the drafting.

K. Jones: The minister has indicated that he's doing this because there's a process underway to make this more effective and efficient. Can the minister tell us if there is any process to amalgamate into a common database the municipal, provincial and the federal elections acts?

Hon. C. Gabelmann: The desire to come up with a common list is something many of us have talked about for many years. I know that discussions have occurred between various levels of government about that, but at this stage there has been no substantial progress. It's not part of this particular enumeration.

G. Wilson: I have a very brief comment with respect to next year's legislation, which we've been promised. It probably gives some credence to the minister's comments about election timing.

Having said that, the Attorney General made a couple of comments, the first being that the Legislature took the 

[ Page 12820 ]

initiative to move this forward. The decision with respect to the cancellation of the enumeration on the first Monday of May was not made by the Legislature. I think that the Attorney General must recognize that it was made by government. That's the first point.

[3:30]

The second point is that there has to be an acknowledgement that while the Attorney General says there is an ongoing enumeration, it is not provided for anywhere in the Election Act, once this is passed. It's entirely discretionary, without any substance in legislation. Once you've removed section 17, which is what this amendment does, the balance of it -- with the exception of the revision of the list under section 19 and the rules for court of revision -- has nothing now, on the basis of actual collection and enumeration, that is obligatory to government. That's a real problem.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: I don't have the time to read right through the Elections Act to deal specifically with the question the member raises, but I can tell him that the chief electoral officer does continuously revise the list. The procedures are in place and are constantly being improved. There is no doubt whatsoever that there will be a full and complete voters list, as full and complete as it can be on any day, today or next week, because that's the way the system now works.

[D. Lovick in the chair.]

Section 4 approved on the following division:

Sections 5 and 6 approved.

On section 7.

K. Jones: Section 7 relates to the fact that under the Motion Picture Act, adult films that do not meet regulations and are produced without authority or do not have proper certification are to be destroyed. The original films are also be destroyed. I say bravo to the minister. I think it's about time we did this, but this isn't enough. I think a lot more work needs to be done on the elimination of pornographic material. I'd like to ask the minister to continue to come forward with more concrete action against the items that degrade women and put thoughts into people's minds that are detrimental to our society.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: I thank the member for his support. This is an important initiative, and I'm delighted that we're able to proceed with it.

Section 7 approved.

On section 8.

J. Weisgerber: I rise in opposition to section 8. If the government wants to create a scholarship to commemorate the Commonwealth Games, I would applaud that. I think that's useful and commendable. But I don't like the notion that the government has decided to take an established scholarship -- one that's been around for a very long time and has some historical connection to British Columbia -- and simply rename it.

I think that some things in our heritage and in historical association with the United Kingdom and other countries around the world are worth preserving, and I think this decision significantly changes the recognition that was originally given in the naming and forming of this scholarship. I don't think it's appropriate, and I intend to vote against it.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: On behalf of the Minister of Government Services, whose amendment this is and whose whereabouts are unknown to me, I will attempt to respond to the member.

As I understand it, this amendment will give scholarship recipients an opportunity to pursue their studies in Commonwealth countries other than the United Kingdom and will give them greater flexibility. I am surprised that that would cause some concern on the part of the member. The speaking notes say: "Several of the past recipients of these scholarships have indicated that their studies could be best pursued at educational institutions located outside the United Kingdom." It is for that reason that these amendments are put forward.

J. Weisgerber: I understand the rationale put forward, but the effect is for government to take an existing scholarship created to commemorate a significant event in British Columbia -- that is, the moving of British Columbia from a colony to a province -- and recognize that ongoing connection with the United Kingdom.... I believe there is room for that kind of recognition, and I am sure that many people would be quite delighted to receive the scholarship and study at Cambridge, Oxford or some other university. If government wants a Commonwealth scholarship that gives students an opportunity to study in Commonwealth countries, that should be fine, but I disagree with the idea of hijacking one for the purpose of creating another.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: I understand the member's point, and we just have a difference of opinion. Just for the record, it is important to note that the Queen Elizabeth II B.C. Centennial Scholarship Advisory Committee was consulted on this and supports the change. But that doesn't mean the member has to.

[ Page 12821 ]

M. de Jong: I view this more as an expansion of an existing scholarship plan than a replacement, as the Leader of the Third Party indicates. I cross-referenced the various sections, and the only concern I have is that there is nothing in that existing Scholarship Act that defines which countries would be applicable or provides for regulations that would allow those countries to be enumerated. In these changing times, I'm not sure that listing a Commonwealth country without some sort of list somewhere is sufficient.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: It is to all Commonwealth countries other than Canada. A list does exist, and it's my understanding that the list is being added to by one -- or will be very soon. I am sure that a list could be provided to the member or to anyone else who wants it. There is an existing organization of the former British Commonwealth.

Section 8 approved on division.

Sections 9 to 12 inclusive approved.

Title approved.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: I move the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; D. Lovick in the chair.

Bill 33, Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, 1994, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed.

[3:45]

Hon. C. Gabelmann: I call committee on Bill 53.

PENSION STATUTES AMENDMENT ACT, 1994

The House in committee on Bill 53; D. Lovick in the chair.

G. Wilson: Pursuant to advice received, would the Chair note that I have removed myself from this debate?

The Chair: Thank you, member. It's duly noted.

On section 1.

F. Gingell: Perhaps one thing the minister could explain to the committee at this point is what the practical consequences are of bringing in the term "spouse" as defined by the Pension Benefits Standards Act, rather than the description that was used in the past.

Hon. E. Cull: Since this is a definition in another act, I'm taking a few minutes to refresh my memory on the Pension Benefits Standards Act. What this change does, in effect, is to make it clear that the precedence is given to a married spouse if the married spouse is living with the person eligible for the benefits. In the case where there is a married spouse no longer living with his or her partner, and a common-law spouse, then there is precedence given to the person who is living with the pension beneficiary.

F. Gingell: Does that mean that in the case where there has been a marriage breakdown but no settlement, and the annuitant dies, the continuing pension will be paid to a common-law spouse in preference to the legal spouse, with the matter not being subject to the court's determination?

Hon. E. Cull: The question that the member has given me applies to the post-retirement period. This definition and the answer I gave is actually pre-retirement, and it relates to rights for spousal pensions and other rights that accrue prior to retirement.

Sections 1 and 2 approved.

On section 3.

F. Gingell: I'm not sure whether this is the right place to deal with this issue. It's the first time it comes in, but it will repeat itself later on.

Without trying to be facetious, this is purely and simply a change in the pension benefits that increases the amount of money an annuitant is paid. From a practical point of view, these have been paid by the plan since the beginning, unless the annuitant has wealth of his or her own from some other source of income. It just means that it was paid to them as pension and turned around, and they paid it out of the money in their pockets; so it was being paid before. Is this the first of a series of items that can be defined as needing to be brought in and paid out of this fund? I guess I might as well get into this issue at this time.

The more I come to understand this rather complex subject, the more it seems to me that if there is an unfunded liability, that liability has in the end arisen because there have not been sufficient contributions made -- that's obviously where it comes from -- or there hasn't been a sufficient amount of income earned on the fund's assets, or any of these things that would increase the amount of money. In the normal course of events, before one deals with putting money aside to pay additional benefits -- whether they be these types of benefits or what I like to call, because I think it describes it better, a cost-of-living adjustment or an inflation account -- one would think that at least until the fund is fully funded, all the earnings and contributions would go into the basic account. After all, it is the basic account that we as responsible legislators wish to see safely there.

So I'd like to suggest that at any time we increase the benefits, which produce a cost -- the actuaries haven't dealt with that in their report, because it is paid out of the inflation account -- shouldn't we rethink this whole pension issue? Shouldn't our first concern be to ensure that the basic pension account is sound? We know that it isn't. The actuaries say it isn't; the auditor general says it isn't. I'm not particularly talking about the college fund, because I think it is a little better off than all the other funds. But rather than repeating ourselves four times through the course of this late afternoon, I think we should only deal with it once.

Although the actuaries have not dealt with this cost issue because it comes out of the inflation account, in the end it does detract from the assets available to ensure that these pensions are paid. I appreciate that I'm not going to get you to change your mind about this....

An Hon. Member: Keep trying.

[ Page 12822 ]

F. Gingell: I really do feel like trying. I think this government has shown some responsibility for the first time. I'm really pleased that you have taken the issue of the underfunding by the neck and got a grip on it. I don't think you've done enough; I think we needed to deal with the whole thing.

Don't you think it's time to rethink the whole issue? Our unfunded liability, particularly in the teachers' plan, goes up by huge amounts every year. We're not going to get this sorted out in a manner that can be afforded until we put a lid on all the benefits -- section 3's included -- and allocate all the assets to the basic fund until the unfunded liability has been evaporated.

Hon. E. Cull: The question of the unfunded liability and how we're dealing with it, and what policy decision should be made with respect to reducing it versus changing any benefits, is probably one that touches on a number of sections here. So with a little bit of latitude I'd like to just address this issue, knowing that some of the things I'm going to be talking about will be coming up specifically under certain sections as we move ahead.

Let me first of all say that the auditor general has not said that the plans are unsound; that would certainly be overstating my understanding of what he has said. What he has said is that we should have a funding strategy to deal with the unfunded liabilities. I have to say that many of the questions the member has just raised were questions I myself asked as I started to work through this pension legislation. There are some good answers to the questions he raised.

Yes, we are concerned about the unfunded liability. Now, the unfunded liability has actually been declining recently, and may be eliminated entirely within a year in the public service pension plan. Notwithstanding this, we need to put in place some firm policies to ensure that the unfunded liability doesn't increase and that, over time, it decreases. Ideally, it would be eliminated entirely for all four plans.

What has been in place in the past has been a policy which was never followed. In the sections we'll get to later this afternoon, this act puts into place in law various requirements that the unfunded liability can no longer increase, and a strategy for ensuring that if the liability does begin to increase, there is by law an increase in contributions to bring it down and deal with it over a reasonable period of time. The suggestion here is that these benefits are somehow adding to the problem. I think the member understands that this is a reallocation of benefits. This is money in the inflation adjustment account that, instead of being spent on inflation adjustment, will now be spent on paying for these benefits.

The member is right. In some ways, you're not sure which option you would choose: to give you the money, and we'll pay for Medical Services Plan or extended health care ourselves; or to have it paid and get less money. From a dollar point of view, it probably doesn't make a lot of difference in the end to the pensioner.

The member also knows, however, that these changes have been brought forward as a result of 18 months of consultation with the advisory boards that are also being established through this legislation; but they have been in operation to look at the plans and to provide input. The plan members themselves, through these advisory boards, have made trade-offs. They would like to have everything, but they can't have everything. There's not enough funding in the plan, and there are the unfunded liabilities that have to be dealt with. We gave them some very clear guidelines. We said to them that they couldn't increase the unfunded liabilities and had to make sure that what they were doing was actuarially sound. That's where they started to look at making some exchange of benefits.

There are two funds in each plan: a basic fund and the inflation adjustment account. The money that is in the inflation adjustment account has already been earmarked as benefits for pension indexing, and we can't unilaterally take it away and say that we want to move it over to pay down the unfunded liability. If the plan members agreed with that, we certainly would consider it, but I think the member can understand why the plan members would not agree with that. That's why we have put together a number of things in this bill, including a strategy to ensure that if the unfunded liabilities start to grow again in future, there will be legal requirements to ensure that those liabilities do not grow and that contributions are increased.

To suggest that we can unilaterally take the funds in the inflation adjustment account and use them to pay down the unfunded liability is incorrect. We can't do that. All we can do is either leave the funds there, where they are building up a surplus that's not needed, for a number of reasons, or allow the members, clearly understanding the risks they are taking, to make the decision to reallocate those benefits. We have made very sure they do understand that, while it's a small risk, they are taking a risk in reducing that account and using it for other benefits. They have to evaluate this and weigh it in their decisions.

[4:00]

I think the member will agree that, in sum, the changes being made here are very progressive. They benefit people who have not traditionally benefited through the pension plan. They are therefore worthy of support because of the advantages they provide to more members in the plan who have been unable to benefit in the past.

F. Gingell: The minister mentioned trade-offs. What do you think the pensioners gave up in exchange for this additional benefit?

[W. Hartley in the chair.]

Hon. E. Cull: All the additional benefits that are contained in this act are paid for out of the inflation adjustment account. The money that has been accumulating in that account -- and there is a surplus, because inflation has not been as high recently as it was in the past -- now is being earmarked for improvements in benefits. So they're taking money that was there to index their pensions and moving it into other benefits under the pension plan. They know full well that if assumptions around inflation or earnings are not realized, there will not be full indexing of their plan. But having worked with the actuary, they are satisfied that the risks are minimal and that the benefits are worth the small risk entailed in making this trade-off.

F. Gingell: I know we're only dealing with section 3, but this really flows through the whole thing, and maybe we can just carry on with the issue. I'd like to suggest to you that if I were.... First of all, I accept what you say. You can't just take back the inflation account. I would like to, first of all to solidify the basic pension fund.

What happens now? We're saying: "Okay, under the way the plan exists, we have a contractual obligation at 

[ Page 12823 ]

the moment to pay you a cost-of-living adjustment" -- or whatever term you want to use -- "out of the inflation account. We're going to continue to pay you that, but we're going to pay you some more; we're going to pay the premiums on these various benefit packages." What has happened is that you've just increased the amount of the benefits.

Who can suffer by this? Some person in the future who was anticipating inflation protection can, if there's no money left in the inflation account. All of these pensioners have inflation protection up to the point of their retirement, because their annuity is based on their best so-many years. As inflation has pushed their salary up, that inflation has been looked after in the basic salary -- which I'd like to suggest to you is the cause of the underfunded liability in the first place, in my simple mind. That's what's caused the unfunded liability, because you've paid in for a teacher years ago who was earning $8,000 or $10,000 a year. When I was first on the school board, that was the salary; in fact, the teachers didn't earn that much to start. So you were paying into the fund on the basis of an $8,000 or $9,000 salary. As inflation, promotions and experience have pushed that salary up, you never go back and cough up the shortfall that you didn't pay in the early years.

So now we're saying okay, if we have a different investment mix, go into equities and do some of those things, we can earn a greater rate of return. Yes, I accept that from this greater rate of return, whether it is realized or not, you are going to push another half a percent, three-quarters of a percent -- it's something like that, isn't it? -- into the basic account before you cut off. With higher returns, it's higher risk; that's the way the world is. If the rates of return come down so low that you don't make the agreed-to rate of return to go into the basic account, then it is probably the taxpayers -- who are perhaps not legally liable but morally -- who will have to make up that shortfall. In the end, if the fund runs out of money -- heaven forbid -- the taxpayers of this province will have to make up this shortfall.

I can't get rid of the interrelationship -- and the thread in my mind -- that runs through all of these issues, whether they be interest rates of return, additional benefits paid out of the inflation account, or changes in the division of the interest earnings between the inflation account and the basic account. Everything has a domino consequence. I can't say this too many times this afternoon, but I really feel terribly uncomfortable with this whole package.

I am pleased that you are bringing in a definitive statutory requirement to deal with the unfunded liability -- or at least to stop it from getting any worse. When one goes to the auditor's reports and the actuary's reports and you see the amounts of additional contributions that were recommended by the actuary to these four plans, surely the first thing to do is apply any additional earnings of the fund through better investment policies to looking after these additional contributions.

In the college pension plan, the additional contribution recommended by the actuary was an additional 2.14 percent per year. It seems to me that you should make the changes for dealing with the unfunded liability.... At least making sure that it doesn't get any worse, you should deal with the changes to the boards. I approve of the annuitants having a much greater role. But shouldn't you just sit back, not have any benefit increases, do nothing that has any cost, wait a couple of years, see how things go, and if the plan looks like it can afford it, make some change then?

Hon. E. Cull: We are taking a fairly broad debate here, and that is probably useful, because when we get to specific sections we will have covered a lot of the territory.

First of all, I have to address the concern that the member has with respect to diversification. Diversification of the investment policy results in less risk, not more. It's more risky to have all your eggs in one basket. Fixed income also entails a risk as markets change, so the diversification actually ends up with less risk to the plan over time. Diversification isn't new either. The teachers' plan has been diversified for two years now, and other plans will be moving in that direction.

It is important to know that as the investment policy pays off with greater returns, those greater returns do reduce the unfunded liability. They stay in the basic account because the inflation adjustment account is created by shifting an amount of money to the inflation adjustment account to create that account. Somewhat less money is going to be shifted as a result of this act and the decisions that have been made. But a very small amount is being retained in the basic account to pay for the additional benefits. In doing that, they have made a trade-off. They could have put all the money into the inflation adjustment account and forgone the benefits. But that would not have affected the unfunded liability, and it would not have provided any benefits, particularly to women and others who are going to be benefiting from this change in policy. It is those people who have not been able to stay in the workforce for a long, consistent period of time. So, again, it's primarily women who end up dropping out because of family-raising responsibilities, or those who have come into the workforce, or at least into that particular pension plan, later in life and may not have all the accumulated time necessary to be able to benefit from the current circumstances who will see increased benefits from this. I think that is a reasonable trade-off.

As the Finance minister, I suppose my very narrow interest would probably be to scoop those benefits and try to use them to reduce the unfunded liability, because that reduces the liabilities of the province. But having said that, I don't think that's fair to those who have paid in and have seen those benefits established for them. It's important to recognize that the benefits in the inflation adjustment account have been assigned to members of the plan.

J. Weisgerber: I've listened with some interest to the rather wide-ranging debate on this section of the bill. I enter into the debate in the spirit of assuming that we're covering a whole range of issues and that that will allow us to move forward more quickly on other issues -- at least that's the anticipation. Let me say, then, entering into my version of the second reading debate, that it seems to me that the bill has three areas in which it focuses its energies on reducing the unfunded liability: the one we're dealing with here, which is moving down the indexing when the unfunded liability increases; if that's unsuccessful, requiring the employer to pay a larger contribution into the plan, as the second part of that initiative; and, furthermore, looking then at another method of trying to make that contribution. I must confess that the third one slips my mind at this particular moment, but I'm sure we'll come to it. While setting out, at least on the surface, to deal with the unfunded liability, 

[ Page 12824 ]

the bill then moves into the area of expanding benefits and increasing the costs. The bill is as much about expanding benefits and increasing costs as about dealing with the unfunded liabilities, and I think the minister would probably acknowledge that.

This section suggests that as the unfunded liability increases, the first action will be to reduce the amount put into the indexed account -- the account to deal with inflation. Can the minister give me a sense of the parameters that this section of the act could deal with? What effects, over a year or over a period of time, does this section have the potential to address on the question of unfunded liabilities? I have the sense that this is a pretty small move toward dealing with unfunded liabilities, which in some sections are as much as 120 percent.

Hon. E. Cull: I guess this last set of questions or comments illustrates some of the problems with allowing wide-ranging debate when we're dealing with a section, because we've gone well beyond this section. Specifically on this section, it doesn't address unfunded liabilities at all. All it says is that we can pay for group benefits -- medical services, extended health and dental -- out of the inflation adjustment account. That's simply what this section deals with; it doesn't deal with the unfunded liability.

Let me just go back again and deal with the question of the unfunded liability. You said that there were three things that you thought were inherent in the bill. The first one was wrong; the last one you couldn't remember, so I can't comment on it; and the middle one was right. What we are doing with the unfunded liability is setting a limit which says we can't exceed where we are now; we can't make it worse. If it gets worse, there's a process for making it better, by increasing the contributions. It also provides that if the unfunded liability goes down, there's a benefit back to the employer as well, through reduced contributions.

[4:15]

The process for dealing with the unfunded liability is putting a policy in the act in a subsequent section -- and I don't remember the number right now. Otherwise, the way the system works, if I can use it in its most simple format.... There are more subaccounts, but if I explain those, I think it might complicate the matter. Essentially there is a basic account and an inflation adjustment account. Money is transferred from the basic account to the inflation adjustment account to provide for the indexing of pensions. The conclusion of the actuaries and the plan members and the government is that more money than was needed has been transferred to the inflation adjustment account. As a result of that conclusion, we will be transferring less -- on the order of 0.5 to 1 percent less, depending on which plan we're talking about. The money that will not be going into the inflation adjustment account will then become available for some limited but I think essential benefit improvements.

This case is probably not the best example, but if we decided not to reduce the penalty for early retirement from 5 percent to 3 percent or to make any other benefit improvements, then the money would continue to go into the inflation adjustment account. We couldn't keep it in the basic account, not spend it and reduce the unfunded liability, because we can't unilaterally change that. I hope that clarifies it. It's a somewhat complex issue, and I'm trying to boil it down to some fairly simple concepts. But that's really what it comes down to. If we decided not to improve any of the benefits, we then end up with an inflation adjustment account that, in the opinion of almost everyone who's looked at it, has more money in it than it needs and will continue to have more money put into it than it needs. I don't think that's in the best long-term interest of the plan members.

J. Weisgerber: To make sure that I'm headed in the right direction on this -- I would then be willing to move on and deal very specifically with the section -- the minister says this section doesn't deal with limited transfers to the indexing account. But one of the three approaches that I see to dealing with unfunded liabilities is, if I understood the minister correctly, to put more money into the basic account and less into the indexing account. When we get to that section, we can deal with it. The other approaches are to look to the employer for greater contributions and to look for a broader investment diversity that would bring in more income.

The point I would make before moving to the individual sections is that I don't believe any one method, or all three of those methods, are going to deal with the unfunded liabilities, particularly in those plans where the unfunded liability exceeds 50 percent. If you're going to hear a theme from me during this debate, it's that there needs to be stronger action. This bill falls short of bringing in methods that we believe would deal in any effective way with unfunded liabilities.

Having said that, I am now led to believe that section 3 simply provides an option to use money earmarked for indexing to purchase benefits rather than index pensions. If that's the intent of this section, I'd be willing to move forward.

Section 3 approved.

On section 4.

F. Gingell: I'm wondering if the minister or the commissioner have in their notes the most reasonable, up-to-date number for the unfunded liability. Let's deal with the college plan, because that's the one we have here, as at this date. The information that was sent around indicated that it was something like 10 percent of the annual payroll. Could you tell us what the unfunded liability at the end of all these changes will be? I appreciate and understand that you may immediately make a change, because you said that in the future you're going to make some increased contributions to look after the unfunded liability. Also, I thank the minister for letting me have copies of the actuarial letters, but nowhere in the letters does it deal with what the current unfunded liability is. Could we just get a feel for that?

Hon. E. Cull: For the college plan, the most recent estimate of the unfunded liability is $45 million. Although you didn't ask about the other plans, I'm going to give them to you right now in anticipation of future questions. The public service plan is $193 million, the teachers' plan is $2.093 billion, and the municipal plan is $1.411 billion. The second part of your question is: what is the change in those unfunded liabilities as a result of this act? The answer is that there is absolutely no change.

F. Gingell: From this point forward, doesn't a greater amount of the earnings of the fund now stay in the basic account than has in the past? I thought this was the one -- 

[ Page 12825 ]

the three-quarters or half a percent that we discussed. I know it is somewhat different for each plan, but isn't there an additional amount of earnings that in future years will stay in the basic account?

Hon. E. Cull: The member is correct. There is more money staying in the basic account, but there is more liability associated with it, so they offset each other on a present-value basis. That's why there is no immediate change in the unfunded liability as a result of bringing in this act. Obviously, over time, there may be a change in the unfunded liabilities. We hope that it will be a reduction as a result of the policy that is being put in place to deal with the unfunded liabilities. This section requires that increased contributions be made if unfunded liabilities increase. Also, diversification may result in a reduction in the unfunded liabilities. I believe my staff have provided you with a copy of the cost certificate from the actuary, if that's the correct phrase for that. That tells us that this trade-off of benefits does not affect the unfunded liability. That was the number one concern for the government.

F. Gingell: The first one I happen to have here is the teachers' pension fund. It indicates raising the excess interest threshold from 6.5 to 7.5. What numbers are we using for the teachers., to save me looking it up? What number does the interest threshold in the teachers' plan go up to?

Hon. E. Cull: The numbers are from 6.5 to 7.5.

F. Gingell: So by putting it up from 6.5 to 7.5, there will be a cost saving of 1.79 percent as a percentage of payroll, right? That's what the actuary says here. I think that's correct.

Underneath it has listed the costs of the additional plans, and it talks about whether or not.... It measures the change in the cost, and it depends upon whether the funding continues at statutory rates or whether the additional unfunded liability, assuming future employee contributions are made at entry-age normal levels.... I'm not quite sure what that means, and which is the appropriate one. But in each case your actuary comes to the conclusion that the cost savings are 1.79 percent of payroll and your additional costs are 1.17 percent of payroll. By these changes you are going to be 0.62 percent of payroll better off. When you extrapolate that over a number of years, doesn't that change the unfunded liability?

Hon. E. Cull: There are many factors at play here, so it's very difficult to add up all the numbers and come up with a precise number that is going to predict what will happen. But if I refer you back to the document that you're looking at, you want to look at the cost savings at 1.79 percent, but at a total cost of 1.51 percent of payroll. If you look to the very bottom of the page you will see what I am referring to; it's in the last line on that page. So there is a slight residual left in the basic fund, which may slightly reduce the unfunded liability.

We wanted to leave a little bit of room, because the unfunded liability will depend on the earnings of the plan, and some of the assumptions that are made with respect to the members themselves and retirement and all the rest of that. Because this is a bit of an art, not a precise science, we felt that it was necessary to leave some room to ensure that we were comfortable that the unfunded liability would not be increased. Theoretically you are right; there is a small potential that this may reduce it somewhat. It would not be a large amount.

F. Gingell: Good. You had me worried when you said there is no change. That was saying to me that if you reduce your costs you have a saving of 1.79 percent, and if you increase your costs by 1.17 percent -- I'm sorry, that should have been 1.51 percent; I understand -- then there isn't any change. But there is a change, and that was what my question was.

Seeing that you have an expert sitting next to you, what kind of effect will 0.28 percent of annual payroll have over the actuarial life of the plan? In this case we're talking about the teachers' fund, which presently has an unfunded liability of $2 billion, which to me is roughly about a third, isn't it? The fund has about $4 billion in it, so it has a liability of about $6 billion. What sort of difference would those 28 points make? Would it make a difference of $10 million unfunded liability or $1 million?

Hon. E. Cull: I don't have a precise figure, and I'm not even sure I can do the $1 million versus $10 million. But it is negligible; it's not a large amount.

[4:30]

F. Gingell: I have one last item in order to make sure I'm not thinking about this thing wrongly. The minister said that the unfunded liability would be affected by a whole bunch of things. One of the things she said it would be affected by is the earnings of the fund. I was under the impression that the earnings in the fund are assumed from this point on to be 7.5 percent, and that every additional penny of earnings goes into the inflation account. Therefore isn't it true to say that the future earnings of the fund -- assuming they are at least 7.5 percent, which goes back to the issue that I discussed on the earlier section -- will not affect the unfunded liability?

Hon. E. Cull: This is rapidly going to get extremely complex, and we're going to get into those subaccounts that I was hoping we could avoid discussing, because it will be a challenge for me to explain them in a way that will convince the member that I thoroughly understand them myself.

The simple answer is that only a portion of the money gets transferred, and only a portion of the money remains in the basic account. It has to do with the fact that under the basic account, there is both an active account and a pension account, and 40 to 50 percent of the improved return is transferred from the basic account to the inflation account. I think that if we want to get into this much deeper, I will have to offer you a briefing with the commissioner, because it is rapidly going to get beyond the details that we can discuss in this chamber.

J. Weisgerber: My study of section 4 suggests that the government has decided that as long as the unfunded liability remains static as an unchanged percentage, the government would be satisfied with that. If the unfunded liability starts to increase, the government will call on the employer to make a larger contribution. If it starts to fall over a period of 15 years or so, then the employer is entitled to make a smaller contribution.

I have two questions. Why did the government decide not to pursue reducing the unfunded liability through this formula? Why didn't it establish a formula that would 

[ Page 12826 ]

have had as its goal a specific reduction in the unfunded liability?

Second, why did the government, as the employer, choose to make those additional contributions without looking to the employees to make a proportional contribution, perhaps, and accelerate the ability to bring down these unfunded liabilities?

Hon. E. Cull: First, before answering the two questions, I will just refresh this member's memory with respect to the policy that was in place for 12 years under the government that he was formerly a part of. That's the policy that we're now legislating. The policy was supposed to be that if the unfunded liability was increased, contributions would increase, and every time there was an actuarial report indicating this, the government of the day was supposed to increase contributions to do that. Unfortunately, the former government failed to do that in each and every year they received advice that the unfunded liability was growing. I leave it to the member to answer the question as to why their government didn't increase the contributions and take action earlier so that the unfunded liabilities would be less.

Nonetheless, the government of the day didn't do that. To ensure that governments do that in the future, we're now putting it in legislation so that it is no longer a policy; it's a legal requirement that we do this. You asked why we don't change that policy, which, of course, would be an option we could pursue at this point. When public sector employers -- hospitals, school districts, colleges, universities and others -- are receiving budget increases that are extremely tight, I think it would be impossible to ask them to do this at this point when they weren't asked to make those contributions by former administrations when budgets were increasing at 10 percent a year. We should have been having those employers make the increased contributions in those days. Right now I just don't think it's fair to ask hospitals, which are doing absolutely everything they can to live within the tight budgets that have been given to them, to take on a problem that should have been addressed by a former government.

Your second question is why we're not asking plan members to pay the cost, just employers. That's because the plan member contributions are already high in relation to private sector standards. They're comparable with other public sector jurisdictions, but they're high with respect to the private sector. As I said a minute ago, the funding shortfalls are not the fault of the plan members; they're the fault of previous governments having failed to take the action they should have taken at the time. I think it's unfair to ask today's workers to contribute more, when they are already making very high contributions, to compensate for errors -- if I can be generous -- of past governments.

We have offset that, though, by ensuring that if employers have to make increased contributions as a result of this policy, they also benefit when the plan has reduced liabilities. Contributions may go up for the employer, but they also go down, so there is a quid pro quo, from the employers' point of view, that they benefit as the plan's financial situation improves.

J. Weisgerber: Indeed, this is taking a bit of a philosophical bent, but that's all right. It seems to me that while the minister is extremely critical of the former administration for allowing the unfunded liability to grow, now as government she's happy with the unfunded liability at the level it's at. I suggest to you, with all due respect, that you can't have it both ways. If you are unhappy with the unfunded liability as it exists today and you're critical of the former administration, then I think it would behoove you to take action to correct it.

I would argue that if the increases to public sector groups like school boards, hospital boards and other public institutions were overly generous over a period of time, they should be at the level now, even with very modest increases, where there should be lots of money in the pot. You know it's not true, and I know it's not true, and I think it only contradicts the original argument that was made.

The minister says she decided not to ask employers to make a greater contribution because the contributions were high, given comparisons with private sector plans. I would suggest that the benefits are also generous compared with private sector plans and that one offsets the other. Again, I don't think the minister, as much as she'd like to, can have both sides of the argument. If there is a commitment to reducing the unfunded liability, you would very well argue -- if it was in comparison with the private sector -- that one should either reduce the benefits or increase the premiums.

Hon. E. Cull: Well, I can't let that pass without saying that there are a lot of situations that I as the minister and our government find ourselves in which we inherited from the former government and we're not happy about. Unfortunately, decisions they made have really limited our ability to immediately change those. We are changing them in this respect: we are bringing down the unfunded liability; and we are putting into law something that the former government failed to do, so that we ensure that all governments in the future are required to deal with the unfunded liability in a timely and responsible way.

J. Weisgerber: I'm sure it's a tune we'll hear from the next Finance minister as the next government looks back on the actions of this government. It seems that it goes ever thus, whether it be in provincial politics or in Ottawa. We see the Liberal government singing very much the same tune about the Conservatives. I have no doubt that the government that succeeds the current one will find that, indeed, even though they were anxious to replace this government, they are handicapped by bad decisions made by the former administration.

With all due respect, I think that at some point in the mandate of a government, particularly when it moves past the two-and-a-half-year mark toward the three-year mark -- the last quarter of its mandate -- government has to start accepting responsibility for governing, for making decisions and for justifying them. I'm a bit disappointed that the government has simply chosen to accept the status quo. I believe they've been willing to trade off greater benefits rather than deal with the unfunded liability. I suspect that that's a problem paralleled in government in other areas.

Hon. E. Cull: Just to bring a bit of information into this debate, since we formed the government the unfunded liability has come down in all of these plans. So action has been taken by this government.

J. Weisgerber: Perhaps the minister would tell us what action her government took, other than to take advantage 

[ Page 12827 ]

of changes to increases in inflation and payroll and interest rates.

Hon. E. Cull: Implementation of diversification strategies.

C. Serwa: I've been listening with considerable interest and substantial concern. Here again, the beneficiaries are friends and insiders of the current government, and the liability is incurred by the taxpayers of the province. Perhaps the minister could explain the rationale for her statement that the government couldn't make a unilateral decision to move moneys from the inflation account into the unfunded liabilities. I suppose the beneficiaries, who will receive the pension, would be unwilling to have that happen. Could the minister explain the rationale?

No one lost anything; neither the employer nor the public sector employee really lost anything. If we can get a greater return on the funds from the expansion of the type of investments, then why shouldn't that money go to guarantee that the pensions would in fact be available and that the unfunded liabilities would and could be attended to?

Hon. E. Cull: I think a lot of people listening out there today would find it curious to hear nurses and teachers, municipal workers, and people who work in the public service -- several hundred thousand people -- called friends and insiders of the government. I think they're a considerable part of the constituency that people in this Legislature have been elected to represent. I think the comments are somewhat insulting to those people who work on behalf of the citizens of British Columbia in various capacities.

[4:45]

The suggestion that we could move all of the inflation adjustment account into the basic account and use that to reduce the unfunded liability -- if that's what the member was suggesting -- would create a significant risk with respect to pension indexing that would be unacceptable.

C. Serwa: Again, from listening to the discussion on this particular section, it was my understanding that in fact you were going to expand the benefits -- to utilize those surplus funds that weren't required to expand the benefits to those who will be getting the pensions. Now you're saying we would jeopardize the inflation adjustment account. Again, as my hon. colleague from Peace River South said, you can't have it both ways.

There was certainly no insult meant. But the hon. minister knows full well that funding, financing and support for this government largely comes through the public sector employees. That's the reality. It's not meant to be any insult, but a recognition of the interest and the concern of this particular government of the day.

Hon. E. Cull: I thought the member had suggested we move all the money from the inflation adjustment account into the basic account. Now I understand that he is saying: "Why don't we do what we're going to do, move some of it" -- really, that we leave it behind and don't transfer it over -- "and not provide any additional benefits?" Well, the deal struck in 1982 with the pension plans precludes that. We cannot unilaterally violate that agreement with the plan members.

C. Serwa: Has any attempt been made by the government of the day to take a reasonable, reasoned, commonsense approach to it and discuss the situation with the public sector unions?

Hon. E. Cull: Yes.

C. Serwa: The last question, then, is.... I can only presume that the expanded benefits were more desirable than ensuring that the unfunded liabilities were not to undermine the future demands of the plan. So short-term expediency, for the benefits, rules the day.

Hon. E. Cull: I think the member would understand that it would be very difficult for plan members to agree to give up a benefit for which they would see no benefit to them offsetting it. While we may like to suggest that the greater good would be served by reducing the unfunded liabilities, plan members were not willing to give up something and incur a risk -- which they are doing with respect to indexing -- and not receive anything else. From their point of view, it's better to just leave it in the indexing account than to have it moved. We have discussed all kinds of possibilities with them, but I think anyone would understand why plan members were not interested in making that trade-off. They wanted a trade-off that saw them no worse off at the end of the day. Your suggestion would not do that.

C. Serwa: Is the inflation adjustment account running at a surplus at the present time? Or will it be presumed to run at a surplus in revenue, from the expanded investment opportunities of the pension account?

Hon. E. Cull: Both. It is in surplus now, and it's expected to continue to be in surplus if we don't make these changes.

C. Serwa: How significant is the surplus in dollars and in percentage in relationship to the exposure?

Hon. E. Cull: The current inflation adjustment account has about $3 billion in it. To do indexing, we require $200 million to $300 million annually. This is across all four plans; that's why the numbers are very rounded. You can see that with that kind of draw on $3 billion, we have 20 years' worth of ability to do the indexing, which is in excess of what would be needed.

Section 4 approved.

On section 5.

F. Gingell: I understand that what's involved here is the area that deals with contributions made when you're on leave of absence. All we've dealt with in the statute before.... This says that it repeals provisions now prescribed by regulations. First, I presume that the regulations are presently in effect. Second, do those regulations differ from the legislation that was in the four acts?

Hon. E. Cull: Regulations don't exist now; they have to be done subsequent to the act. This is the first step in simplifying the legislation by taking administrative details out of the legislation and putting them in regulation, where they should more properly be. It allows for more technical details to be dealt with in regulation than were formerly dealt with in the statute.

[ Page 12828 ]

F. Gingell: Is there an understanding that the regulations will not deal with issues that determine the amounts of benefits or contributions? Changes that could take place by regulation will not affect contributions, benefits and, our favourite subject, the unfunded liability.

Hon. E. Cull: That's correct. All of those have to remain in the statute.

Sections 5 to 8 inclusive approved.

On section 9.

