1995 Legislative Session: 4th Session, 35th Parliament
HANSARD
The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.
(Hansard)
THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1995
Morning Sitting
Volume 18, Number 16
[ Page 13265 ]
The House met at 10:04 a.m.
Clerk of the House: Pursuant to standing orders, the House is advised of the unavoidable absence of the Speaker.
[D. Lovick in the chair.]
Prayers.
Hon. D. Miller: I call continuation of the budget debate.
(continued)
H. Giesbrecht: It's a pleasure to continue with my comments from yesterday. As I was saying, there's the notion over there across the floor that if we take care of the future, then somehow the needs of the present will take care of themselves. There's this notion that the present and the future are totally separate; they are not. For 17 years prior to 1992 the present was taken care of without any thought for the future. In fact, it wasn't even taken care of very well.
To give you an example, in the 17 years prior to 1992 we had neglect in terms of the province's finances, and we had neglect in the forest industry -- there was a war in the woods, we had valley-by-valley conflicts and there was a pending timber shortage -- which everybody but the politicians in government in this House could recognize. We had neglect in education, which resulted in the Sullivan commission. It said that there were changes being demanded by the public. We had neglect in health care. There were runaway costs, and the Seaton commission told us that those runaway costs were not sustainable. We had neglect and runaway costs in Pharmacare. The mining industry had steadily been declining in the last decade prior to 1992, and we had neglect on the issue of land claims. And for 17 years, there was little done.
So they weren't even looking after the present very well, but certainly that affected the future. They left a legacy of neglect and didn't even keep their budgets balanced. Now we're being asked to forget the present, forget the needs of the present, not spend any money and not borrow to build schools, hospitals and roads. The two are not separate. You plan for the future by addressing the essential needs of the present.
The Liberal-Reform vision is the same trickle-down economics that have prevailed in this country since Confederation and have given us more than a $500 billion Canadian debt. When this government took office at the end of 1991, the budget deficit was $2.4 billion, and they had a provincial debt of $20 billion.
Interjection.
H. Giesbrecht: "How much?" you ask. Let me repeat it: $20 billion. You are repeatedly being told by the members of the opposition in this House that the previous government paid cash for everything they built; they never borrowed. So one might justifiably ask: where did this $20 billion debt come from?
They didn't even address the needs that were there. One place we know that none of that $20 billion went was in the building of schools. Another place we know it didn't go was in housing. Last year I took part in a sod-turning ceremony in Terrace for a 32-unit family housing complex built by CMHC and the province of B.C., and they recently received approval for another 18 units. Not one person came up to me and said: "You shouldn't borrow money to build this." It's interesting to note -- and there were people at the ceremony who reminded me -- that the last housing complex built in Terrace, which was built for seniors, was built 20 years ago by the previous New Democratic Party administration.
Maybe some of the speakers from the other side who will follow can tell this House and the people of B.C. where that $20 billion actually went, since they insist that borrowing for much-needed projects is something new. They want us to believe that they paid cash up front all the time and did not borrow.
The budget deficit, which reached a high of $2.4 billion under the Socreds, is eliminated this year. There's even going to be a moderate surplus. More important, while getting rid of it, we've done it with a population increase year after year. We've done it with health, education and vital services funding increased year after year, and no other province has been able to do that. We have addressed capital projects -- addressing the years of neglect, creating jobs and protecting our economy. We've made investments in natural resources, people and infrastructure, and in that way created jobs.
How do we know it's working? We have the second-lowest tax rate in the country, the best job creation record of any province: 67,000 new jobs in 1994 -- one in four jobs created in Canada -- and another 43,000 jobs this year, for 110,000 new jobs in just the last two years.
Of course, there are limits to spending. In the last four budgets of this government, starting with the full fiscal year of operation, 1992-93, the increases were half a percent, negative 0.8 percent, negative 0.9 percent and negative 2.3 percent this year if you count inflation and population increases. In the year following the former administration -- and remember who they were -- the real per capita spending was reduced by one-eighth. So theirs was eight times higher the year before. We now have a budget with a surplus, and we have had none of the devastation to medicare, education and essential services which other provinces have had. You only need to go a little further east to Alberta to understand that.
If you listen to the opposition, there is now a kind of trendy preoccupation with the debt. It used to be the deficit, but now it's the debt because the deficit is taken care of, so we need something else. They see debt every time there is a school, a hospital or an interchange built. Now borrowing to build assets which will last for the next 50 years is bad. "If you can't pay cash up front, then people's needs should not be addressed; they should be put on hold." Now, according to the opposition, you shouldn't build schools even if they are needed because it increases debt. Of course, it always has, but.... We shouldn't invest in people, jobs and medicare because they are so worried about any debt, even if it is manageable. It's fashionable; it's so Preston Manning.
From time to time, people go to the bank to borrow money for an essential asset. The bank doesn't say that all debt is bad. They don't even tell you to pay cash if you have it sometimes. They encourage you to take out a mortgage, for example. The bank works out your debt equity ratio, looks at your income and expenditures, and bases a decision on that. Yes, there are limits. If you exceed certain thresholds, you don't get the money; they won't loan it to you. We know that and the banks know it, but the opposition doesn't seem to.
[ Page 13266 ]
The question, of course, is whether the government has exceeded those acceptable limits. Anyone in business will tell you that you have to borrow money to make money. Since governments are not operating for profit but for the delivery of services, sometimes borrowing to provide capital assets and spreading out the repayment over the life of the asset is acceptable. It's been that way for years, but suddenly the rules have changed.
Eight and a half cents of every budget dollar in B.C. goes to pay off the debt. The question, of course, is: is that too much? In Alberta, the hotbed of socialist spenders, that figure is 11 cents. For Canada, run by a succession of Liberal and Tory governments for more than 100 years, that figure is 24 cents. The notion of what is an acceptable level of debt so intrigued me that I did a little research. The comparable 1994 figures for the two major communities in my constituency were 7.7 cents and 7.5 cents of every budget dollar. That's probably similar to many of the municipalities across B.C. So is the cost of debt too high?
[10:15]
Don't believe the opposition. Don't even believe me, because there are experts you can rely on, and here's what they have to say. Goldman Sachs says: "British Columbia's high double-A ratings and stable outlook are based on the province's improving fiscal profile, moderate debt burden and strong economic performance..." -- moderate debt burden.
There's another one here, from Nesbitt Burns:
"B.C. is in the best financial shape of all the provinces.... Besides achieving lower deficits, the province has taken action to keep debt growth on a downward path...debt service absorbs just 5 cents of every spending dollar. By way of comparison, every other province devotes more than 10 percent of total expenditures towards servicing the debt."
I could go on; I have more quotes, but obviously.... I remember a couple of days ago the member for Saanich North and the Islands was quoting his sources as a "whole lot of headlines from the three provincial dailies," which was kind of an interesting source of information. These are the experts, and they're not partisan -- they may even vote Liberal or Reform. They provide information that is useful because they're in the business, but it just isn't what the opposition wants the public to hear.
The member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast used the analogy of the car, and I'd like to expand a little on that. The car represents the economy of B.C., and the occupants, of course, are British Columbians. The car wasn't running very well in 1991. It was clogged up with a $2.4 billion deficit and the neglect of most of its essential components. Those who were in charge of maintenance lacked the vision for the future, and they just let things go on and get worse. Everybody agrees that the car should be fixed; we just don't agree on how. The government has decided that it should be repaired so that the engine can serve the occupants, all British Columbians. The Liberal opposition says no to spending -- no gas, no repairs -- unless you can pay cash, and you can't borrow. In fact, they're suggesting that we sell off the four wheels so we can repair the engine. That will certainly help; that's their vision. The Reformers are saying basically the same thing, but with a new twist: they want to sell off the headlights as well, because I guess they're accustomed to driving in the dark. Not only that, they want to kick out half the passengers: aboriginal peoples, multicultural groups, people on income assistance, single mothers. That's so un-Canadian, so Republican.
This government supports fair wages; the opposition does not. They even want replacement workers to be allowed to go and take their jobs. This government supports investments in our natural resources, in people and in infrastructure; the opposition does not. This government supports investments which create jobs; the opposition does not. This government wants to protect medicare; the opposition wants to introduce private for-profit health care. The Liberals call it "outsourcing to private sector providers," according to the Liberal Health critic. That sounds pretty American to me.
What the opposition is trying to hide from the public is that B.C. has the strongest economy, the best credit rating, the lowest per capita debt and the second-lowest tax rate of any province. In this budget we've been able to increase health care investment by 4 percent, increase post-secondary funding by 3.8 percent, create another 4,800 spaces for students, put in $106 million for apprenticeship training, for retraining workers and for getting people on income assistance off welfare and into the workforce, and increase allocations to schools by 4.4 percent. What other province has increased spending in those essential services? Name one, hon. members.
The opposition says they want to cut debt and cut taxes. Now, that's a catchy little phrase, but what does it mean? Let's examine that comment more closely. We know that to cut debt, you have to stop investing in resources. You obviously can't borrow. You have to stop investing in people. Of course, you could always cut fair wages, so you can't pay fair wages. You have to stop investing in infrastructure. Basically, you have to stop investing in jobs. It also means that you have to pay off the debt in some way. With what? They also want to cut taxes, so where's it going to come from?
It means only one of two things: either they'll have to cut health, education and essential services -- and that's where most of the tax dollar goes -- or they'll have to sell off and privatize Crown corporations. After the assets have been sold off -- that is, after you've sold the house to pay off the mortgage -- then what? Then you're at the mercy of the people on Howe Street. All this hysteria about B.C.'s debt is just that: hysteria to take the focus away from a very good budget.
We have a balanced budget with a modest surplus, and a comprehensive debt management plan that will cap debt costs at 8.5 percent of every dollar of government revenue -- the lowest in Canada. The plan will ensure that taxpayer-supported debt will be cut in half over the next 20 years. Taxes are still frozen for two more years, and we have the second-lowest taxes in the country. We're cutting waste, cutting government, advertising and consulting budgets. We are streamlining Pharmacare administration and cutting school district administration costs. I could go on, but the important thing is that we are keeping affordable investments going: investments in resources and infrastructure, investments in people and jobs. That way, we are going to be able to protect essential services in medicare, and that's how you establish a vision for the future.
This is a good budget for B.C. All the ranting by the opposition and all the attempts to detract from the good stuff in it is not going to work. It is just so much excess of expenditure of political rhetoric over the income of facts and truth.
Hon. A. Edwards: It's my pleasure this morning to come to address the budget. I thought I'd begin my remarks by talking about something nobody else has talked about, and as anybody who has listened to this debate knows, that's rather difficult. I had to go a little further afield, and I decided that I would talk about my son Isaac. He is much like your son or your son. When Isaac turned 16, he got a driver's licence, and then of course he could drive the family car. He was always off in the family car, and various things, so that by the time Isaac was 18 and thought he might like his own car, we all
[ Page 13267 ]
thought that was a good idea. It just was the right time for him to get his car. He had gone out and got himself a part-time job, and he had saved some money. He decided he had found a car that he could afford, and he went to the bank to get the loan that young 18-year-olds get when they're going to buy a car -- when they're finally old enough to buy the car so they aren't a load on the family vehicle anymore.