Hon. E. Cull: I move the amendment standing in my name on the order paper.

[SECTION 9, by deleting the proposed section 9 and substituting the following: 
9. Section 13 is amended 

(a) by repealing subsection 

(1) and substituting the following: (1) If an employee who has made or is making contributions under this Act is a person who 

(a) ceased or ceases to be employed in the service of a reciprocal employer and, on or after July 1, 1994, is or becomes employed in the service of an employer to whom this Act applies, or 

(b) ceased or ceases to be employed in the service of an employer to whom this Act applies and, on or after July 1, 1994, is or becomes employed in the service of a reciprocal employer, 

that employee's aggregate period of pensionable service as an employee, within the meaning of the pension plan of the reciprocal employer and as an employee within the meaning of this Act, must be allowed in computing the employee's length of service for determining his or her eligibility for an allowance under this Act, but the amount of the employee's allowance under this Act must be based on his or her pensionable service and contributions under this Act. , and 

(b) by repealing subsection (3).]

Let me just explain the amendment. Section 13 of the Pension (College) Act is amended to remove the three-year limit on a gap in service between reciprocal employers for service recognition purposes. This removes a potential source of conflict among several provisions of the Pension (College) Act. Terms for recognition of service between employers could be established by the commissioner, subject to the approval of the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council, under section 12 of the Pension (College) Act, and also by the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council under section 32. Consequently, the amendment removes an inconsistency among the provisions of the act. There are three other amendments that are similar to this for the other acts.

Amendment approved.

On section 9 as amended.

C. Serwa: There was talk about reciprocal benefits, and I have a question on leave of absence and pensionable time. Is it proper to talk about that in this particular section, or is there a section that more closely refers to that?

Hon. E. Cull: That was dealt with in section 4. I'm not sure what question the member wants to pursue.

C. Serwa: My question has to do with the reciprocal arrangements of other public bodies -- for example, an employee employed in the municipal area, then in the provincial area, or wherever. It also has to do with leave of absence. For example, take an individual who has a leave of absence -- that's not unusual -- from Municipal Affairs or perhaps from the Ministry of Education, and who left a position in the community or the school district to come to the province. Is that leave of absence pensionable time that could be added on to the time when the individual is already working for the provincial government?

Hon. E. Cull: Employees can't double-dip in this case. They can't be on a leave of absence and be working for another employer and purchase back pension time. From your nods, I think that's what you are wanting assurance on.

C. Serwa: That was my express concern: the potential years of service.

Section 9 as amended approved.

Sections 10 and 11 approved.

On section 12.

F. Gingell: Pension funds are like insurance policies to a great extent. You have winners and losers. I have a friend who plays golf, Dr. Fahrni, who is 107. He is collecting an old age pension and has received one for so many years. You get people who live long periods of time, and they are losers as far as the fund is concerned. They take out far more from the fund than the amount of moneys that were paid in on their behalf, and you get others who, unfortunately, die early. Those people who die early make up for those people who live lengthy lives.

Actuaries use mortality tables to make their calculations. They must take into account those who die early and those who live a long time. All the benefits and contributions are based on the building up of all the calculations, using these things. Then we suddenly come in and say: "Aha! We will look after people we lose money on -- people who live a long time -- but if someone has a shortened life expectancy, we will perhaps have a different arrangement for them."

My first question is: has disability been within the act before? Second, from the point of view of an actuary, is it actuarially sound? Is it playing the game within the established rules to have these kinds of provisions?

Hon. E. Cull: The answer to both questions is yes. In fact, it is required by the Pension Benefits Standards Act, and it is there now. All this section does is change "commissioner" to "board," reflecting the new management structure.

F. Gingell: Does the minister or the commissioner on staff have any idea of what historically this has cost the plan? When this change came in, perhaps because of changes in federal legislation, did that cause any change in the contribution rates?

[5:00]

Hon. E. Cull: No, there was no change of the contribution rates. Unfortunately, I don't have the information you are seeking with respect to the impact of this particular provision. But we could endeavour to get that for you, and I'll send it to you after this debate.

[ Page 12829 ]

F. Gingell: No, that's fine -- unless the amount is significant. We deal with these plans in such a highly technical manner, and all of these issues have an effect. Everything has a cost. It surprises me that it isn't incumbent upon the government or the administrators of the plan to ensure that everybody understands what the costs of these changes are. So there should have been a change in the contribution rate if you were going to have a change in the benefits. Does the minister agree with that statement?

Hon. E. Cull: In theory I agree with it, but this doesn't change the benefits. All this does is change the power to make the decisions. It already exists. That's why there hasn't been a cost analysis of the change; there is no change. It just changes it from commissioner to board.

F. Gingell: No, I understood that; that wasn't what I was saying. My first question was: has this been practised, and was it in the act before? Are we just moving the authority to determine the terms of payment from the commissioner to the board? I got the answer yes: that is all that has happened; nothing else has changed. So maybe I'm off on the wrong fishing trip here. Does this not, then, have anything to do with paying an increased pension to someone who has a shortened life expectancy? If that's not the case, what's the shortened life expectancy got to do with this?

Hon. E. Cull: No, it doesn't change the amount of the payment.

F. Gingell: What's involved here? What are the consequences of someone's shortened life expectancy that the board can now determine?

Hon. E. Cull: I'm somewhat reluctant to get into that, because it doesn't pertain to this act, in that the change being made here is simply to the form, not the amount, of the payment. It strikes out the words "acceptable to the commissioner" and substitutes the words "acceptable to the board." While it would be interesting to delve into the policies related to shortened life expectancy and what we do in that regard, it's not specifically in front of us in terms of the changes being made to the act right now. I certainly don't have briefing on all of the basic act, and I could not get into that line of inquiry at this point.

Sections 12 to 16 inclusive approved.

On section 17.

F. Gingell: There's a whole series of sections here that talk, in this particular case, about the College Pension Advisory Board: the board shall do this; the board may, subject to this act...; the board must.... We get to the proposed section 23, under section 17 of this bill, which says: "(1) The board may engage the services of an actuary for the purposes of this Act. (2) The actuary must...." I actually spoke to the commissioner about this. I really would like the minister to accept a friendly amendment that would change the word "may" in section 23(1) to "will."

Hon. E. Cull: I have spent many years as a public employee going over this. When does "may" mean "must" and "will" and "shall," and all the rest of it? After long arguments with legal counsel, I have been convinced that in this case the interpretation of the word "may" means "will," so it's not necessary to make that amendment. Believe you me, as somebody who used to try to work with legal counsel drafting legislation, I raised the same question -- almost on an annual basis -- and received exactly the same answer.

F. Gingell: They haven't used the word "will" in many places, but they have used the word "must." Why don't we change it to "must"? Common English usage indicates "may" is permissive; "must" is requirative -- if there is such a word. You're the English professor, aren't you, hon. Chair? Surely the most important thing about legislation is for it to be as clear and understandable as it can be. I can see arguments around the advisory board table going through this same exercise. If you used the word "must" there won't be any argument about it.

Hon. E. Cull: Based on English language usage, I agree with you. It would be a lot easier if it said what I thought it said in all cases, but I am very reluctant to tamper with this kind of wording, which has not been vetted by legal counsel. They advise us on when to use may, shall, must, will and all the rest of it. Not being a legislative drafter, I have to take their advice.

Sections 17 to 20 inclusive approved.

On section 21.

F. Gingell: At some point I wanted to raise the issue of the ability for changes to be made in this act through the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council. At this moment we are dealing with the College and Institutes Act. In the end -- when you look all the way through it -- the provincial government funds it, so one understands. But when you look at the Pension (Municipal) Act -- which is also in here -- that is not funded by the provincial government. It's funded by the municipal government, and probably taxpayers. These same kinds of provisions, I believe, run all the way through each of the four acts.

Does the minister have any concern that she is removing from, in this particular case, college boards -- who, although they are funded by government, still have responsibility for determining the use of resources...? Does the minister have any concern that the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council shall be doing things, the consequences of which are the responsibility of other people in authority?

Hon. E. Cull: There is no change in the powers that the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council has in this regard. What happens as a result of the sections we have just passed is that there now is a board which is composed of representatives from municipalities, and that board will be making recommendations on any changes which would go before cabinet. It would be at cabinet's peril to ignore those recommendations, particularly if something is being imposed, as you have suggested, because the goodwill of the board would be lost, all of this would be undone, and we wouldn't have the structure that we have just put in place. There are sufficient safeguards through the advisory board. Without the board, these provisions were still in the act. In fact, this improves on the access of municipal representatives to the accountability issues you're raising.

[ Page 12830 ]

The Chair: The member has drawn my attention to the noise level in the House. I would just ask members who aren't participating directly in the debate to please be mindful of that problem. Thank you, member.

Section 21 approved.

On section 22.

F. Gingell: This is another place where the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council gets to prescribe terms, conditions and costs to be paid. We talked before about regulations. I understand that we have a commitment that no regulations can change costs. But here there is a proposal that the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council can take action in determining leaves of absence, etc. that could, one assumes, have costs on the provincial fund, unless it's all funded by whoever they've gone to for their leave of absence.

Hon. E. Cull: This particular section only empowers the cabinet to make regulations respecting what constitutes service recognition, not to actually change benefits.

F. Gingell: I have one more question. Don't the benefits change when the service recognition changes?

Hon. E. Cull: The changes or recommendations that are coming into effect right now have already gone through the process that I just described to you. If there were to be a change that would affect costs in the future, it would also have to go through the same process, so there are safeguards there in that there is a process. It can't just be done unilaterally.

Section 22 approved.

The Chair: I understand that the bill is structured essentially as a rollover. So it's essentially a repetition, only for different pensions. Having said that, the member for Delta South.

On section 23.

F. Gingell: I was wondering whether the minister and her staff, who are more familiar with this than we are, could point out any differences in the following three sections, so that we can cooperate with you in moving this along in a sensible manner.

Hon. E. Cull: I trust the member doesn't want an itemized list of all the changes. The changes are essentially the same for all plans, but in some cases the base isn't the same. For example, we already have diversification in some plans and not in others, so obviously that would be part of it. There's also a trigger in the teachers' plan, because of the size of the unfunded liability, which comes into place immediately that has not been triggered in the other three plans.

There are differences in benefits between the plans and, of course, those are reflected in the different changes. But in terms of whether there is something in here that is substantively different from what we have just discussed, my staff assure me that there isn't. It pertains to whether, for example, a plan now covers dental or not, so those changes will only be made to some plans and not to others. For example, the municipal plan doesn't have dental in it.

So if that is satisfactory, I think you can be assured that there aren't any other policy changes to other plans that we hadn't canvassed pretty well under section 3 when we started off with that lengthy, wide debate, which covered the entire plan, it seemed to me.

F. Gingell: There is one issue that I would like to canvass. I tried to go through and find it, and I can't, to be honest. In funding the additional contributions to be made to the teachers' pension fund, because the fund is presently over 50 percent, is there a restriction on something that doesn't come in for a couple of years? There are some words that try and smooth out the maximum amount of additional contributions to be made. If the minister could direct me to that section and describe it to me, we could....

[5:15]

Hon. E. Cull: It's section 75. I was going to give you a page number, but I realized that you don't have quite the same page numbering that I have here. Anyway, it provides for an increase in employer contributions if the unfunded actuarial liability grows as a percentage of payroll. If the unfunded actuarial liability is greater than 50 percent of the payroll, further employer contributions are required to reduce the unfunded actuarial liability to 50 percent. The other sections deal with the increase in employer contributions if it grows as a percentage of payroll -- and the decrease.

Sections 23 to 32 inclusive approved.

On section 33.

Hon. E. Cull: I move the amendment standing in my name on the order paper.

[SECTION 33, by deleting the proposed section 33 and substituting the following:
33. Section 11 is amended 

(a) by repealing subsection 

(1) and substituting the following: (1) If an employee who has made or is making contributions under this Act is a person who 

(a) ceased or ceases to be employed in the service of a reciprocal employer and, on or after July 1, 1994, is or becomes employed in the service of an employer to whom this Act applies, or 

(b) ceased or ceases to be employed in the service of an employer to whom this Act applies and, on or after July 1, 1994, is or becomes employed in the service of a reciprocal employer, 

that employee's aggregate period of pensionable service as an employee, within the meaning of the pension plan of the reciprocal employer and as an employee within the meaning of this Act, must be allowed in computing the employee's length of service for determining his or her eligibility for an allowance under this Act, but the amount of the employee's allowance under this Act must be based on his or her pensionable service and contributions under this Act. , 

(b) by repealing subsection (3), and 

(c) in subsection (6) by striking out "prescribed by order of the Lieutenant Governor in Council." and substituting "specified by the board."]

Amendment approved.

Section 33 as amended approved.

[ Page 12831 ]

Sections 34 to 60 inclusive approved.

Hon. E. Cull: I move the amendment standing in my name on the order paper.

[SECTION 60.1 by adding the following section: 
60.1 Section 16 is amended 

(a) by repealing subsection (1) and substituting the following: 

(1) If an employee who has made or is making contributions under this Act is a person who 

(a) ceased or ceases to be employed in the service of a reciprocal employer and, on or after July 1, 1994, is or becomes employed in the service of an employer to whom this Act applies, or 

(b) ceased or ceases to be employed in the service of an employer to whom this Act applies and, on or after July 1, 1994, is or becomes employed in the service of a reciprocal employer, 

that employee's aggregate period of pensionable service as an employee, within the meaning of the pension plan of the reciprocal employer and as an employee within the meaning of this Act, must be allowed in computing the employee's length of service for determining his or her eligibility for an allowance under this Act, but the amount of the employee's allowance under this Act must be based on his or her pensionable service and contributions under this Act. , and 

(b) by repealing subsection (3).]

Section 60.1 approved.

Sections 61 to 74 inclusive approved.

On section 75.

F. Gingell: I'm sorry; I'm getting older and a little deaf, and the minister has a very soft voice. I was trying to catch.... When I look in section 75, I see the need for the 15-year excise, but isn't there a limitation that goes up by a quarter of 1 percent per year? Isn't there a limitation in the early years so it isn't all of a sudden a great big...? Which section is that in?

Hon. E. Cull: It's at the end of section 3.3(1)(e). If you look at the very end of that, it says they "must be paid to the fund in a manner prescribed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council." So it will be in regulation.

F. Gingell: I can't find section 3.3.

The Chair: It's on page 27, directly below. It's the first heading under section 75.

F. Gingell: Okay, thank you.

This idea that I've got in my head I got from a briefing, not from the act. This is going to be done through regulation. Am I right that you're going to use one-eighth of the amount and that it's going to go up by one-quarter of a percent until we get up to a total of 2 percent? So it's one-eighth of 2 percent the first year, two-eighths the second year, three-eighths the third year and four-eighths....

Okay, thank you.

Sections 75 to 82 inclusive approved.

On section 83.

Hon. E. Cull: I move the amendment standing in my name on the order paper.

[SECTION 83, by deleting the proposed paragraph (a) and substituting the following: 

(a) by repealing subsection (1) and substituting the following: 

(1) If an employee who has made or is making contributions under this Act is a person who 

(a) ceased or ceases to be employed in the service of a reciprocal employer and, on or after July 1, 1994, is or becomes employed in the service of an employer to whom this Act applies, or 

(b) ceased or ceases to be employed in the service of an employer to whom this Act applies and, on or after July 1, 1994, is or becomes employed in the service of a reciprocal employer, 

that employee's aggregate period of pensionable service as an employee, within the meaning of the pension plan of the reciprocal employer and as an employee within the meaning of this Act, must be allowed in computing the employee's length of service for determining his or her eligibility for an allowance under this Act, but the amount of the employee's allowance under this Act must be based on his or her pensionable service and contributions under this Act. , and 

(b) by adding the following paragraph: (a.1) by repealing subsection (3), .]

Amendment approved.

Section 83 as amended approved.

Sections 84 to 103 inclusive approved.

On section 104.

Hon. E. Cull: I move the amendment standing in my name on the order paper.

[SECTION 104, 
(a) by deleting the proposed subsection (1) and substituting the following: 

(1) Sections 1 to 4, 8, 9, 10 (b), (c) and (d), 11, 12, 16 to 28, 29 (a), 31 to 33, 34 (b), 35, 36, 38, 39, 41 to 52, 54 to 57, 59, 60.1, 62 (a), 65, 68 to 75, 76 (a) and (f), 80, 81 (a), (b), (d) and (e), 83, 84 (b), 85, 86, 87 (b), (e) and (g), 89, 90, 93 to 100 and 103 come into force on July 1, 1994 and are retroactive to the extent necessary to give them effect on and after that date. , 

(b) by deleting the proposed subsection (4) and substituting the following: 

(4) Sections 5, 7, 13 to 15, 29 (b), 30, 40, 53, 58, 61, 77 to 79, 81 (c), 91, 92, 101 and 102 come into force by regulation of the Lieutenant Governor in Council. , and 

(c) by adding the following subsections: 

(5) Regulations that may be made under sections 32 (1) (m) to (p) and 33 of the Pension (College) Act, sections 39 (1) (m) to (p) and 40 of the Pension (Municipal) Act, sections 61 (2) (m) to (o) and 62 of the Pension (Public Service) Act and sections 39 (1) (n) to (q) and 40 of the Pension (Teachers) Act, as a result of the amendments enacted by this Act, may be made retroactive to July 1, 1994 and, if made retroactive, shall be deemed to have come into force at that time. 

(6) Subsection (5) and this subsection are repealed on December 31, 1994.]

Amendment approved.

Section 104 as amended approved.

F. Gingell: While I have the opportunity to have the last word, this has been an interesting exercise. I don't get the last word, of course, because the minister can stand up and have the last word. I do give credit to the government for many of the things they've done in this act, but my 

[ Page 12832 ]

very small-c conservative nature stops me from supporting it in third reading. I'm going to vote against it because I believe that the most important thing we should be doing is protecting the basic pension account at the beginning. I know that a deal was made in 1982, and it's very difficult to go back and change those deals now, but the reason for the unfunded liability is that all of the investment earnings have not gone into the fund. The unfunded liability would have vanished if all the investment earnings had gone in. Why were the investment earnings higher and available? They were higher because there was inflation, and inflation has caused the unfunded liability in this fund.

So I support the majority of things that you have done. But in the end, Madam Minister, if I had been in your shoes I would not have done it. I would not have gone for the whole package. I understand the problem of trying to go back and change old deals. But I do give you credit, and support you for finally getting to grips with the problem that you quite rightly identified as the previous administration's failure, year after year, to follow through on their own policies. It is really hard to understand.

With those few words, I will vote for the title.

Title approved.

Hon. E. Cull: I guess these days you take your compliments where you get them, and I'll accept those.

I move the committee rise and report the bill complete with amendments.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; D. Lovick in the chair.

Bill 53, Pension Statutes Amendments Act, 1994, reported complete with amendments.

Deputy Speaker: When shall the bill be read a third time?

Hon. G. Clark: With leave of the House now, hon. Speaker.

Leave not granted.

Hon. G. Clark: I call second reading of Bill 36.

RECALL AND INITIATIVE ACT

Hon. C. Gabelmann: On June 23, 1992, the Select Standing Committee on Parliamentary Reform, Ethical Conduct, Standing Orders and Private Bills was authorized by the Legislative Assembly to examine the two referenda questions placed before the voters in the 1991 provincial election. The select standing committee tabled its recommendations on recall and initiative legislation for this province in November 1993. Those recommendations were adopted by the Legislative Assembly.

Bill 36 will empower British Columbians to voice their concerns in the political arena and strengthen legislative mechanisms to ensure those concerns are being heard. Bill 36 contains recall and initiative procedures that are designed to be neither easy nor impossible. The key feature is one of fairness. This legislation will ensure that duly elected members of the Legislative Assembly and executive council are recalled with the "due process" that this legislative package provides. However, Bill 36 will not provide -- I emphasize for hon. members -- an opportunity for disgruntled political interests to relight the fires of a failed election campaign. Instead, Bill 36 is designed to prohibit this type of abuse, and the regulations that follow will only strengthen those measures. Bill 36 is legislation that breaks new ground in our current system of parliamentary democracy. Because those changes are such a departure from our parliamentary traditions, this government has worked hard to prepare recall and initiative legislation that strikes a balance between grass-roots support for democratic reform and our commitment to responsible government.

Bill 36 allows an eligible voter to apply to the chief electoral officer for a petition to recall his or her Member of the Legislative Assembly. If that voter obtains signatures from 40 percent of the eligible voters within 60 days, the member loses his or her seat, and a by-election to fill that vacancy is held. Following the recommendations of the select standing committee, an eligible voter may apply for a petition to recall his or her member for any reason. As well, in order to protect the recall process from being dominated by special interest groups, Bill 36 prohibits anyone who canvasses for a recall petition signatures from accepting payment or any other form of inducement for their canvassing activities.

[5:30]

The initiative component of Bill 36 also adapts our system of parliamentary democracy to allow British Columbians to petition their government on specific legislative proposals. Under Bill 36, an eligible voter may apply to the chief electoral officer for a petition. Once it's issued, the voter has 90 days to obtain signatures from at least 10 percent of the total number of registered voters in British Columbia in support of his or her draft legislation.

If the petition is successful, the chief electoral officer must submit the initiative legislation to a provincewide vote. The government must introduce the initiative bill into the Legislative Assembly, provided it is supported by more than 50 percent of the voters in British Columbia from at least two-thirds of the electoral districts.

The initiative procedure recognizes that from time to time an initiative bill will come forward that should be introduced into the Legislative Assembly by way of an expedited process. In anticipation of that, Bill 36 empowers a select standing committee to recommend the introduction of the initiative bill into the House without the requirement of a provincewide vote.

Bill 36 contains a number of safeguards to ensure that recall and initiative legislation remains accessible to the grass roots of this province. When developed, the regulations for Bill 36 will augment those safeguards.

G. Campbell: Unfortunately, as I stand before you today, I have to report on yet another broken promise from this NDP government. It's more than a broken promise, though. This is really a slap in the face of democracy for people across this province. This bill has been written by politicians, of politicians and for politicians. It has missed the mark by a long shot.

People were expecting what they wanted, when in fact there was a plea for accountability in government. That's what the referendum and recall vote did at the last election. Over 80 percent of British Columbians said they wanted to be sure that their elected representatives were accountable again. They wanted to re-establish access between their public institutions and those elected to serve them.

[ Page 12833 ]

This is not about whether we agree with that 80 percent vote or whether we believe we have better wisdom than the public. It is about creating a piece of legislation that will indeed work and that will make people understand that we are here as their servants first, and that they are not the servants of the Legislature or of the public bodies. It's about doing what we're told. I'm afraid that the bill falls far short of doing what we were told and what people could expect.

I should say this government has taken three years to bring this legislation before us. I can understand the time that it took them. I should also point out that the previous government took much longer than three years to bring the legislation before us. Indeed, they never really brought it before us. They avoided dealing with the crucial issue by putting a relatively flaccid referendum before people when they could have, in fact, created strong public policy that would have established accountability in the Legislature in British Columbia.

I understand that we who run for office are often frightened by the kinds of changes that this represents. The Attorney General mentioned them in the closing comments of his speech. This is a significant change in some of our institutions. But as the world changes, as the places we live in change, as the service we have to provide to our constituents changes, it's imperative that we change our democratic institutions to ensure that we have accountability in this system.

Why do people call for that accountability? Why has that cry come up so loudly from the towns and cities of British Columbia, from the north to the south, from the east to the west? The reason is that they believe that our governing institutions have indeed lost their sense of accountability to the electorate. The reason is that they have watched as successive governments have made promises and broken them. They have watched as successive governments have said they were not going to do special favours for their friends and insiders, and the next thing they know they're doing major special favours for friends and insiders.

Instead of re-establishing trust between our public institutions and the people they are supposed to serve, this piece of legislation does not even come close to restoring that trust. What it does is solidify public cynicism about our public processes and about what people profess to be the intent of a bill. When you read the title of the bill, there is great hope: recall and initiative legislation, it points out. But the fact is that this is not recall and initiative legislation; it is legislation that is meant not to work. I think we just have to look at these items in turn to see how the government has turned its back on the promise of the NDP Premier prior to the last election, which was that he would move forward with referendum and recall in a way that would be workable.

Let's start with initiative. We are told in the legislation that it's going to be a requirement that we get 10 percent of the province's voters. That's 190,000 voters on a petition. More important, that's 2,100 voters per day, because the government has limited the time period in which people are able to go out and pursue legitimate initiative endeavours.

Further to that, the government has said that you don't just need 10 percent, the 190,000 voters; you need 10 percent in 100 percent of the ridings of British Columbia. I believe we are putting an onerous obligation on the voters. It suggests that the government doesn't really want to become accessible to the ideas of the public. The government doesn't want the public to come forward and say: "Here are some ways that you can make our public institutions work better for us in the province."

To put the government's 10 percent in context, it should be noted that Oregon, for example, requires 4.5 percent. In places where direct democracy and initiative are, in fact, looked upon as positive tools of government, as opposed to tools that we have to protect the politicians and the government from.... Switzerland, one of the homes of direct democracy, requires 2.2 percent. In California, it's 2.9 percent. The National Citizens' Coalition has suggested we should have only 3 percent. Our government has suggested 10 percent.

That 10 percent is simply a hurdle, one which I believe the government understands people will not be able to overcome. It's not just the 10 percent number on a provincewide basis, but 10 percent in 100 percent of the constituencies of British Columbia, and that is far too onerous a hurdle for us to overcome. It suggests that the government is literally frightened of the input that citizens may have with regard to referenda proposals. If we put this in the context of the last provincial election, if the referendum received 80 percent support from that 60 percent turnout, the referendum would actually fail under this NDP plan, because it would receive support from only 48 percent of the total number of voters in British Columbia.

By expecting that this will have hurdles that are far greater than any of us would ever be able to jump over to get elected, I think the government is clearly saying to individuals in British Columbia: "You have no role here. We will have a piece of legislation, and we'll put the right title on it, but we don't expect you to really be able to contribute, because after all, we're the elected people and we know what's best." We on this side of the House don't share that belief. We believe that initiative can indeed be a major, positive way to create better legislation and more accessibility to our public institutions.

I think it's also important to note that there are no obligations to enact any of these proposals in the House, and I believe that suggests that the government is afraid of having the public actually participate in creating the kind of policy that will respond to the needs of communities and citizens in British Columbia in the 1990s.

So while the word "initiative" suggests that the government may be trying to respond to their election commitment, I think we're really seeing that with this piece of legislation they have turned their back on the commitment that they made during the election.

If we can turn to the recall legislation, I think it's obvious why people demand this legislation. They are tired of politicians who make promises before an election and do the exact opposite after. A number of times I have had occasion to visit the city of Kamloops, which, I am sure you will recall, was the subject of one of those locational announcements during the last election. The Premier stood up and told the people of Kamloops: "If you elect me and my colleagues and we form government, you will have a cancer clinic in the city of Kamloops." Within months of being elected the Premier had changed his mind, not because there was new information, but because initially he had no intention of carrying out that promise, I would suggest. Initially, we had a political statement which was aimed at garnering support for political candidates. That was forthcoming. The candidates were elected to office and then said to the 

[ Page 12834 ]

people of Kamloops: "Thanks for your vote, but forget about the promises we made." You and I know that if we go to Kamloops today you can see signs in the windows with regard to that broken pledge to the people of that community.

Further, it is important to note that under the recall provisions of this legislation, you only have 60 days to gather the signatures. That is not just 60 days to gather the signatures, but an onerous hurdle over which the average voter is supposed to jump in order to be able to succeed in pulling together a recall. In fact, if you just take some averages in British Columbia, it would require citizens to put together 167 signatures a day in an average constituency in order to secure a recall vote. We believe that the hurdle should be far lower. We obviously believe that accountability is a far more important issue in the 1990s than the government does, and during committee stage we will be putting forward suggestions on how we can amend this bill to make government MLAs as well as opposition MLAs directly accountable to their constituents.

When you look at the way the government has put together this legislation with regard to recall, it reminds us of so many other pieces of legislation where the NDP government seems to believe that one-size-fits-all solutions can be imposed across the province, as if every constituency was the same and every constituency had the same opportunities for recall and to gather signatures, and that is simply not the case. I believe that we need to amend the recall provisions to be sure that citizens know that they do have the opportunity to hold their elected representative accountable.

When we talk about being elected, we all have to remember that we are elected to respond first to the needs of our constituents. I believe this shows a lack of trust in the government by the constituents they are supposed to serve.

The fact of the matter is that people will not abuse this right. They will simply require that all of us as elected politicians live according to the pledges we make to them. They will simply require that we stand up for the things we believe in. They will expect us to be accountable to their concerns and needs.

There is no question that the 60-day limit, as well as the onerous 40 percent requirement for the riding's total voters to sign a petition, is put in place to be as sure as possible that citizens don't have that kind of access and don't hold their elected representatives accountable. I believe that is not good enough. I believe accountability is going to be the cornerstone of re-establishing and restoring the trust between our elected representatives and those who elect them.

There are a number of technical problems with the legislation, beyond the principal comments I made earlier. For example, I am very concerned that the government seems to think it's a good idea to have some sort of gag provisions in the legislation, and that will let the government decide how much work can be put into initiative or recall legislation. I don't believe that the government should be controlling how this works. Indeed, we have seen in other parts of Canada with other pieces of legislation that the gag provisions this government is proposing to make through its regulations would be unconstitutional in Canada, I believe. They again will help to hurt the very important components of this bill which require more public accessibility to and accountability of our public institutions.

I believe it's also a little -- a lot -- hypocritical for the NDP government to impose financing restrictions when citizens are involved, but there are no financing restrictions when they're involved. We will restrict people from their activities so we can make sure that we keep people under control. It's unfortunate that the government has decided to look upon both of these opportunities as problems and has tried to create barriers to their being put into proper effect.

We can learn a lot from other jurisdictions as we look at this legislation. One of the things we learn is that when you have an initiative principle that requires 10 percent, you find very few initiatives that are successful. In both Wyoming and Illinois, where there is a 10 percent hurdle before initiatives are put in place, in the 14 years that that has been in place there has not been one successful initiative principle in either one of those jurisdictions. There clearly have been initiative principles which have been successful in a number of other jurisdictions. Our amendment, which we will bring in at committee stage, will clearly lower that level so that we are assured that citizens can, after a considerable amount of work, have significant input into the public process.

The other thing that's important to note is that this government has done everything it can to make it look like they are being open, like they are trying to establish recall and initiative legislation that will work, but when you have the limited time frames that we have, it really is designed just for show and not to work.

[5:45]

In the 23 states that have initiative legislation currently in place, six have no time limits whatsoever on how those initiatives are brought forward, and if you average out the other 17, their time limits are 416 days. Our government has been incredibly generous to the people of British Columbia. It said: "You'd better get all of your work done in 90 days, or you're out of luck." I understand the fear that this government has of the electorate. I would be frightened of the electorate if I were aware of the polls they've been looking at.

It is time for the government to truly reform our parliament, to truly start to create accessibility, to truly start creating accountability in government. I'd just like to read this quote from Thomas Jefferson, because I think it's apropos of what we're doing right now: "As we become more developed, more enlightened and as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed and manners and opinions change with change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times." The fact of the matter is that this is a bill that does not keep pace with the times. This is a bill that pretends to open the door to accountability and accessibility, but if a citizen wants to try to take advantage of that invitation, they'll find that the door will be slammed in their face.

The fact of the matter is that the government has said no to yet another one of their promises. They have betrayed yet another part of the public trust that was given to them when they were elected. This bill will not work, and as we go through committee stage, we will be offering in the order of 18 amendments to the bill to try to make it work. Hopefully, the government will be true to its word at last and try to establish a piece of legislation that provides for the kind of accountability and accessibility to our Legislature and to our public institutions that are demanded in the 1990s.

J. Weisgerber: Mr. Speaker, I would seek some clarification from you. It's nearing 6 o'clock. I certainly 

[ Page 12835 ]

intend to take somewhat more than ten minutes to address this subject and would like to move that we recess until 6:30.

Deputy Speaker: May I suggest to the member that he adjourn the debate, and then we'll take a recess motion?

J. Weisgerber: I so move, Mr. Speaker.

Motion approved.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: I move the House do stand recessed until 6:30 this evening.

Motion approved.

The House recessed at 5:49 p.m.

The House resumed at 6:38 p.m.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

Hon. C. Gabelmann: I call adjourned debate on Bill 36.

RECALL AND INITIATIVE ACT
(continued)

J. Weisgerber: Well, it's a real pleasure to finally, after almost three years, have an opportunity to rise and speak to Bill 36, the Recall and Initiative Act, and to speak to the principles and the philosophy behind this legislation. Indeed, before this bill is proclaimed, it will be in excess of three years since voters went to the polls and voted overwhelmingly in favour of both recall and initiative. I don't think I have to remind government members, but I will.

Over a million British Columbians went to the polls in 1991 to vote for recall and initiative. They were voting for meaningful recall and initiative. They believed that the government of the day intended to bring in workable, effective recall legislation. The government at that time was indeed committed to that undertaking. The opposition, the NDP, didn't like the notion of recall and initiative. Indeed, the minister who introduced this legislation -- the current Attorney General -- was quite clear that he opposed the notion of recall and initiative. He said afterward that he was one of the less than 20 percent of British Columbians who voted against recall and initiative. They saw that there was perhaps a wind blowing and a movement happening in British Columbia, and that people were supportive of direct democracy -- recall and initiative. They saw that there was an opportunity, perhaps, not to get involved in debating this issue, and the current Premier said: "We will certainly support whatever voters wish." And, in a very halfhearted manner and with an enormous lack of enthusiasm, almost three years later the government has finally brought forth this piece of legislation.

At least they were consistent with the position they took during the election, which is more than we can say for the Liberals, who campaigned under the current leader of the PDA against recall and initiative. They were quite outspoken in the fact that they disagreed with the notion of recall and initiative. But today we find the miraculous transformation -- the reformation -- of the Liberal Party. They now support recall and initiative. Indeed, we saw just before the break how unenthusiastic even the new leader of the Liberal Party is with this venture. But they're going to support it because they don't have the courage to vote against it.

I wonder: will the member for Delta South, who spoke in this House and during the campaign against recall and initiative, come forward today and vote for it? Will he speak for it? The member for Richmond-Steveston, who made a rather impassioned speech in this House in opposition to recall and initiative, who made quite a presentation to the committee against recall and initiative, was then chosen by the Liberal caucus to represent them on the committee to implement recall and initiative. Now they find themselves reformed believers -- believers in the notion of recall and initiative.

So I think this bill is not going to have too difficult a time. Indeed the government saw the light. They believe. The Liberals -- most of them, at least -- believe. And I expect we'll find that the Reformers, although extremely critical of the processes in this bill, will support the bill simply because it provides a process, unsatisfactory as it is, for recall. The initiative portion of this bill is totally unworkable and provides only a framework that can be amended after the next election. But indeed, at least for those very extreme cases, there might be an opportunity under this legislation to start a recall process.

More than 80 percent of British Columbians voted for the right to recall. But they aren't getting that right; they're not getting the spirit or the intent of that right in this bill. And more than 83 percent of British Columbians voted in support of initiative. The spirit and the opportunity they anticipated aren't here in this bill.

[6:45]

What we have, most obviously, is an act of cynicism. Many will feel it an act of betrayal. Many, indeed, will feel the government has simply decided that it will try and put forward a sham of a bill and say to British Columbians: "We said we were going to bring in recall. We didn't say it was going to be workable or meaningful recall. We just said we'd bring in recall. And here you've got what we promised you." It's something that wasn't meant to work, that won't work and that was designed by a government that didn't want it to work.

The vast majority, more than 80 percent, of British Columbians want workable, effective recall and initiative legislation. I find it interesting, as I travel and talk to people around this province, that they still want it. They have become increasingly frustrated with the government dragging its heels to bring this legislation in. The government knows that. That's why the government finally brought in this ragtag piece of legislation in the last few days of the session.

We know that the committee that was finally struck was ordered to take at least a year: "Go and travel the corners of the province. Consult with British Columbians. Don't come back for at least a year and preferably not till after the next election. Tell us whether British Columbians knew what they were voting for." That was the task of the committee -- to go back and ask folks if they understood what they were voting for. Again to the government's surprise, they found that they did. They knew what they were voting for. They were still committed to it. And they were becoming increasingly impatient with the government for failing to bring it in.

Indeed, we saw shams of meetings that were clearly organized by government supporters who came out. I mean, even in Dawson Creek people I'd never seen or heard from before came out to say how much they disagreed with recall and initiative. It probably was their 

[ Page 12836 ]

only public meeting in their entire careers, but they were there, and they listened to them. Those other folks, who managed to find the tiny print in the newspaper and wanted to come out and say how much they supported recall and initiative, were listened to for a short period of time. I was going to say "politely listened to," but that wasn't always the case. They were often questioned, badgered and cross-examined.

Coming out of that process of consultation that the member for Cariboo North, who should know a lot about this legislation because it may affect his own future at some time down the road.... He says this is a process of consultation.

Interjections.

J. Weisgerber: When you are at the extreme left of the spectrum, where in the world would you go? It would be marvellous to know what kinds of offers the member for Cariboo North has had. Who wanted him? Who asked him?