Well, the usual things happened. Somebody at the bank called Isaac into a back room and grilled him and asked him every personal question in the book and finally decided that everything was airtight and sealed up and perfectly safe. They had, in fact, already put a pair of suspenders on with their belts to hold their pants up, at which time they then said: "And your mother will have to co-sign the loan." Therefore they wanted those pants held up with an extra piece of rope, which is really the way banks operate.
It wasn't hard, really, in the scheme of things, for Isaac to get that loan, because the minute he went into the bank and said he wanted a loan for a car, everybody knew what he wanted. They said: "Go over there. That's the department that deals with car loans." I mean, it's not unusual. It's common practice for people to borrow money to pay for a car, because it's an item that costs more than most people can put out in cash at the moment. Everybody does it as long as they can afford it. But it's not a moral question as to whether he goes and borrows money; it's a question of whether he can afford to borrow or not. That is tested very clearly, and Isaac's moral character and certainly his ability to pay was tested extensively.
When Isaac turns 28, he's probably going to want a mortgage, and the same thing is going to happen. He is going to go to the bank, and he's going to be tested. He's going to want to buy something that he doesn't have cash in hand to buy, but over time, if he borrows the money, he can pay it back -- and if he can afford it, he will get the money. The question is going to be: does he have a good credit rating?
I can assure you that my son Isaac is not the government of British Columbia. As some of you are looking, I thought perhaps you might have thought that. No, my son Isaac is not the government of British Columbia, but there are some similarities between Isaac and the government of B.C.
The question about debt for the government of British Columbia is whether British Columbia can afford the debt. Whether British Columbia should borrow money or not is not a moral question in itself; it is not an ethical or practical question. The question is whether the government can afford to repay debt for items that the government should not pay out all at the same time.
When Isaac goes into business.... I'm going to make an assumption, and I know there are people here who would challenge me if I were wrong. But there are accountants who might tell Isaac that if he goes into business, he should use his credit, and if he can afford to borrow money, it would probably be foolish not to borrow some money to put into his business to bring back a return that he needs over time.
So the issue again is not the issue of whether to borrow money. Common sense is the issue. The issue is whether the debt is affordable. I'd like to indicate that with the government of British Columbia, as with Isaac, it is a question of whether the government can afford its debt.
By any measure you can name, the banks that we deal with -- the banks that want to have belts, suspenders and an extra piece of rope around to hold their pants up -- are very confident in British Columbia, in British Columbia's economy and in the way that the Minister of Finance is running the finances of this province. Bob Vincent, the president of the CGA Association, says: "We are pleased with the budget's emphasis on both deficit and debt...it is refreshing to...have a provincial Finance minister present a management plan which contemplates a substantial reduction in B.C.'s accumulated debt." RBC Dominion Securities said: "The province's standing as a premiere credit among Canadian borrowers is solidified further following presentation of the budget." I would love to go on, but I know that my friends and cohorts have quoted a few of the quotations. The quotations are so good that it would really be refreshing to hear them all, but I know that I want to limit my comments so that they don't take too much time.
The question, then, is that.... I would say that this budget is an excellent budget, because this budget lays out a plan to deal with debt. It says that we have debt; it admits to having debt. It says we are borrowing for things that will bring back a return in the future. They are investments that we need to make.
Having made that comparison between my son Isaac and the government of British Columbia, I would like to go back to another thing that Isaac tells me about my job here as an MLA and as a minister, and my support for the budget that was presented just days ago. Isaac needs a job. Isaac is a British Columbian, like the rest of us, and he needs to work; he needs to have a return for his work so that he can be a contributing member of society. How does the government fit into that? Definitely, government has a part to play in that game, if you like -- that activity. There are certain things that the government has to put in place and see that they remain in place if Isaac is going to have a job.
[10:30]
We have to be sure that our natural resources in British Columbia are healthy and sustainable, that we are not going to run out of our natural resources and throw our economy into a kind of downspin out of which we cannot recover. We have to be sure that we have an infrastructure that ensures Isaac, his family, his relatives and his community that he has the services that every other British Columbian wants as well: the services of health care, education, roads and courthouses, if you like -- all the infrastructure of society that needs to be in place to make sure that community works in this province. As well as that, he needs to have a good education. In this day and age we cannot put people out into our world and expect them to survive in a global trading market without appropriate education and training or without the resources to retrain, re-educate and continue to learn throughout their lifetime. That is why the B.C. budget commits itself to investment in our natural resources, our infrastructure, our people -- our Isaacs, if you like; our sons and daughters -- and our future.
This government recognizes that we need a healthy private sector, and that many of the jobs and much of the economic activity in this province will be created by the private sector. What we see is cooperation between government and the private sector. For years there has been a lot of emphasis on how competition makes people sharp and makes them succeed. But there is another side to success, and that is cooperation and the ability to use the benefits of working with other people and to recognize that if people cooperate and work in partnership, the essence of what they do will be greater than what the two entities put into it.
As for our economy and working with the private sector, British Columbia certainly has an excellent record. Capital investment in 1994 was up 14.4 percent, and if you take out the capital investment that was nonresidential in 1994, it was 23.5 percent. That's a single year's increase. It's a huge increase, and it indicates a huge, healthy growth on the part of
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our business sector. British Columbians altogether created 66,000 jobs in 1994. That's the highest job creation in the country. According to our budget documents, the capital investment reflects increased corporate profits. It reflects the forest sector investing in new technologies, and it reflects a strong market for office space. All those are very clear, and they are only partly connected to some of the things that I see in my ministry.
In the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources we have seen the natural gas industry.... I know that the member for Peace River North is interested in this, and that even when he is chattering, he is interested in knowing that the natural gas industry continues to proceed apace; it's growing.
The investment in drilling and production has been significant over the last several years, and it has made the area from which he hails one of the healthiest in the province, certainly as far as mining is concerned.