Let's get back to looking at this legislation, because it's serious business. It is a betrayal of the trust that British Columbians put into the system when they voted for recall. What they've got is a hollow sham of a piece of legislation that, first of all, should have been brought in as three pieces of legislation. There was no logical reason to bring forward a combined piece of legislation that dealt with recall and initiative and rolled into it a whole chunk of election financing. This thing should have been dealt with separately. There should have been a recall bill that we could have discussed and passed or defeated, and there should have been an initiative bill that we could have done the same with. Then the government should have, at the same time, brought forward election financing legislation that would have cleared all the questions that surround this process and the financing of this process.

Let's have a look at recall, because I'm going to look at it as if it were two or three pieces of legislation. The first major flaw in the recall part of this legislation is that it is interpreted and designed to be a reconsideration of the vote in the previous election. Neither this government nor this legislation says people in their constituencies today have the right to assess the performance of their MLAs. What they're saying is that they have an opportunity to reconsider the vote made in the previous election. To cause that process to follow through logically, the government says that the only people who are eligible to vote on recall are those who were eligible to vote in the last election.

This ignores the fact that, in most constituencies in this province, between 20 percent and 30 percent of the people move between elections. This legislation says that 40 percent of the people who were eligible to vote in the last election have to sign a petition to recall the MLA, regardless of how many people have moved out of the constituency, or how many voted or didn't vote in the last election. Forty percent of all those people who are eligible to vote have to vote to recall their MLA.

How long do they have to get petitions ready, to organize and to get out and knock on doors and find these people, many of whom have perhaps moved? Sixty days, if you can believe it.

This legislation is designed not to work. The two-step process simply flies in the face of recall legislation in every other jurisdiction in the country. Recall is working in other jurisdictions around the continent, and there are processes in place, but because the government was seeking to design legislation that didn't and wouldn't work, it had to create its own parameters. It couldn't depend on workable recall models in other jurisdictions. It had to create its own, because it wanted to be sure it wouldn't work. To have used another model would have put them in jeopardy in that respect.

What they should have had is a three-step process for recall that would have seen a reasonable number of eligible voters sign a petition, which would cause a vote, with a simple question put to voters: "Should your MLA be recalled? Yes or no." And the magic formula to decide that should have been 50 percent plus one of the people who came out and voted. That would have been a pretty simple, fundamental, democratic process, and one can only anticipate that it was overlooked because it was thought that it might be workable.

What we have here flies in the face of what was anticipated in 1991. Instead, the government says we need to have 40 percent of the people who are eligible to vote. During the last election -- and I don't suggest this should give the Premier undue comfort -- the safest seat in the province was the one the Premier ran in. There were 25,868 eligible voters. Forty percent of that amount -- the number needed to recall the Premier -- would be 10,347 votes. But that many people didn't vote for the Premier in the last election. Indeed, in 70 of 75 constituencies the elected MLA received less than 40 percent of the eligible votes. In other words, in only five seats in this province did the elected member of this assembly receive more than 40 percent of the votes, the number necessary to get on a petition to recall a member. Mr. Speaker, if you have any doubt about whether or not this legislation was designed to work, look at the fact that in order to recall members, you would need a greater number of votes than any of 70 members in this Legislature received.

Interjection.

J. Weisgerber: The member for Cariboo North says: "What's wrong with that? It wouldn't work in my constituency. It must be good." But don't be too sure. And indeed, if you were the member for Kamloops, you wouldn't feel that comfortable even with those numbers.

In my own constituency I received 4,617 votes, which was 23 percent of the eligible vote, but recalling me would require 7,296 votes -- almost twice that number. And for those who think it would be a piece of cake, I would say: spend the summer in the South Peace and take the petitions around.

Let's look at what a workable piece of recall legislation might entail -- legislation as has been laid out in this province and demonstrated to work in jurisdictions all across this continent. It would be a very simple three-part process. It would take 12 percent of the voters to vote for recall. The question would be put fairly to voters, with an opportunity for both the MLA and the proponent of the recall to state their reasons for recall or why it should fail, and then people would be allowed to vote. It would take 50 percent of the voters plus one vote to recall the MLA. They'd be gone, and they shouldn't be eligible to run in the next by-election that would be caused by that recall initiative.

If that doesn't sound daunting enough, in order to go out and get petitions every petition-taker would have to have resided in the constituency for more than six months before going out to seek recall petitions. They would have 

[ Page 12837 ]

to be registered with the registrar of voters and the chief electoral officer, and they would have to do all of this within 60 days.

If you think this is unworkable, you only have to look at the initiative legislation to see what they might have done, because it is even more unworkable, difficult and cumbersome than the legislation that was designed for recall. Indeed, it should have been called the recall and plebiscite legislation, because that's all that the initiative legislation provides. It provides people with an opportunity to go around and collect signatures from 10 percent of the eligible voters in British Columbia, and that 10 percent has to be distributed in every one of the 75 constituencies. If one of the 75 constituencies signed up only 9 percent of their voters, the entire initiative would fail. They've only got 90 days to do that.

[7:00]

If, by some miracle, those initiative proponents were able to get through these hoops, what does that oblige the government to do? It would oblige the government to bring forward a bill to first reading, something that any member of this assembly can do with little or no effort at all. Any member can simply draft the legislation, bring it in, stand at their place and table a bill for first reading. Backbenchers know that's all that type of legislation gets. Those people circulating petitions will have an enormous amount of concern that their legislation will suffer the same fate as private members' bills in this House.

Should the government decide that it wants to go beyond that and put the initiative question to referendum, 50 percent of the eligible voters have to sign, come in and vote in favour. We see school board and municipal elections where only 25 percent to 30 percent, or even 40 percent, of the people show up to vote. On an initiative vote, if 10 percent of the eligible voters signed the petition in every one of the constituencies and, at the end of all that, if that it was put to referendum and only 49 percent of the voters showed up to vote, and every one of those 49 percent voted in favour of the initiative, the whole process would still fail. Do we need to demonstrate again that this is unworkable, that it was designed to be unworkable? Let me say that there are better and workable models.

Interjection.

J. Weisgerber: That member asks: why didn't we bring them in? He might have known that private members' bills on initiative have been tabled in this House.

Interjection.

J. Weisgerber: The member says they weren't passed. I think the people who understand the initiative process and the value of bringing legislation forward to first reading will get a lot of value out of your critique. They will understand just how impossible it is. Workable initiatives would have been easy enough to bring in. Thresholds range from 1.5 to 5.5 percent of voters around the continent and around the jurisdictions that were available for any member of the drafting group to look at.

An initiative brought in by a Reform government would have a threshold of 3 percent for initiatives that sought to change or repeal a law. It would be 3 percent provincewide, and it would then have to be supported at an election by 50 percent of the voters who turned out to vote in at least two-thirds of the constituencies. In all of this, they got one clause right, and that was that the initiative should pass in two-thirds of the constituencies. I will give them credit for that. It wasn't a whole sentence, but it was half a sentence. They got the idea right.

If we were going to bring in an initiative to initiate a referendum or a new piece of legislation, we would set the threshold for that at 6 percent provincewide and send it back for a referendum vote that could be defeated or approved by a simple majority of people who are interested enough to come out and vote. Direct democracy means that. It means that the simple democratic processes in fact work. You take issues to electors and say to them: "If more than 50 percent of you -- if it's only one more than 50 percent of you -- support this initiative, referendum or recall ballot, then it is going to succeed." That's what democracy is all about.

This government, I suppose, learned a painful lesson with the Charlottetown accord, and I expect that they see referenda as something that can hurt government, hurt the establishment or hurt the elite in society. They are scared witless of it, and that's why we have this legislation brought in without any regulation, except that if you give a canvasser a cup of coffee for refreshment, both the person giving the cup of coffee and the person taking it are subject to a fine of up to $5,000. That's direct democracy, NDP-style. It's no wonder that British Columbians were not satisfied by this legislation, but were in fact outraged by it

In conclusion, we're going to support this bill simply because it brings an opportunity, slim though it may be, to recall a member of this House. That's one reason, and it also provides a framework for amendments, which would be brought in in the first session of a Legislature to make this process work. I believe that's a question that's going to be talked about again in the next election. This time voters will want to know specifically where the parties stand. They won't accept the half-hearted "Yeah, we'll go along with it too" kind of endorsement they got from the NDP during the last election. And there will be even more interest in the Liberal position, to see whether it's back on or back off. They'll know that there's a fifty-fifty chance that they could be for or against it.

We will bring forward workable recall legislation. There is one party that voters can depend on to bring forward workable recall legislation, and I believe everybody in British Columbia already understands that that's the Reform Party of British Columbia.

D. Schreck: There have been many important debates in this Legislature during this sitting. There has been the fundamental work done to preserve, protect and renew our forests; the work on the budget to bring the deficit down, get jobs up and freeze taxes; and the work to protect animals with the SPCA. But the legislation we are debating tonight in the form of initiative and recall is in an entirely different class. This legislation is equivalent in its importance to a constitutional amendment. In fact, it is even more fundamental than a constitutional amendment, because it changes over 700 years of development of parliamentary democracy.

When we listen to those opposition naysayers try to exploit short-term political opportunism or strategically position themselves on this matter for the next election, they are doing a fundamental disservice to the history that we are setting tonight. There is nowhere in the entire world, not a single country, where there is a parliamentary form of government that has initiative or recall. I was particularly privileged to be one of the members of the committee that studied this issue for a year and a half, 

[ Page 12838 ]

which is really a rather short period relative to the 700 years of parliamentary tradition that we are changing in the next day or two.

When we studied where initiative and recall exist, we discovered that it existed in foreign governments. I mean foreign not only in the sense of outside of Canada, but in the sense of fundamentally different structures and traditions.

In the United States, for instance, which is often pointed to in the example of California, less than half the states have recall or initiative. Even in the United States there's a fundamental difference between California and New York. In the United States, their form of government is nothing like a parliamentary form of government. Some people refer to it as a glorified city council. The executive branch of government consists largely of unelected officials accountable to no one but the sole elected Governor or President. Their legislatures and Congress are made up of individuals who are really incapable of delivering on an election promise because they do not have the party structure that delivers the platform to the people. By contrast, we have what is known as a responsible form of government, in which governments are expected to deliver on what they promise.

I will be the first to acknowledge that a great deal of voter dissatisfaction comes from the fact that what is delivered is not always exactly what everybody read into what was said. Clearly the Leader of the Opposition, in his introductory remarks, made much of that disillusionment. But I put it to you, hon. Speaker, that the type of opportunism, the type of strategic positioning, that is being expressed in this evening's debate illustrates why the public becomes cynical. Instead of talking about this truly historic moment, as we are fundamentally altering parliamentary democracy, we have the opposition throwing out attacks based on whether or not they will be able to create sufficient mischief with the tool that is being put into their hands.

I am proud to be part of a government caucus and a party that has listened to the public and is bringing forward this truly historic piece of legislation, which modifies 700 years of parliamentary democracy and gives people the fundamental power to cause a by-election in the middle of a term, to recall an official or to write a law. Nowhere in the world where there is a form of parliamentary government -- and that is the majority of the world -- is that trust put in the people so that they can use those tools on a day-to-day basis.

The opposition heckles and says it is going to be too hard to do it. Let's use a little common sense. What is hard? People should think about how an election campaign is run in this province. In British Columbia, an election campaign can be called at the will of the government at any moment; and when it is called, it is 28 days long. In that 28-day period, every major party fields a campaign organization in each and every one of 75 constituencies in this province.

My own party, I know, makes every effort -- certainly it does in my campaigns -- to personally contact every voter in every constituency three times in that 28-day period. That's not a particularly difficult task -- it's a challenging task. It is done, my friends, with volunteers. It is done with hundreds of volunteers that collect not one dime for that effort, because they believe in the democratic system. That is a fundamental difference between this treasured parliamentary democracy that we enjoy in Canada and the form of government in almost any other part of the world.

My friend from West Vancouver-Garibaldi heckles about the problems that he has getting workers. I know that as an independent, he may face difficulty and be one of the first members to be tested under this legislation, as other members may whose constituents voted for a political party and now find that they are not represented in this House by that political party. This legislation puts into the hands of those constituents this ability: if, as in the case of West Vancouver-Garibaldi, the citizens voted for the Liberal Party and they find they are no longer represented by the Liberal Party, they can go and use this legislation to cause a by-election. Or, in the case of that party itself, which has gone through so many transformations, they might say it has so fundamentally changed its nature that they will pick on more than one constituency to have that reconsideration.

[7:15]

The point is that through this legislation, that power is put in the hands and good judgment of the people. In placing that power.... The leader of the Reform Party says: "Well, 70 of 75 constituencies have members elected with less than the 40 percent called for as a threshold." Unfortunately, he did not quite think through the full logic of that statement. That means that 70 of the 75 members in this House had 60 percent of the people vote against them. What are we saying? We're saying that 60 percent of the public voted against most of us in the first place, and it only takes 40 percent of them to cause a recall or by-election. In other words, it takes only two-thirds of the number of people who voted against most of us hon. members in order to cause a by-election. Why would any government put into the hands of people who voted against them the power to have only two-thirds of them sign a petition on their doorstep and get rid of them?

My answer is that this government trusts the wisdom of the people, and this government knows that simply because voters did not vote for you or for me in the first place, hon. member, does not mean that they would be so mean-spirited as to turn around the next day and say: "Sour grapes. We're going to get rid of you." The judgment of the voter would rise above that mischief-making. But I do not trust that organized parties in this province would rise above mischief-making. We must draw a line between that trust we put in the people and that inherent distrust we place in organized parties that are up to strategic manoeuvring and mischiefmaking. If the advice of that Reform Party were followed, any organized opposition party in this province would constantly be conducting recall campaigns. Every malcontent, every discontented, unhappy loser of a political election campaign would be conducting recall campaigns the day after the election were over, or at the very first opportunity. The test put forward in this historic reform legislation is a test that puts power in the hands of the people, not a tool of mischief into the hands of organized political parties.

This is not Switzerland, where in some cantons women do not even have the right to vote, where there is a voter turnout of less than 40 percent, and where the constitution guarantees a proportional representation that makes it virtually impossible to change a cabinet. This is not the United States, where in a presidential election year they only get 40 percent or less voter turnout. This is British Columbia, where we have the highest voter participation of any country in the world.

[ Page 12839 ]

We have a knowledgable, informed and active electorate, and that knowledgable, informed and active electorate know that with this tool.... Do you know what it would take to recall a member? It would take 200 people. That's less than half the number of people who volunteer in my election campaigns and most of those of my colleagues. It would take 200 people going out for each day of the period, which is twice as long as an election campaign, collecting two signatures per night. That's two signatures a night for 200 volunteers for a period twice as long as an election campaign, and a by-election would be on, and the member would automatically be out of his or her seat. That's not a hard test; that's a very easy test.

If those opposition members are saying that they should be able to hire ten people out of New York, pay them big salaries and come in and bump off a cabinet minister in order to create mischief, I say that's not what this is about. This is to provide people with a tool so that if 200 concerned citizens -- which I presume there would be if we're going to go to the extent of a by-election -- are unhappy with a member and are willing to go out and get two signatures per night, then those people are empowered with this legislation.

History is being made here tonight. I say shame to those opposition members who want to create mischief. This legislation gives power to the people; it is fundamental reform. It will go down in the history books as one of the most important changes in parliamentary democracy, and we should all be celebrating that tonight.

L. Stephens: It's a pleasure for me to rise and speak to Bill 36 in second reading. This is the second-to-last bill to be debated in this session of the Legislature, and there's a good reason for this: the government wanted to leave this bill to the end. Indeed, if the government thought it could have avoided bringing it in altogether, I think it would have done that.

We have here a very cynical and unworkable proposal. Over 80 percent of the citizens of this province voted for the power to recall their MLAs and to have direct input into the laws that govern us all through the initiative process. This bill makes that almost impossible. During the last election, the NDP and the new Premier promised to abide by the results of the referendum, but since getting elected, the government has been moving along the road to recall and initiative at a snail's pace. Two and a half years later, we have this legislation, and it isn't workable.

Others have called this legislation laughable; I call it insulting to the people of British Columbia. The proposed legislation is not fair. It is certainly not something that the people in this province asked for, and the government knows it. The government knows it's not workable, and anyone who has read the bill knows it's not workable. Even if all the requirements to bring a referendum forward happened and the referendum passed, the government is only obligated to introduce a bill in the House; they have no obligation to enact legislation. This bill is a sham. It is a cruel joke on the people of this province who voted in good faith. I suggest that they no longer have faith in the government, nor should they. With this bill, this government has clearly demonstrated their contempt for the people of this province.

The member for North Vancouver-Lonsdale talks about making history with this bill. Let's talk a bit about history. Seventy-five years ago this past March, the Liberal government of John Oliver introduced a bill in B.C. entitled an Act to Provide for the Initiation and Approval of Legislation by the Electors. Its short title was the Direct Legislation Act, and it was supported by the opposition at the time. The act provided that an initiative or referendum could be requested by 25 percent of the voters, including at least 10 percent of the voters in at least three-quarters of the electoral districts. Money bills were exempted.

This bill was passed through the B.C. Legislature and received royal assent on March 29, 1919. It was not proclaimed because of a 1919 Privy Council judgment, which was at that time the highest court of the land. The Privy Council ruled that a Manitoba direct democracy law was not constitutional, and the government of British Columbia believed that its act would be ruled unconstitutional as well; therefore they did not proclaim it. It has been there for 75 years, languishing in legislative limbo. The Premier could proclaim that act today. I suggest to you, hon. members, that if you read it, you will find that it is far superior to what we have before us here today.

Alberta enacted its own Direct Legislation Act in 1913 to provide a mechanism for public participation. The law allowed initiatives as long as they did not involved spending public money. Any proposed law needed only 20 percent of the electorate in a petition, and if the Legislature did not pass such an initiative, it was put to the people in a referendum. In 1958 the Alberta government decided to repeal it because they felt it was unconstitutional. Since then, on March 19, 1992, Premier Donald Getty introduced his Constitutional Referendum Act.

Saskatchewan, hon. members, has a Direct Legislation Act. It received royal assent on January 11, 1913. Hon. members, the hyperbole from the member for North Vancouver-Lonsdale is laughable. The government used the law in Saskatchewan -- the new law of April 16, 1991 -- which was Premier Grant Devine's law. They used this to put three plebiscite questions to the electors of Saskatchewan in the October '91 election, and it has worked very well.

In Manitoba, in 1916, another Liberal government under Premier T.C. Norris introduced, and the Legislature subsequently passed, the Initiative and Referendum Act. It provided an opportunity for Manitobans to submit laws to the Legislature through a petition containing the signatures of 8 percent of the electorate. If the Legislature did not enact the proposal, it had to be put before the voters in a referendum. Does that sound familiar? The act also provided that 5 percent of the electorate could petition for the repeal of any act of the Legislature other than an emergency measure.

Elsewhere in the world, direct democracy has flourished. Australia is, like Canada, a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy. Since the turn of the century, Australians have had an opportunity to vote on 36 constitutional amendments and passed only eight of them. Referendums have been used in Switzerland since the Middle Ages. The original Swiss constitution of 1848 was ratified by a national referendum.

In the United States, closer to home, 22 states plus the District of Columbia allow citizens the power to initiate statewide legislation. In California, Proposition 13 -- everybody knows Proposition 13 -- passed in 1978, which required reductions in property taxes. Nationwide, a wave of successful state initiatives to limit the terms of state legislators has been the recent development in the United States. Initiatives are not only at the state level. In 

[ Page 12840 ]

addition, initiatives are used widely at the local government level throughout all of the United States.

There is a view held by a great many people that direct democracy is difficult to accommodate in our traditional parliamentary system. But since the Magna Carta of 1215 our parliamentary system has been continually evolving, and it continues to do that today.

This bill is far from a workable model of citizen initiative and recall. The question is not whether British Columbians made the right choice on October 17, 1991, on the referendum vote; it is to propose legislation. This government has -- had -- an obligation to propose legislation to reflect the wishes of the voters, and that is clearly not in this bill. This government has not brought forward meaningful, sincere or workable legislation.

M. Farnworth: It's a pleasure to rise this evening on tonight's debate on the initiative and recall legislation. There's been much said so far, and I'm sure there's much still to come. Recall and referendum seems to be for some a mantra for the nineties -- somehow it will solve all our problems. If only we have recall and referendum, the world will be a better place. There will be no more deficit. We will have a balanced budget. Politicians will no longer make mistakes; they will always represent our interests. If only we have that, the world and the province will be reformed, and all will be well.

[7:30]

Unfortunately, that's not the case, because there's no such thing as something that's going to fix everything -- not even reform. But this is a tool that 80 percent of the people of this province voted for in the last election. They asked that a committee be set up to find out what the people wanted; they asked the government to implement a recall and referendum system in this province. And do you know what? The problem was that there were no models in the rest of the country to follow, despite what the member for Peace River South seems to think. So we had to look to other jurisdictions, we had to look south of the border, we had to look throughout the Commonwealth, and we had to talk to the people of this province.

When we looked at the different models, we had to take into account the system of government we have. A disturbing thing that's come out in this debate and other debates on other pieces of legislation over the past few months, and which has come out of the mouths of politicians on the opposition benches -- first here tonight by the Leader of the Opposition, then by the leader of the Reform Party -- is that somehow you can transpose an American model onto a Canadian system and achieve the same results.

An Hon. Member: Nonsense.

M. Farnworth: The hon. member says it's nonsense. But had he listened to the words of the Leader of the Opposition -- the member for Vancouver-Quilchena -- he would have found his statements peppered with quotes from Thomas Jefferson, examples from Wyoming and Illinois, a complete and total fascination with the United States political system -- saying that in Wyoming they have 10 percent, in Illinois they have 10 percent, but in other states they have 3 percent, and that you can recall your member with 5 or 10 percent of the vote.

That demonstrates a fundamental problem, a flaw. Members of the opposition, from the leader of the opposition party to the leader of the Reform Party, fail to understand the nature of our political system. They fail to understand the nature of the parliamentary system, that we are not a congressional system. There are some substantial differences.

L. Stephens: Look at the models in other parts of Canada.

M. Farnworth: The member says: "Look at the models in other parts of Canada." There are no other models in other parts of Canada. There are no other models that function anywhere today in this country. This province is a first.

We're making changes in our system in response to what we heard around the province. People made presentations and asked for the congressional system. People made presentations and said: "We don't want recall and referendum." People made presentations and made suggestions about what they thought would work and what wouldn't work. And I want to explore some of those in a few minutes.

But there were a number of things that people agreed on. They wanted a system that wasn't dominated by special interest groups. They wanted a system that reflected the wishes of a broad segment of the population. They wanted a system that didn't see the domination of one region of the province by another. They wanted a system that was fair, that didn't bend just to the special interest group or media story of the day but that allowed government to do what it was elected to do, which is to govern. At the same time, they wanted a mechanism in place whereby if people felt they weren't being listened to, they could propose laws; or if their Member of the Legislative Assembly was not responsive to them, was negligent in the performance of his or her duties for whatever reason, they had a method to address that problem.

[D. Lovick in the chair.]

But there was a common thread: that it should not be easy, that it should not be there as a tool for partisan groups. Initiative and recall legislation presents some unique opportunities for citizen empowerment, but it also presents some interesting challenges. Looking south of the border, one problem the committee had to deal with was the preponderance of initiatives not sponsored by ordinary citizens, as was initially the case when the first recall or initiative legislation was introduced in California, but dominated by financed corporate agendas. This has become the domain of financed corporate interest groups, often with divisive results. Referendums are put forward not on the basis of serving some broad consensus, or some broad need that's identified within a state, but rather for some special interest group, whether it be environmental groups in the state of California seeking to shut down the entire logging industry, tobacco companies seeking to repeal health and welfare legislation governing the sale of tobacco or legislation in the state of Colorado that sought to enforce discrimination against a segment of society.

C. Serwa: Get real.

M. Farnworth: The member for Okanagan West says: "Get real." Yet, if he goes to the state of Colorado where proposition 2 passed, he would find that gays and lesbians were subject to a referendum which legalized discrimination against them and that, unfortunately, the 

[ Page 12841 ]

people voted to entrench discrimination. Similar measures were on the ballot in the state of Oregon. What happened was that people were forced into bitter camps.

That's one of the things that people told us they were very concerned about. They didn't want one region being pitted against another region of the province. They didn't want to see the lower mainland or the southern end of Vancouver Island, where the preponderance of the population of this province lives, being able to put initiatives on the ballot. As the member for Peace River South says, it would be easy for them to get loads of signatures at a 2 or 3 percent threshold and suddenly to declare all of northern British Columbia a park and shut down the logging communities.

One of the problems with initiatives that was identified and that we had to address was the powerful role the media and advertising can play and the power of images, because much of our political system is cut down into ten- or 15-second sound bites. What happens is that decisions are made on the basis of advertising campaigns, and those who have the dollars can control the agenda and buy the air time. They didn't want that. So what did they want?

They said they wanted a system that would allow everyone to participate. So let's look at the initiative for a few moments, and let's see why we have some of the provisions that we do. Two-thirds of the ridings are required to pass a particular initiative. What does that do? It ensures that it has got provincewide support. It ensures that the lower mainland, with the bulk of the population, cannot dictate to the rest of the province what the laws of this province are going to be.

Interjection.

M. Farnworth: I can tell you right now, one of the most effective advertising images ever created was the white seal pup's face. That image was flashed across this nation, and everybody saw that little seal pup's face. It's a very powerful image. It wrenches emotions, and a debate over initiatives is often a very emotional thing. That's an example at the national level. It has a different meaning in Newfoundland, hon. member.

I'll give you another example, a particularly British Columbian one. Take one of those majestic 2,000-year-old red cedar trees from the west coast rain forest, and put that into a 15-second clip. That's a very powerful image for the environmental community in the lower mainland. Pristine wilderness appeals to the good side of everybody, and it says: "Don't cut that tree." But there's another side to that picture, and that is jobs and economic opportunity, and the need for a government to try and strike a balance. There is an example, and that's what the member for Okanagan West asked for. You need balance to make sure that people have both sides of the question and that one side of the province doesn't dominate the other -- and two-thirds of the ridings accomplishes that.

Why do we need 10 percent of the population to endorse an initiative? To show that there's a level of support, that it's not just a community initiative but an initiative that has widespread support throughout the province. That's what 10 percent does. The hon. members have said that that's difficult to achieve. We've given 90 days to achieve that -- 90 days to get 10 percent of the population signed up. We enumerate the entire country at federal election time in two weeks. Under this bill you have 90 days to sign up 10 percent of the province's population in each of 75 ridings in this province.

An example was given by the Leader of the Opposition that somehow a canvasser would have to go out and get some 2,100 signatures a day. On an issue of widespread importance, I don't think it's going to be that difficult for 50 or 60 volunteers in a constituency to get 2,100 signatures a day. The foot traffic in a mall alone is often 10,000 to 15,000 people a day. So the 90-day period is very reasonable, and it will work.

Let's come to the other issue: 50 percent of the eligible voters in this province. There's a fundamental thing that should be realized. As I said at the beginning, this is a tool to empower people. It is not a delegation of the responsibilities of this Legislature or an abrogation of its powers, responsibilities, duties and rights. At the end of the day, we are elected by the population of the province of British Columbia. We are not elected by special interest groups or by single issue groups. We are elected by the public of British Columbia in an election campaign where all the issues are addressed over a 28-day campaign period. Under our system of government, the party that has the most seats forms the government for a four-to-five-year mandate. That, at the end of the day, is where laws are made. That is our responsibility.

I firmly believe that if this province is going to have recall and initiative and have laws initiated at the public level, then those laws must have the support of a majority of the people of this province. They should not be made by special interest groups; they should not be made on Howe Street; they should not be made by environmental groups; they should not be made by those who seek to take rights away from others; they should not be made by small, vocal minorities; and they should not be made by those who can grab the attention of the media. They should have the support of the entire province.

One of the things the opposition doesn't talk about is that when laws are made by initiative, quite often they can be undone only by initiative. So if we are going to have legislation, it must have the support of the majority of the people in this province, and I don't think that's too much to ask. If people from the lower mainland want to institute a law that affects northern British Columbia, it should have the support of the majority of the population. Recall is much the same. You are elected by your constituents. You have time to learn the job. It's not about trying to knock off one or two members to bring down a government, which is what many in this province said was something they're concerned about. They wanted a high threshold.

[7:45]

I'll tell you something, hon. Speaker. In our system most of us were elected here by between 40 and 55 percent. So you already have a substantial number of people who are predisposed against you. You have to have a high enough threshold to avoid a sense of mischief.

We have a petition process in place that, as the member for North Vancouver-Lonsdale said, will ensure that the time frame is long enough for people to be contacted and signed up -- twice as long as in an election campaign. It allows for an in-community decision on recall, not an outside-community recall. It will not hamper members of the executive council in doing their job.

One of the things governments must do is make tough decisions. If we are going to have recall, the people who decide whether a minister is to be recalled should be the members of that constituency, not an association that represents a particular group that may be upset with a policy and decides that because they don't like a decision, recall should take place. Recall takes place because those 

[ Page 12842 ]

constituents that the member represents have the say -- the people that put that member there in the first place, not the people in the constituency next door, but the people who voted for the member in the first place. That is what happens with this piece of legislation.

One of the things we must be concerned about is that you cannot buy a recall. The people who make the decision live in the constituency and decide of their own free will. They are not subject to a vast barrage of outside money coming in and influencing the outcome of an election.

Others will talk about recall. The points I want to make are mostly concerned with the initiative. To me, that is the more important of the two things in this piece of legislation. The media has focused on recall, because somehow it is seen as very populist at the moment. It suits a 15-second sound bite and sounds so simple, and I guess one of the things they like to focus on is the simple.

Initiative, in my mind, will have the most profound impact on this province, because this Legislature is giving up some of its rights, powers, privilege and responsibilities to the public and saying: "You may make and propose laws." This piece of legislation -- which will be proclaimed, unlike the previous piece of legislation in this province -- is going to change democracy in this province for some time to come.

It is not going to be easy, but I don't share the lack of faith that the opposition has, because I know how if the public in this province want something, they will get behind it and make it work. I ask them to join with us, put aside their skepticism and make this piece of legislation work.

J. Dalton: As the members know, we are dealing with recall and initiative -- or, as it is popularly called, direct democracy; although when this bill was introduced, in its press release and backgrounder the government described at least a part of it as grass-roots democracy. Whatever your choice may be, we are dealing with a proposal in this bill to revamp the democratic process. At least, that's presumably its intention, although quite frankly, I think some of the items built into this bill are probably not workable. I can tell the House right now that the opposition will be introducing amendments in committee to make something which is currently probably unworkable into something that is hopefully workable.

As we all know, this bill reflects the express wishes, the results, of the '91 plebiscite, and the more recent findings of the select standing committee of this House, which brought in its report. We see the finished product -- although I hope it's not the final finished product, to put it that way. If Bill 36 goes through in its current form, as I've already stated, it isn't workable. Why go through the sham and the rather dubious exercise of introducing, debating and passing a bill if it is not going to work? If direct democracy is the wish of the people -- and perhaps with amendments this bill will reflect that -- then it must be carried through. Does this bill reflect reality? I suggest that it doesn't -- not in its current form.

When we look at this bill, we know that the recall formula is 40 percent with a 60-day time line or ceiling. Well, that's not achievable. I've heard some members opposite say that in 60 days you're going to get an army of people to go out and sign up. One member -- in fact, it was the member who spoke just before I got to my feet -- commented on the federal enumeration. Let's remember that enumerators are paid. Enumerators are bounty hunters, in effect. The people who will be working through this legislation will not be paid, and that's appropriate. You may get a so-called army of volunteers at the start, but you won't keep those volunteers out on the streets for 60 days. As the House will find in committee, the opposition will be proposing an extension of that 60-day period.

The initiative formula. As we know, it's 10 percent in each riding in this province -- each of every single one of the 75 ridings -- and a 90-day time frame. I said the recall formula is not achievable, and I think that the initiative formula is impossible. Amendments must be proposed and hopefully carried through.

I wish the House to reflect on some findings of a conference that was held at the University of Lethbridge in the late winter -- February 25 and 26 -- and sponsored by the Canada West Foundation, an outfit that I'm sure some members will have some familiarity with. It was sponsored, as well, by the University of Lethbridge, where the conference was held. The title of the conference -- and I think this is noteworthy for all members -- was Reinventing Parliament. There were three segments to the conference. By the way, for what it's worth, Mr. Preston Manning was the keynote speaker to kick off the occasion. In fact, I'm looking down the benches here, and I see the member for Okanagan West, who was one of the attendees at this conference. Perhaps he'll be commenting later on the results.

The important thing coming out of this Lethbridge conference for our purposes was the workings of the people when they broke into workshops on recall and initiative -- the very topic that we're dealing with in Bill 36.

Before I get to the results of those workshops, I thought it would be edifying to at least read into the record some of the comments of Dr. Peter McCormick of the University of Lethbridge, who was one of the speakers who dealt with this topic that we're dealing with this evening. He goes on in his comments to deal with recall, and he asks if anyone has ever tried it. He recounts some of the experiences in the United States, where fifteen states have recall legislation. The first to adopt it was Oregon in 1908; the most recent was Georgia, in 1978. Dr. McCormick goes on to relate that many recalls have been attempted, but few have been successful. He can cite only seven state representatives, including one state senator, two elected state cabinet officials, one Governor -- and a second Governor who he says would have been recalled in '78 if the state senate had not impeached him, cutting off the process.

Just as edifying for the members, especially the government members, are Dr. McCormick's comments on the experience in Alberta, which in 1936 approved and implemented recall legislation. It is ironic and of interest that the only riding in which recall was undertaken was that of the Premier of Alberta. I'm hoping the Premier of British Columbia is listening to this. Premier Aberhart, who was Premier of the day, stepped in and promptly repealed the legislation to head off the process. I'm wondering if our Premier may have to go through the same exercise. We'll see. I recommend this document, and I'd be more than happy to lend my copy to any member. You can trade it around, because there is some interesting reading in it.

The results of the workshops, which all dealt with the issue of what the essence of recall and initiative should be, are more important. There were about ten workshops, and 

[ Page 12843 ]

the member for Okanagan West can probably comment more directly on them. The consensus reached on recall was 50 percent plus one of eligible voters. That was what the workshops collectively suggested. None of this is chiselled in stone, but it gives you a reflection of what happened in the two-day conference.

They got into some discussion on whether initiative should be a three-stage or a two-stage process. As we know, it's a two-stage process in our Bill 36. That was not of particular concern to the workshop attendees, but they were certainly concerned about the threshold, which is the number of signatures required on a petition to initiate some legislation. The findings were an interesting range, between 3 percent and 10 percent. Perhaps just as importantly, there was a 120-day time frame to collect those signatures, and we know it's 90 days in this bill. We also know it's 10 percent of every riding in this province. I have already commented on the impossibility of that. There were more than a hundred people at those workshops, and the people who attended had some interesting discussions about the time frame that should be available for meaningful initiative and recall, not this rather dubious exercise that Bill 36 presents.

The opposition will be proposing a series of amendments to make this bill workable, and, as the Leader of the Official Opposition commented earlier today, to build some accountability into this legislation and make it available to the people of this province. I fear that if we pass this bill unchallenged and unamended in its current form, we will not achieve the workability that the people require. There will be no accountability coming out of this legislation; it will not be available. The government talks about grass-roots democracy in its backgrounder, but I'm not sure that this government has the appetite for a true grass-roots democracy. Perhaps we will have the opportunity through committee and amendment to put this bill in workable form and take it for a test drive.

[8:00]

B. Jones: I rise to support this bill before us in the strongest possible terms. One of the many reasons that I do is that this bill before us is the work of an all-party committee that travelled to every corner of this province and heard from British Columbians in 25 centres. The member for West Vancouver-Garibaldi shakes his head. He chose not to participate, not to travel, and even those hearings that he did attend he chose often to leave the podium and go and schmooze with various members of groups that had already made presentations and ignore individuals who were making presentations.

Because of the all-party nature of the committee that delivered this legislation, when division is called on this legislation, virtually all members of this chamber will support it. I have sat opposite, and I understand the need for the opposition to carve out a different position than the government. They will find criticisms. Perhaps some of them are legitimate; perhaps some are not. But they will do so motivated by partisanship, rather than by what is in the best interests of British Columbians at this time.

At the first meeting of the all-party committee, the member may recall, the gravity of the work that we were about to undertake dawned on us: to change in a fundamental way concepts that the people of British Columbia had supported in overwhelming numbers -- to try and graft on concepts alien to the British parliamentary system, concepts that have not been tried anywhere else in a Parliamentary democracy. That unanimous report came from members of the Liberal Party, although they have bisected or subdivided since then; members of the Social Credit Party who have bisected or subdivided since then; and even the independent member. They were all part of that committee report to this House and to the people of British Columbia. It was a unanimous report; not one item in the report was criticized. For partisan political purposes, members opposite are going to....

Deputy Speaker: The member for Okanagan West rises on a serious point of order?

C. Serwa: Affirmative, hon. Speaker. In the member's zeal, he forgets to relay to the public at large that all standing legislative committee reports are deemed unanimous; there is no opportunity for anything else.

Deputy Speaker: Member, you know full well that that is not a point of order.