An Hon. Member: It's on a downhill slide now.
Hon. A. Edwards: I hear a bit of gas from the northeast, I think.
Mining is beginning to show the results of some care and attention and also, of course, from the results coming out of the valley of the cycle, that the industry survives. Mining has increased significantly. We reopened four copper mines over the last year. The first new mine in western Canada in six years opened in British Columbia in January: Eskay Creek. We have announced the beginning of another mine that is expected to open over the summer: Quesnel River. There are other mines in the process, and we continue to have a very -- shall I say? -- rosy-looking future with the price of commodities up significantly over what they were previously.
In electricity we have independent power producers now in a position to have the kind of support and structure they need in order to develop in British Columbia. Now we are working at developing a market and making sure that they have access to a market to do that. All of these things mean jobs for British Columbians, jobs for people like Isaac and for anyone in this province who needs to participate in the economic activity and have a continuing job for himself or herself and be sure that they are going to have a job over time.
In my own constituency we have completed a land use plan through a CORE process that has brought us experiences from A to Z and has brought us together with a plan that will create far more jobs than we currently have in the region. We have Forest Renewal B.C. working with their regional office in Cranbrook. Forest Renewal B.C. is, of course, one of the classic partnerships between the private and the public sectors. We have the Columbia Basin Trust, which is another community event, another regional process that is going to depend on regional direction and economic activity in our area. We have our forest and coal industries looking at much better times. We have the community skills centre. We have a planer mill program that is unique in the country. We have a new rehabilitation centre and a CT scan in Cranbrook to make sure that we have the kind of preventive care and preventive approach we need in our health care in order to assure that medicare can proceed. We have activity in tourism, in arts and heritage and in electronic technology.
The mood is high. I think that it will continue to be high as long as we have the kind of budgeting and the kind of optimistic outlook that this budget has presented to British Columbians. I would say that partnerships between business and government really do equal jobs for Isaac and his brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles, sons, daughters and even his mother. I believe that all of this depends on balance. I believe that the balance is there: the balance is in the budget; the balance is in the province. I believe that that is where the essence of our success is.
Hon. J. Cashore: I seek leave to make an introduction.
Leave granted.
Hon. J. Cashore: I'm delighted and honoured that in the House this morning, in the gallery, are Joe and Mildred Krejci, of Mount Prospect, Illinois. They are the parents of my daughter-in-law Donna, and they are also grandparents of my grandson Walter, who's using my desk at this very moment. I'm also very pleased to welcome my son Ben, who is also in the gallery. I hope the House will make them welcome in visiting us today.
It's interesting that in following the theme of the Minister of Energy and Mines' comments with regard to Isaac, I would also recognize that my grandson Walter, who's here in the precincts at this present time, is also very much symbolic of what this budget is about. So I'm very, very pleased to stand in the House and support our budget. It's very clear that this kind of budget puts in place that which enables us to protect jobs and to have good jobs for British Columbians and for those people who are coming into our province, because it is such a popular place to come to.
It also puts us in a position to be able to protect medicare. We know that medicare is indeed vulnerable in our society at this time, given the approach of the federal government and some of the vested interests of those in British Columbia who would see that very good medicare system, which we treasure so much and which ensures equality of access.... The budget very clearly is the kind of budget that enables us to continue to plan effectively for British Columbia, for jobs in British Columbia, and to preserve that which is so precious to all British Columbians: medicare. It's interesting, in looking at this budget, to recognize that the Minister of Finance has found the balance between being able to eliminate the deficit in a very fiscally responsible way, and start paying down debt, while managing to maintain the compassion that is the symbol of a society and a civilization that we very much want kept in place.
Therefore, it's interesting that the area I represent along with my colleagues the MLA for Port Moody-Burnaby Mountain and the MLA for Port Coquitlam, which had been seriously neglected during the previous seventeen years.... During the term of this government, that region of the province has started to catch up with some of the realities. Previous governments had allowed rampant growth to take place. As populations expanded towards the eastern suburbs and started moving up the slopes of the mountains, all of that happened with no planning, no infrastructure, no coming to grips with the need for a transit system, no dealing with the fact that we need to be able to move commuters from this location to their work in downtown Vancouver and other locations, and no planning for the fact that as these people were coming in and adding wealth to our province, there would be a need for those people to be able to have access to services, schools, health care facilities and the like. Because of not having representatives that could represent the area well, that area was simply neglected.
It has been a delight to work with the two MLAs I mentioned, the MLAs for Port Moody-Burnaby Mountain and for Port Coquitlam, because by working together, three MLAs have been able to take a message from their constitu-
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ents to government, and government has responded in a responsible way. I would just point out that recently, during an announcement that was made in Coquitlam, our mayor, Lou Sekora, stated that in his 22 years in public life, more has happened for that region in three years than had happened in total in the years prior to that time. He was recounting how Coquitlam recently celebrated a centennial. He said it just wasn't good enough, when he got letters from the provincial and federal governments at that time, that those letters were saying congratulations on a hundred years and to have a good time. Mayor Sekora said: "I thought there would at least be a cheque in the letters, something to recognize that our area had been neglected." He said it wasn't until this government came into place that that region started to be recognized.
That was reiterated in a recent announcement by Councillor David White, who is not a member of the NDP. He's a person who, as far as I know, doesn't belong to any political party. Recently, when we announced a wildlife management area at the mouth of the Coquitlam River and acknowledged the work the community had done with the MLAs, with government and with the good people of the council in Coquitlam, along with the people who are concerned about the Colony Farm area and about the wildlife management needs, he said: "These three MLAs sitting here have produced more for this region than anybody else has in the previous 17 years."
[10:45]
[A. Warnke in the chair.]