B. Jones: Now we will see members opposite making amendments that they had an opportunity to make in committee. Was one amendment made to the committee that reported to this Legislature? Not one amendment was made to that report. There was a lot of discussion; it was an afternoon meeting. What we see before us is a report that that committee looked at. Despite the fact that it was the process of people and perhaps not perfect, it was the right report for this province. It is complex, and because it is complex it's easy to criticize.

This is an historic move. We have had a number of changes to our parliamentary system in this province since Confederation. We enfranchised women in 1917; we eliminated discrimination on the basis of ethnic and religious purposes when we enfranchised the Doukhobors in 1952; and we are again changing in a fundamental way our democratic system in this province.

At the same time that this is a bold and historic initiative -- and this is perhaps why members opposite are struggling -- it's also a modest and cautious initiative. Why is it that way? When we travelled this province and heard from the people of British Columbia, every public submission that was made told us to proceed with caution: do not allow legislation that can be abused by minorities; do not allow legislation that will be abused by monied interests. The people of British Columbia said: proceed, but proceed with caution.

We were told in these hearings of the downsides. We were told of the potential for political mischief. We were told that unwarranted smear campaigns might occur. We were told about targeting cabinet ministers and the impact that might have on a minority government. We were told about avoiding the interests of special interest groups and monied groups. We were told that immigrants and the poor and the homeless will not have the same kind of voice in the system as others. We were told about the tyranny of the majority and the opportunity for dominance by the lower mainland in this province. And we tried, to the greatest degree possible, to put in safeguards that protected against that.

We also heard from the public that there were many positive aspects to this. We were told that it was more democratic than the system we've had and that the public wants it and voted for it. We were told that it would increase participation. We were told that it would produce a more informed electorate. We were told that it would force government to deal with issues that a government might want to avoid. So the job of the committee was to 

[ Page 12844 ]

try to find a balance -- a balance that is often difficult to achieve, a balance that tries to put in safeguards to avoid the downsides -- but to produce a piece of legislation that allowed citizens, for the first time in the history of any jurisdiction in a parliamentary democracy, (a) to unseat their member and (b) to propose legislation.

The catcalls from members opposite suggest to me that they disagree with the balance that was struck. Well, do not take my word for it. What did the Vancouver Sun editorial say at the time the report was released? It said: "Yes...."

An Hon. Member: Not about the legislation.

B. Jones: The legislation is based, except in one area that I'll talk about in a minute, on the report.

What did the Vancouver Sun editorial say? It said: "Yes, it's going to be difficult to unseat a member; and yes, it's going to be difficult to pass initiative -- as it should be." The Vancouver Sun editorial said the appropriate balance was struck.

What did Gerry Kristianson say about this legislation? On CBC Radio the other day, that political analyst, that person who is called upon by CBC to be a pundit and comment on legislation of the day, your friend Gerry Kristianson -- not particularly known to be a fan of this government -- said: "This is a fundamental change in the way we do politics in this province." He said: "Government is on the right track." He said: "Government has erred on the side of caution." And he supported what the government was doing in this legislation.

What did Jim Hume say? Mr. Hume, the venerable press gallery veteran, said: "New Democrats are under attack because their recall proposals make it difficult -- some say, impossible -- for any person or group to launch a recall initiative." He said: "And that's the way it should be. It should not be made easy." This is extraordinary legislation for extraordinary circumstances.

Interjection.

B. Jones: Well, you don't like Gerry Kristianson; you don't like the Sun editorial; and you don't like Jim Hume. Perhaps you would like the Province "Hotline" poll. Every day we have a "Hotline" poll. Do those people...?

Interjections.

B. Jones: Fifty percent supported it, and 50 percent didn't. That tells me that the appropriate balance was struck in this legislation. What did the member for Richmond-Steveston say at the time of the report? He said that it accurately reflected the hearings that we attended around the province, and he felt British Columbians would be pleased with that report.

The previous speaker quoted a political scientist from the University of Alberta. I would urge all members to pick up today in their mailbox the latest edition of Canadian Parliamentary Review. In it Peter McCormick talks about one of the criticisms of this particular bill -- the signature threshold for recall. He clarifies for members who don't understand -- and I commend this particularly to the leader of the Reform Party -- the difference between a three-stage and a two-stage process of recall. He also points out, contrary to what the leader of the Reform Party said just a few minutes ago in this House, that this two-stage model is used, although it is used by a minority of the U.S. states that have this provision in place.

What does he say on the particular signature requirement? He says: "If the effect of the petition is simply to trigger a vote on whether or not to have a recall, it makes sense for the threshold to be relatively low." This is what the leader of the Reform Party suggests. "On the other hand, if it is a petition itself that triggers the by-election and that creates the vacancy in the seat that removes the member, then it makes sense to have a threshold considerably higher." The only change from the committee report to the legislation is the that committee recommended 50 percent. That was criticized as too high. We've reduced it to 40 percent, which under the two-stage system is appropriate. And now that's criticized as too high. The time limit is also criticized. Professor McCormick goes on to say: "In states that have a time limit, 60 days is normal." So you don't have to believe me. There are a number of other commentators on this legislation that persuade me, and I hope persuade you, that the appropriate balance has been struck by this committee. Yes, it is a relatively high test, as it should be. But it could have been higher.

The causes for recall could have been specific. We talked about that -- there are a number of particular issues, such as crossing the floor and changing parties. We didn't do that. It is wide open. We talked about a limit on the number of recalls that a member could experience in a session. It is wide open; there is no limit. There are no restrictions on how petitions are circulated, as some suggested. And there is no restriction on whether money bills are appropriate for initiatives.

This is one step at this particular point in time. It is a step forward, in terms of our democratic system. It is, at the same time, both a bold step and a careful step. It increases the accountability of elected members to the public. It tries to redress the serious problem of public alienation from our institutions. While it's easy to criticize, I believe this legislation has struck the appropriate balance. I urge the members opposite to take off the partisan blinders and support this advance in our democratic system.

J. Tyabji: I really look forward to this debate, especially because we're supposed to be speaking to the principle of this bill. I've heard a lot of members of this House speaking about the contents of it, which is more appropriately done in committee stage. Some were complaining about percentage, and some were complaining about time limits and the details of it. But let's talk about the principle of this bill and about why we would support or not support the principle of recall. Let's go back to the last election campaign.

[8:15]

Interestingly enough, there are 17 people in this Legislature who were elected when the party was campaigning against recall and initiative. At that time the leader very loudly and articulately stated repeatedly that the party was opposed to recall and initiative. But I'm going to leave some of the documentation of that to other members who will be only too glad to bring it up.

Interjection.

J. Tyabji: The member for Fort Langley-Aldergrove is pointing out that he was a dissenter even before he was elected, and he can bring that up in his speech.

[ Page 12845 ]

D. Mitchell: How does he feel now?

J. Tyabji: However the wind blows. But I'll leave it to some of the other members to raise some of the specifics of what other members of this House stood for in the last election.

What I would like to do in speaking to the principle of this bill is introduce some theories on democracy. The interesting thing about democracy these days is that we've been talking a lot about the concept of direct democracy. Nobody talks about what this means. We have direct democracy now; we have it through our elected representatives. We also have it through an open political process. Anybody who chooses to get involved in politics may do so.

The interesting thing these days, I think, is the dynamic of mass communication. Never before in the history of the planet has there been an opportunity for mass communication to relay information -- whatever the source may be -- to the general public. The general public, of course, receiving that information will then react, and it is that reaction that I think leads the principle of this bill to be totally unsupportable. It's interesting, because in the last election....

Interjection.

J. Tyabji: I'll let the member of Reform, formerly Social Credit, formerly Liberal, formerly whatever he was -- whichever party he's backing today -- put his comments onto the record.

But in terms of the theory of recall and initiative, in the last election when there were a number of debates in my riding on this issue, I stood up very proudly and said: "It doesn't make any sense."

Interjection.

J. Tyabji: The member for Burnaby-Edmonds, I think, is saying I lost the debates. I don't know what he's talking about. I'm sure he wasn't there. In fact, it was usually agreed that I did fairly well at the debates, but having said that....

When the issue of recall and initiative came up, I spoke very vocally against it, the reason being that the method of transference of information is through the mass media. The media becomes the filter.

Let's go back.... Don't take my word for it, as the previous speaker said. Let's start with Plato, because that's a good place to start. A lot of people talk about democracy and refer to the ancient Greeks. Plato's approach to the masses has been echoed by all those who've seen the mass media only as instruments of great disruptive potential if controlled by somebody else. Noble lies for the people are a recurring feature of many mass media ideologies -- the noble lie. That's from Politics and the News. The interesting thing is that we live in a society where there's an acceptable level of dishonesty. If we feel comfortable with the illusion that's perpetuated by that....

Interjection.

J. Tyabji: I hope the member for Fort Langley-Aldergrove doesn't tempt me, or I may put specific examples on the record. You can just read my book; it's a very long story.

Again, in Politics and the News it says: "The power of the press in America is a primordial one. It sets the agenda of public discussion. It determines what people will talk and think about, an authority that in other nations is reserved for tyrants, priests, parties and mandarins." That, I believe, is true. What we have in this day and age is a telecommunications and print system with corporate ownership, much of it multinational. We know, for example, that the publisher of the Globe and Mail is an American. We know that most of the national publications are now owned by someone with a very different corporate agenda. We know that we have corporate agendas recurring in the media.

The member for Cariboo North is saying I should be an NDPer. However, I remind him that the NDP are bringing in this bill, which I totally oppose in principle because I don't think it's workable. That's reassuring.

To move to Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's book, Manufacturing Consent, manufacturing consent is a theory that may be unfamiliar to the member for Fort Langley-Aldergrove, because he's snickering at it. However, we have to understand that people are too busy in their everyday lives to do their own research on every single issue before them. Because they're too busy in their own lives to search out the truth behind something, they rely on the mass media for information, however true it may be.

Thankfully enough, there is today a very high level of cynicism with the corporate media. That's a plus, a bonus, because I think when people rely on their own individual critical thinking, democracy is strengthened. However, to those who don't rely on critical thinking and do take, for example, the Province newspaper or BCTV news at face value, I think Noam Chomsky speaks directly. Let me read a few things into the record. It says:

"The democratic postulate is that the media are independent and committed to discovering and reporting the truth.... If, however, the powerful are able to fix the premises of discourse, to decide what the general populace is allowed to see, hear, and think about, and to 'manage' public opinion by regular propaganda campaigns, the standard view of how the system works is at serious odds with reality."

We know that people who have the greatest access to media, whether it's in the news.... People some decades ago used to think the news was objective. Nowadays most people will concede that there are very few objective reports of the news and that generally the editorial comment will carry the day on what gets filtered out to the public. However, the other access to the mass media is through advertising. The only people who have access to mass communications through advertising are people with a lot of money.

In terms of people with a lot of money, the reason I cannot possibly support this bill is that it disenfranchises people without money. The people who have the ability.... The member for Mission-Kent is providing a very good example of propaganda through the mass media in some of his commentary. I will get to that later in my speech.

However, in Noam Chomsky's propaganda model, he says: "The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace." We see that all the time. We know that -- whether it's through the advertising they accept or reject, through the editorial comment they choose to print or not, or through information and the way they choose to present it -- the mass media have an incredible role to play in the dissemination or the filtering of information.

[ Page 12846 ]

To give some of the individual people in the media credit, Chomsky goes on to say:

"These filters occurs so naturally that media newspeople, frequently operating with complete integrity and goodwill, are able to convince themselves that they choose and interpret the news 'objectively' and on the basis of professional news values."

This is true. I've seen this repeatedly myself and would be happy to provide examples later -- once we get through the theoretical stuff -- of what gets printed, how it's printed and what kind of editorial comment is used in printing it.

With regard to the media and propaganda, it says: "...a propaganda approach to media coverage suggests a systematic and highly political dichotomization in news coverage based on serviceability to important domestic power interests." We don't see that any more clearly than in British Columbia. What are the major sources of information in B.C.? Pacific Press; BCTV, which is associated; and we've got 'NW. These are incredibly powerful sources of information to the public. There are people who own them, and they have direct financial interests in the operation of this province.

What I find ironic is that the NDP should know this. They should realize how susceptible the system is to manipulation. When we look at the way the questions were put on the ballots in the last general election, what were people actually voting for? I'll leave it to the Alliance leader to speak to some of the statistics and the specifics of the questions.

When we talk about critical thinking, is this bill really a response to what people were expressing in the last election? I say it's not.

It's interesting that there is always selective reporting, and selective reporting will drive the agenda of what people are talking about. Chomsky goes on to say:

"Contrary to the usual image of an 'adversary press' boldly attacking a pitiful executive giant, the media's lack of interest, investigative zeal and basic news reporting on the accumulating illegalities of the executive branch have regularly permitted and even encouraged ever larger violations of law...."

I want to go from the theoretical to the specific on this and give some names to the Speaker and to the people following the debate. In the term of this government, we have seen the Liberal caucus bring to the floor of this House character assassinations of people such as Robyn Allan and Marc Eliesen. And today we saw David Van Blarcom, a very intelligent and well respected member of the community in Kelowna -- someone I've known for years -- being slandered in this House without recourse. We know that in Marc Eliesen's case, there was an entire illusion built up that B.C. Hydro was being driven....

Deputy Speaker: The member for Fort Langley-Aldergrove on a point of order.

G. Farrell-Collins: I know that the member is familiar with the standing orders. I and many others find it very difficult to discover the relevancy, let alone the truthfulness, of what the member is saying. I'd ask her to perhaps try to stick to the intent of the recall and initiative bill.

Deputy Speaker: As we know, considerable latitude is allowed in second reading debate, and I recall that the member did begin by saying that she wanted to talk about the theoretical bases of democracy and representation, so quoting Chomsky et al. seems appropriate. But perhaps every so often, hon. member, you could remind us of the connection, and that way al. will no longer challenge you.

J. Tyabji: It would help if the members in the House were paying attention to the entire debate rather than to when they were specifically mentioned. In this case, I'm talking about the fact that public opinion can be manipulated through the mass media. When we talk about direct democracy, we have it; we have it during a general election campaign, when the individuals who are putting themselves forward for election have the opportunity to stand on a platform and be judged on that basis.

In the example of recall, vested interest could perpetuate an illusion without the person having an opportunity to respond. The illusion has been very effective in this House. In this House we've seen the removal of Robyn Allan. She was basically drummed out, even though the issue that she was drummed out on had nothing to do with her job performance -- and her job performance was exemplary. She had her own staff petitioning to have her stay. That's how good she was. In fact, if you meet with senior executives of ICBC even today, they still lament what happened when public perception was manipulated by misinformation -- some of it from the member who previously called a point of order in this House, which is shameful.

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: Let me do this. Hon. member for Okanagan East, I must suggest to you that constant reference to other members and casting aspersions on their character is really not in order. I would give you that caution, suggesting as you did -- and this isn't debatable -- deliberate misrepresentation, if I heard you correctly. Please, I would just ask all members to restrain themselves from making those kinds of comments.

J. Tyabji: I will confine myself to things that can be verified by Hansard, to contributions to debate in this House and to this debate -- which is what I have been doing.

Deputy Speaker: The member for Fort Langley-Aldergrove on a point of order.

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Order, members. I must hear the point of order.

G. Farrell-Collins: The member clearly stated that I was deliberately misrepresenting facts in this House, and I would ask for an unqualified apology and retraction.

Deputy Speaker: I am sorry, I didn't hear the specific wording. But we all know what the practice is in this House. I would ask the member for Okanagan East, in deference to the sensibilities and the understanding of our colleague from Fort Langley-Aldergrove, to withdraw. It's simply a matter of decorum and, I would suggest, appropriate.

J. Tyabji: There's no question that in terms of the member deliberately misleading the House, I would withdraw.

[ Page 12847 ]

However, the whole point of my speech, which I'll go back to now, is with respect to the distortion -- and I think that's a fair analysis -- or the representation of things that are only peripheral or are perhaps used in a very selective way to drive public opinion. There were a number of other examples. Marc Eliesen is a good example of a person who was doing a competent job of managing B.C. Hydro. In fact, B.C. Hydro was proven to be one of the most effective Crown corporations.

Interjections.

J. Tyabji: The members may laugh, but they haven't done their research on this.

Deputy Speaker: Excuse me, member.

J. Tyabji: I'm going to move off this, because clearly there's some thin skin in this House.

Deputy Speaker: Yes, if you would, member. I was going to suggest that to be in order -- it seems to me that we have now deviated some distance -- we ought to be back to the principle of the bill before us. I would ask the member to please direct her remarks in that way.

[8:30]

J. Tyabji: Thank you, hon. Speaker. I'm going to move off that, because there's too much heckling anyway.

The last quote that I want to take out of Chomsky's book is with respect to the principle of this bill and our vulnerability to the manipulation of public opinion. He talks about the obedience of someone working in the media to a certain editorial or corporate perspective. He says:

"There are other considerations that tend to induce obedience. A journalist or commentator who does not want to have to work too hard can survive, even gain respectability, by publishing information -- official or leaks -- from standard sources."

That is something that I think anyone who has spent any time in this House can appreciate. Often information is given, and because of deadlines or sensationalism or the editor wanting a headline, things are being published that at best give a very warped perspective of the truth and at worst colour public opinion most unfortunately and drive public opinion in a way that is contrary to the public interest -- if the interest of the entire public is taken into account.

To remind the members who are listening, the whole point of this is that when we debated recall and initiative in the last election, we opposed it so strongly because it is open to manipulation -- selective representation of facts or alleged facts. People will generally not question what's coming through the information source, and public opinion will therefore be influenced. Propaganda and Persuasion says: "Modern propaganda uses all the media available: press, radio, television, film, posters, meetings, door-to-door canvassing, handbills, billboards, speeches, flags, street names, monuments, coins, stamps...." We in British Columbia know that public opinion can be driven through news stories and allegations that are found to be unsubstantiated afterward. Somebody's character can be called into question and never verified, and a person who doesn't have an opportunity to respond to debate in this House can have their name brought forward and their reputation called into question without any evidence whatsoever. These are things that we have seen done in this House repeatedly, and it has driven public opinion. That is a distortion of what we're supposed to be doing in the House, and it doesn't serve the public at all.

Propaganda and Persuasion also says: "All output will be tied to ideology in one way or another." That's the bottom line. When information is being put out by mass communications systems, it is directly tied to an ideology, whether it's an NDP ideology, a Reform ideology, a Liberal ideology -- if they ever develop one -- or an Alliance ideology. This is the thing that is directly tied to the output of information.

Then it says: "Propaganda is associated with the control of information flow." What does that go back to? Money. Who controls the information flow? Either money because you own the media, or money because you can access it. That doesn't put people on an even playing field. Whenever there's an uneven playing field, we know that we don't have democracy. Democracy is undermined when we make the balance of power favour someone with money over someone without money. That's where we have democracy being jeopardized.

In fact, it's ironic. It's almost like Orwellian double-speak that we stand here and hear the majority of people speaking in favour of the concept in principle, saying that they want more democracy. We have democracy. We have a democratic system, and it works. If we want to allow that democratic system to work, we should be removing the opportunity for people with money to have greater access.

We know that we can create illusions through the media. We know that there can be all kinds of things built up. Several books have been written on urban legends -- things that have developed a life of their own. Books have been written on ideas and, in many cases, things that will have a direct impact on the political agenda are developed that are independent of somebody's performance or of the political agenda they are stated to be representing.

If we want to look at a good example in the realm of fiction by a very well-known Canadian author, we only have to look to Margaret Atwood. In The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood develops a very credible and very interesting perspective on manipulation of public opinion. The most poignant scene of the entire book is where a group of constituents has gathered, a platform has been put forward, and a man is dragged onto the platform and does not have the ability to address the crowd. The crowd is told that the man is a rapist, and the man is torn to shreds by the crowd. It is later found out that the man was, in fact, politically opposing the government.

History is replete with examples of manipulation of public opinion to manufacture consent. How do we manufacture consent? With greater access to communications. I want to move from the theoretic to the specific, and to give my case study. The only reason I feel compelled to do this is that when this bill was tabled in the House, BCTV chose my riding as an example. I was away on vacation in November when it was announced that recall was coming forward. There were about three days of news stories on my riding being used as an example.

An Hon. Member: I wonder why.

J. Tyabji: That's a good question. I'll tell you why. The lady who has come forward, named Ika Jagic -- and I'm putting it on the record because it's already there -- lives next door to my ex-husband. She's a very close friend of my ex-husband and his sister. And my ex-husband's sister 

[ Page 12848 ]

is married to a man who would like to be the MLA for Okanagan East....

An Hon. Member: Conflict.

J. Tyabji: It's a direct conflict. It's a partisan conflict, but her name -- without research or verification of her motives -- was broadcast across the country. The interesting thing in that case is that my brother-in-law is directly tied to the Leader of the Opposition. He is very partisan, has opposed me politically, and works with this lady. There is no question where her motives are, but despite that being provided by my constituents.... It's interesting that when those stories went out, my constituency office was flooded by people coming in saying that I had to expose two things: the character of the person coming forward and the motives. And I refused to do that. I only bring it forward in this House because this House should be aware of how open it is. We see the smirks on the faces of the Liberals. They are trying to manufacture an illusion that there is some huge groundswell of opposition; it's partisan.

The interesting thing is that I was elected with 38 percent -- 62 percent of the people in my riding didn't vote for me. I would say that quite easily 40 percent would sign a petition, if you got to them all. And you know what? I would run in the by-election, and chances are I would win, because I have done a good job. I see the smirks on the other members' faces. Let me tell them: when I went to form a new riding association for the Alliance, I have never had such an easy time putting together such a strong group of community workers. I have been organizing politically for nine years, and I have never had such an easy time of phoning people and having them say that I had done such a good job and that they were going to help me -- not because they believe in a partisan agenda but because they believe in the community.

I have had fundraisers for the homeless, I have raised money for a transition house, and I have done a lot of work with manufactured homes. I have done my job. Is it a breach of trust perpetuating an illusion in my riding? No. Have I been golfing or on vacation? No. What was the first provincewide article that I saw about me after the election? The first one that I had was one criticizing me because I opposed reverse discrimination. That created an illusion that I was anti-feminist. That illusion still stands today in many sectors, and that spreads by word of mouth. The second provincial media coverage was after I had a baby as a sitting MLA. Two articles came out calling for my resignation. After that, when I was appointed House Leader, I was called an opportunist loyal only to myself. Credible sources repeatedly leaked information to the press gallery, and all kinds of stories were written. Did any of them phone me for verification before they printed them? No. Did they ever check the source? No. Do I know the source? I do; it's a partisan source.

In terms of manufacturing an illusion, if I can stand here and put one thing on the record, it is that I was elected as a 26-year-old, pregnant, ethnic woman, and I defeated a Social Credit cabinet minister in the heartland of Social Credit. I was elected with 38 percent. I made a lot of enemies the day I was elected. That shouldn't surprise anyone, but in that area, especially, there were some people who were very surprised -- not people in my community so much, but right beside me where the power brokers were, and they have direct access to the media. So I want to put that on the record, because I oppose this bill, just as I did in 1991, for the very same reasons.

Interestingly enough, I have had a lot of direct experience with manipulation and illusion, and illusion is not the reality. The good thing about it is that the public generally know better. Unfortunately, there are some people who do get captivated by headlines, who do get captivated by the corporate media. And, unfortunately, when there's a partisan agenda at work, we become susceptible to the very extensive, distracting, counter-productive machinery that is recall.

R. Neufeld: This is a bill that has finally come before the House almost three years after an election in which more than 80 percent of the people in the province voted in a referendum that they wanted the ability to recall their MLA and to put forward initiatives. That's unacceptable to British Columbians right from the start, that it took this length of time to get this kind of legislation into this Legislature. People are really upset about it, and as they find out a little more about the workings of the bill -- how unworkable it is and how poor a piece of legislation it is -- they will become more dissatisfied.

I want to put on the record a little about what the member for Burnaby North talked about: an all-party committee. He said that the report that came out of it, which received unanimous consent, is almost mirrored in this legislation, and that we as British Columbians should accept it because that committee was made up of NDP, Liberals and Social Credit members. What the member failed to say was that all reports that come out of an all-party committee which is dominated by the government of the day will be unanimous. You cannot bring forward a minority report even if you're part of that committee; you're hamstrung by what the committee wants to bring forward. That committee is dominated by the government of the day -- and I'm not saying that's anything new; it's happened before. What I'm saying is that members that maybe did not agree with how the report was being put together really didn't have a vote on how that report was going to come out.

Bill 36 is an absolute farce. It's a bad piece of legislation, and it's designed to fail. And that should come as no surprise. It should come as no surprise to anyone that this piece of legislation would come out of an NDP government that is tremendously afraid of direct democracy. That's evident from the speeches we've heard from the NDP members; it's evident from the speech we heard from the PDA member who spoke just before me. They are tremendously afraid of direct democracy. There's nothing wrong with direct democracy today, but they are afraid. Only an NDP government could craft a piece of legislation that would try to create the illusion that they're really responding to what the people thought they were going to get.

Interjection.

R. Neufeld: The member for Okanagan West says "devious and despicable." I say it's a piece of legislation that is designed to fail.

The other part that really bothers me is about the legislation and what's happening in this House. I have travelled around the province on different committees with members from the NDP and from the Liberal Party. I've heard members from both of those parties say that they don't agree at all with recall or initiative. Both 

[ Page 12849 ]

parties, the official opposition and the government of the day, say in the hallways that they do not believe in recall and initiative. So it will be interesting when the vote is called to see just how these members are going to vote on Bill 36.

[8:45]

Bill 36 requires 40 percent of all voters who lived in the constituency at the last election to sign a recall petition. The part that is really distasteful to me is that if you are able as a group to go out and get 40 percent of the electorate who were registered at the time of the election to sign a recall petition on a member, even if it is successful, that member is able to run again. You know that's blatantly wrong. That should not happen. If you've been able to convince 40 percent of the electorate, that member should not be able to run again. There should just be an election.

This legislation disenfranchises new residents who have moved into the constituency after a general election. Remember that this legislation talks about not recalling anyone for 18 months after the election, but a tremendous amount of people move around the province. I know that in my constituency it's a younger population. They come and go probably more than they do in some of the southern ridings. What we're doing by saying that only those that were registered at the time of the election are able to sign the petition -- remember, this is 18 months later -- is disenfranchising people. It raises Charter rights, and I think it could be challenged by the Charter -- maybe that is why it is designed the way it is.

Last but not least, it disenfranchises those young people who have come of age to vote. They should be able to vote.

An Hon. Member: They can't.

R. Neufeld: They can't, because they weren't registered at the time of the last election. They will come of age, but they will not be able to vote.

The other onerous part in recall is that they're given 60 days to gather the signatures -- it's not enough time. I don't know how you're going to manage to go out and get 6,000 or 7,000 signatures. One of the members earlier spoke about 7,300 signatures in 60 days. That's doubtful, and that's why this legislation is unworkable. The recall part is unworkable, but I guess if somebody's really determined, really serious, they might be able to make it work. The initiative part of it is absolutely unworkable. It never will work; it's designed to not work.

Looking at other parts of the bill, if you want to have someone canvass for signatures, you have to register that person with the chief electoral officer. Isn't that rather ridiculous? If you want to recall someone, you have to go to the chief electoral officer to register your canvassers. That doesn't happen in an election. You can go get anyone you want to canvass for you, to knock on doors and try to sway people's opinions as to whether they should vote for you. But what has been built into Bill 36 is that you have to go see the chief electoral officer and register those people.

I want to bring up my constituency, because there was a lot of heckling earlier on about the fact that I changed from Social Credit to Reform. I think I should be quite upfront and honest and tell the people what is required under Bill 36 to recall me. I was elected in Peace River North with 5,758 votes, which represented 37.4 percent of all eligible voters. Yet to recall me under Bill 36, it would require 6,163 eligible signatures on a recall petition, or 58.6 percent of valid votes cast. I wouldn't say that threshold is unattainable, but it's very high. I don't think it's fair, and I think it's quite unworkable, as I said when I started my discussion.

The Reform Party's position on recall is fairly simple. It's a three-step process. Step one, reduce the threshold on recall petitions from 40 percent of all previously registered voters to a number of currently registered voters equal to 12 percent of all votes cast in the previous election. That simplifies it; it doesn't matter if you are a new voter or not. A successful recall petition would then trigger a recall vote based on a simple question to all voters: do you wish to recall your MLA -- yes or no? If 50 percent plus one say yes, the MLA is automatically recalled and there is a by-election. It's quite simple. We don't have to go through a piece of legislation that is 15 pages long and has about 40 sections. But that's one thing this government is excellent at: bringing forward legislation that is crafted craftily and is hard to understand.

I think initiative is absolutely impossible under Bill 36; in fact, it's unworkable and impossible. No one will be able to bring forward an initiative petition. The bill states that the petition would have to be signed by 10 percent of all registered voters in each and every one of all 75 constituencies. Inherently, there is something wrong there; that is, all registered voters. It's not the people that voted; it's all registered voters. If a few of them have passed away, I don't know if you go to the grave and get their signature or not. But you have to go to all registered voters that were registered at the time of the election. In this case, it would be three years ago. If some of those people have moved out of your constituency, it's tough luck. They are just counted as no.

When you dissect a bill, you see what happens and some of the reasons it is unworkable. To get 10 percent of all the eligible voters in the majority of the constituencies in British Columbia, you would have to collect nearly 200,000 signatures within 90 days. That's almost impossible. It would not happen. We have a lot of people who tell us there's no way they could meet that. Even if you accomplished it, and even if you were lucky and were able to get enough canvassers the chief electoral officer would agree to, and if you didn't buy too many cups of coffee, and if you were lucky enough to get 200,000 signatures, all that would happen is that it would come to a committee of the Legislature. That committee doesn't have to deal with it. It's not binding on anyone. If they don't like it, they can refuse it. There's no guarantee that it would be put to a referendum -- none whatsoever.

An Hon. Member: Yes, there is. Read the bill.

R. Neufeld: No, there would not be. The government would have two options. First, it could prevent a referendum simply by introducing the draft bill for first reading and letting it die on the order paper, which is quite simply done. It happens here all the time. We've seen it happen year after year with the private member's bills on initiative and recall put forward by our leader. Every session, they die. That's all that has to happen. There would be no requirement at all for the bill to be debated or passed.

Second, the government could allow it to go to referendum. They might want to try out a bit of referendum. I don't know whether this government would, but they could. It would then have to win the support of 50 percent plus one of everyone on the voters 

[ Page 12850 ]

list, regardless of whether they voted, and anyone who failed to vote would be counted as a no vote against the initiative.

The further you go into initiative in this bill, the quicker you find out that it's in name only. When more than 80 percent of the people in British Columbia voted for referendum and recall, it is inherently wrong for a government to come up with this crafted kind of bill.

L. Fox: Did you say crafted or crappy?

R. Neufeld: I said crafted.

Let's say it could be accomplished. It would go -- after you were able to collect 200,000 signatures equalling 10 percent of the eligible voters in every constituency within 90 days. There are all kinds of other little items in there, such as whether an election is called. If there's an election called within that 90 days, the 28-day writ period just comes out of the 90 days. All of a sudden, you've been cut down. Those things are not what members opposite talk about, of course. They don't want to talk about them.

It has to survive the attack of being something the government of the day does not like, and it could be another government. The initiative has to survive the attack of the government in office, using taxpayers' funds to advertise against it, and they can do that. The government of the day can use taxpayers' money, and we have seen a blatant use of that money by the government in power right now. Just recently, with the BC Forest Renewal Act, there was a blatant abuse of taxpayers' funds when there were other avenues to get the message out. They didn't have to use taxpayers' money to promote NDP ideology and put down the opposition parties.

After gaining the support of more than one million voters, representing a majority of all registered voters in at least 50 constituencies -- if you managed to overcome that hurdle -- the government could simply introduce the bill and let it die. All they have to do is give it first reading in the House. It's not binding. They don't have to pass the bill. They don't have to go to second reading. They don't have to go to committee. They just introduce it into the House, and it dies. It's just unacceptable to British Columbians.

[9:00]

The further we get into this legislation, the more we see how unworkable it is. An initiative vote would only be allowed once every three years, under this legislation. Historically, British Columbia goes to the polls every three years. It has done for a long time. But only once every three years could you bring forward an initiative. And that's on a specified date: September 28. I don't know, it seems a little ridiculous to me.

An Hon. Member: It's close to Halloween.

R. Neufeld: Maybe that's the issue; I don't know. But it's at a specified time.

It doesn't matter how you look at the initiative part of this bill; it is not workable. Our leader laid out our position fairly well. It's an easy, simple process to follow. Maybe that's what the NDP are afraid of. They like to make it difficult. Maybe that's the idea: make it so difficult that no one will ever try it. I'm sure that's exactly what's going to happen.

As far as we in the Reform Party of British Columbia are concerned, to initiate a new law, the signature threshold should be 6 percent of all registered voters.

Interjection.

R. Neufeld: The member across the way says 7 percent. I say 6 percent.

The time frame for collecting signatures should be at least six months, not three months. For the record, I want to bring to the attention of members opposite a few areas that have initiative referendum. The required number of signatures as a percentage of regular voters in Switzerland is only 2.2 percent, and they allow 18 months. If you go to the three jurisdictions that recommend 10 percent of the registered voters -- Illinois, Wyoming and B.C.'s Bill 36 -- we see that only B.C. says 90 days. Wyoming has 18 months, and Illinois has 24 months.

Now I can't say whether everything is rosy and dandy and works great in those areas, but if you were going to look at any places where it has been put in place, I would think you would try to work a little bit from their experience and use some of their ideas. But not this government. We're going to make these people get all these signatures in 90 days. And we're going to make sure that everyone that's running around getting signatures has to sign in with the chief electoral officer. Every canvasser has to do that. In a general election you don't have to. You can go out and get as many people as you want to work door to door.

To ensure under our model that the referendum has the support of most regions, we would favour the requirement for a majority of all votes cast in two-thirds of the constituencies. That would alleviate the problem of the lower mainland dictating to the rest of the province what would happen. I think that's fair, and I'm sure it would be fair to the people from Peace River North. I am sure that they would understand that. We would eliminate the requirement for a supermajority of all registered voters that counts no-shows as votes against.

So much about this initiative bill makes it unworkable that it's hard to believe this government would even decide to bring something like this forward.

I talked earlier about information and news releases put out by the government. They put out a news release when they introduced the legislation in the House. It's interesting to see what the government wrote into the news release -- not everything. It's just like when the member for Burnaby North talked about a unanimous report coming from an all-party committee. It sounds good to the people out there. They think that everybody had a chance and that this is the best we could get.

I want to read part of it. It says -- and I'm reading the part dealing with recall: "Where the petition is reviewed and approved by the chief electoral officer, the MLA ceases to hold office." If you were a voter out there in British Columbia and you were not following politics that closely, but you were generally keeping up on things that are happening -- as the average person does -- you would think that, by golly, that MLA is gone; that's it. But it's not so, because under Bill 36 that MLA can run again. Why don't they put right below that part that the MLA ceases to hold office but is capable of running in the by-election? Why don't they just write that in there? No, it's crafted so people will have a different impression when they read it, and that's unfair; that's not right.

When we go to the part of the press release that deals with a successful initiative petition -- and again, I'm going to read it -- it says: "If the select standing committee recommends the draft bill be introduced, the government must introduce the bill at the current or next 

[ Page 12851 ]

session of the Legislature." Anybody out there reading that would think: "There. Now the bill's in the Legislature and everyone has a chance to vote on it."

L. Fox: Wrong again.

R. Neufeld: All they have to do is introduce it in first reading, and all of us here know what happens with first reading. We've got them all over the place. They stand up and give it first reading, and it dies on the order paper if they don't want to bring it forward. The government has the ability to bring it forward, and I would bet that in most cases they wouldn't bring it forward.

I'm going to read another section of the news release put out by the government of the day to promote Bill 36: "If the chief electoral officer declares an initiative vote to be successful, the government must introduce the bill at the current or next session of the Legislature." Again, people would think: "By golly, we got it into the Legislature. It's there, it's good stuff and they're going to do something with it." What does the Legislature do? The minister responsible for it stands up, takes a cursory look at it and gives it first reading -- and it's gone. It hits the deep, dark file over there -- what they call file 13 -- at the end of the session. That's what happens to it. Why don't they put another little paragraph in there and say that? Why don't we tell the people the truth? I don't know; it's inherent with this government that they just want to make everything look really good, all wine and roses, but they don't want to lay out what will really happen.

I want to read the last part of this press release: "British Columbians who canvass for signatures on recall and initiative must do so as volunteers, to avoid the use of highly paid political campaign professionals." Doesn't that sound just great? That comes out of a press release. What they don't say in Bill 36 when they talk about canvassers is that, first off, you have to go and get this person okayed by the chief electoral officer before that person can canvass, and then that person -- everyone, in fact -- is subject to what they define as inducements, which include "money, gift, valuable consideration, refreshment...." It includes refreshment, so after you have cleared the hurdle of getting a chief electoral officer to sign up this canvasser, by golly, you can't even buy that person a cup of coffee.

Interjection.