I think having that kind of validation from people in the community who have no political axe to grind is an indication that this government has been following through on the kinds of commitments we made when we were seeking a mandate to represent the area.
This budget is a made-in-B.C. budget. The province leads the country in many ways. We have Canada's number one economy and the highest credit rating. We have health care that is second to none. We have the world's leading environmental protection, combined with unprecedented investments in forest and resource communities. It is truly a remarkable record. This budget protects universal health care and makes affordable investments in education, training, transportation and local infrastructure to support the economy and to create jobs.
Interjection.
Hon. J. Cashore: And to create jobs, hon. member. The hon. member doesn't seem to realize that there is a kind of investment that can be made which stimulates and enables the development of those jobs that we need in all parts of the province -- and, I would assume, are needed in his part of the province as well.
The budget ensures that B.C. will continue to have the lowest debt level and the highest credit rating of all provinces. The budget provides fiscal stability and supports a positive climate for private investment. It ensures that B.C. will continue to have one of the strongest job-creating economies in North America. The international investment community and major bond-rating agencies are virtually unanimous in praising British Columbia's financial performance. Our government recognizes that B.C.'s fiscal and economic achievements are due to the hard work of individual British Columbians, and our government has listened to those British Columbians in developing that budget.
Budget '95 moves us ahead after three years of catching up because of the mismanagement of previous governments. When we took office, we inherited runaway spending, with government growth averaging 12 percent a year. We met that challenge and cut spending growth in each budget. This year it will be under 3 percent, and once you take into account population growth and inflation, that works out to a real cut in per-person spending of 2.3 percent.
Some people may ask: why not cut further? Why not use the Alberta style? Why not use Ralph Klein's style of dealing with government spending? That represents one opinion on how government should operate in the modern global economy: cut public services, stop building infrastructure, lower social standards and cut wages in a race to compete with less developed economies for the bottom-end jobs.
That's not the British Columbia way. The British Columbia way is to recognize that ordinary working people and their families would have to pay the price for the Alberta approach. The other choice is to invest in our strengths in education and training, to upgrade our skills in new technology and infrastructure, and to increase our productivity and add value to what we produce. That way, we can compete with the advanced economies of Japan and Europe, and create good jobs. With this vision of building British Columbia for British Columbians, we believe that we are investing in the land and resources, and in the people and the economy, to ensure long-term prosperity and jobs.
I take great delight in supporting this budget, which is moving British Columbia in a direction that is going to enable the years ahead of us to be very significant and progressive. They'll be years in which there will be jobs for people who are coming into the province, jobs for the Isaacs and the Walters who are growing up and who desire a hopeful future. This is the kind of budget that has been put in place.
[D. Lovick in the chair.]
Recognizing the importance of ensuring that we have a good job-creating climate and the importance of protecting the future of medicare, and recognizing that this has to be handled very well, I think we have to recognize the plans that are afoot within the Liberal opposition in this Legislature. We only have to look at the comments of Dr. Gur Singh, the Liberal leader's star candidate, who would be appointed as Minister of Health. We need to recognize some of the things this candidate is saying very openly, for instance, on women doctors and their contribution to medicare. Dr. Singh says: "We've got more female doctors now, and they don't work as hard as the men...they put in about 66 percent of the hours that male physicians put in." That was stated in the Vancouver Sun on December 5, 1994, and it's a bit of an indicator of what you would find. Perish the thought that we'd ever see a Liberal government in this province.
He opposes public responsibility for medicare, and instead thinks physicians should be very involved in managing the health care system. In another quote, again from the December 5 Vancouver Sun, he says: "...even to the point of physicians taking over." Is that acceptable? I think it isn't.
We want to protect medicare, but here we have the one who would be the Minister of Health agreeing with the federal Liberals that medicare should be cut back to cover only catastrophic illness. I quote: "The idea of medicare in the beginning was to make sure nobody lost his house because of medical bills. That was forgotten when politicians tried to please people by providing first-dollar coverage." That was in the journal Medical Economics, May 24, 1993.
There is clearly an agenda here, and it is coming out into the open. British Columbians are starting to ask what the
[ Page 13270 ]
agenda of the Liberal opposition is and what they really stand for. We know what they're opposed to and what they're prepared to take risks with, but what is it that they stand for? People have a right to know. I think we are going to be hearing more about this in the days to come.
I want to take a few minutes to talk about some of things that have been happening in my constituency and in the constituencies of my colleagues from Port Moody-Burnaby Mountain and Port Coquitlam. As I said earlier, this government is the first government in years to deliver to an area of our province that has been so neglected. On May 12, the Premier announced $53 million for the northeast sector highways. This is infrastructure that is absolutely needed, because the lack of infrastructure has caused severe problems for one of the most rapidly growing areas in Canada. We are going to see the construction of the Johnson-Mariner overpass, and we will see the Broadway connector completed. Plans are to have that completed by September. We're going to see the Mary Hill bypass in Coquitlam, so that bottleneck will be dealt with. We're going to see the Pitt River Bridge counterflow lane in Pitt Meadows, and we're going to see the Barnet-Hastings people-moving project, with high-occupancy-vehicle lanes. These are practical solutions to gridlock problems that cause the people of that area a great deal of frustration.
Then in January 1995, Coquitlam received $900,000 under the federal-provincial infrastructure program to widen Guildford Way from two lanes to four lanes between Westwood Street and Pipeline Road -- again, another very important initiative. And in March 1995, work was completed on a $110,000 modification to the pedestrian tunnel under the Lougheed Highway at Gauthier Avenue to improve visibility and lighting, etc. I'm very pleased about this, because when the parents of the children who have to cross that dangerous roadway were dealing with a tunnel that was very, very inadequate, we were able to ensure that the Ministry of Transportation and Highways took that on and upgraded it and made it secure and safe. Again, I thank those parents who called my constituency office and enabled me to fulfil my role as MLA by advocating on their behalf to deal with that situation.
The fact is that in the three years in which we have been government, more money went into capital spending for our schools -- again, this growth area, for which previous governments had not provided the needed capital spending in any way, shape or form -- than had been spent in the previous 20 years. The fact is that we still have too many children in portables. We still have needs that have to be addressed, but this government can very proudly say that we have addressed this issue of education for our children, and we have addressed it in a way that is beyond comparison with any other government in the history of British Columbia.
Also, the fact is that we have worked with Douglas College and with the city of Coquitlam in providing the funding that will enable the Coquitlam campus of Douglas College to get going, and we're very proud of that. We've also provided over $3 million to Foyer Maillard, which is a very, very fine facility for seniors in Coquitlam. With the hard work of their executive director, Doris Brisebois, we have been able to work with them to ensure that that very important facility in Maillardville is on track.
In our area we have been lacking a much needed facility for arts and culture. This has had tremendous citizen input, and, through a federal-provincial infrastructure grant, the federal government, the provincial government and Coquitlam have been able to come up with a $7.7 million grant to build a new Coquitlam cultural centre. This is going to be a very important amenity for our area.
So we have been representing the people of Coquitlam to the government of British Columbia in a responsible way, in a way which recognized that while infrastructure was being provided in other parts of the province, it was not being provided there. Those needs are being addressed. We seek to continue to express those needs. In so doing, I say in conclusion how proud we are that this government has found the way to trim costs, to cut government spending, to deal with fiscal responsibility in a way that enables us to go forward and protect jobs, protect medicare and protect the interests of ordinary British Columbians. That's what this government has done with this budget, and that is what has enabled us to do the right thing and provide service to areas such as Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody.
Along with my two colleagues who represent the area, we are very proud to have the privilege of representing the area of School District 43.
Deputy Speaker: I thank the minister for his comments and recognize now the member for Cowichan-Ladysmith.
J. Pullinger: I am pleased to stand and take my place in this budget debate, and I am very pleased to support this budget, which reflects again the careful and balanced approach that this government has been taking to managing the finances and policies of British Columbia. This budget is clearly a budget that puts people first, and I think we see that reflected primarily in its continued focus on jobs and in its focus on protecting services to people, particularly medicare. As well as that focus, I think we can take some real pride on this side of the House in the fact that that we have not only balanced the budget as we promised we would do, but we have done so a full year ahead of schedule -- and it includes a debt management plan.
Our budget has a debt management plan that is just a little more stringent with slightly lower debt levels than the advisory committee made up of business and labour recommended. Clearly our debt in this province is affordable. We now, for the first time ever, have a debt management plan that will keep it that way and over time reduce the proportion of debt in the province as our population and economy grow.
[11:00]
This budget invests in the future of the people of British Columbia. It invests in schools, in health care, in transportation, in all those kinds of things that make our society a good place to live. Our budget has, not surprisingly, received some considerable praise. Wood Gundy says: "B.C. remains in the best fiscal shape of all the provinces, with the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio and the lowest ratio of debt-servicing costs to revenues." Similarly, Jerry Lampert, a well-known, high-profile Socred, who worked for the Vander Zalm government and is now president of the Business Council of B.C., says:
"We welcome both the elimination of the deficit of 1995-96 and the clear emphasis on debt reduction in the new budget. Minister Cull deserves good marks for leading an open and constructive prebudget consultation. It is apparent she has listened to the advice she received from business and others, who have been urging the government to scale back its borrowing in order to get the province's debt under control."
We also have Bob Vincent, president of the chartered accountants' association of British Columbia, who similarly says: "We are pleased with the budget's emphasis on both deficit and debt. While one can quarrel with the details, it is refreshing to finally have a provincial Finance minister present a management plan which contemplates a substantial reduction in B.C.'s accumulated debt." We take pride in what we've done fiscally, but even more pride in the fact that we haven't balanced the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable citizens, as we see in the province next door.
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In listening to the debate over the last few days -- and in the last few years, actually -- and to both opposition parties' responses, I have found it very instructive, because there are two clear themes emerging, and both of them have internal contradictions. The first theme that we're hearing is: spend no more; don't spend another cent; not one more cent should be borrowed; don't add anything to the debt; the first priority should be to pay off the debt entirely. What this means, of course, is that operating funds would be severely restricted. We would have to cut; we'd have to slash programs; we could not build another school, another hospital or another road; we couldn't improve transit; we couldn't buy parks. None of those things could happen if we were to follow their advice. Not borrowing one more cent means that we simply cannot invest in the people and the future of this province.
But what is really interesting about their arguments is that at the same time as they are saying: "Borrow no more; above all, we should focus on the debt; we shouldn't spend another cent...." We hear it in the heckling, and we hear it in every single argument. At the same time, we hear the Liberals in the opposition saying.... I quote from his address to the UBCM in 1993, and we hear the same things in the House all the time. The Leader of the Opposition says: "We need better roads; everywhere people need more investment in their transportation system." He's asking for more spending. Similarly, the member for Matsqui says: "Matsqui is a growing community. There is a great need for services to meet our changing needs. The new MSA hospital and the Mount Lehman interchange remain stalled. These issues need immediate attention." The member for Surrey-White Rock says: "Both myself and another member will be pressing for immediate improvements to King George Highway and 24th Avenue." That's a little more money to spend.
In the estimates last year, another member said: Good operating transportation systems are necessary for the economy of the province. We can't put off another day what has to be done today." Again, they're saying that we should spend it today, that it's better to spend it today than to wait till tomorrow, because these needs are great. They're needed now.