R. Neufeld: Okay. I don't drink, hon. Speaker, but you can't even buy him a Coke or a rum and Coke.

Why don't we lay this out in the Election Act for those people who work on elections. By golly, we shouldn't be able to buy them a coffee or anything like that. I don't know what the government that we have today would do. To offer "entertainment, office, placement, employment or any other benefit of any kind...." Like some members who have stood up and spoken on this bill, I guess you can go down to the mall and collect 40,000 signatures in an afternoon. I live in a part of the province which covers 66,000 square miles. There's no great big mall; you have to drive around. But you can't even help a person canvassing for these signatures with a vehicle. You can't buy gas for them, and heaven forbid if you have to drive 500 miles, because you can't even have a coffee. It's absolutely ridiculous. Why didn't they lay this out in the press release? That's why Bill 36 is unworkable.

With magic, or if you're lucky, you may be able to get the recall part of Bill 36 to work.

L. Fox: If it's amended.

R. Neufeld: If it's amended, as the member for Prince George-Omineca says. We will have quite a few amendments for this bill. But unless the initiative part of it is amended drastically and the whole shape of it is totally changed, it is unworkable. It is unacceptable and unpalatable to most British Columbians, and it's a sham.

S. Hammell: I'd like to put this debate in context. The legislation before us is based on an all-party committee report, which was adopted unanimously in every sense of the word. At the time, the parties represented on the committee were the New Democrats, the Liberals, the Socreds and one independent. In this House now, the New Democrats are the same, the Liberals are the same -- at least for now -- some Socreds are Reformers, one Socred is still a Socred, and the independent who was a Liberal is still an independent. But the people are the same and the report was adopted unanimously in every sense of the word. The government then based the legislation in front of us on the work done by the committee, except that it lowered the number required for a recall petition from 50 to 40 percent. Now the opposition parties are criticizing the report they voted for. No wonder the public is cynical.

Those people in this chamber who have sat as both government and opposition members have talked about the differences in these roles. In opposition, you don't have to walk the talk. In government your feet are held to the fire and you are walking the talk. That is as it should be. A tenet of leadership, no matter what role you're playing, is to lead, and another is to follow. The Leader of the Opposition has spoken eloquently of how the essence of the concept of initiative and recall is to follow the electorate and to include, trust and follow the public will. That means responding to the needs that are expressed about both initiative and recall. That kind of leadership does involve walking the talk and leading by example, especially when you control the government.

So what I can't understand is why there isn't a ward system in Vancouver. Over 50 percent of the people in a referendum voted for a ward system when the Leader of the Opposition was mayor. So I must be wrong. The Leader of the Opposition is in favour of initiative and recall. Over 50 percent of the people voted for a referendum in the city of Vancouver, and the leader is suggesting that now the referendum legislation in front of us it should have a lower test. But when he was mayor, he asked that the test be raised. He asked former Premier Vander Zalm that the Vancouver Charter number for approving a ward system be raised from 50 percent to 60 percent. I guess he didn't trust the people; he didn't follow. Having asked the people what their will was, he then said he didn't like the answer, and he thought he would make the test level higher.

[9:15]

This legislation is fair and balanced. It is between being too tough and being open for abuse, which is what we as a committee heard time and time again. We have heard the opposition whine and cry about the 60 days and the 90 days. People in this province can prepare and put up an election machine in 28 days. They can prepare and put up a recall machine in 60 days. They have lots of time. If you skip from recall to initiative, we are asking the people of the province to have 10 percent support for an initiative 

[ Page 12852 ]

before it moves further. There is an example in front of us today. The reasons this legislation is in front of us are precisely the reasons that other initiatives, if passed by the citizens, would also be in front of us. One hundred percent of the constituencies of this province voted over 60 percent. In fact, those who did vote voted over 60 percent to pass recall and initiative legislation, and now we have it.

We have a bill designed by an all-party committee, endorsed by government, with the appropriate balances for exploring new territory.

[G. Brewin in the chair.]

R. Chisholm: I rise tonight to speak to this bill.... I won't speak for very long. I have been listening to this pompous drivel for the past three hours. KISS is an adage that I believe belongs to this Legislature -- keep it simple, stupid. This bill does not work. And why doesn't it work? Because you have to have 40 percent of the population sign a petition within 60 days. That doesn't even happen in elections.

If I look at the report of the chief electoral officer for the riding of Chilliwack, for instance, and they wanted to recall me at this point, they would need in the vicinity of 13,000 to 14,000 votes. I was elected with a little over 8,000. In the riding of Mission-Kent, the member was elected with 7,659 votes. They would need approximately 12,000 to get rid of the member. In 28 days they could not do it; in 60 days it's going to be downright impossible. If you look at Surrey-Green Timbers, the member there was elected with 8,700 votes, and they would need between 13,000 and 14,000 votes to recall the member. It's not realistic.

When this bill was tabled, the press clippings of the day were very blunt in what they had to say: "Recall Bill A Dud" -- that's pretty specific. "Recall Bill Just Smoke And Mirrors" -- that's Brian Kieran of the Province. You may not like the particular reporter, but the fact is that they are all saying the same thing. Vaughn Palmer, of the Vancouver Sun: "NDP Doesn't Seem To Recall Its Promises." They do have a point: the bill does not work.

If you take a look at the referenda, it's impossible. You would need in the vicinity of 200,000 signatures to put the referenda in, and I think that's impossible, especially when you look at the amount of time you have to do it in -- 90 days. Let's take a look at other jurisdictions. For instance, in 23 states with initiative legislation, six have no time limit for signature collection, and the remaining 17 have a combined average of 416 days. Ninety days will not work. If you look at the states of Wyoming and Illinois, there is a 10 percent petition requirement. Not one initiative qualified for the ballot between 1981 and 1990.

I think we'd better rethink this bill. The population, with an 80 percent majority, said they wanted this. They sent this government into the Legislature, saying: "We want it." Two and a half years later, this government has given them recall legislation that does not work, and I think that is downright shameful. We are here to represent the people of this province. We are not here to protect our rear ends; we're here to serve the public, and that's the population of British Columbia. This government has yet to learn that.

When you take a look at the majority of the 75 ridings in this province, most members were elected with between 8,000 and 10,000 votes. Right now, for recall you'd need between 13,000 and 14,000. So if the members on the other side of the House can explain to us how they expect to see the public do this within 60 days, especially with the rules that they put in along with the referendum and recall initiative, I'd like to see them prove it. Perhaps at committee stage they can change my mind on this point of view. We, for instance, have 18 amendments for committee stage. I certainly hope the government is listening, because the people see this as a sham. This is not what they asked for. They didn't expect to wait two and a half years for it.

I'd like to quote the Premier, as a matter of fact. The Premier said: "When the cabinet was sworn in last November, I reminded its members that they must begin by restoring the confidence of the people of British Columbia in their government. There will be new initiatives during this session to ensure that government is open and honest." This is not a good start. Two and a half years later, this is a bill on recall referenda that does not work. It's time for the government to take a good, hard look at what they've said in the past and what they're presenting to this Legislature. Hopefully, they will have an open mind when it comes to committee stage.

Deputy Speaker: I would like to ask hon. members for some order before the next speaker starts.

A. Warnke: Thank you, hon. Speaker.

An Hon. Member: Are you the designated speaker?

A. Warnke: I only wish, hon. member. I only wish I was.

I was actually prepared to be non-partisan, and I was hoping to see a bit of non-partisanship as this subject was being introduced. But as a matter of fact, what has broken out is good old partisanship, and maybe that's the way it should be. But at the same time, unfortunately, when partisanship broke out....

I'll tell you what. I was going to make the following comments. I wanted to express the good grace to sincerely extend my admiration to the seven Social Credit members elected to this chamber in 1991, because it was to no credit to their party -- no pun intended -- or to the previous administration that they were re-elected. Rather, it was due to their own efforts, their own reputation and their own integrity. But unfortunately, after hearing some of their remarks, I'll have to withdraw that. I guess I'm going to engage in a little bit of good old partisanship myself.

In October 1991, as everyone knows, in addition to electing members to the new parliament to represent them, the voters throughout British Columbia cast their ballots on two questions and in every electoral district voted at least 71.6 percent in favour of recall and 72.9 percent in favour of initiative -- incidentally, in both cases that was in Vancouver-Quilchena. Extremely high percentages for recall were also in Surrey-Green Timbers -- over 86 percent -- Peace River South, Surrey-Whalley and Vancouver-Kingsway. For the initiative, in Peace River South, Cariboo North, Kootenay and again Vancouver-Kingsway these were extremely high percentages -- over 87 percent. It shows as well that it wasn't concentrated in one region of the country.

The final results provincewide were 80.9 percent for recall and 83 percent for initiative. No matter what arguments concerning the ballots cast are used -- such as spoiled ballots being 9 percent for the recall question and 11 percent for the initiative question, or that 1.4 

[ Page 12853 ]

million total ballots were considered out of 1.9 million registered voters -- it certainly illustrates a significant turnout of voters. One must be impressed with the fact that at least 60 percent of eligible British Columbians favoured recall and initiative. That fact alone essentially means that the public overwhelmingly supported recall and initiative. That compels us in this chamber to implement them in some form.

Whether the current Premier stated that he would honour the results is, I believe, an aside. He doesn't need my support. Nonetheless, his commitment no doubt led British Columbians to believe there was no harm in supporting these two questions. I believe a warning at the time was perhaps essential. Frankly, the way I see it, I believe the results would have compelled any executive council to propose legislation in some form to be considered, debated and resolved by us. That it was not done sooner has, in my mind, less to do with the current government being tardy than the previous administration bringing these questions to the public prematurely, without accompanying proposed legislation.

In the Charlottetown accord debate and the national referendum that followed in 1992, a package of proposals was presented for public consideration, for full debate. As we saw, a full debate did follow, the public was fully informed and a full discussion did occur -- as was so essential, because that accord could have had tremendous, profound effects on how we shape our national institutions of government.

So did the two questions proposed in 1991 by the previous administration, in shaping our provincial parliamentary democracy. Given the difficulty in articulating a realistic, practical process for implementing recall and initiative -- which is the short strokes -- the legacy of the previous administration is that it intended to introduce two questions in the hope that these popular questions would somehow rub off and re-elect them. There was no accompanying legislation proposed.

L. Fox: Nor should there have been.

A. Warnke: The member still says there shouldn't have been. Why not? In the Charlottetown accord there was accompanying legislation. I strongly submit that such an ill-conceived, premature attempt to bring forth ideas without even considering the implications of our parliamentary institutions or giving the people a real choice before them, rather than only trying to get re-elected, in the most cynical and corrupt manner, as that previous administration tried to do, means that the leadership of that former administration deserves to be relegated to the oblivion where they belong. That's where they are headed.

What were the people to do in 1991? Suppose they had re-elected the former government by a narrow margin and turned down recall and initiative. I guarantee that the previous administration would have taken that as a mandate, a signal, an interpretation to do whatever they wanted to. No wonder the former government's attempt to be re-elected in the most cynical and corrupt manner meant their failure, and they do deserve to be relegated to oblivion. I think that is something that has to be stated at the outset: no government anywhere must bring questions such as this forward in a cynical manner.

If we adopt referendum and initiative -- and I believe we will, simply because the question was put to the people and the results were overwhelming -- we have to ask the questions: what do we do, and where do we go? I believe we will accept referendum and initiative. I could go on in detail. At committee stage I will question many different facets of what is being presented here.

I want to speak to the principle of the bill. Somewhere along the line it has to be stated that when we adopt this particular piece of legislation, there will be possible adverse implications.

[9:30]

I believe that we must get away from the partisanship -- and this is hopefully where we're going to go from here on out -- and try to make this the best possible piece of legislation for our national institutions -- something that enhances parliamentary democracy. If we can do that....

I have to point out that the percentages, numbers or days of duration can be amended. These can be fully debated and fully amended at committee stage. But the principle is so important. We have to recognize that in the name of the people and democracy, the implications of recall and initiative in a parliamentary democracy may well serve a strong executive.

As I look at the previous administration and the problems they had, I really wonder whether it is desirable to enhance a strong executive. That's a warning that I really want to push right across this country: change parliamentary institutions if you will, but be very careful of the implications of what you espouse.

It's very well to point out that direct democracy.... Incidentally, there is a clear definition of what we mean by direct democracy. The literature is huge, but at least there is consensus on the concept of direct democracy, and it revolves around the questions of recall and initiative. I do see some flaws in direct democracy, so what I want to focus on are the possible implications that we must be forever wary of. Direct democracy has the prospect of enhancing the executive and executive power at the expense of the legislature.

Direct democracy is nothing new. As a matter of fact, the first time there was come consensus as to what it meant in terms of initiative was in 1780 in the state of Massachusetts. They drew on the experience of the problems of the first American constitution, the Articles of Confederation, which was a failure. Interestingly, initiative was addressed in the debates about the Articles of Confederation. It was felt that it was one factor that was a flaw in the original Articles of Confederation. That is the reason why they adopted a second constitution, the present constitution of the United States.

The present constitution of the United States makes it crystal-clear that it sides with representative democracy. In fact, if one were to explore this debate fully -- and I don't have the time to explore it here -- there is the concept of direct democracy on the one hand, and the concept of representative democracy on the other. The intent of the American constitution was to improve on representative democracy and to make sure that the abuses of direct democracy did not appear in the constitution.

Now, in the twentieth century, the concept of democracy has arisen again. Interestingly enough, it was introduced by the Progressives. This is something for Reformers or any others of that persuasion to keep in mind that from a left-wing perspective direct democracy is preferable to a government by politicians in legislatures. This is what was said in the earlier part of this century, and I wonder why. I want to warn those Reform members about who is the best organized, especially in 

[ Page 12854 ]

this province. It is a warning as well to other members of that persuasion.

The beneficiaries of direct legislation will not necessarily be the people at all, but special interests. Indeed, one downside could be that it is a very complex ballot. It will be very difficult to deal with complicated proposals. It does tend to polarize political issues. Lord only knows that is precisely the direction that we should get away from in this province. It is quite possible that factionalism, polarization and that sort of thing will undermine the democratic character of a people.

Direct democracy was dealt with by James Madison in his famous paper No. 10 in the Federalist Papers. What Madison pointed out was that any attempt to avoid representative democracy and to start making that direct link between the two -- not because people are to be mistrusted.... Madison knew that there was every possibility in a direct democracy of undermining the very democracy that we espouse. The way to do that is to encourage executive power -- that is, the power in the hands of the Premier or President or Governor -- and a direct linkage between the executive branch of government and the people. What has to be done is to constantly temper that. That is the strongest argument for representative democracy, without going into too much detail.

Thomas Jefferson, who had tremendous faith in people, also noted that it has to be tempered by representative democracy. Indeed, Jefferson himself recognized that there is a natural aristocracy, as well as the farmers, who could keep the character of the American people. Thomas Paine championed indirect democracy. There is a whole rich history there.

I would also borrow one term from Madison that is worth keeping in mind at this time: "If people were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern people, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." We have neither, and that is what Madison emphasized. Therefore, it is quite important to always remember that as we move in the direction of reform, we must make sure that representative democracy and its principles are kept intact, because it is so easy to circumvent representative democracy in another form.

One of the wisest statements has been made by Jean Bethke Elshtain very recently in a book called Democracy on Trial. She stated:

"Plebiscitism is compatible with authoritarian politics carried out under the guise of, or with the connivance of, majority opinion. Therefore, what is needed is a sense of responsibility for one's society, and the participation of plebiscitarianism is dramatically at odds with this democratic ideal."

Indeed, Ms. Elshtain put it this way: "Plebiscites have been used routinely to shore up anti-democratic majoritarian movements and regimes." Argentinean Peronism comes to mind.

That view is a warning, and I think it's extremely important. While there are arguments in favour of recall.... One of the strongest arguments that has been consistently put forward over and over again -- indeed, it was put forward very eloquently by the Leader of the Opposition -- is that it provides for continuous accountability. It seems to me that accountability is the key word of the 1990s. People are concerned about accountability, and I share that concern. It's a darned good, strong argument for recall.

But I just want to warn everybody that when advocating recall, there is a possibility that it could be antagonistic to electing good lawmakers. It could make public office a little less attractive. It could be divisive, disruptive and polarizing. It could be subject to abuses and latent consequences that are not really compatible with parliamentary democracy. It places a tremendous burden on voters to keep constantly informed. It is extremely important that we protect a deliberative process. This initiative has the potential of circumventing that deliberative process.

I believe that initiative has been brought up several times in this country and in this province. Indeed, when I talk to people, they are in favour of initiative. They also recognize, far more wisely than some whose comments I heard earlier, that it has some potential problems, and therefore we have to be extremely careful. Indeed, those who advocate initiative ought to keep in mind that the Los Angeles Times once took a poll and found that 72 percent of registered voters agreed with the statement: "The initiative process has gotten out of control in California." Approximately 84 percent of the respondents in the same poll agreed with: "There are so many initiatives on the ballot with complex issues that an average voter cannot make an intelligent choice." Those are warnings -- maybe not to reject the legislation at hand, but warnings nonetheless.

If I may get back on a partisan kick again -- I deliberately left this to the last -- members who were part of the previous administration are advocating initiative here. Yet in 1919, an act to provide for the initiation and approval of legislation by the electors was assented to. In other words, it has already been on the books since 1919. In 1978, Mr. Gordon Gibson got up and asked a question of Premier Bennett about the proclamation of the citizens' initiative act. That's all it would have taken. Here is Premier Bennett's very short answer: "It's a matter of policy." Well, holy cow! Here are these members claiming that they advocate initiative. It's been on the books since 1919. It's been there, and yet they don't proclaim it. And do you know what, hon. Speaker? Despite what these members have said, they will not bring it in. They did not want to bring it in. Do you know why? This is what's so darned dishonest of some of these members: it's because it is unconstitutional; they can't bring it in.

There were one or two members who talked about how you bring in an initiative and it's got to go into law right away. There is already a case that has been established firmly in the Manitoba courts....

An Hon. Member: I've heard about it.

A. Warnke: And have you read that, hon. member? It would be very instructive if some members would actually read the Supreme Court decision. That may be asking a lot.

This is what was quoted from the Supreme Court:

"It seemed clear that the portion of the proposed legislation which might be called initiative is, in the United States, beyond the powers of the state legislatures without most complete and radical amendments to their original constitutions."

The reason -- and there are long constitutional arguments -- is that the power of initiative in the United States derives from the people. In Canada that is not the case. This is from the Supreme Court: "The law-making power is, by section 92, vested in the legislature, and that is reiterated in section 91." Just to remind some hon. members, the reserve powers of the 

[ Page 12855 ]

constitution of Canada are exclusively those of the federal government, not of the provincial government, which is quite the contrary in the United States constitution.

Secondly, it says also:

"The legislature can in no way change any of the provisions of section 92. By subsection 1, the provincial constitution can be changed by the legislature. But no matter what changes are made in the constitution, the provincial legislature and no other body can legislate on the subject set forth in the remainder of the subsections."

There is more. In the United States, the sovereign power is in the hands of the people, but in Canada we have an entirely different situation. In Canada we have actually a whole load of cases. Hodge v. the Queen is an example, and perhaps some hon. members should look at some of the statements made in that:

"These powers of the provincial legislatures may permit localities to decide whether or not certain acts, such as those regulating the sale of intoxicating liquor, shall be in force in such localities."

In other words, that's how municipal governments are allowed, and so forth.

"Those powers so given, however, are merely in the nature of policing regulations. They do not interfere with or purport to cause others to take place or perform the functions of the legislature."

And it goes on. There are a few other comments:

"In Canada there is no sovereignty in the people. Our legislature consists of the Lieutenant-Governor and the Legislative Assembly. To substitute the popular vote for that of the Legislative Assembly would leave us without a legislature."

That is by a member of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Here is a good one:

"But the Initiative and Referendum Act would provide new means for passing legislation. It would make the electorate a law-making body possessing powers which by the BNA Act are conferred on the legislature alone. This would be wholly opposed to the spirit and principles of the Canadian constitution. Further, its effects would be to do away with the debate and deliberation which a bill receives in the Legislative Assembly on the floor of the House and the committee. Further, this would not only be contrary to the spirit of the constitution but would be subversive of it. Furthermore, it cannot, in the guise of the constitution, completely abolish the representative chamber in the Legislature...."

Interjection.

A. Warnke: If the hon. member for Prince George-Omineca is so smart, why doesn't he go back to the law books and read the darned cases? If he read them, he would understand very clearly that the kind of legislation he is talking about, which could be brought in so easily, and somehow automatically accepted.... The kind of legislation that they're supposedly putting forward in this chamber would be unconstitutional just as soon as an initiative was passed.

Interjections.

A. Warnke: These people simply do not understand the laws or the constitution of Canada. Now that I've got them over a barrel, they come up with this name-calling: "elitism." I am talking about the constitution of Canada, the laws of Canada, and frankly, I don't give a whit what these people think. They have to conform to the laws and the constitution of Canada. If they don't do that, they do not belong in this chamber, and they do not represent the people that supposedly elected them. They don't know what they're talking about. It's amazing -- they do not respect the laws of Canada. It's shocking. And these are supposedly lawmakers. If these people claim to be lawmakers and are deliberating on the laws in this chamber, then I really fear when they want a process that gives power to the executive that circumvents the Legislature. That's what kind of dinosaurs we have in this chamber, and it's about time they joined the dustbin of history.

I'll put it simply this way: they had a chance. This so-called Social Credit, Reform or whatever they want to call themselves had a chance. If they believed it was constitutional, they should have brought it in. And they didn't bring it in because they knew, and their legal advisers told them, it was unconstitutional. All they had to do was proclaim it, and they didn't.

Hon. Speaker, I think I rest my case when we see how people who do not understand the nature of representative democracy can actually circumvent representative democracy, as is illustrated here -- all in the name of direct democracy, all in the name of the people, when in fact they have no idea of or commitment to the principles of direct democracy. That's where they stand, and frankly, they belong in the dustbin of history.

C. Serwa: Well, it's been a delightful evening as we're winding up the session. It's been most enlightening and a little bit partisan, perhaps. But it's very interesting to discuss the philosophy and principles of this particular bill. The difficulty I have is that when we talk about principles, we can't be confused in what we're discussing here. I'm an ardent supporter of the concept of direct democracy. As a matter of fact, the original form of democracy started in Athens, Greece, some 2,500 years ago, and it was direct democracy. Over time it evolved and was transmitted by other peoples from Greece to Rome and from Rome to Great Britain. Ultimately the Westminster parliamentary system, which has been developing over the last 300 years, has to some degree thwarted the opportunities for direct democracy. Philosophically, as the public are now well educated to and aware of -- solid value systems -- there is no reason to withhold from the public the opportunity for recall and initiative, and direct democracy.

We've heard a great deal this evening about accountability, and that is one of the real, justifiable reasons for the recall initiative. As I speak on this, I am going to talk primarily about recall and initiative, and perhaps less about the philosophy and principles of this bill. In my own estimation, this bill is written in a very devious fashion to give the impression that the government of the day has decided that it would be wise to bow to the public interest -- and that was amply demonstrated in the '91 election -- and bring in legislation with respect to recall and initiative.

I'm also mindful of the nature of this legislation and the real motivation for acting on this legislation. The committee was not really activated, and there was no urgency to bring anything in until after the last federal election. What happened in the last federal election? In that bastion of a socialist stronghold, Vancouver Island, nary a socialist was elected. Reformers were elected from the Reform Party of Canada with a pledge that they would be more representative and more responsible. They believed in democratic reforms in the parliamentary system, and the socialists lost out. The socialist 

[ Page 12856 ]

government in the province of British Columbia became concerned. Rather than continuing to procrastinate, they decided with their spin doctors that they had best go ahead.

As I talk here, I'm mindful of the validity and value of recall and initiative. I'm also mindful of the hypocrisy that is part and parcel of this bill. In the end, in second reading, I will vote in opposition to this piece of legislation, and I will explain why I will vote in opposition to it.

Access of the individual is a form of empowerment. All over the world, people in societies want a sense of empowerment when it comes to governing themselves. Recall and initiative are tools; they are not the be-all and the end-all. They're not the total solution, but they're a step in the right direction to the solution. The Westminster parliamentary system is both a representative system and a responsible system. Yet because of the delicate nature of the Westminster parliamentary system, parliamentary democracy can be abused. It's often utilized in Third World countries in the form of a benevolent dictatorship -- a one-party system. It's a thin facade -- a veneer -- over what real democracy is all about. There is a great deal of concern when we recognize that all over the world -- not only in this jurisdiction of British Columbia or of Canada -- there is a passionate wish for empowerment of the people.

That's what this bill should be about: an opportunity to start to fulfil that wish on the part of people for empowerment, a wish to make certain that their politicians are more representative of the public interest than the party interest and a wish that the elected members are there for the right reasons -- to represent their constituents, province and country to the very best of their particular ability. The aims and objectives in the introduction of recall and initiative by the former government were in an effort to start to reduce the cynicism that has been building up in the people in this particular province. It was a positive, good step in the right direction.

What has happened with this particular piece of legislation that we're discussing in second reading tonight? There are a number of public assessments of this particular Bill 36. I'd like briefly to go over some of the submissions that have been made to myself, in order that the public at large, whether they're reading Hansard or perhaps watching the televised broadcast of these proceedings, are more aware of what some of their peer groups think in British Columbia.

The National Citizens' Coalition wrote me a letter, and in the letter they state this:

"I thought that you might be interested in receiving my critique of the committee's report on initiative and recall. As the critique makes clear, I think the report is appalling. Why couldn't the NDP be more honest and come out and say, 'We don't trust the judgment of British Columbians.'"

That's a fairly harsh statement and a most difficult assessment by the population of a government in power.

[10:00]

Another organization called For Action in Referenda -- the acronym is FAIR -- is a group of well-meaning people striving to the best of their ability to enhance this opportunity of empowerment of the public. They're doing it in an apolitical way and have provided information to all members of the Legislature -- on the government side and certainly on the opposition side and to the independent members.

It's interesting to note the comparison of initiative percentages required in various jurisdictions in the world. They quote Switzerland, for example, where the required signatures as a percentage of registered voters is 2.2 percent, and you have a total of 18 months to collect those signatures. We go to California with 2.9 percent, and you have five months in order to collect those. We continue to go up higher in the various states and proposals until we get to British Columbia, where we require 10 percent and only allow three months to collect that information. It's the most stringent of all they have looked at.

What does that say about the government? How much faith has the government of the day with respect to the competence, ability, knowledge and wisdom of the people of British Columbia? Not very much.

I have some of the other reactions to the report. The Canadian Taxpayers' Federation said:

"It is the position of the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation that if the government proceeds on the basis of the committee's recommendations, British Columbians will be no closer to citizens' initiative than they were before the vote taken in October 1991. In other words, the government will have failed to honour the dramatically expressed will of the people. The committee's recommendations are far from a workable model of the citizens' initiative, and if implemented would effectively deny voters the capacity to directly decide matters of public importance."

The National Citizens' Coalition response to the report is as follows. "The committee produced a deeply flawed report that was a transparent exercise in cynical, hypocritical manipulation." A Times-Colonist headline was: "'Appalling' Referendum Threshold Will Kill Grassroots Swell." An editorial from the Times-Colonist was: "Committee Missed the Democracy Boat." Headlines in the Globe and Mail were: "British Columbia Eyes Strict Recall Rules" and "Recall of MLAs Would be Hard." Those are fairly harsh criticisms and statements.

The following is a direct quote from correspondence the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation forwarded to my office:

"After wasting $127,000 on a useless all-party standing committee report, the government now plans to waste more time and money debating a bill that is nothing less than political window dressing. If this government had any honesty they would simply admit to not supporting these measures and their charade."

A headline from the Vancouver Sun was: "B.C. 'People Power' Proposal Called Unworkable...." An editorial from the Vancouver Sun:

"Recall Legislation a Law of Hypocrites. The New Democratic Party government's attempts to weasel out of an ill-considered promise to give British Columbians the right to recall members of the Legislature and initiate referendums have taken on the flavour of a long-running farce. It isn't yet in a position to challenge the record of The Mouse Trap, but the way it's going, some day it might."

An Hon. Member: More.

C. Serwa: "More," the hon. minister says, and there will be more and more. Thank you very much, hon. minister.

"Recall Bill Just Smoke and Mirrors. Even the hon. Attorney General voted against recall and initiative back in 1991. He trumpeted proudly last week that Bill 36 will usher in a new age of openness in government."

I don't think it's going to usher anything in, because it is a bill that was designed not to work. It is simply an illusion, an opportunity to fool the people -- to say the words and express the wishes that are near and dear in the hearts of people. It's devious, and it's a despicable act. And to be 

[ Page 12857 ]

brought in at this time, some three and a half years after the 1991 election, is also most disgraceful.

F. Gingell: Two and a half years.

C. Serwa: October '91 to July '94.

F. Gingell: Two and three-quarters.

C. Serwa: I stand corrected; two and three-quarters.

Why are these reforms necessary? All of the proposals are necessary to mitigate the cynicism that exists with respect to politics and politicians. If we are not mindful of the level of cynicism that exists out there, we will destroy the very thing that we love and that we are very much a part of: the parliamentary system here.

I have recognized a number of things since I was elected in 1986. When our government was in power I presented several private members' statements in this Legislature with respect to reform of the role of the private member, and the reform of the Legislature as well. I have supported such things as free votes. I continue and always will support initiatives such as recall and initiative, such things as fixed election dates, and the expanded use of multiparty committees to handle some of the challenging tasks and demands that are put forward in the Legislature. I have been sincerely concerned and interested in this.

I have talked to a number of kindred souls right across Canada on these matters. I have been in touch with James McGrath, who is with the federal government. When he was a Member of Parliament he was charged with the responsibility of bringing in initiatives to reform the House of Commons. They did a superb piece of work. I spoke to him on several occasions when he was the Lieutenant-Governor of Newfoundland.

I've continued to strive to take every opportunity I can to meet with kindred souls in a variety of areas, and I was the only member of this Legislature who, on my own personal initiative and at my own expense, went to a symposium in Lethbridge on reinventing parliament. It was sponsored by the Canada West Foundation and the University of Lethbridge, and approximately 200 individuals attended. Proposals such as recall and initiative were high on the agenda of reforms that had to transpire to reinstil in the public the confidence it should have in this system of government. That's very important, and it cannot be overstated.

The NDP action on this particular initiative was certainly accelerated after the federal election, because the federal Reform Party of Canada has stood long and tall on the concept of reforms. As I said earlier in my speech, the current government was well aware of what happened. Seeing how you could get a swing from a very left-wing vote to a hard right-wing vote on Vancouver Island frightened the very daylights out of the NDP caucus, and I presume that's why they moved.

There was some mention earlier in the debate of the cancer clinic situation in Kamloops and Kelowna. This came up a number of times. I was a member of the "committee of delay" on this initiative, and I want to make clear the situation that existed, because I heard the Leader of the Official Opposition speak on this. It was often used as one of those potential mechanisms -- that members could be recalled in spite of the fact that they were working as hard and as ardently for their constituents as they could.

The first thing I want to do in making this clear is to indicate that, prior to the election of 1991, all parties -- Social Credit, New Democrat, as well as Liberal -- made pledges on the very matter that there would be cancer clinics located in both communities. It was an initiative brought forward as a potential by the two former members from Kamloops, working hard for their constituency.

G. Wilson: We never committed to it. We said quite the opposite.

C. Serwa: Nevertheless, because of the difficulty of that particular situation and the concern of the Cancer Control Agency of British Columbia, an initiative was brought forward by former Premier Rita Johnston to have experts analyze the situation to see whether the two-clinic concept could work. The results of that assessment didn't come in until after the election, and what I want to make abundantly clear is that the results indicated that the site had to be either in one community or the other. A decision was made by the government in power, and I believe it was a correct and sound decision, on the basis of medical facts and population centres and densities. It's not a situation where the recall mechanism could, should or even would have been used. That's the reality, and I want to make it very clear.

I have some concerns, and I'm going to talk about the particular committee that explored this. I've been on a number of legislative standing committees since 1986, and in the former government I was on the Select Standing Committee on Forests and Lands. In not one instance was a committee meeting ever held by government members only on a strategy or decision-making agenda. I served on the committee under the chairmanship of the member for Burnaby North, with the responsibility of selecting a commissioner for the freedom-of-information and protection-of-privacy legislation. Not once in that committee was there any hint of bias or preordained sense of direction for the selection. It was completely objective from start to finish.

The committee work on this particular area was not objective. There was a great and grave reluctance on the part of government members to accept anything other than the wish to abandon the commitment to recall and initiative. That was clear throughout the whole session. There was a great deal of structure to the attendance at the hearings. The message came through repetitively from members of that party who said the things the committee wanted to hear.

When we gathered and concluded.... I'll stop at mid-term. At the end of the last session of this Legislature, we had run out of the hundred days. Government members were very frustrated at having to sit here to maintain the dominance in numbers in case of a division. The Premier, I guess, was faced with the challenge of what to do with these members who had had their $100 per day terminated, so they decided to send the committee up north and tour some more of the province with this initiative. That was the sole reason. They got some of the perks, they travelled, they got accommodation and they got $100 a day. They were happier members when they came back to the Legislature. But there was nothing objective in that search. They were not getting more input or information, nor were they expanding it. They were only using it to keep the members satisfied and willing to sit here as the Legislature went on and on.

[10:15]

[ Page 12858 ]

I expressed concerns. At that time, the member for West Vancouver-Garibaldi and I decided to stand down from these tours. We became reinvolved with the committee at the stage where the summation process took place. But we were denied an opportunity to participate in that process. A decision was made in isolation on the manner in which the material would be compressed. It was decided that the Chairman and one as yet unnamed staff member would do the summary report. When those recommendations were brought forward, they were perused by the government members of the committee, and there was no opportunity.... As I recall, no attention was paid to any changes in the recommendations. This whole thing was structured, organized and written -- and not by a committee objectively searching for the public's information. That's the scam behind this whole thing, and that's the tragedy for democracy. That's the tragedy of this exercise. To play so light and fast and to achieve an end by scamming the very people that we are chosen to represent, I think, is a very reprehensible act.

An Hon. Member: Scamming?

C. Serwa: That's right. It's a very serious thing.

It has taken over two and a half years to get to this point. I have heard government members say a lot about how it will revolutionize democracy in British Columbia. When he introduced this bill, the Attorney General spoke very briefly. Was there any desk-thumping? Was there any animation on government members' faces? Was there any excitement in making a new sense of direction and achieving new pinnacles in democracy? No, there was none. There was a great deal of reservation and concern among the government members when this bill was brought forward. I think that says a great deal with respect to the development of the bill, and to the fact that it is simply deemed absolutely necessary to maintain a facade. It is a bill that has been designed not to work. That again is part of the tragedy. We in this Legislature wonder why there is increasing cynicism. The select standing committee in this particular case didn't function well or objectively, and I will always have a great deal of concern about that.

Deputy Speaker: Hon. member, I would like to raise an issue. Some concern has come to my mind about some of the language you are using and some of the motives you are imputing to the select standing committee. I'm not sure that is entirely parliamentary in our jurisdiction. I wish that you would take a different tack on all of that or explain yourself completely.

C. Serwa: The only reason I'm mentioning it is that our activities were mentioned by speakers on the government side -- with respect to my colleague the member for West Vancouver-Garibaldi. While I'm not....

Deputy Speaker: My comments will stand. I'm not going to take issue and argue with you on the topic, hon. member. I think it would be best if you took a different tack on this issue. We're dealing with second reading, the principle of the bill.

C. Serwa: Well, thank you very much. The principle of the bill, of course, was developed, and I suggest that there was a substantial amount of bias in that development. As a member of that particular committee -- and I can speak as a committee member -- I heard a great many well-reasoned, well-presented reports brought by those who supported recall and initiative. As a matter of fact, the quality work in this case was done by proponents who devoutly supported the concept of recall and initiative. I'm very proud of the quality work they did and the presentations they made.

I'm afraid that the committee report, in my assessment, makes a mockery of public opinion and meaningful legislative reform. Those are harsh statements, I agree, but from my perspective, unfortunately and regrettably, true. Neither recall nor initiative will work, because they were designed not to work, and I can't say that often enough.

Another concern that we heard -- and I've heard it again this evening in debate -- was the fear and trepidation concerning large corporations putting forward initiatives. I've heard it on the committee, and I've heard it time and time again. I want to give you an example of why I don't believe that it can or will occur. What better example than to refer to the Charlottetown accord, where every government in Canada, the federal government and all ten provinces, were in support? The two territories were in support of that accord. The major banks were in support of that accord. Between the federal, provincial and territorial governments, you have an operation that is turning over perhaps $750 billion in expenditures annually -- perhaps a trillion dollars. Did they make a difference in that particular referendum? What happened? They supported the Yes side. Yet it was the No side -- public opinion, society at large, individuals working for what they thought and believed in -- that defeated that referendum.

Now I ask you: how can you express concern that an initiative is going to be effectively manipulated, unless you have so little faith in the competence, capacity and wisdom of the majority of people? It didn't work then in spite of all of the money, in spite of all of the organization, in spite of all of the expertise that was used to promote the Charlottetown accord. I have no fear of, but rather a great deal of confidence in, the public at large.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

Democracy is very important and precious, but we have to continue to evolve in order to shape democracy and maintain the democratic process. The public -- the taxpayers and citizens -- have to be empowered so that they recognize that the individual is a significant and important force in society, and that's what recall and initiative will do.

Hon. Speaker, I'm the designated speaker for my party, and I won't be going on very much longer.

The Speaker: Order, hon. members. Just a moment please, hon. member.

Hon. member, I just had to confirm what I believed to have been the case in the first place. You are in a party, but it's not recognized under our standing orders, as I'm sure you're well aware. I'll have to advise the hon. member that the normal time allotted for other debaters has expired.

C. Serwa: May I just make a concluding sentence, then?

The Speaker: Provided leave is granted. Hon. members, shall leave be granted?

[ Page 12859 ]

Leave granted.

C. Serwa: I will always devoutly support the concept of recall and initiative, but I will say that I will vote in opposition to this particular bill.

L. Fox: Let me say at the outset that because second reading stage is on the principles and philosophies of the bill, given that the bill is on recall and initiative, I will obviously be supporting the bill at the second reading stage.

Notwithstanding that, I find myself listening to the debate over the course of the evening with great interest. When I listen to the government members speak, it's very obvious and easy to figure out that they support this legislation but in actual fact do not support the principle of recall or initiative. I listened to the member for Port Coquitlam point out that two minority groups in the U.S. lost on their particular initiatives because the majority outvoted them, and how wrong that was, in his view. I look at an article in the Northern Sentinel entitled "From Your Skeena MLA," and I quote a statement from it. "In some cases, if you allowed a referendum of all the population on whether a program for a minority group should exist, you run the risk of having the majority deciding that it should not." Those are the statements and the true thinking of government members. The real purpose for putting this forward in this way is so that it cannot and will not succeed.

It's ironic that that kind of argument should be coming from the back bench of a government whose strings are being pulled by minority groups around this province. We've seen bill after bill come in over the course of the last two and a half years that were driven by minorities, yet these members are suggesting that this legislation would limit minorities -- and truly it would. The whole purpose of citizen empowerment and direct democracy is to place some accountability on government so that it's looking after the interests of the majority of British Columbians, not just the interests of the minorities.

When I listened to the long diatribes of the members for North Vancouver-Lonsdale and Burnaby North, who spoke about and tried to legitimize the process, I wasn't sure whether they perceive that we in the opposition are totally naive or if government members perceive that the public is naive. The previous member spoke very straightforwardly as a member of that committee and pointed out the problems and the lack of accuracy in terms of recommendations coming out of that committee, which truly did not respect or report what the majority of the presentations reflected. They articulated and, through this legislation, brought forward what the NDP wanted brought forward in a way that makes initiative virtually impossible to achieve.

What this is all about and what direct democracy is all about is not a threat to government. What it's about is accountability and bringing accountability back into government.

My own personal experience is that the night before I was elected as an MLA I was a good guy, but the minute I became elected, it seems that I changed in the eyes of the public. I became one of "them." Why is that? I didn't do anything within 24 hours to change the opinion of the people. The fact of the matter is that as elected officials -- as government in this country -- we have lost accountability and credibility. What we're talking about with direct democracy is bringing some of that accountability back and allowing citizen empowerment to do that for us.

This is something that has been spoken of over the last ten years, from what I can recall. To my understanding, direct democracy appeared in the vocabulary around 1983 and has been growing ever since that time. It's quite ironic that we now see all parties, including the Liberal Party, identifying with the words "direct democracy." Members who spoke out against recall and initiative in the Liberal Party and the NDP are now speaking for it, or else they're quoting enough briefs and papers to justify it either way. Earlier, the member for Richmond-Steveston was very outspoken about not supporting recall. Now in his presentation, he tries to make it appear that it's unconstitutional so that he doesn't have to take a position on it. That's unfortunate, because that is exactly what he has condemned the previous administration for -- not making their position known to the public.

[10:30]

Let's look at what has happened over the course of the last three years. We have seen this government go through the exercise of trying to figure out how it could get out of a commitment it made prior to the 1991 election, when the now Premier suggested that this government would honour the outcome of that referendum. What we've seen is a government trying its very best to, first, scuttle the whole referendum vote. Second, when it couldn't find a way to do that, it stuck it with the select standing committee and told them not to report back for at least a year, in the hope that it would die. But as other members have pointed out, when the Reform movement swept British Columbia in the federal election last year -- in fact, swept the western provinces -- this was something that was not going to die. Direct democracy is here to stay, and there's an increasing hunger of the electorate to have a party and a government that will support those principles of direct democracy.

The members for Peace River South and Peace River North spoke eloquently on some of the rationale for, and some of the concerns about, this proposed legislation. But let me say that it is clear that the principle is supportable. I'll be looking forward to committee stage and the countless amendments we're intending to put forward in the hope that this government will seize the opportunity to make this workable legislation so that we can truly reform the parliamentary process here in British Columbia.

G. Wilson: I rise today in what I think is a somewhat historic debate in the Legislature in British Columbia with respect to the introduction of what I believe is a most regrettable piece of legislation.

I think we have to weigh very carefully what we're doing in this Legislature when we introduce the kind of legislation that on the surface appears so popular with the public but is largely untested in any parliamentary jurisdiction anywhere in the world. There are a number of issues that the public has to be aware of when they talk about recall. I for one am very well aware that it has become a rallying cry for people who have a protest movement, who have moved forward to suggest that somehow politicians are not sensitive to public needs, that politicians promise at elections and don't deliver, and that politicians should be put in a position where they have to be more accountable. I don't take issue with any of that. But I know of no other occupation, jurisdiction or place where an individual, given a mandate to perform, may be removed from their position simply on the basis of a petition.

[ Page 12860 ]

We have something in this country -- at least, I thought we did -- that is called justice. It is some process by which an individual charged with an indictment has an opportunity to stand in defence on that indictment and be judged by their peers in some manner, and if judgment is placed against them for some reason, is provided with some reason why judgment comes down. It is not because purely political, partisan motives may drive X, Y or Z number of people to canvass door to door to get enough signatures on a petition -- which people may or may not have read -- to take before the public in what would become a public indictment of an individual who does not have an opportunity to stand and be heard freely in an impartial hearing on charges laid with respect to some level of conduct spelled out in some legislation somewhere. This bill doesn't provide any criteria whatsoever for why an individual elected to office should be removed, except for a bunch of names on a petition. That's it.

I remember history classes that talked about when people -- mostly women -- were charged with being witches. The masses would rise up, rush out and say: "That person is a witch." They would be asked, "How do you know?" and answer: "Because they look like one." That may be enough to bring up a stake, put them there and burn them.

Interjection.

G. Wilson: The member is saying it's a bit of a reach. I tell you it is not a reach, and I'll tell you why. I suggest that the member might just revisit the Matsqui by-election to see what kind of reach it is. An individual there was prosecuted because of his religious beliefs before he even ran. That's the danger of what we're doing here.

We are responding to what people perceive as a call by 80 percent of the public to two questions put before them by a government that was in desperate need of an issue in order to cling to power after an absolutely terrible regime of government. It is no wonder that people wanted to vote for recall; they wanted to recall that government. And they did recall it and moved it out of office. They reconstituted this assembly in the manner that, for better or worse, the public sees before them now.

If the public does not like the way this assembly is constituted, they have an opportunity to change it at the next election. That is where the democratic process takes place. It is due process provided on an equal basis to those who wish to stand for elected office. Judgment of individuals will be based on their record of performance in a legislative session. It will based on the kinds of issues they take forward to the public by way of some public platform put before the people, either as an individual, if they're an independent, or as a party, if they're a member of a party. It isn't a vehicle for those who have a partisan agenda and mass together to decide that, for whatever reason they may concoct, they're going to go out and get enough names on a petition to remove that individual from public office. People who run for public office go through a process of election.

This is a very dangerous piece of legislation, save and except the fact that it is worded in a manner that makes it less possible. We all know, once it's introduced and on the books, that legislation is subject to amendment. In future years in this Legislative Assembly we're going to have a whole range of people sitting on the government side. Some of them may enjoy, celebrate and protect at all cost the fundamental liberties, freedoms and the rights of individuals, but other governments may not.

My colleague from Okanagan East talked very eloquently about the role of public perception and the fact that we have an agenda that is often concocted by the electronic media, perhaps one of the most powerful media ever in the history of humankind. The electronic media have told us that 80 percent of British Columbians supported this referendum. That's wrong; they didn't. If we look at what happened, 80 percent of the people who voted in the last election voted in favour of it. But if you look at the exact number of people who were eligible to cast a vote, that constituted 54 percent. And if you break it down by riding, you will see that it was less than 50 percent in many ridings.

So here we are, saying that we are going to fundamentally change the process of democratic election in the province and the right of individuals to stand for public office. We're providing to any private interest group, any political interest group, any group that wishes to frustrate the interests of a duly elected member -- without fair hearing, without fair trial -- an opportunity to remove those individuals from office through petition, a simple process of name collection.

This is not good news for British Columbia. I strongly urge those British Columbians who may be following this debate or who may follow it later by reading Hansard to think clearly about what is happening in this province. We have one of the finest democratic systems in the world. It's one that says that if my record as an MLA is in question, the people have a duly constituted right to remove me at the next election.

There are many petitions from people who will come to me and take issue with votes that I may cast in this House. People may lobby me to cast my vote one way or the other. I can tell you, I agonize about how I should cast my vote on some matters of legislation, because I hear and try to represent to the best of my ability how the people of my riding wish me to vote. But more importantly, when I cast my ballot in this Legislature, I don't just think of what is in the interests of the people in my riding today. I try to think about what's in the interests of future generations of British Columbians. I try to think about what the effect is going to be on the population as a whole.

I'm not elected only and simply to stand in this House and speak for the people of Powell River-Sunshine Coast. I try to do so as forcefully as I can. I try to go to the ministers at every opportunity to get for my riding that which I believe my riding should have. But my elected role in this Legislature isn't simply to meet the needs of the most powerful, the most vocal, the most aggressive of those that may use that powerful medium of the media to determine what they want, when they want it and how they want it, and hold over my head the threat that if I don't do what they say the way they see it, their power and money will bring about recall and will pull this MLA out.

[10:45]

Sometimes, to provide leadership on a question, it means you have to go against the public flow. Sometimes, to provide leadership and to stand on the principles that you believe are right, it means that you must stand up against the majority view to advance the view of a minority which may, on future reflection or on evidence that may come forward, be seen to be the view that, in fact, is the majority. One such occasion, I can tell you, was the Charlottetown accord. When I stood up and voted against that accord in its initial stages, when I first came 

[ Page 12861 ]

out on a No campaign, I had very powerful people in this province turn around and say to me: "If you don't come on the Yes campaign, Wilson, you are dead politically, and we'll see to it, because we are not going to have somebody stand up and speak out on principle, when virtually every government" -- and, as the member for Okanagan West said -- "all the banks, all the major corporations and all the power brokers said we should vote yes." I believed then and I believe now that it was the wrong thing to do, and we voted no. At the time, as when I stood up against Meech Lake in this province, virtually everybody who was speaking publicly was in favour of it. The minority view seemed at the time to be purely suicidal, but it prevailed.

Hon. G. Clark: And look where it got you.

G. Wilson: Indeed, look where it did get me. Partisan, powerful politics is where it got me, standing on exactly the same principles I took to the people in 1991 when I campaigned against recall because I believe it to be a Faustian deal we make with the voters -- like Faust, who thought that making a deal with Mephistopheles to give him ultimate power was going to do good for him. We know what that did in that Faustian arrangement.

That's what recall is. It's a travesty. This is not democracy; it's counterproductive to democracy. It allows well-financed, well-funded special interest groups to start to push special interest agendas. That's what it does. It allows those specialized agendas to come into the offices of MLAs and say: "We have a powerful, well-financed group of people that are going to take issue with you, elected member, if you don't do as they say." They have enough money and influence to put into the media, on a day-to-day basis, enough misinformation, character assassination and information that is impossible to refute -- because of the power and verbosity of those who put it out -- to sway public opinion against that member. That's what this bill is all about. It's wrong. It's a fundamentally anti-democratic process.

Let's take a look at what it means to certain groups. Let's take a look at an election, for example. Let's deal with the most recent one we've looked at, the Vancouver-Quilchena by-election. The media reported a 67.8 percent victory for the winner. That's absolutely false, because out of 28,941 eligible voters, only 10,983 bothered to show up, which means that in fact the margin of victory was 25 percent -- so 6,000 people could recall that member. Some might say that's not a bad idea, but I argue that 25 percent is a pretty narrow margin. That individual stands as an elected member and has every right to come and put forward the legislative platform that the member believes is in the public interest. I defend that right.

I will speak out as strongly as I can against any legislation that empowers special interest groups to advance special agendas and break down the basic, fundamental principles of democracy. Of all of the reforms that this government could have brought in, why this one? Quite frankly, I don't believe that the members opposite support recall. I don't think members of this government really think it's a good idea. I believe that they have brought in one of the most convoluted, complex and difficult propositions calling for recall so that the chances of it ever being used will be slim. Maybe that's true with the bill in its current form, but once it's on the books, it can and will be amended. My goodness, if we listen to the Reform Party and the way that it's going to be constituted, the leader of the Reform Party only wants it to be 50 percent of the people who show up to vote. So if 100 people show up, that's 50 people. That's great!

J. Tyabji: It would be 12.5 percent.

G. Wilson: And 12.5 percent can move in to remove an MLA on some totally bogus agendas.

One of the most divisive issues in my riding in the last election was the question of abortion. I have a personal position on it. I'm not afraid or ashamed to tell people what my position is and where I stand, and I do so. But let me tell you that those two groups are well organized and well financed, and I would not want to have the thread on that matter -- which is a non-political issue; it is a personal issue that has been politicized -- be the special interest issue that would bring down an MLA. What about issues with respect to taxation?

We hear people say that 80 percent of the British Columbia public voted for this, which I have already told you is false. They did not. On a provincewide basis it was 54 percent; and in fact if you looked at it by riding, it would be less than that. So this government is not under any specific mandate. Had the leadership in this government -- under the NDP in the last election -- taken the same position and stand that I and the Liberal Party had taken under my leadership, they would have said that that miserable Socred government, in its dying days -- which had been the most disgraceful government in the history of this province -- had no business bringing in two referenda questions: one with respect to recall and one with respect to initiative. It had no business doing it at the time of a general election when there would be no opportunity for proper debate on the wording or the merits of the question.

I worked in that last election. I went around this province and I did my campaigning, like every other member and every other leader did, and I don't remember any debate on the question of recall. I don't remember any debate on referenda or initiative. There wasn't any. In principle, at that point I said they had no business bringing it in; I would not be bound by it. I do not believe that anybody should introduce this kind of reform in parliament without a much broader debate with respect to the actual wording of a question that people can understand the implication of.

This all-parliamentary committee went around and gathered some interesting information. But if we really believe in true democracy, its work is only half done. If it firmly believes that we should be bringing in a recall initiative, then it should take the wording of that bill to the public, talk about it in the communities of this province, and allow proper, adequate debate on the subject. Believe me, this is a Faustian deal, and it's one that the members of this Legislative Assembly are going to regret when they introduce it.

You know, expediency in politics often leads to the worst legislation. When we put our finger to the wind and try to figure out where public opinion is on certain questions -- and this is one where we've done that -- and we bring in legislation and try to respond to that, we often don't bring in sensible, sound legislation.

I can tell you that there are communities in this world that would die to have the kind of democratic system we have here -- and some are dying, trying to get it. There are people in this world who know what it is to have persecution take place. Let me tell you that minorities 

[ Page 12862 ]

who stand for office.... The member for Okanagan East has already alluded to it. Believe me, I did not even come close to understanding the extent to which minorities who stand for office have a double burden, a bigger hurdle and a much greater problem to deal with. I didn't know that until I understood more fully and more clearly what the member for Okanagan East has gone through in the last two years. Let me tell you, in some communities where minorities seek to stand for office, this recall legislation is going to be an absolute blight. They won't even come forward, because they know what can be at work in communities.

We should not provide opportunity for this legislation to sit on the books, even in an amended form that would allow the opportunity for their election to be jeopardized on anything other than a sound basis -- a trial or hearing of sorts, an opportunity to present in their defence and have people make judgment on sound data and information, not on rumour, innuendo or some modern assassination technique in this North American community where we live -- simply media assassination.

We've seen it. We see people totally assassinated -- tried and convicted in the media -- before a case is even brought forward. Sometimes a case never is brought forward. I don't know if the members of this Legislative Assembly know what it's like to wake up and read in the front page of the newspapers the slander, misinformation, outright lies and allegations on a day-to-day basis. I'll tell you that gets to an individual, because that individual is human. They stand for political office because they believe they're trying to accomplish something worthwhile. If somebody wants to take issue on political matters, I'll debate them anywhere.

But when there's personal character assassination at work, and when it goes on day after day, month after month for a full year in unprecedented media coverage, you have to ask who's driving that agenda, and why. What does it really mean in terms of the capacity of the individual with respect to their job?

No, this recall legislation is not good legislation. It's bad legislation. If we want to reform this institution -- and we do -- let me give this government some tangible ways to do so. Introduce a fixed term so that people know, when one stands for election, that there is a fixed term of office within which that individual will be able to do their job, and then stand after that fixed term to be renewed or not. That's an open democratic principle. Bring in a fixed term. I can support that.

Interjection.

G. Wilson: The minister is saying there is a fixed term -- five years. The minister simply has to look back in history and know that that, in fact, is not the case. I'm talking about a fixed election day. While it may be a fixed term, certainly government hasn't used it.

If we want to bring in meaningful reform, then I suggest this government set up a code of ethics that MLAs would be presented with upon election. They would have a stated code of ethics before them in writing that they would be able to live by. And if they are seen to be in breach of trust or in breach of that code of ethics or standard, then let them be charged and tried by their peers or a group of peers. If it is deemed that they have breached that standard code of conduct in some way, having been given a fair opportunity to present a case, then let this assembly take the stand that that individual should be removed from their seat. That would allow for a free and open debate on a question that would allow an individual the right to be heard, not some petition drummed up by people who can get enough money together on some special interest to drive an agenda that may not even be in the public interest at all -- because somebody may have the intestinal fortitude to stand up for what they believe is right.

If this government wants to bring in meaningful reform, bring in a fixed budget day -- a day by which the budget must be tabled in this Legislative Assembly. That's a good reform.

If we want to hear more directly from the people of this province, bring in a direct delegation process that would allow a delegation to come directly to this assembly on prescribed days to put forward initiatives with respect to legislation. That is a democratic process. Let's not hide behind the sham of democracy which this recall bill is. It is not democracy. Direct delegation on this legislative floor is the kind of reform that will allow the public to have an opportunity to come forward directly with respect to initiative questions which can be heard and debated by all members.

If we really want to turn away from partisanship, bickering and nonsense in this House, which is often really embarrassing, then let this assembly reform itself to reflect the regions within which people are elected -- except for the executive council -- so that people are seated by region and not by party affiliation. Allow an opportunity for free votes to occur on matters of substance.

I call on this government to have the fortitude today to release every one of their members for a free vote on this question. Let them stand with all those members.... I have put that challenge to the assembly by way of letters to the Premier, the Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the Third Party, challenging them to free up their members. We recognized that this government wouldn't respond to that, but the Leader of the Official Opposition did respond to that.

It's interesting that the Leader of the Opposition said that the Liberal caucus has taken a position on this, and that's encouraging. They say that this recall and referendum legislation is a slap in the face to every British Columbia voter, because that caucus believes it's unworkable and too expensive. I assume the Liberals are going to be voting in opposition to this bill.

What hasn't been said is whether or not the Liberal Party stands opposed to recall in principle. I know where their members were in the last election, because I was part of that party. I would say that there wasn't unanimous support for the position taken by the leader, although it was the majority by far. The most vocal and outspoken opponent was my colleague for West Vancouver-Garibaldi, who took a position that on principle we should respond to and support the public's view on the question of referendum and initiative. I have to say that even though I disagree with my colleague for West Vancouver-Garibaldi, at least I respect the fact that that individual has stayed consistent in his position on the matter, which is something we can support.

[11:00]

The Leader of the Third Party didn't respond, because, I assume, all questions are free votes in that party. I think that's part of their platform. Let's hear the government commit itself to a free vote on this question.

If we want reform to make this parliament more responsive, why don't we have fixed sitting days? Why 

[ Page 12863 ]

don't we bring in legislation that will commit this House to a spring session and a fall session, so that we're not standing here at 11 o'clock at night in the dog days of a spring session trying to push through legislation as important as this? If this government is committed to parliamentary reform it should bring in legislation for a fixed term, fixed sitting days and some fixed days for the implementation of legislation, such as a fixed budget day.

Bring forward reforms that will allow for direct delegation. Those are the kinds of reforms that the people will believe in when they look at the kind of parliamentary reform that's necessary -- not this Faustian deal. Unless there has been some major metamorphosis in the Liberal caucus, every member of that party believed that -- at least some months ago, before their leader came out and said that they're changing their position to support recall and referendum. We have in writing what their positions were. The newspapers are replete with quotes. So to try to duck and hide, or bob and weave and stay away from that now simply isn't going to fly with the voter.

There has been a lot of talk about the cancer clinic question and this whole proposition. I was the only leader who said no to Kamloops, because I believed it to be right. I believed it then; I believe it now. I spoke out against recall, because I believe it to be bad legislation. I believe it is a Faustian deal that will unleash the powers of well-financed special interest groups that are counterproductive and anti-democratic and will threaten the very fibre and basic democratic principles of a parliamentary tradition. I said it in 1991; I'm consistent and stand now to say it again in 1994.

I hope that all members in this House are free to vote on this question, because I don't believe that members of the government support this legislation. It is hypocritical in the extreme to bring forward unworkable legislation on the pretence that they support something when they do not.

Hon. G. Clark: I hadn't planned to speak in this debate. I only plan to speak briefly now, because the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast has provoked a response, as he so often does. I want to say first of all that the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast is the best speaker in the chamber. I say that in my introduction, because I'm not going to try to duel in the parliamentary fashion by making a speech to attack the member's points. Having said that, I can't resist commenting very briefly on some of the points he made. It was an eloquent speech, and I share some of the member's concerns. But frankly, I think he is incorrect in a variety of ways.

He gave what could be described as a response worthy of Edmund Burke, which is that members are elected to represent their constituency and that while they are elected they are free to exercise their judgement on all matters that come before them. I have some sympathy with that view, but it seems very obvious to me that in a modern society the public are saying that view is outmoded. In fact, the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast has in other cases -- when it came to Meech Lake or the Charlottetown accord, for example -- reinforced the public view that those who are elected are out of touch with the people whom they serve. He espoused that view when it came to taking on elected representatives, institutions and elites in this country on those questions, and he made that part of his campaign. It's a part which I think has some resonance. Yet ironically, today he's here saying that because he was on the right side of public opinion on those issues and therefore won the debate, if you will, he's not prepared to accept public opinion or the will of the public on an issue like this. So I think he has to examine the logic.

While I said he is a very good speaker, I think there's a certain demagoguery as well in his remarks -- and maybe, when you listen to his comments, even a bit of a martyr complex. He clearly has said that he's a victim of public anger, a victim of the establishment; he's taken a principled position on issues, and look where it's got him. He's now no longer the Leader of the Opposition but the leader of the fourth party, I think. So there's a certain kind of anxiety about that, a certain kind of angst that his views have been rejected or that he has been rejected because of his principled position.

As you go through it, you can see he's saying that because he's been elected, he alone should be able to take what he perceives to be principled positions; and that being his position, that is therefore the position that all members should have. The fact that he's no longer the Leader of the Opposition may be not simply because he is taking a principled position on an issue. It may be because the positions he has taken have not been shared by the membership of his previous party. The position he has taken on this bill may in fact be proof of what the public at large may be saying: "We're sorry, Mr. Member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast, we simply reject the position you're taking."

What I'm saying, though, is that he's really trying to have a double standard. He's saying "I support the people" when it comes to taking on the elites in one area -- Meech Lake or the Charlottetown accord -- but "I don't support the people" if it means they're actually going to have their way or their wishes felt on an issue of public importance -- abortion, capital punishment, etc. I think there's an inherent inconsistency in the member's remarks, notwithstanding his eloquence in making them.

Where I share his view is the danger of initiative and recall being used by powerful special interests, by the media or by organized interest groups, those who can raise funds, etc. I share that view, and I think the members of the government do. This bill addresses that. This bill says to the public that we agree it's no longer acceptable for elected representatives to be elected, and then every five years go to the people, without any intervening checks or balances or review on fundamental questions that come up. That has been rejected by the public. And given the member's comments on Meech Lake, the Charlottetown accord and all that history that's there, I think he should recognize that: the public is saying there must be greater accountability than in the past. The public is saying they don't trust politicians to act in their best interests consistently and only have a check every four or five years.

On the other hand, where I agree with the member is: how do we give the public that right that they're demanding -- in this case, for recall and initiative, and there are other areas -- but at the same time protect against the expression of that being organized by special interests or powerful groups? What we've tried to do in this bill is recognize legitimate aspirations of the average British Columbian, in the absence of parliamentary support, to initiate change and to initiate recall where they feel strongly about it, but protect from large, well-financed special interests exploiting that by having very tough spending controls -- criticized by members of the Reform Party. There are tough spending controls so 

[ Page 12864 ]

that you can't just go and buy your way into a recall or an initiative. I think it's very important that we protect the actual right of people to initiate recall or initiative, but it has to be genuine. It has to be grass-roots. It has to be people saying they want to recall that member because of some fundamental breach of trust with their constituency. Those constituents have to gather the requisite signatures themselves to make that happen -- not some party, interest group, union, business or well-financed outside consultants or pollsters. The constituents themselves must be the ones to initiate that change. We have allowed the initiation of that change by constituents. We have protected from the special interest by tough spending controls.

[D. Lovick in the chair.]

There are thresholds. Members of the opposition say that the thresholds are too high, and that's another test. The thresholds are higher than what Reform wants, but there is a reason for that as well. Taking a recall action against an MLA or pursuing an extra-parliamentary initiative, as this allows, must not be easy. Obviously there should be that opportunity when it comes to dealing with the questions I canvassed a minute ago. But it shouldn't be so easy that members can't take the very difficult decisions of modern government and balance those competing interests and make decisions, without always being subject to frivolous or very easy recalls and initiatives. So the balance is to allow it; to prohibit special interest groups; to have a threshold which is reasonable -- not so tough that it can't be done, but not so easy that it is done frivolously in the heat of the moment because of difficult decisions made by government.

We believe that this bill provides that balance. We believe -- and this is important, hon. member -- that we must have faith in our constituents. We must have faith in the voters' wisdom. That is why I fundamentally disagree with what the member said. He has made a very impassioned plea, and I agree with many of his comments, but at the end of the day, the public is saying: "We don't trust you, and we believe that we know as well as you do on some issues of importance." The government agrees with that. With this bill the government is saying that the wisdom of the average British Columbian is important, and that we are not afraid that when government makes tough decisions which may be unpopular, at the end of the day, even if constituents disagree with it, they will have the wisdom to make those choices. They may choose to try to organize recall and initiative, but at the end of the day, that's a battle in which governments have to be prepared to engage in the 1990s.

This is the only place in Canada that is moving in this direction. It's the only place in parliamentary democracy, I believe, that is marrying these concepts. The member opposite disagrees with that because he thinks it's too easy to do, and he disagrees with that analysis. Other members are saying it's too hard to do. We are saying we are taking a significant step to empower British Columbians to make change independent of what politicians say. At the same time, we are saying that there must be spending controls and tough limits to make sure that it's not taken over by special interests or powerful groups; and to make sure that the threshold is such that people have to really want to work for it and not simply, in a frivolous manner, cause the expense and dysfunction it would be to have recall all the time because people are annoyed at some government action.

[11:15]

I am only saying this in response to the member opposite, because I believe he has made some very good points. But all members have to understand that the public is beyond that, and they certainly expect government to do more than that. No longer in British Columbia can any politician of any party simply say: "Too bad! We're here for four or five years, we'll do whatever we want, and you can defeat us four years from now." With this bill we now have to be conscious of the literacy of our voters and the wisdom of our constituents, who will have the right to recall a member and the right to initiate change on their own -- and that is an important right which we're granting. It's time that we do that in the 1990s. The member opposite has to recognize, notwithstanding his personal experience, that Edmund Burke passed a long time ago, and that the public expects something more than that. I think we've sought that balance. It may not be perfect, but we have tried to deal with the concerns that the member has raised, and I think we've dealt with most of them. But at the end of the day, the government believes we have to move in this direction. We have to have faith that the voters of British Columbia have the wisdom to make decisions, and all of that wisdom certainly does not lie in this chamber. So for that reason, the government has brought in this bill and we commend it to the House.

D. Mitchell: I'd like to say a few words on Bill 36 as well. I'd like to say that the Government House Leader gets up and speaks rather eloquently himself. I can only say that I believe that the words uttered this evening by the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast are really the words that members of the governing party would like to have the nerve, the guts and the fortitude to stand up and say in this House, because that's the position they really believe in. If you talk to them privately, and if you really examine the positions they've taken on this issue over the years, that's the position the members of the New Democratic Party would like to have the nerve to stand up in this House and take, but they haven't got the nerve.

I don't happen to agree with my colleague the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast on this issue, but I've got to tell you that I admire the conviction and consistency with which he's espoused his views on these particular forms of direct democracy. I've differed with him from the start, but he's been consistent, if anything, in a way that members of the governing party of our province haven't been. They haven't been honest. He's been consistent in a way that surprises me, as a former member of the caucus that he once led, because when I was in that caucus and I tried to suggest an alternative point of view, I didn't find a lot of support for it in that caucus when he led it.

The interesting thing for me is that today, that caucus is now led by a different leader, who -- for reasons of popularity, in my opinion -- has decided to take a different point of view on recall and initiative, and he seems to have almost unanimous support in that caucus for a diametrically opposed position. I guess that goes to show you that there are principles in politics, and for some, if you don't like those principles, there are other principles. Who knows, if the new Leader of the Official Opposition should decide for whatever reason to pack up his marbles and go home because he's not up to the challenge of provincial politics, then perhaps a new leader of that caucus who has a new position might find that he 

[ Page 12865 ]

or she is unanimously supported by a caucus that has no principles themselves. Their principles are for rent, and if you don't like those principles, they'll rent you out some others for a higher price.

G. Farrell-Collins: Point of order.

Deputy Speaker: Member, I must confess that I'm responding to your call on a point of order with some difficulty, because I listened to the comment and I do not see any violation of the rules. The member may proceed, though.

G. Farrell-Collins: But I think it's always best if you hear the point of order before you rule on it.

Deputy Speaker: Except, member -- just before you decide to engage in debate -- I do know the rules rather well. I did hear the member's comments, and I think I have some qualification to judge on whether the rules of the House are being observed. But go ahead.

G. Farrell-Collins: The member, despite his strong feelings on this, clearly stated that the principles of the opposition were for sale. I think that the member knows quite clearly that that's inappropriate. I am personally offended by that, and I would ask the member to withdraw those comments.

Deputy Speaker: Given the tradition in this House that if one member's sensibilities are offended we tend to defer to the member's wishes and ask a member to withdraw for the sake of cooperation and civility, I would ask the member to withdraw.

D. Mitchell: Hon. Chair, if I have offended any member of this House with my comments, I would withdraw those comments.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you. Please proceed.

D. Mitchell: I wish to get to the heart of the issue of the politics of recall and initiative. I think there has been a good and wide-ranging debate this evening, and some interesting positioning has been taking place among members on the floor of this House in this important debate. I would like to say that I think this bill, Bill 36, holds the potential to be the most significant piece of legislation brought to this assembly during the life of this parliament. When I say it holds the potential, I want to emphasize those words. In my view, Bill 36 does not live up to the promise. Over one million voters in British Columbia, at the time of the last provincial election, said they wanted to empower themselves with the tools of direct democracy -- a word that has been misused from time to time. It may seem like a buzzword or a catch-all phrase to others, but I'd like to describe what I mean when I refer to direct democracy during the context of my comments. I'd like to refer as well to some of the positioning that is taking place and what I believe to be the outright hypocrisy in some of the comments during the debate so far on this very important bill with some important principles.

Bill 36 doesn't even nearly begin to live up to the promise that British Columbians made to themselves when they voted overwhelmingly in favour of two reforms -- recall and initiative -- in the last provincial election in the fall of 1991. What was that promise? It was outlined very clearly in a brochure published by Elections B.C. at the time of the election to explain to British Columbians what these referenda were all about. It was outlined very clearly in a brochure that was available to all candidates and all voters, and in some constituencies there was a lot of debate about these issues. I can tell you that there was in mine. I know there has been a contention that this wasn't properly aired or properly discussed. Well, there was certainly a lot of discussion and healthy, vigorous debate in the constituency that I campaigned for and was fortunate enough to be successful in.

The brochure put out by Elections B.C. said, "Here are the 1991 referendum questions," and it outlined what those questions were. It stated what the consequences of a yes or a no vote would be. The brochure was distributed to every voter in the province, and it said: "If either or both of these referendum questions are approved, legislation would be required to implement the decision of the voters." It went on to say: "A referendum is not a poll, it's an opportunity to make a decision. This referendum is not asking for your opinion; it is asking you to make a decision that affects the future of the province." I'll end the quote there, hon. Speaker.

That's what voters who entered the polling booth at the time of the last election, October 17, 1991, were doing. They were making a decision; they weren't expressing an opinion. Overwhelmingly, more than 80 percent who cast ballots said yes to recall and yes to initiative. They knew what they were voting on, contrary to the claims of many members of the government and contrary to the claims of many in the community who wish to rethink or second-guess or force British Columbians to reconsider whether they really knew what they were voting on. I think we must reject that old, elitist assumption. British Columbians knew, and had every opportunity to know, what they were doing; they were not confused. They had expectations about what the consequence of their vote would be in those historic referenda.

There's one overwhelming reason why these two reforms need to be implemented in a workable fashion -- it's only one reason, and there's no cause to debate this -- and that reason is that British Columbians said yes to both of the questions at the time. That's the only reason we need. There are many other reasons we could discuss for why recall can be a good idea and why initiative is a necessary forum for allowing people to be empowered in a democracy that's changing under severe pressure today. But we don't need to discuss all those reasons, and I think many of them have been alluded to during the debate on this bill. The only reason that's valid for me is that the people have said they want these reforms. Our challenge as legislators is to come up with a workable plan to ensure that these two reforms are implemented.

Have we done that with Bill 36? No, we haven't. The promise is not delivered on in Bill 36, because it's not a workable plan. In my view, it effectively cheats the public in a way that may only serve to frustrate the genuine desire of British Columbians to have a more direct say in the day-to-day affairs of their government. That's what direct democracy is. It's little bit of a buzzword. The hon. Attorney General, who sponsored this bill, may recall that one of the slogans among youth activists back in the 1960s was "Power to the People." Many of us remember that. Some associate it with the radical fringe of youth activism. I don't think so. It was really the same kind of idea as 

[ Page 12866 ]

direct democracy in the 1990s, which a generation later is saying "Power to the People" in a different way.

People want in and want to have a direct say in the day-to-day governing of their lives. They're no longer confident or content to allow an elite group of old-style party politicians to decide, for a four- or five-year period, what will happen with their taxes and the way government will intrude into their lives. People want in. They want to have the chance to express themselves more than just during election campaigns every four of five years, but rather, on a day-to-day basis.

That's why these two reforms, recall and initiative -- as modest as they are in the context of other tools of direct democracy -- are so important. They are a first step toward giving power to the people. In the same way that youth activists in the 1960s said they wanted in, people in the 1990s, more broadly and throughout society, are saying they want in.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: This is the Jerry Rubin bill.

D. Mitchell: It's the Jerry Rubin bill, as the Attorney General says -- I'm sure one of his heroes from a previous existence. Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and the Attorney General: a troika worthy of contemplation.

Why is the New Democratic Party afraid of direct democracy? Bill 36 can offer only one conclusion: they have something to really fear about giving power to the people in the way people said, in the two referendum questions, that they wanted to be empowered. They're afraid of two simple and very important reforms.

I think it would have been preferable if the governing party had simply been honest and taken the position that was taken so eloquently this evening by the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast. It would have been far preferable for the government to be honest and simply say that they rejected this, but they didn't do that from the start.

In fact, when the questions were first debated in this Legislature prior to the last election, members of the New Democratic Party, who were in opposition at that time, did not oppose the idea of the two referendums being placed on the ballot at the time of the election. In fact, their House Leader at the time, Mark Rose -- who is now the agent general in London, secure in patronage heaven; and I can mention his name, because he is not here -- said that his only regret was that these two referendum questions didn't bring forward reforms that went far enough. That's what Mark Rose said in this House, hon. Speaker. You may remember that at the time. He was your House Leader, after all.

When the Premier was questioned, who was then the Leader of the Official Opposition, he said he guessed that maybe, perhaps, gee whiz, he was in favour of these reforms, sort of, and he never expressed any opposition. He came down off the fence part way to perhaps, maybe, in a qualified manner, sort of be in favour of these reforms. During the election -- aw shucks -- he certainly was -- I think. Why not simply fess up and state that you're not in favour of changes to our democratic system? If you're not, why not say you're not?

The Government House Leader referred to the member for Powell-River Sunshine Coast this evening as taking a Burkean position with respect to the role of legislators. It's interesting to think about that, because what Edmund Burke said, in his famous address to the electors of Bristol, was that an elected representative should be proud to give his or her judgment to the constituents -- he didn't say "her" back in those days, but I think that's what he would have meant today -- and not simply be their tool of slavish obedience. I think that would be the colourful language that the famous Black Tory, Edmund Burke, uttered.