We continue to hear members opposite say on the one hand: "Not another cent. Balance the budget. Get rid of the debt. Above all, don't borrow one more cent." But they also say: "Spend all this money." Obviously you can't do both, and I think the people of this province, after three years of listening to that, have probably figured out that their friends opposite say one thing in their ridings and another thing in the Legislature, and just go where the wind blows. Clearly that's not a responsible attitude.
The second theme that has been emerging from the opposition benches I find even more interesting and equally contradictory. They say they are going to cut taxes for the highest income earners and the big corporations to the tune of a billion dollars. We've seen that in print in the papers and in this Legislature. They say they will not increase taxes for the rest of us, that they will freeze taxes, that they will bring in balanced-budget legislation, that means you must balance the budget, and that they will not accumulate any more debt -- none.
At the same time they say they're going to do all of that, they say they're going to protect health care and education, when we have a population growth of around 3 to 4 percent every year and we have inflation every year. Clearly those two things are absolutely contradictory. You can't keep up with schools, health care, transportation needs and all of those things that we need in order to have a vibrant and growing society, and at the same time simply put the brakes on any kind of spending.
What I think is even more instructive, though, is if we look at what the federal Liberals are doing, because they've been singing the same kind of song. They got elected on a promise of jobs, jobs, jobs and protecting social programs. What have they done? Last year's budget cut 16,000 jobs, and if you use the usual spinoff factors, it's about two and a half times that. This year they proudly announced the slashing of another 45,000 jobs. At the same time, they're gutting unemployment insurance, and they just recently announced that they're in effect dismantling the Canada Assistance Plan. That's a pretty clear agenda.
The government of British Columbia outlined $9.2 billion that the federal government could cut in waste overlap and subsidies to business that are not only ineffective but destructive -- $9.2 billion. Instead of cutting some or all of that, the federal Liberals took direct aim at social programs and are gutting health care, education and Canada Assistance Plan spending in this province.
I think that's a pretty clear agenda, and I think we all need to pay clear attention to it, because what we heard from the provincial Liberals was not an objection to that kind of agenda. They simply said: "Cut more. You didn't cut enough." They didn't say they cut in the wrong places, that they shouldn't be gutting social programs at the same time as they're cutting jobs, and that they should be building for the future. Instead, they just said that gutting the social spending is okay but that they didn't cut far enough.
What we hear, both federally and provincially, is the Liberals and Reform -- all of the right-wing parties -- talking about privatization, deregulation, cutting taxes for the wealthiest among us and big corporations, and drastic cuts to the public service -- and therefore to all the services that we enjoy. They're also talking about cuts, and privatization even, of education and health care, and handing those important public services over to private interests. It's a familiar theme. It's the same kind of thing that we are hearing from the national taxpayers' coalition, the B.C. Taxpayers' Association and Troy Lanigan, the Fraser Institute and all those other extremely right-wing bodies that speak for a tiny percentage of our society.
I was reminded recently of a good example that we can use to see how all these policies work and what happens. Some time ago I was scheduled to speak on an open-line show for an hour following the budget speech the next morning. The owner of the station, CKAY, bumped me because he wanted to be on and have some chartered accountants on, and so on. I had someone tape that and report to me. What I heard was pretty much a pounding of the Liberal and Reform lines that we hear in this Legislature, but among all of what I heard was the same individual saying we should really learn from the New Zealand experience. He was extolling the virtues of what successive governments in New Zealand have done over the last decade and saying that we should learn from that.
For entirely different reasons than what that individual put forward, I would say yes, indeed, we should learn from that experience. I think New Zealand is a very good example, because I think we all feel a bit of similarity to or comfort with New Zealand and feel that it's a similar kind of society to what we have here.
New Zealand in 1984.... It's a small country. We all think of it as a green and friendly and relatively egalitarian country, and indeed it was. It had the third-highest standard of living in the world and decades of virtually no unemployment, just frictional levels of unemployment. In fact, in 1984 it had the lowest unemployment rate in the industrialized
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world. Because it was relatively egalitarian, it had the lowest crime rates in the industrialized world, and personal security was simply taken for granted. Foreign debt -- that's public and private foreign debt -- amounted to something like $20 billion, and the total public debt was $11 billion. So what was the problem? There was some agreement in New Zealand that the economy was getting a little stagnant and that there needed to be change. I'm not going to debate or get into that. There was pretty widespread agreement that some changes needed to be made. They were at a crossroads in a way similar to us in British Columbia right now.
They had a couple of choices; they had a number of choices. What they decided to do, in short, was to implement reforms based on the ideology of the New Right or neoconservatism or what is most recently being called neoliberalism. So they started off with economic reforms, driven by a finance minister who was a high-profile member of the business community there, backed by groups comparable to the National Citizens' Coalition, the Fraser Institute and the B.C. Taxpayers' Association. The buzzwords were downsizing of government: "We've got to downsize government; we've got to reduce government; we've got to get it out of the way." They argued implicitly, as we hear every day from the opposition benches, that government is inherently bad and we therefore should minimize it. They want minimalist government. And we heard that things like deregulation and privatization and social reform were all necessary for the economy.
The focus in the decade that followed, from 1985 to the present, was on free enterprise. It was on the primacy of the marketplace, it was on tax levels and it was on public debt -- the same as we're hearing here in British Columbia and across this nation. The public debate in New Zealand -- and it was driven by well-heeled business groups such as we see writing in the papers here every day -- shifted from people and community almost exclusively onto the economy, the marketplace and the debt. And I expect if New Zealand is consistent with other places around the world -- Britain, Canada, British Columbia -- they probably had tax revolts, where people in Jaguars and Mercedes were dropped off to participate. In any case, in New Zealand tremendous fear was generated about debt levels, and it was argued that taxes had to be lowered on high-income earners and big business if they were going to be able to attract capital to the country. Similarly, regulation became a dirty word. Environmental and other regulations on business had to be removed, it was argued, if the economy was to thrive and compete in the world economy. Part of the equation was to keep wages low and to reduce the power of trade unions, which was a key theme, because business required flexibility and freedom from these kinds of constraints. The public debate shifted that way. People started to believe that the debt was the biggest problem they had.