[11:30]

The interesting thing to reflect upon, if anyone has studied the career of Edmund Burke -- as I've noted, he was known as a Black Tory in nineteenth-century language -- is that he never, ever voted against his party at Westminster, in the House of Commons, in the Mother of Parliaments. Never once did Edmund Burke ever part from his party Whip or say anything in the House that was against his party, the Tory party of Great Britain. It's easy to espouse principles in a Burkean tradition. It's easy to talk about free votes in the Legislature. But the truth is that it is much harder to achieve these kinds of reforms in practice. Maybe that's why we need the force, power and discipline that can only be provided by law to ensure that these kinds of reforms are implemented. The people have no confidence that the words, the rhetoric and the hollow, broken promises that come forward from politicians are ever going to be acted upon. That's why we need a Bill 36 that works.

It has been suggested by my colleague the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast that perhaps we should have a free vote on Bill 36. Perhaps we should have a free vote on everything that comes before the House, but that's another debate. Why not have one on this particular piece of legislation? Why not allow government members, in particular, to stand up and really express their true feelings? Hopefully, they would try to represent their constituents as well, if they can come to terms with that kind of a paradox. Wouldn't it be refreshing to see the governing party declare a free vote on this, and let them really stand up and tell us what they think of this bill? I know many of them are very uncomfortable with even the weak and feeble form of bill that's been brought in.

Also, wouldn't it be interesting for the official opposition to declare a free vote on this? The new Leader of the Official Opposition has said many times publicly lately that he's in favour of free votes. I haven't noticed that they've declared any free votes since he became the Leader of the Opposition. It would be interesting to me, because I can tell you as a former member of that caucus that the great majority will stand up and vote against this bill if any of the members are true to the convictions and beliefs that they expressed at that time. As weak and feeble as it is, members in that caucus said that they were totally opposed, and they campaigned vigorously with the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast, when he was their leader, and supported his position against these tools of direct democracy.

So wouldn't it be interesting if we had a free vote in this House and allowed every member to stand up and tell us truly where they stood on recall and initiative? It's the least that we can do, and I hope we get to that point soon, because I believe a division is going to be necessary if the debate does conclude on second reading this evening.

There is a tradition of direct democracy in western Canada, and in British Columbia in particular. This is not something new. A lot of people have said that this is foreign to parliamentary democracy. Government members have got up and said this is the greatest reform in 700 years of parliamentary democracy. That's nonsense. Throughout the history of parliament, there's been a 

[ Page 12867 ]

constant tradition of reform, change and renewal. The only difficulty is today, in the 1990s, in order to make this institution relevant and accessible to the people who want in, we've got to change faster and in a more meaningful way. That's the only difference; we need to change significantly.

We've always had an element of direct democracy in Canada, and in British Columbia. I've done a little research, and I have counted the number of referenda and plebiscites that have accompanied general election campaigns in Canada in this century. There have been 58 referenda or plebiscites accompanying general elections at the federal or provincial level in Canada in this century.

In British Columbia we've had more than any other province. I'm talking not only about referenda and plebiscites that are put on the ballot at the time of elections. Aside from that, many local governments allow themselves to be directed, guided and bound by expressions of the will of the people through plebiscites during election campaigns and other periods. We have a strong tradition of this. I'm not going to cite all of them, but let me just give you one fact.

An Hon. Member: The ward system.

D. Mitchell: The ward system is a good example, and maybe the Leader of the Opposition will have a chance to address that during committee stage.

Here's one interesting example of the fact that British Columbians do believe in and have a long tradition of direct democracy. In 1904 the very first bridge was built across the Fraser River from Vancouver to Surrey. Why? Because a 1,500-signature petition by local residents demanded it. There's an example of people expressing their democratic will through a petition process, and a direct action was taken as a result of that. We have a tradition in British Columbia that goes back beyond that.

In this century, in 1919, a government -- a Liberal government, interestingly, led by John Oliver -- brought in a bill, far-reaching at the time, called the Direct Legislation Act. It was an important piece of legislation, and it was referred to by a couple of other members earlier in this debate as a significant piece of legislation. The interesting thing is that it's still on our statute books. It's never been proclaimed because of legal opinions about its constitutionality. I think those legal opinions have been superseded by subsequent events. There's no doubt that direct initiatives are constitutional. One only needs to consult with constitutional experts like Mr. Mel Smith, in our own province, or Mr. Peter Hogg, who's written learned texts on this matter. I won't quote from them any further.

The 1919 debate was interesting, because a Liberal government with a Liberal Premier in this Legislature brought forward an act that allowed initiatives to take place. The threshold was higher -- 25 percent would be required to bring forward an initiative at that time -- and opposition members thought it was outrageous.

I've had a chance to take a look at some newspaper clippings from the era. There was no Hansard at the time, so the press gallery had to be a lot more responsible and actually report on debates in the House. What a refreshing idea that was. No disrespect to Hansard, but maybe we could implement some reforms of our own to get some relevance back here and force the press gallery to report on our debates.

At that time, the Leader of the Opposition -- Mr. Bowser, a Tory -- said this was just paper legislation, freak legislation. He didn't know why it was being brought forward. According to the Times-Colonist of March 7, 1919, he characterized it as a trick to fool people.

An Hon. Member: Jim Hume. He was around for that one.

D. Mitchell: It wasn't Jim Hume. He was covering another story. He was the sports reporter at that time.

But this was March 7, 1919, so the young Jimmy Hume wasn't covering the political beat yet.

But Mr. Bowser, the Leader of the Opposition, claimed that the Premier was proposing to do away with all precedents and traditions in bringing down such a bill. There were no reasons or excuses given as to the necessity of it and not a word as to the demand for it. "Who wants this legislation? Who has asked for it?" he asked. That's what the opposition said at the time. They were really opposed and outraged.

Well, in 1994 we don't have to be so concerned about wanting to know who wants it or who has asked for it. We've been told that. Over one million British Columbians -- more than 80 percent -- want it.

So we don't have to be concerned with the debates of 1919, although I'd like to make just one final aside. An opposition member at the time thought the 25 percent approval level might need to be changed. He was worried that it would be too easy to achieve that threshold. The population of the province was smaller back then, and communication lines were more difficult. But he was worried that 25 percent might be too high. He suggested -- this was an opposition member at the time -- it would be quite possible to get a petition signed by that percentage of the electors calling for the hanging of the Premier or the Leader of the Opposition -- or both. [Applause.]

Some today might think that would be a good thing; I won't go that far. But I will say the model being brought in today is going to be very difficult. The model for direct legislation through initiative brought in with Bill 36 is far too difficult to ever achieve. In fact, it almost would make more sense, if you look at the details of the bill in 1919 that's never been proclaimed, to simply proclaim that bill and maybe seek to amend it to make it work. That would be far more acceptable.

The recall provision is truly extraordinary. The initiative provision is probably the more far-reaching in terms of the change it may exert on our parliamentary democracy. But in terms of recall, we are introducing something new that's never been on our statute books before.

It's not workable; the approval levels will not work. I don't think we'll likely ever see an MLA recalled, with the thresholds that are required and the time limit for gathering signatures. Those comments have been made previously by other speakers. In particular, the member for Peace River South outlined some of the problems with the threshold levels, and I certainly agree with the position he's taken on that. I won't go into any more detail on those kinds of issues. I'd like to say there are some problems with the bill. When we get to committee stage, we're going to have a chance to address some of the specifics.

The bill, though, has to be looked at in its larger context. I'd like to conclude by stepping back a little and 

[ Page 12868 ]

taking a look at what these reforms really mean to parliamentary democracy in British Columbia in our age.

It's part of an evolutionary process. There was a time when not everyone could vote in our province; only property holders could vote to elect members to this assembly. Then there were reforms to that so all males could vote. Then early in this century women were finally allowed to vote; it wasn't until we got into the teens of this century that it happened -- far too late, in my opinion. Later on, there were more reforms extending the franchise which, pathetically, had been denied to Orientals and others of Asian extraction. Then, pathetically, even later on we finally allowed native Indians in our province to vote -- far too late, in my opinion. These were some of the steps along the way in the evolution of extending the franchise and bringing true democracy and universal suffrage to all British Columbians.

I believe we can look at reforms like recall and initiative as part of the evolutionary process of not only extending the franchise but extending democracy in a more meaningful way to allow people not only to have a vote during elections, but to have a say between elections as well. I think that's the really significant part of these reforms. Not only do they let people in once every four or five years when an election is called at the discretion of whoever happens to chair the executive council of the day, but they allow people to have a say between elections as well. That's what people want. Some members may shake their heads and disagree. I wish they'd stand up and vote according to their consciences, not according to their party Whips or party bosses, in terms of the kinds of positions they're taking for whatever reasons -- political or popularity.

Someone once said that these kinds of reform are alien to our form of parliamentary democracy. That was the Chair of the committee that I served on, the member for Vancouver-Kensington. He suggested that these reforms may be alien to parliamentary democracy. When more than 80 percent are in favour of reforms, how can they be alien? The people who oppose those reforms are possibly alien to the wishes of the majority of British Columbians.

These reforms provide safety valves for democratic discontent. There need to be safety valves in any kind of system, because if we don't have those, we lose confidence. Right now, confidence in our democratic institutions is not high; public opinion research says that. How are we going to restore confidence in the institutions that we serve? By letting people in, and that's what these reforms do.

Why not develop a model for direct democracy right here in British Columbia -- a model for our country and for the world? We have that opportunity. On the "committee of delay" that I had what some might regard as the misfortune to serve on, we had an opportunity to study how direct democracy was implemented in other jurisdictions -- whether it be Switzerland, a number of American states, Australia or other jurisdictions that have experienced different forms of direct democracy. We can learn from their mistakes, and there have been some.

We have the opportunity to develop, right here in our province, a model for the rest of the world. We are not taking advantage of that opportunity with Bill 36. We're getting our foot in the door in an awkward way that may serve only to frustrate the public will. That might provide a backlash, and I think that's the real threat to this government. The risk they're taking with Bill 36 is to suffer a genuine backlash of public opinion against them. The public aren't going to be fooled; they know what they voted for.

There's no doubt in my mind that this is going to be a campaign issue in the next provincial election, whenever that's held. We're going to see parties having to take a stand -- more than take a stand. That happened during the last election campaign, and people have seen how promises are broken time and time again. One of the reasons why people voted for recall and initiative is simply because of the lack of trust and the breakdown in support for our democratic process.

So in a more fundamental way, a division is going to take place, and part of the debate in the House tonight and tomorrow during committee stage on this bill is going to be the dividing lines on this issue, which are going to be significant issues in the next provincial election. They were in the last election; they are only going to be larger now. The government has ensured that by bringing in a bill that's hypocritical in the extreme.

[11:45]

The people said they wanted direct democracy; the government has given them indirect hypocrisy. The official opposition -- and I regret I have to say this, because I have some friends and former colleagues in the official opposition -- is guilty of being insincere, glib and shallow in the extreme by pretending to have gone through an amazing conversion. All of a sudden they're in support of something simply because their new leader has suggested that that's the way to go. They've gotten down on their knees and prostrated themselves in front of another leader, and they've only shown that they have no principles. They stand for nothing, and I think it's shameful.

The one thing that I didn't hear tonight from the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast, which I would have liked to have heard, is an apology to this House and to the public of British Columbia, because he's responsible for having elected the members of that official opposition, who are here with no principles and who are supporting a leader who has simply taken a position for reasons of popularity, not for conviction. I think the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast owes us and all British Columbians, if not tonight then on some occasion, an apology for having accidentally elected, in a moment of brilliance during a televised debate, members to this House who are unable to recognize principle or to recognize conviction when they see it. They are unable to be consistent in their views because they don't have any views. I say shame on them, and I ask the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast, perhaps right now.... I could ask for leave, if that's possible. I'd be willing to continue my comments if the House would give leave and the member would be willing to stand up right now and make that apology. I request leave for that purpose.

Deputy Speaker: I believe that the suggestion is entirely out of order, but I will accept the rhetorical flourish of the question and ask you to proceed.

D. Mitchell: I know that the opportunity will arise on another occasion.

I would just like to complete my remarks by saying that we're entering an age of direct democracy. Politicians and parties should not fear that. They should embrace it and be proud of it, and if they don't, the people will supersede them. Politicians will be bringing up the rear, as usual. The brave politicians and parties will embrace these changes and work with the people, not against their 

[ Page 12869 ]

wishes when they're democratically expressed -- as they were at the time of the last election.

K. Jones: I'd like to start off by saying that I ran for election openly supporting giving the electorate access to both initiative, which is sometimes called referendum, and recall. I still support initiative and recall. I trust the wisdom of our electorate, and I support direct democracy. I am concerned about the formula proposed in this bill. The trigger points are too high. Reasonable reduction of criteria will make this bill effective. I continue to support an effective process for direct democracy. This bill is a beginning to further reform of government that must come forward soon. I will conclude by saying that I support an effective initiative and recall process as part of a truly more democratic government for the people of British Columbia.

G. Farrell-Collins: I found the comments this evening both interesting and enlightening. In response to some comments made by the member for West Vancouver-Garibaldi, I would suggest that the same apology he's begging from the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast could be made on his own behalf, because we know that he was part of that group that took the whole province by storm. If he's looking for an apology, I would suspect that it would be on behalf of himself as well.

The other interesting item I wish to bring forward is that member's self-righteous indignation and comments towards the close of his speech, where he talked about the need for the forward-looking politicians to listen to what the people have to say, and to be in the vanguard of the new politics -- the new direct democracy. That ties in very closely with some earlier comments of his -- which I personally took offence to -- that somehow principles were up for sale, because I distinctly remember having detailed discussions with that member leading up to the Charlottetown accord. His prime reason for supporting the Charlottetown accord, despite the fact that some 78 percent, I think, of his riding opposed it, was that we'd be up against everybody in the country. We'd be opposing all the major political parties. If the Liberal Party of British Columbia was the only party in this country to oppose the Charlottetown accord, we would be opposing every other political party in the country. But the most important thing and the interesting thing that he said, which always stuck in my mind, was that we'd be opposing the business community -- the business community was coming out 100 percent in favour of the Charlottetown accord. So how could we possibly oppose it? At that time, I thought to myself: if we ever make decisions as leaders in this province because one group or another is going to be upset about it, then we have no right to be here.

So when that member stands up in this House and talks about hypocrisy and about principles being for sale, I harken back to my experience with that member. I harken back to the things that member said to me and to other people in the Liberal Party, and I question his motives and sincerity. So I think that has to be taken in context. I don't think someone can make those types of allegations and comments without having to account for one's own past positions and indiscretions.

I want to say from the start that during the last election, I too stated quite clearly a number of times -- certainly when I was asked in my constituency, certainly in the newspapers when these questions were asked of us in a poll -- that I had no problem with the concept of initiative or recall if that's what the public wants, if that's what the public feels they need in order to hold their elected officials accountable. I personally felt that if I was doing my job properly as an individual MLA, I wouldn't have to worry about recall. And if I was doing my job as part of a caucus, and more importantly, as part of a government, I wouldn't have to worry about initiative, because I'd be listening to those people anyway. And if I was any kind of a leader, I'd be trying to deal with the types of problems that they found in their everyday life and that they strongly felt needed to be addressed. I would be aware of those concerns and problems, and I would be trying to take a leadership role in solving those problems, as I think any member of this House would want to do.

So I didn't feel threatened by recall, and I don't feel threatened by it today. I didn't feel threatened by initiative, and I don't feel threatened by it today. I think the cautions and warnings that have been made by the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast and, more importantly, by the member for Richmond-Steveston and other members are valid. They are cautions that we should listen to. But if you're doing your job properly, if you're listening to the people that you represent -- and to the rest of the province -- and if you use your good judgment, you don't have anything to worry about from recall or initiative. I don't feel threatened by it. I said that then, and I'll say it now. I haven't changed on the road to Damascus, as one member said.

But I want to defend members of my caucus who campaigned in the same vein as the former Leader of the Opposition during the last election and said that they were opposed to initiative and recall. They campaigned against referendum and against recall, and they lost, because the public voted overwhelmingly in every single constituency in this province, stating that they wanted initiative and recall. Whoever campaigned against those, lost. The direction was clear.

In fact, I would hazard a guess that there isn't one member of this House who won their constituency by more votes than those two referendum items received. So how come we don't question the knowledge and wisdom of those people who voted for us, but we question the knowledge and wisdom of the very same people who went to the very same polling station and used the very same pencil on the very same piece of paper and voted in favour of initiative and recall? Why do we question their wisdom? I haven't heard one member stand up in this House and say: "Gee, I don't know if those voters knew what they were doing when they went out and voted for me. I think they made a mistake." Nobody in this House has said that. So why do we assume that when they moved their pencil from voting for an MLA down the paper to voting in favour of initiative and recall, they got stupid all of a sudden? Why do we think that they lost their sense of wisdom and somehow were no longer rational human beings entitled to make those decisions and that their opinions don't matter? They sure mattered when we knocked on their doors, phoned them, put pamphlets on their doorsteps and annoyed them like crazy for 28 days. Then it sure mattered what they thought. We were very concerned about what they thought. We begged to listen to them and hoped when we went to their doors that there would be somebody on the other side we could talk to. Their opinion really mattered to us. But it doesn't matter to us on referendum and recall? I think that's strange.

[ Page 12870 ]

We hear the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast talk about fixed election days every four years. I happen to agree with him on that item. It makes sense to have a fixed election day, because it's not prone to the abuse of government. That's something that we should do. But to state that the electors are smart once every four years on election day, but that somehow those same electors are not smart halfway through the term, when they decide to fire you, or that they have really good judgement on election day, and the day after have absolutely no judgement right up until the next election day, when all of a sudden they have good judgement again.... If you trust in people, if you trust in the voters, if you believe in democracy, and if you believe that individual people in this province and around the world have a right to be heard, then we have a responsibility to believe in them.

People vote for strange reasons sometimes. If I listed all the reasons people told me they were going to vote either for or against me in the last election, some of them are pretty funny. But they have a reason that's important to them. When you balance it all out over the 45,000 people who are entitled to vote, you generally come up with a pretty rational conclusion. Weigh all the little things that are important to people -- the issues, the things they look for in a candidate and all their past experiences -- and they balance out and come to a conclusion. Right or wrong, it's a valid decision. I don't know of any better way to do it. If anybody has a better idea, I'd like to hear about it.

I believe people are intelligent. Because of access to information, voters are in general more and more informed. People are concerned about the issues that affect them -- not everybody, but the vast majority are. In this province look at the incredibly high voter-turnout percentage in election after election. People care about this province. They care about the issues that are important to them and their families. They care enough to learn something about them, and they care enough to make a decision. When they make that decision we should listen to them, whether we agree with them or not. When in as clear a voice as 80 percent of the people who turn out to vote they tell you they are in favour of something, you have no right to ignore it. If you're going to put the question to them, you'd better be ready for the answer, even if it's an answer you don't want to hear. And you'd better be ready to do something about it. Don't ask the question if you don't care what the answer is.

Members like the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast and a couple of others campaigned against it, because according to their individual elite standards, which are better than everybody else's standards, this wasn't a legitimate question. They say that people didn't know what they were doing on this issue, that the people weren't really smart enough and didn't inform themselves well enough about it. They certainly informed themselves about whether or not to vote for them as a candidate, but they didn't inform themselves enough about these two issues. To state in that elitist way that your own principles and standards are more important than those of all the people out there who voted is, I think, more than elitist; it's really arrogant. I don't know what that member's constituents would say now if they knew the types.... I assume they do know the types of things that he's saying.

[12:00]

One of the members talked tonight about a witch hunt, as far as recall goes -- that somehow you're going to drag somebody up onto a platform and accuse them of all sorts of things and then rip them asunder; just like they did during the old days when they would say: "You're a witch because you look like a witch." Those were the analogies that were used to describe a reform bill. It's interesting, because a member of that same caucus tabled in this House a piece of private member's legislation called the Public Officers Recall Act, Bill M216. I don't want to go into any real detail other than to say that the bill sets out a procedure for recalling public officials -- I think it was particularly focused on judges -- because they don't feel they are accountable. It lays out a position.... There are some safety valves in here to see that it's not abused, and there's a committee that would meet to hear the complaints after they had been accused. But then there is a really neat section. Section 38 says that if the Premier decides, the Premier can bypass that hearing process and just fire the person -- just like that. So if the Premier doesn't like what a judge says, the Premier instructs the Attorney General, the Attorney General goes out and hauls this person in off the street, puts them up on a stand, and says: "You look like a bad judge, you are a bad judge, and you're out of here." How can a caucus member be against recall and then put in a piece of legislation like that with no safety valves whatsoever? There's a double standard there. Somebody is not paying attention.

I also heard comments by members of the new Reform Party, which is made up of guys who used to be in Bill Vander Zalm's cabinet -- the old Socred Party that spawned the outrage in this province to demand recall, because this nightmare kept going on year after year and everybody was hoping there would be an election. I know that members opposite and the Speaker sat on this side of the House during that, and I knew how embarrassing it was for British Columbians. I wasn't a member of the House, but it was really embarrassing as an average British Columbian, knowing what was going on this province. It was what spurred me to get into politics.

I find it interesting that those members who had the opportunity in government to bring forward referendum, initiative and recall in a meaningful way, never did it. They had the longest uninterrupted string -- or marginally interrupted string -- of majority governments that any province has ever seen. They were here for a long time -- from 1952 to 1991, with the three dismal years of the NDP between 1972 and 1975 -- and they never did anything. They never did initiative; they never did recall. They had opportunities. All of a sudden, because they have a new name to their party.... They have not only changed their position but they have even changed the thresholds. It's interesting that they have to go with the Reform Party, so all the things they were saying as Socreds are now changed. They are now spouting different rhetoric than they did when they were Social Credit. The thresholds have all changed and everything is all different. So I find it really interesting when that person turns around and points to the Liberal opposition and says somehow we are wishy-washy on this.

The people have spoken. People have said pretty darned clearly and loudly that they want meaningful initiative and recall, and I think it's our duty to bring it in. We have stated clearly that we feel there are problems with this bill. Some of the thresholds are too high, and we'll deal with that in committee stage. We will put forward amendments, and because of their majority the government can accept them or reject them, but we will make those issues and we will make that case. The people want initiative, but they want initiative they can access. There is no point in doing it if it's not going to be 

[ Page 12871 ]

available to them. Otherwise it's just for show. People want recall that will work. They want to be able to have access to it, and I don't think they'll abuse it. You have to have tight spending requirements so that you don't get big money and special interest groups.... It's not just business; there are environmental groups and all sorts of other groups that have access to lots of money that could bring in drives for a referendum. You have to be careful that you don't allow that to happen. It has to be something that the people feel, not something that's heated up and stirred up by special interest groups. We can address all those things in committee stage.

I don't like the way this bill is set up. I don't like the thresholds. I know the member opposite is going to speak to us about those thresholds and why he thinks they are reasonable. I disagree with him, and we will have that argument in committee stage afterwards. But I don't think we should have members stand up in this House and state that because politicians are willing to take the direction of the public on an issue they feel strongly about, despite their own personal feelings about it, somehow they've prostrated themselves on the floor. The public has given us a direction. They are the same people who hired us, who put us here, and we better start responding to them, or they're going to get rid us. Recall or no recall, they'll get rid of us. It has happened before, and it will happen again.

Our parliamentary system has evolved. I don't think we're back 700 years ago, as the member for North Vancouver-Lonsdale stated. The parliamentary system has changed, and it always will change. This is another thing people are looking for in British Columbia. They want it; they've demanded it. They've become informed about it, and they still want it.

We have a duty to do this and to make sure it works. If the government brings in this bill, I'm sure the public will have no access to it. The public will find that they aren't able to accomplish a meaningful initiative, that they don't have access to recall in any meaningful way. I think those thresholds will have to be changed. Either this government will come to realize it in the near future, or another government after them will realize it and will have to make those changes.

This bill is a step in the right direction. It responds partway to what the people want. I think we've got the framework, and we can build on it. We can build on it either in committee stage tomorrow or a couple of years from now, but we've started. I don't think the public will be happy with it. They're going to demand changes. They're going to tell us in very clear terms that this isn't what they were looking for, and we will have to bring that in one way or another.

I hope that people will listen to the debates tonight. Despite an awful lot of the rhetoric, there were good points made by probably every member who stood up and spoke. We should listen to the cautions that are brought forward. As I think the member who is going to speak next said, we should be careful about grafting this system of direct democracy on to a representative system of democracy. We should be careful how we do it, but I think we can do it and have to do it. I think that if we work hard to make it work, it will be something we can all be proud of, something the citizens of British Columbia will respect and use when they need to but will not use frivolously. I hope that's the case. I look forward to hearing the members speak and to the committee stage debate, where we will have a chance to look at this bill in detail and try and make it work better than I think it will in its present state.

U. Dosanjh: We are engaged in a historic debate today. We have heard from many members of this House. Various point of view have been expressed. I just want to say that these two innovations we are introducing to our system of government are a fundamental departure from the system of government that has developed over centuries and which we have inherited from our predecessors.

Therefore, it behooves us that we proceed on this issue with a great deal of caution. Before I deal with the legislation itself, let me, as chair of the committee that went around the province and heard from hundreds of people across British Columbia, pay tribute to those people who appeared before us or made submissions to us in writing, and also pay tribute to the patience of the members of the committee. They sat through all those submissions, looked at various forms of government in other parts of the world where recall or initiative may be in place and functioning, and brought that information and knowledge and expertise to bear upon the foundations of the system and the institutions within which we function. We tried to graft, by way of the recommendations, these two concepts onto the system and make them an integral part of the system.

The member for West Vancouver-Garibaldi quoted me as saying these two concepts were alien to our form of government. I think it would be candid on our part to admit that these two concepts are alien to our system of government, but that doesn't mean we should not implement these concepts. We make innovations and bring new things into our system of government every day. Prior to their entry into our institutions, those traditions or concepts that we bring in are always alien. Once they form part of the system of government within which we function, and we're able to graft them onto our system, they are no longer alien. From the day that this bill passes this Legislature and is given royal assent, these two concepts will no longer be alien to our form of government.

It is also important to recognize that we are not giving to people something that does not belong to people. People themselves are the reservoir of all the democratic rights, either crystallized or uncrystallized to date. People themselves have given unto themselves, through the referendum ballot, the right to have these two concepts implemented in British Columbia. We are not, as some members have alluded, extending these rights to the people of British Columbia. People of British Columbia have decided to select these two rights from the arsenal of rights that exist for them. One of the members indicated that somehow we extended the franchise to natives, to minorities and to women. We did not extend anything. We simply woke up to the fact that those people had those rights and that they had to have those rights. It is not for us to extend those rights. It is for the people to latch onto those rights, because those rights belong to them in the first place, in an inherent manner.

Let me make something clear. Many speakers today, particularly on the opposition side -- not all -- have indicated that people have said they want something and that we have not delivered in this legislation. I think there is a link missing in their logic, and that is that when people spoke, they spoke very clearly -- massively in terms of 80 percent support for these two concepts. But 

[ Page 12872 ]

these were two abstract concepts put to people without much debate. It was the function of that committee, which members of this House had the privilege to be part of, to put flesh on the bones of those two concepts and make recommendations so that those two concepts would form part of our system of government.

[12:15]

Let me read to you from "Referendum B.C.: The Decision Is Yours," a document put out by the previous government at the time these two questions went to the ballot. This very clearly outlines the challenges that the committee had and that this House has in terms of dealing with this bill. The conclusion of this document, which accompanied the referendum, says:

"Determining the suitability of the recall mechanism to British Columbia government is a complex matter. Simple reference to use of recall in other countries does not fully address the issue. Each country has a unique political system, history and culture. Rather, it is necessary to consider the general strengths and weaknesses of recall, its intended purpose and effect, its history...and the unique considerations presented by combining recall with parliamentary government."

This, my friends -- particularly those opposite -- is the conclusion the previous government arrived at. We have to proceed very cautiously with the mechanism of recall, because in putting this question to the people of British Columbia, the previous government realized that there may be problems in terms of implementing this concept within a parliamentary form of government. Never in history has there been a functioning system of recall in a commonwealth jurisdiction anywhere in the world -- with the very brief exception in Alberta, where the legislation was repealed very quickly.

Given that history and that lack of experience, we had to proceed with caution. We had to deal with all of the various consequences, both positive and negative, of the implementation of these two concepts in British Columbia. We had to deal with the issues of vested financial interests and special interests, of parties or groups creating mischief, of regional balances and of whether to allow initiatives on local issues or only on major issues across the province. The committee and the drafters of this legislation wrestled with those kinds of issues in arriving at the system of recall and initiative that is now presented to you in Bill 36.

Let me say very clearly that we looked at all of the various experiences that were available to us, including the reform bill in the House of Commons. Let me give you a cursory comparative analysis of what the reform bill contains and what our bill contains. The reform bill requires 50 percent plus one of the number on the last list, but you are required to sign that number out of the current residents of a particular federal riding. This bill requires 40 percent of the last list for logistical reasons of certainty. The reform bill requires ten voters to commence a petition for recall. Bill 36 requires just one voter to commence a recall petition. In the reform bill there is a 60-day time limit to sign up 50 percent plus one. In Bill 36 there are 60 days to sign 40 percent. In Bill 36 there is an 18-month waiting period after the general election, during which no recall petition can be commenced, and that's the same as it is in the reform bill.

In the bill before you there can be any number of recall petitions at any given time against any member. You can have many unsuccessful petitions against any member, whereas in the reform bill you can only have one recall petition, whether successful or unsuccessful, in the life of the parliament. In the bill before you, you can have ten different unsuccessful recall petitions. When one succeeds, however, that's the last one for that particular constituency. That, in a nutshell, gives you a comparison between what the Reform bill does federally and what this bill does provincially. I think it's important for all of us to have that perspective.

Let me just go over some of the issues that have been raised by the members. We've been told that 40 percent is a high number, that it is not achievable. In my constituency, my friends, I have about 25,000 voters. If you wanted a 50 percent sign-up for a recall petition -- I'm not talking about a 40 percent sign-up now; I'm now talking about a 50 percent sign-up -- you would require 100 volunteers to go door to door for 60 days and gather two signatures every day; that would be 12,000 signatures. In order to gather 40 percent of the signatures, you would require only about 1.6 signatures every day. I submit to you that if there is no overwhelming desire on the part of my constituents to recall me, then they obviously shouldn't recall me, and they wouldn't get the 100 volunteers to go out and recall me. I think that's important to remember.

Secondly, my friends, it's important to remember that in British Columbia there is an almost 78 to 80 percent turnout in elections. In the States, where the system is different, there's a 40 percent turnout even during the presidential elections. What we're saying in this legislation is that if 80 percent of the people turn out to vote for or against you in a general election, you only need half of those people to sign a petition, which is quite reasonable, because if you have the three-stage process....

This is where the members get confused. In the States, my friends, you have a three-stage process: you need a 10 or 15 percent sign-up, a recall election is triggered, and you require 50 percent plus one of the voters who go out to the polls to vote for recall. If you have an 80 percent turnout in British Columbia, that would be exactly 40 percent of the electors on the list. We're not doing anything that has not been done in the United States of America. There you have a three-stage process: you have a petition; if the petition is successful in getting 15 percent of the signatures, you have a recall election; if the member is recalled, you have a by-election. In British Columbia we have encapsulated two stages into one: you sign up 40 percent, the member is automatically recalled once the signatures are verified, and then there is a by-election. I see some members shaking their heads. Obviously you have to be able to do this math.

In a recall election, it's a straight contest: 50 percent plus one need to vote against you to recall you. If you take 50 percent plus one of the 80 percent that usually turn out to vote in any election, that's 40 percent. What we've essentially done is asked you to ask any member of the public to go out and gather 40 percent of the signatures from the electors list, and then you would be recalled.

The other issue that has been raised is that somehow we have placed a ban on canvassers by requiring that the canvassers be British Columbia residents and on the voters list. If you do not have the right to vote in British Columbia, why should you have the right to propagate for someone's recall in British Columbia? If you have not lived in the province for at least six months so that you have some stake in developments here, why should you be able to promote someone's recall in British Columbia? It's only common sense that we must make sure that people who participate in these fundamental issues are 

[ Page 12873 ]

British Columbians by residence and British Columbians in terms of the right to vote.

Let me switch to the initiative. I'm going through these issues as they arose in the debate. We are told by some members that initiatives in the States require only 5 percent sign-up. We are requiring 10 percent sign-up across British Columbia. Obviously, it must have become abundantly clear to all members of the House by now, through this debate tonight, that there was some consideration of regional balances. There are some constituencies in this province that are as large as four or five other constituencies in other parts of the province. You could not ignore the rights of the voters and residents of those constituencies, which are regions in themselves.

I think it's only fair to require 10 percent sign-up uniformly across British Columbia -- particularly with the Liberal opposition raising the issue of this 1919 legislation and saying implicitly that they would support that legislation today. The message I got from the member for Langley was that she would support that legislation today. In 1919 the means of communication and transportation were ancient compared to what you have today -- you didn't have faxes, television, the media and telephones. At that time the sign-up was 25 percent and 10 percent in at least two-thirds of the constituencies, which is a much more onerous requirement if you compare it with the requirement that's presently in the bill before you.

The Leader of the Third Party said that we should have workable recall available. I know that the Leader of the Third Party presented bills on recall and initiative in this session and in the last session, but he has not given it much time or thought at all. If you look at the bill he introduced, the bill doesn't even take into account some of the fundamental rights that all of us enjoy, as British Columbians and Canadians. For example, the bill introduced by the Leader of the Third Party would have a member who may have lost his or her seat barred from running in a re-election. Now, unless there was some criminal convictions that constitutionally prevented a member from contesting a by-election, I don't see the logic of that kind of a clause in a bill that is introduced by a responsible member of this House. Obviously not much thought has gone into whatever the Leader of the Third Party has said.

[12:30]

The member for Peace River North talked about the same issue. Obviously that party is confused about fundamental rights that we as Canadians enjoy from coast to coast. The member for Peace River North also said -- I'm simply paraphrasing him; I don't remember his words -- that it is beyond belief, if the initiative passes based on the current requirements in Bill 36, that we might then turn around and say as legislators that we're not going to live up to the expressed will of the majority of British Columbians.

My friends, many of us have stood here today and said that 80 percent of those British Columbians who went to the polls supported these two concepts -- thereby, whether we agree or disagree, obliging us to put this legislation in place, to bring it into the House and pass it, for that is the will of the people. Why would we not comply, as legislators or as the people who will sit here two or ten years from now, with the most clearly expressed will of the people of British Columbia through an initiative if one passes through all the stages? We would ignore the expressed will of the people of British Columbia in such a clear fashion at our own peril.

The member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast said that if it's wrong, we shouldn't do it. I don't think the issue is whether it's right or wrong to do what we're doing; I think the issue is whether you have abiding respect for the expressed wish of a majority of the people of British Columbia, and that is the wish that we as servants of the people of British Columbia are honouring today.

G. Wilson: So anything the majority asks you to do, you're going to do, is that right?

U. Dosanjh: Hon. member, I am a lawyer by profession. I ask all those kinds of questions all the time. I used to in my previous life, at least, and enjoyed them all the time. When one asks an asinine question, one may get an asinine answer, but I would not stoop to that level at this point. It's rather early in the morning.

The issue is whether we respect the wishes of the people expressed in a democratic fashion. Sure, you may argue about Hitler and Germany. I understand all of those arguments. People make the argument that Hitler came to power initially through democratic means; I understand that. But in British Columbia we obviously aren't blind. Eighty percent of the people have spoken on this issue, and this is very clearly a fundamental issue of constitutional innovation in British Columbia. What we're debating today is a constitutional amendment to our system of government, and the people of British Columbia have said they want it done. They didn't say how they want it done. That's your and my task, the task for all of us, and that's why we're debating it. But they have very clearly expressed the wish to have these two concepts enshrined in our system of government, because they have realized that at times we're not responsive to their needs, and they've said so very clearly. Maybe they weren't given all the various options at that point. We can debate that issue, but that's really not the issue at this point. They had the option of saying yes or no, and they said yes. We cannot and will not turn that into a no.

Let me say this before I conclude. The name of Jefferson, an American, has been evoked twice in this Legislature today. I would have been prouder if some Canadian name had been evoked; I'm sure there are Canadian heroes. I would have been more satisfied if some other name had been evoked. Jefferson was an eighteenth-century aristocrat and slave owner, as we know, and he was really scared of populist democracy. What we're doing today is saying to the people of British Columbia that they have spoken and clearly expressed their will, and that we will do what they have asked us to do. What they have asked is that we look at these two concepts, form a committee, study the issue and bring in legislation. That is what we have done.

I know my time is up. Without saying anything more, let me conclude by saying I congratulate all of us who have participated in this debate and those who have listened. This has been a historic debate dealing with what amounts to a constitutional amendment to our system of government, and I hope that in years to come these two concepts work. If they don't, the people of British Columbia will change them.

Hon. C. Gabelmann: I want to make a few brief comments in closing debate on what, as the member for Vancouver-Kensington has indicated, is a historic debate. I've listened to most of the comments by members tonight, and with no exceptions, I find something to agree 

[ Page 12874 ]

with in everything that has been said. In the comments of every member, I have found merit in some elements of what they have to say.

Since the 1991 plebiscite, we have embarked on a process unprecedented in the British parliamentary system. We have tried to find a way to marry American concepts with British parliamentary tradition. Some would argue that it's an impossible marriage. The member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast eloquently argues that this is not an appropriate marriage to make. Others argue -- some with conviction, and others perhaps with less conviction than political purpose -- that we should move to an American style of governance in this province, and presumably, by extension, in this country.

I'm not going to repeat the arguments made by members throughout the debate tonight, other than to say that the government made a decision following the 1991 expression by British Columbians that we would find a way to respect the decisions made in that vote, which was overwhelming. Whether it was 70 percent or 75 percent, or even 80 percent, depending upon how you count, the fact is that it was 3 or 4 to 1 in favour of bringing in some kind of system that would enable people to recall their MLA should they find great cause to do so, and find some way to enable them to speak directly to the legislative process in this chamber. We made a commitment to respond to that vote and to respect the wishes of British Columbians. It was not an easy process to reach a conclusion.

In my view, as one who did not participate in the process that led to the committee's conclusion, the all-party committee did an outstanding job in trying to find a way to bring together totally contradictory ways of governing -- the British and American parliamentary systems. They are totally different in principle, concept and execution. But the committee worked. It took some time, and it took a lot of criticism for taking that time. But the committee took the time necessary and listened effectively, and it produced a report that did find a way. Although people on either side of the argument are going to find difficulty with accepting all of it, they did find a way of bringing together, in the best possible way, the differences that exist on this issue.

Following the report of the all-party committee, the responsibility of the government and the executive council was to translate that report into a legislative framework, which we did. In my view, as an executive council we were faithful in respecting the views of the parliamentary committee in translating those views into a statute. Every single member of this House will find something they don't like in this bill. Every single member of this House can cite decisions that were made in respect of this bill that they don't like. I can, and I believe every member can. That doesn't mean that this isn't the best possible consensus or the best possible resolution of very difficult concepts and very difficult initiatives -- to use that word in a different sense.

We are doing something that hasn't been done -- except by William Aberhart, which they quickly undid as soon as they realized what it could do to them -- in a British parliamentary system anywhere in the world. It's pioneering stuff. It's the kind of stuff that should have the press gallery lined with reporters listening to this debate. In my view, this was a historic debate and it was a good debate, and every member who did speak, spoke well and eloquently and had something important to say. It should be reported well, because this was a good debate tonight.

The result may not please everybody, but the result does honour the decision made by British Columbians in 1991. British Columbians were not asked to explain how it would work at that time, but were simply asked if they favoured the idea of being able to get rid of an MLA who wasn't doing a job. They were also asked to have some impact on bringing in legislation. They said: "We want to have those powers." That is understandable; every voter would want that.

So this House has worked through a variety of processes, and we now conclude tonight with a conclusion that I think is pretty good, given the difficulties. It's not perfect. Not everybody is happy, but this is a result that reflects the views expressed to the parliamentary committee during extensive travels around this province. It reflects the views of all members of this House, as reflected by the representatives on that committee. Given the variety of expressions that have been put forward in the debate, it very effectively captures a middle ground in respect of the views of all parliamentarians in this province -- and that's pretty good legislating, in my view.

[12:45]

With that, hon. Speaker, I am sure we will all have more to say very shortly -- probably even today -- in committee stage on this bill. I am sure we will have a number of suggestions for differences in thresholds and other issues that will want to be debated, and all of us look forward to that debate. It is a legitimate debate. There are no questions of black or white, or right or wrong. These are questions of choices. These are choices this Legislature has made, in its majority, and I am delighted to be part of this very historic occasion.

With that, I move second reading.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

Motion approved on the following division:

Bill 36, Recall and Initiative Act, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House.

Hon. G. Clark: We have just a few minor bills before we proceed to the Environmental Assessment Act. First, I call third reading of Bill 7.

[ Page 12875 ]

FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION AMENDMENT ACT, 1994

Bill 7, Financial Administration Amendment Act, 1994, read a third time and passed.

Hon. G. Clark: I call third reading of Bill 20.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT GRANTS ACT

Bill 20, Local Government Grants Act, read a third time and passed.

Hon. G. Clark: I now call second reading of Bill Pr401.

LOWER FRASER VALLEY EXHIBITION ASSOCIATION AMENDMENT ACT

S. Hammell: I move that the bill now be read a second time.

The Speaker: Please proceed, hon. member.

S. Hammell: This motion will allow the Lower Fraser Valley Exhibition Association to use the name "Cloverdale Rodeo and Exhibition Association." This will enable the organization to function more effectively.

K. Jones: Bill Pr401 was brought before this House for the last two sessions by myself and has died on the order paper for lack of government support. I'm pleased to see that, with the support of the member for Surrey-Green Timbers, this non-partisan bill may be passed in this session, maybe even this evening. This is a simple request by the Lower Fraser Valley Exhibition Association to legally use a name which more closely describes their operations and has been in common use for some time. I urge all members to support this bill to final completion as an act.

The Speaker: The hon. member for Surrey-Green Timbers closes debate.

S. Hammell: I close debate. [Laughter.]

The Speaker: Is the hon. member putting forward a motion?

Interjections.

The Speaker: The motion is second reading of Bill Pr401.

Motion approved.

Bill Pr401, Lower Fraser Valley Exhibition Association Amendment Act, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration forthwith.

LOWER FRASER VALLEY EXHIBITION ASSOCIATION AMENDMENT ACT

The House in committee on Bill Pr401; D. Lovick in the chair.

Sections 1 and 2 approved.

Preamble approved.

Title approved.

Hon. G. Clark: I move the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; the Speaker in the chair.

Bill Pr401, Lower Fraser Valley Exhibition Association Amendment Act, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed.

Hon. G. Clark: Perhaps we can try the same on the next order of business. I call committee on another small bill, Bill 29.

ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT ACT
(continued)

The House in committee on Bill 29; G. Brewin in the chair.

On section 27 (continued).

Hon. M. Sihota: Last time we were in committee dealing with the Land Title Amendment Act, the hon. member for Matsqui asked me to table policy describing the approval process for conservation covenants. Also, I'm pleased to enclose a legal opinion that dealt with section 2 of the act to clarify the concerns of the member. I'll just table that for the member's information.

[1:00]

Section 27 approved.

On section 28.

Hon. M. Sihota: I move the amendment standing in my name on the order paper.

[SECTION 28, in the proposed subsection (1) (b) by deleting "to inform the proponent and the project committee, within the same prescribed period as that prescribed for the purpose of section 24, that the approval applied for under specified enactment" and substituting "to inform the proponent and the project committee, within the same prescribed period as that prescribed for the purpose of section 29 (2), that, subject to any order that may be made under section 34 (2), the approval applied for under the specified enactment".]

The amendment is a housekeeping amendment to correct a typographical error. Additionally, it adds the phrase "subject to any order that may be made under section 34(2)," which clarifies that the possibility that a permit or licence under another enactment that may be issued at this stage is subject to any order of cabinet, and that a permit or licence be issued at a public hearing of the board.

Amendment approved.

Section 28 as amended approved.

On section 29.

G. Wilson: With the indulgence of the Chair and the committee, I have a question with respect to section 29(4), but it also refers to section 30. I don't know if it's possible 

[ Page 12876 ]

to deal with the two in conjunction. I'll take the ruling from the Chair as to whether we can deal with them together or not. It might expedite the debate if we just deal with the two together.

The Chair: I think you can proceed with your questions, but we'll still have to vote on them separately.

G. Wilson: I have a question with respect to 29(4): "A referral under this section may be accompanied by recommendations of the project committee relevant to a decision under section 30." I'm thinking specifically of the powers provided here which are in addition to the minister's power to approve, reject or refer, which are under section 30.

As the minister knows, I'm a strong advocate for the Bamberton project going to an environmental review. I would strongly argue that this section suggests that in that kind of instance, where a project has been underway, there may be an opportunity for materials and recommendations to be presented. That would empower the minister to be able to move such a project into an environmental review, recognizing that there has already been some form of public process in place and that documents might come forward. I wonder if the minister might want to comment as to whether or not those kinds of accompanying materials might be suitable with respect to recommendations prescribed under subsection (4). If so, then we might deal with the issue further in terms of the approval or rejection process in section 30.

Hon. M. Sihota: Thank you, hon. member, for your question. It would be hypothetical at this stage of the game for me to make any comment with regard to Bamberton. Obviously I would have to make those determinations if and when this legislation is passed. Presumably there are a number of points of entry should government decide to proceed with an environmental assessment project for Bamberton, but I don't think it's appropriate for me to comment on what the potential points of entry may be.

G. Wilson: I'm not asking the minister to necessarily make a commitment tonight; I'm asking whether the minister would agree that there might be an opportunity for a referral process to be accompanied by relevant materials that might come forward under such a review. The minister knows the position I've taken on Bamberton. We believe that Bamberton should be reviewed. I believe that both sides -- the proponents as well as the potential objectors -- would support an environmental review if two things were in place: (1) an acknowledgment of existing data that could be a formal part of that process; and (2) an expeditious movement toward that review, rather than a long and dragged-out process. My question is simply whether or not this would provide an opportunity for that kind of material to come forward to a project committee.

Hon. M. Sihota: Yes, it would, hon. member.

G. Wilson: I hope the minister might recognize the wisdom of moving Bamberton into the status of an environmental review project on the successful conclusion of this bill. I have two amendments to section 30, so perhaps I will let section 29 pass, unless other members have questions.

M. de Jong: My question relates to section 29(1). My observation at this point of the bill is that it goes to fairly great lengths to ensure that a process is in place that would leave proponents satisfied that they are completely aware of all materials before the executive director and the various committees, and that they have an opportunity to respond. In certain sections the bill requires responses to be given to proponents in writing.

The one area where that may start to break down in section 29(1) is where the executive director, as set out in the section, is obliged to "take into account the application, the project report and any comments received about them." The procedural problem I have here, which I'd like the minister to address, is that the executive director could potentially be receiving information without the knowledge of the proponent. The section might even contemplate the executive director embarking upon some sort of a fact-finding mission of his own. That may not necessarily be a bad thing, but it means that the proponent isn't going to be aware of everything that is before the executive director.

Hon. M. Sihota: Perhaps I should answer by saying that everything has to go on the registry within seven days, and therefore comments that would have been available would be known to the proponent.

Section 29 approved.

On section 30.

G. Wilson: I have two amendments to propose. With the willingness of the committee and the Chair, perhaps I could put them both forward at once. The first one is with respect to a new subsection, 30(1.1), and the second would be another new subsection, 30(3).

[SECTION 30 (1.1) Despite subsection (1), the ministers must refer the application to the Environmental Assessment Board for the public hearing required under section 52 if the reviewable project is likely to cause adverse environmental effects or if there is significant public concern about the reviewable project.]

[SECTION 30 (3) The minister and the responsible minister must refer the application to the Environmental Assessment Board pursuant to subsection 30(1)(b)(iii) where the reviewable project is prescribed by regulation under subsection (92)(m).]

I'm sure the minister is aware of the amendments and of the intention of the amendments. I've had an opportunity to discuss them with the minister's staff. There's no secret that this is exactly what I attempted to do earlier to advance amendments that had been put forward by the West Coast Environmental Law Association, which argued an effective case on this question. Perhaps the minister might outline very briefly for the record why he has not introduced these himself and whether or not he can support them now.

On the amendments.

Hon. M. Sihota: The hon. member correctly notes that these are issues which have been raised by the West Coast Environmental Law Association. I have a lot of respect for that organization. Having said that, I also have to tell you that this legislation was a product of extensive consultation with various parties. As a result of representations made in this House, we endeavoured to engage in 

[ Page 12877 ]

discussions with the public over the last few months leading up to the introduction of this legislation, to arrive at some balance in the legislation and to provide some flexibility -- perhaps greater flexibility than that organization would have preferred in certain sections, including this one. Therefore we chose to look at their representations with respect to a narrowly focused test. We decided there was a need for more flexibility on the minister's side, and hence made a decision to proceed with this amendment.

As I say, this package of legislation that's before members must be considered in its whole as opposed to its parts. And on the whole, it has secured the acceptance both of business and of organizations such as the West Coast Environmental Law Association. Consequently, I think it's acceptable to them as a package. I expect and encourage groups to continue to make their representations through hon. members in this chamber, but I think the answer is going to be generally the same. We've tried to strike a balance here, and we're happy with it. We need the flexibility in this case. We're maintaining it.

Amendments negatived.

M. de Jong: Two points. First, on 30(1)(a), it occurs to me that one of the documents the minister should be obliged to consider is the project report itself.

Hon. M. Sihota: That comes under the recommendations themselves.

M. de Jong: Just to clarify, then, the minister is saying the word "recommendations" encompasses the project report.

The second issue I'd like to hear the minister speak on relates to the difficulties one can conceive arising when the government is acting as the proponent of a project and the minister responsible also becomes a proponent of the project. As I recall, the minister dealt with that in second reading, but I'd like him to deal with it on the record, because I can see where this is going to give rise in the future to difficulties and allegations of conflicts.

Hon. M. Sihota: There are checks and balances in that kind of system. I guess people can expect that from time to time a "responsible minister" in the context of this legislation may be inclined to support a particular project they favour. But to check against that, we have the responsibility of the Minister of Environment, who obviously takes a broader overview and advocates broader environmental interests. I can see situations where certain ministers -- you're right -- may want to promote projects. But that happens right now. Ministers bring different points of view to the cabinet table, some more than others. Some have to make sure that they can shield those thrusts from an environmental point of view. That happens right now, and the purpose of cabinet is to allow for that kind of candid exchange.

Not surprisingly, on any issue that's before a cabinet -- let's say an issue that has an economic development aspect to it -- there will be opinions and biases expressed, for example, by the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and the Minister of Environment. So, much as those issues are dealt with and those tensions recognized in our parliamentary system, they are recognized here in this legislation, with the overriding responsibility going to the Minister of Environment to provide the requisite check from an environmental point of view.

[1:15]

M. de Jong: I think the difference here is where the minister speaks of an overriding check and balance. I don't think that's entirely correct. There's a mutual and equitable jurisdiction here conferred on two ministers. This legislation elevates the responsible minister to a status on a par with the Minister of Environment. So there is a difference.

Hon. M. Sihota: I think it's important to note that either public or private sector projects might be promoted by various ministers, and environmental checks have to be articulated by the minister. So it applies both to private and public sector projects. I'll give you an example. Take an IPP -- an independent power producer -- wanting to proceed with a major economic development project in the private sector. It's still true that a minister, such as the Minister of Employment and Investment in our context, may come to me and favour a particular project. Now that's not a public sector project; it's a private sector project. But the Minister of Employment and Investment may be inclined to be fairly aggressive with regard to independent power producers. The check in the system now is the Minister of Environment, and that would apply here again.

Sections 30 to 33 inclusive approved.

On section 34.

M. de Jong: I wonder whether I could question the minister regarding 34(3). The legislation includes the privative clause that appears there as the "final and binding" provision. Throughout this debate, the minister has alluded to the fact that proponents and other participants in the process do have recourse to the courts -- presumably, judicial review. The inclusion of that clause obviously limits in a very meaningful way whatever certiorari or judicial review applications might be brought to the courts. It is by no means the most limiting privative clause that the minister could have chosen to include in his legislation. I would like to know why he has chosen to proceed on the basis of a "final and binding" clause as opposed to something less restrictive or, alternatively, more restrictive.

Hon. M. Sihota: Considerations with regard to the privative clause were as follows. First, in terms of process, it was felt that if government had not adequately proceeded with its responsibilities, government should be in a position to have to explain itself. However, on the technical attributes of a project, that was a different matter; hence the wording of the clause. Third, I think it's important to note that this occurs after the public hearing; therefore the public is afforded the opportunity to comment.

M. de Jong: Dealing then with 34(5), I want to confirm my understanding of that section with the minister. If I read that literally, it suggests to me that it wouldn't be possible for a government department charged with enforcing the provisions of a specified enactment to appeal or otherwise delay the granting of a project approval certificate.

[ Page 12878 ]

Hon. M. Sihota: This section removes the appeal provision so that there will be no appeal of the permit that is issued under another piece of legislation; alternatively, there is the matter of the project certificate issued by the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council.

M. de Jong: Is the appeal contemplated there an appeal by a third party outside of government?

Hon. M. Sihota: Yes.

Section 34 approved.

On section 35.

R. Neufeld: Subsection (1) says: "A project approval certificate must specify a deadline, at least 3 years and not more than 5 years after the issue date of the certificate, by which the holder of the certificate must substantially start the project." Does the minister have some kind of definition for "substantially start," or is it up to the determination of the minister or the board what substantially start means?

Hon. M. Sihota: We are really talking about a dictionary definition. Nothing is specified in legislation. Obviously there is both an objective and a subjective component to it, and that would allow the ministry a degree of discretion. This type of language is not uncommon in statute, and there has been litigation over issues such as the definition of the word "substantially." I guess that would also guide anyone who makes a determination on an issue that is close to the line.

Sections 35 and 36 approved.

On section 37.

M. de Jong: The concern I have with section 37 is that it be used by cabinet, the minister or the executive director as justification for awarding partial approval for a project. I am not quarrelling with a process that would grant qualified approval and attach conditions. But if a proponent is coming to the ministry and embarking upon this process, I think they are entitled to know whether their project has been approved or not. The fact that this section may provide the jurisdiction to halt the project at some subsequent stage causes me some concern. Can the minister explain the rationale behind the manner in which this section is worded?

Hon. M. Sihota: In some ways it's the inverse of what the hon. member was referring to. This allows us to review the project as a whole. Someone may come to us with a 20-year project and they would, I think, legitimately be in a position to argue that as far as the 20-year project was concerned, the section that deals with three and five years would frustrate their project and allow for another go-round environmental assessment. Hence the need for this kind of provision, which allows us to examine the project in its entirety -- let's say the 20-year time period -- then allow for specified dates for it to be implemented, so as to avoid the wrinkle that could be caused by the three- to five-year provision.

Section 37 approved.

On section 38.

M. de Jong: My concern with section 38(2) is somewhat similar, and it centres around the last couple of lines: "...after completion of its construction, to the subsequent operation...." It seems to denote some sort of lingering jurisdiction that I don't think fits with the purpose of the act. It seems to suggest a jurisdiction that would allow for continuous intrusion, and there are other provisions of the act that allow for monitoring of a project or of an activity. This seems to be saying that the ministry will be permitted to intrude at any time it sees fit in the future. I don't think that's the purpose of an act that is designed to approve or disapprove of a project.

Hon. M. Sihota: The objective is to have a front-end review, commensurate with my comments on the previous section. Once that is complete, conditions will be attached throughout the life cycle of the project to prevent against a second round of review, but also to make sure that the conditions we articulated are attached to the project during its full life cycle. That would then allow us to monitor to determine whether people are complying with those conditions.

M. de Jong: I just want to be clear on that, and I think the minister has been candid. With this piece of legislation we're not just talking about an approval process but a lifelong monitoring of an activity or a project. The minister has made that clear. It arises out of this section, where it doesn't necessarily arise in the preamble, for example. I'm hearing that this is a monitoring of the life of the project.

Hon. M. Sihota: Yes, that's true.

Sections 38 and 39 approved.

On section 40.

G. Wilson: This is an interesting section of this bill, with respect to review under other enactments. I wonder if the minister might give us a brief comment as to the history of bringing this into this act at this point, and in particular, whether this kind of section would deal with concerns we're hearing that problems may be associated with the cumulative effect of small projects being done -- projects that under a variety of other enactments ordinarily would not warrant being designated reviewable, but that because of their cumulative impact on the environment might need to be looked at in terms of process or approval. Could the minister tell us if that would fit this?

Hon. M. Sihota: The answer to the question is yes. Fish farms are an example.

G. Wilson: This is encouraging, because that clearly needs to be addressed, especially in the Broughton Archipelago area. Rather than have one particular farm assigned as a reviewable project, the overall approval process might be reviewed under this -- by virtue of having an ongoing kind of review, if you want, or a historical look at the manner by which these permits are granted and the approval process occurs. If that's the case, I assume that the inclusion of this section in the bill would mean that the process for review would have to undergo

[ Page 12879 ]

criteria similar to those called for in the balance of this bill.

[1:30]

Hon. M. Sihota: Yes, that's true.

M. de Jong: There is another issue arising out of this section. It seems clear that what the legislation will do is to grant the ministers the jurisdiction to elevate the executive director to quasi-superbureaucratic status. It will also grant the executive director an overriding jurisdiction that supersedes other legislation and statutes. Is that the intention? What's the rationale for this?

Hon. M. Sihota: That is not the intention. It is to allow this executive director to be an auditor -- I don't know if that's a superbureaucrat -- in order to review existing regulatory processes, measure them against the backdrop of this legislation and make comment.

Sections 40 to 43 inclusive approved.

On section 44.

C. Serwa: My question refers to section 44(a), where it says: "...make any revisions to the category assessment specifications." Would the minister advise me what criteria were used to set these threshold specifications?

Hon. M. Sihota: The answer to the question is the processes and matters referred in sections 41, 42 and 43.

C. Serwa: It's my understanding that the categories in the listing of proposed reviewable projects and their size thresholds, dated April 12, 1994, and the B.C. threshold levels are equal to or more stringent than federal or other provincial thresholds. My concern is what the basis was for arriving at those particular thresholds. Was it scientific? Are they legitimate standards?

Hon. M. Sihota: I know the hon. member quite well, and I know that he wasn't here for the earlier debate. That, unfortunately, impacts upon the discussion we're having now, so I will take a few minutes to explain.

The thresholds the hon. member refers to are thresholds established in regulation, which we debated when we discussed section 3. I know what your concern is, and I'm not going to argue that it is out of place to discuss them now. Out of courtesy, with the indulgence of the Chair, I want to point out that we've introduced a set of regulations we've worked with, in concert with the industry you're referring to, and we have made some judgments. Sometimes we've agreed with them, and sometimes we haven't. As the hon. member knows from his previous experience, that occurs.

The act is different from the regulations. The threshold questions you're asking about here pertain to the regulations, as opposed to this provision. This provision deals with category assessment, where we decided to take a whole industry area -- independent properties, for example, because I used that as an example earlier on -- and do a category assessment so as to expedite the hearings for individual applicants. Not every independent power producer, for example, would have to go through the process. We could do a category assessment, to the extent that there are generic items that are common to each of those projects.

Sections 44 to 46 inclusive approved.

On section 47.

M. de Jong: First of all, on section 47(2), I don't find it particularly illuminating or helpful to include words like "minor" when it comes time to interpret legislation like this, and proponents and third parties will not be greatly assisted by the use of that sort of terminology. Beyond that, though, the other question I have for the minister is: why have cabinet-level involvement at this stage? I think section 41 says it's the executive director who is granted responsibility for creating the category assessment. Why not leave it with him? What would prompt the minister to feel obliged to create an opening for cabinet to involve itself at this stage of the process?

Hon. M. Sihota: The answer to that lies in the fact that section 45 requires the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council to approve category assessments for use in the review of a specified category of projects. With that power being there in section 45, we are then obliged in section 47 to give the same power to cabinet to make those minor amendments.

Section 47 approved.

On section 48.

G. Wilson: Under section 48, we see the introduction of the Environmental Assessment Board. I note that under section 48(2) there is the question of the appointment of the regular members, and then there is the question of relevant expertise. I think we've certainly commented at length -- and possibly even ad nauseam -- on the whole question of what constitutes culture, heritage or health effects, but I note that you have both regular members and temporary members who might be brought on for specific expertise. I have two real questions on this. First, is it possible for a regular member of the board to act also as a temporary member on a specific project if that expertise is there? Can there be a joint relationship? The second question is: what powers is this board likely to have with respect to each of those issues -- social, cultural and heritage -- in the event that the provision of authority of that board is diminished by lack of expertise? Are they empowered then to be able to bring a temporary person in at any time during the process, given the fact that section 48(1) talks about term for appointments?

Hon. M. Sihota: The answer to your first question is yes. The answer to your second question is no, they can't bring in a temporary member if a hearing has commenced. However, they still have the ability to bring in witnesses to provide evidence.

R. Neufeld: I have a couple of questions. First, on subsection (1), the term is "of at least 3 years." In a lot of the legislation that we've seen in the House lately, there's been a set term, whether it's three years, five years, or whatever. Maybe the minister could explain why they would put in there for a term of at least three years. I noticed that section 50 deals with the same issue.

Second, in subsection (3) there is the power to "appoint temporary members, for the purpose of a matter or matters referred to the board, individuals who, in the opinion of the Lieutenant Governor in Council have relevant expertise or special knowledge." Are the

[ Page 12880 ]

members appointed to that board just to give their expertise, with no voting powers? There are three members of the board. If you had to appoint four others for some expertise, could they overrule the actual members of the board? Is that a possibility, or are they just there to give their expertise and knowledge?

Hon. M. Sihota: On the first point you raised, that is a decision of government in terms of the time period.

On the second point you raised, a panel is a panel. You may have four temporary members and three permanent members on a panel, and that panel is then seized of the matter that is before it. How they split on their voting could happen along the lines that you speak of. Of course, if it's done in a way that's consistent with the objectives of the legislation, there's nothing wrong with that.

R. Neufeld: I guess I have a little problem with that. We have a board of three members, who we expect are going to be knowledgable, and I'm sure the panel members who are appointed will be knowledgable, also. But there is the ability for cabinet to appoint four or five members to that board who may influence a decision one way or another. I'm not saying that that's fact, in that it's going to happen, but obviously this section allows that to happen. I'm not saying the minister would indulge in that; I'm saying that it could happen. That's what I'm worried about. So if we have the panel members just giving their expertise and knowledge, that's fine, because I think we should draw from other areas for expertise and knowledge. I have no problem with that. But if they can overrule the board when they're appointed by cabinet, it almost makes a farce of the board, in a way.

Hon. M. Sihota: I'll make a number of points. First of all, remember that they only make recommendations to cabinet, and then cabinet makes a determination to accept or reject.

Second, the B.C. Utilities Commission, an organization you're familiar with.... In legislation that was brought in by the previous government, that's the same kind of situation.

Third, to be candid about it at quarter to two in the morning, your concerns really come down to trust -- whether or not you have confidence in the minister and whether or not games would be played. I can understand where you're coming from. When I used to be in opposition I asked the same kinds of questions, but I've come to realize that most members who have the privilege of serving in cabinet recognize that there's more value in establishing a process that is fair, evenhanded and judicious than in one that's not. In the long run, if you don't take that course, it's going to be fraught with all sorts of interventions, peril and delay, which is not in anyone's interest.

R. Neufeld: I appreciate what the minister is saying, and I agree. So why open up an avenue for that to happen? We're not saying that the minister is going to do it, but that the ability is there. Under the Labour Relations Code, I believe there's an appeal mechanism with the full board where cases are complex. I can't imagine why we would appoint temporary members who could overrule the board. I think the minister is quite well aware that if the board only makes recommendations to cabinet, cabinet very likely is never going to overrule. If it does, it is going to have to have a pretty good reason.

[1:45]

Hon. M. Sihota: Not to belabour the point, it's not as if we have two different boards here; it's one board. It's not as if there is a permanent board and a temporary board and the temporary board can overrule the permanent one. Some members are permanent and some are temporary. They themselves constitute a board. We don't have two competing boards. It seems to me that if one were to take your arguments, they would speak in favour of a permanent board, as I understand it. Apart from losing specialty expertise, the other thing you gain is the cost of having a permanent board with permanent members you may not need. Surely there is an advantage to having this kind of provision, which allows you to reach into the community to access relevant experience.

R. Neufeld: I am not going to belabour it any further, either. A municipal council or regional district, for instance, may bring in experts to advise them in all kinds of manners, and they have all kinds of knowledge. But they certainly don't have the ability to vote in any of those decisions. The ultimate decision is left up to the council or the board.

Hon. M. Sihota: Here, the ultimate decision is left up to cabinet.

Section 48 approved.

On section 49.

C. Serwa: I was concerned about subsections 49(3)(b) and (c). In those two areas, the panel has the orders and powers of the board. In listening to the minister, the reason is that they are merely to question and recommend, and then the minister or cabinet will be making the decision. It really doesn't reflect on the whole board the fact that the panel is of equivalent authority to the board. Is that the reason it was not a critical issue?

Hon. M. Sihota: You are right that cabinet makes the ultimate decision. A panel or a board makes those recommendations.

Section 49 approved.

On section 50.

M. de Jong: The inclusion of this section suggests that the minister has something in mind. How much are these people going to be paid? Is it going to be on a per diem basis? What are the ministry's thoughts on remuneration?

Hon. M. Sihota: To be honest with the hon. member, we have not canvassed that issue at all. We don't have anything in mind. I suppose some members will be on a per diem basis and some will be on a salaried basis, but there has been no consideration and we have no names in mind.

Section 50 approved.

On section 51.

R. Neufeld: Subsection 51(1)(b)(i) says: "...to conduct a review of a matter referred by the minister under section 88...." Section 88 really just says: "...refer to the board any matter that is not the subject of an application for a project

[ Page 12881 ]

approval certificate...." Maybe the minister can explain the reasoning or the need for that section. It opens it up so that anything the minister deems reviewable or thinks should be reviewable, whether it is by size or definition, can all of a sudden become reviewable. Maybe I just don't understand the section.

Hon. M. Sihota: When we debate section 88, we may want to review this issue. Remember the wording in section 88, which says: "...that the minister considers relevant to the process of assessing reviewable projects...." It may be valuable to discuss it at section 88 instead of now.

M. de Jong: At this stage it appears that the executive director no longer has a role. Am I correct in making that assumption?

Hon. M. Sihota: Yes.

M. de Jong: Section 51(1)(c) is somewhat different from the previous section, which incorporates section 88. It suggests that there can be a direct referral to the public hearing process via a different piece of legislation. If I'm reading that correctly, it suggests a fairly dramatic short-circuiting of all the previous processes that lead up to the public hearing stage as set out in this act. Am I reading that correctly, and why is that there?

Hon. M. Sihota: No, section 51 will deal with matters that would not otherwise be covered by environmental assessment but where cabinet may want to use the board as a hearing body.

M. de Jong: The section specifically indicates that such referrals would be pursuant to the "authority of another Act." Those words appears there, and I presume they appear there for a reason.

Hon. M. Sihota: It would allow a review of the agricultural land reserve applications referred to the board and the provisions of the Cabinet Appeals Abolition Act. That's an example of how it could work.

M. de Jong: I just want to be clear, though, that such referrals wouldn't be proceeding through the earlier two stages that we discussed; they'd be going directly to the public hearing stage.

Hon. M. Sihota: That is correct. They'd be going to the review stage.

M. de Jong: The last question I have on the section relates somewhat to the issues that were raised in the section previously. The mandate of the board is to report to the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council, to the cabinet. I may have missed this, I must confess. What assurance do we have that the full recommendations will be made public and will be in the hands of the proponent in fairly short order?

Hon. M. Sihota: There's a requirement in the legislation to file them on the registry within 30 days.

G. Wilson: I had a whole series of question, actually, under sections 53 and 56, but I think it can be answered under section 51(1)(a). Why would the minister not mandate this board to actually rule? Why simply make a recommendation on it? You've got this board established, and we understand how it's constituted. It seems to me that it would be better if the board could make a ruling through the process of conducting public hearings. The government has opted to go to a recommendation process. It would strike me that the public might have more confidence if the public saw a reasonably independent body making a ruling as opposed to simply making recommendations, which the minister can then either accept or reject or, for that matter, may not even be able to get through cabinet.

Hon. M. Sihota: The buck has to stop somewhere. We can get into a lot of discussion about this, but I would argue that it ought to stop with elected officials. At the end of the day, we're more directly accountable to the electorate for decisions that are made than are the officials working with this legislation. I'll use an example that you're familiar with. If there were ever to be another Kemano, if I can use that broad example, from a public policy point of view it seems to me that it's far better that the determination be made at the political level and that the accountability be at that level.

G. Wilson: I would agree, and that's a good example. Maybe I can counter with an example, and we'll just leave it there. In the case of Bamberton, there is the perception of an agenda at work, whether that is true or not. If there were an independent board making rulings on the basis of public hearings and so on, one might argue that there would be greater public confidence in that process. I don't take issue with the fact that eventually the buck has to stop with the minister, but the minister is responsible for the appointment of the board. To that extent, the board presumably has the confidence of the minister and the government.

I recognize that there is also a requirement to try to harmonize -- I hate that word, but that's the word it is -- provincial legislation with that of the federal government. Is that a motivating factor? Does the minister see some relevance to mandating greater powers to boards, given that those boards do have some kind of accountability that might be built into this legislation if it isn't there already?

Hon. M. Sihota: This is a very transparent process. The public can see what is going on in the inner workings of government and the decisions with regard to this legislative process. To use your example of Bamberton, there is a very high level of disclosure, to the point that the recommendations, as I said a few minutes ago, are on the registry that goes to cabinet. Therefore people can make assumptions about some of the determinations that occurred.

If the process were less transparent, you may have a cogent argument in terms of independent authorities making those determinations. In this case, given the openness and transparency of the legislation, those arguments don't hold as tightly as they otherwise would.

G. Wilson: This is my last point; I don't want to get into a long and protracted debate. On reflection, I'm not sure that the minister isn't actually correct. I think there is a need for public confidence to exist in the board, however it is constituted.

With respect to the 30-day reporting, it's my understanding, although it's not specifically in the act, that

[ Page 12882 ]

while there's a 30-day reporting period, the cabinet doesn't in fact have to report for 45 days. So it's possible that that report may be public prior to cabinet's decision being made. Is that correct?

Hon. M. Sihota: That is correct.

C. Serwa: First of all, I was very pleased with the minister's comments that the buck has to stop somewhere, and I believe cabinet is the appropriate place for that. I wish he could impress that upon his cabinet colleagues. Appeal processes stopping at cabinet is one area that would give the public a great deal more confidence. I liked that particular statement.

Back to section 51, I read into this section that the minister can have the board investigate and review any project that he decides, even if it is of a size not normally examined, as outlined in the regulations. Is that correct?

Hon. M. Sihota: No, that's not correct.

Sections 51 to 53 inclusive approved.

On section 54.

R. Neufeld: Section 54(3) says: "The board may receive or accept evidence whether or not it would be admissible in a court of law." The minister being a lawyer, maybe he could explain to me.... I have an amendment that I'd like to propose, but I should have the minister explain that section to me first.

[2:00]

Hon. M. Sihota: Hon. member, I listened to your question. I haven't seen your amendment. I just want to say this is a standard provision that's found in legislation. It's there to make sure we don't get bogged down by technical arguments on the nature of the evidence and on whether it can or cannot be submitted. We've tried to broaden it. That's the reason.

R. Neufeld: Section 54(4) says: "...if a member is absent or unable to attend a hearing, the member is disqualified from continuing to participate in the hearing, and the member or members remaining present may exercise and perform all the jurisdiction, powers and duties of the board." There could be a situation, I guess, where a member may not be able to make one of the hearings. I find it rather cut-and-dried. If you all of a sudden miss a plane or something, you can't participate any more. I can't imagine why you'd want to be that severe.

Hon. M. Sihota: The panel just wouldn't sit that day. That's how you would solve that problem.

Hon. members, given the hour and the fact that staff in Hansard have been working all day long -- and it seems to me I wouldn't want to further the agony any more -- may I suggest to hon. members that there may be some value.... Given where we are in this bill, dealing more with the technical administrative aspects as opposed to the broad policy provisions of the bill, if it would please hon. members, before we resume debate on this matter, I'd be happy to make staff available so some of those technical matters can be clarified, expediting the process of discussion in the House. I'd be happy to talk to hon. members about that outside.

With that said, I move the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; the Speaker in the chair.

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

Motion Without Notice

SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO APPOINT A CHILD, YOUTH AND FAMILY ADVOCATE

Hon. G. Clark: I'm going to try one last piece of business, with the House's indulgence, by leave: to move a motion to appoint a select standing committee to appoint the child advocate. The motion is:

That a Special Committee be appointed to select and unanimously recommend to the Legislative Assembly, the appointment of a Child, Youth and Family Advocate, pursuant to section 3 of the Child, Youth and Family Advocacy Act, and that the Special Committee so appointed shall have the powers of a Select Standing Committee and is also empowered: (a) to appoint of their number, one or more subcommittees and to refer to such subcommittees any of the matters referred to the Committee; (b) to sit during any period in which the House is adjourned, during recess after prorogation until the next following Session and during any sitting of the House; (c) to adjourn from place to place as may be convenient; (d) to retain such personnel as required to assist the Committee;

and shall report to the House as soon as possible, or following any adjournment, or at the next following Session, as the case may be; to deposit the original of its reports with the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly during a period of adjournment and upon resumption of the sittings of the House, the Chair shall present all reports to the Legislative Assembly.

The said Special Committee is to be composed of Mr. Beattie (Convenor), Ms. Pullinger, Ms. Hammell; Messrs. Krog, Farnworth, Streifel, Randall, M. de Jong, Anderson, Neufeld and Ms. Stephens.

Leave granted.

Motion approved.

Hon. G. Clark: Not quite as much progress as we'd hoped, but hopefully we'll do better tomorrow.

Hon. G. Clark moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 2:05 a.m.

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