They began to implement a program. They started to deregulate the private sector, particularly communications and transportation, such as we're seeing in Canada today. They commercialized government departments. They began to treat government as a business instead of as an instrument of social policy.
They privatized something like $16 billion of the people's assets -- after they were made profitable, of course -- like we saw in the 1980s here and like we're seeing federally. Private interests bought railways, telephone companies, postal services and much, much more. Most went to foreign interests. Public television became completely commercialized. In 1991 legislation was passed that allowed 100 percent of New Zealand broadcasting to be sold to overseas investors. There was so-called tax reform, massive shifts of taxation off the highest income earners and large corporations, and large tax loopholes for both, such as were started here under the Trudeau Liberals federally and has been continued ever since. We saw the introduction of a GST.
[11:15]
"Consumer choice" became the buzzword for changes to health care and education. We saw a partial privatization of medicare; private firms were allowed to compete with public institutions. And user fees were introduced. In education, parents could choose any school anywhere they liked for their children; there were no catchment areas and so on, as we have here. A partial voucher system was implemented; parents now pay a fee directly to the school. In other words, the control has shifted from a democratically elected school board to small groups of parents, usually representing interest groups.
Dramatic changes were made to labour legislation, in order to weaken the power of trade unions and to allow businesses more flexibility. Social programs were ultimately reformed to reduce dependency on government, and funding to them was either dramatically reduced or completely eliminated -- just as the federal Liberals are doing right now.
So what happened? Well, after ten years the government finances in New Zealand are finally in a surplus position. It took us three years to do that here -- from the largest debt in the history of British Columbia -- with a balanced approach. But it took them ten years in New Zealand. However, they did reach a surplus position.
Consumers and businesses have more choice in some areas. For instance, with increased competition and international ownership, the range of telecommunication services in New Zealand is as broad as anywhere in the world, and the quality of phone service has improved. International businesses in New Zealand are thriving. Corporations, particularly financial institutions, are almost entirely without cumbersome regulations and therefore are thriving. Inflation is low. Many have argued, as did the owner of my local radio station, that because all these things have changed and there is this kind of boom and some more consumer choices, right-wing policies implemented in New Zealand have been a screaming success on the whole.
But you know, there's another side of this story, and it's not very often told. That side of the story, of course, has to do with the rest of the people. We had a relatively egalitarian society to begin with. Over that decade of New Right policies, it became increasingly stratified. A handful of people got exceedingly rich on the one hand, a new middle class was created, and there was a shift of power to corporations and financiers. But while that happened on the one hand, a large number of people became very poor. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs because of the new rules. With fewer and poorer social services, we saw poverty in New Zealand increase by something like 40 percent. Unemployment that used to be just frictional unemployment is estimated to be around 16 percent today. The government, of course, changed the way you calculate unemployment, so the numbers look a lot better.
New Zealand, which once had healthy, excellent education and medicare, now has two-tier systems where availability and quantity of services depend not on your need for those services but how deep your pockets are -- whether or not you can pay. The standard of living, which was third in the world, is now twenty-second. There is the highest rate of teenage suicide in the world. Violent crime is the worst in the industrialized world. Farmers have been dispossessed of their land. Clearly it has been a disaster for the average people. It's
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similar to the kind of thing we saw happen in Britain: stratification, with a few people getting very rich and doing very well, and the rest of them paying the price.
What about the economy? After all, this was all about the economy. This was about creating a flourishing business sector and attracting those with investment funds. After ten years of deregulation, privatization, low wages and lower taxes, the national economy has completely stalled. It's 20 times worse than the average among the world's other industrialized nations. Combined government and private overseas debt has gone from about $11 billion or $12 billion to over $67 billion, and government debt has doubled and shifted far more to foreign control. Dependence on imports in New Zealand has skyrocketed.
What about workers? Out of almost totally deregulated labour markets, the unions' power has been severely eroded through legislation and policy changes. Workers now bargain individually with their employers. There are some sad cases reported -- not just a few -- where workers kind of go off in a back room with their employer and bargain down wages and working conditions because they are desperate for a job, there are no social services and unemployment is so high. Not surprisingly, almost all the gains that workers have made through their democratic trade unions through the last many, many decades -- probably through the whole last century -- have been eroded.
Similarly, with foreign dominance of broadcasting, New Zealanders no longer see their culture reflected in their television, radio and so on. Rather, they get a steady diet of American and other foreign cultures.
New Zealand increased competitiveness and left most things to the marketplace. They drove down wages and eliminated troublesome regulation on business. They dismantled the welfare state, which the New Right says creates dependence on government. The results are clear: New Zealand made a deliberate choice to engage in the race to the bottom. They have destroyed an economy and a society. People are appalled at the greed. Mr. Fletcher, who developed Fletcher Challenge, has indicated that he can't believe the kind of greed he is seeing. There has been enormous damage to thousands of people's lives, and a whole generation of young people are going to pay the price.
So that is the race to the bottom; that's what it looks like in total. While all the members opposite argue about how social programs are the cause of the problem and that to balance the budget, to a large degree, we have to eliminate or undo the social programs we have built so carefully in this country. The fact is that even if they were the cause of the problem and the debt -- which they are not -- that kind of solution doesn't work.
New Zealanders engaged in the race to the bottom. We saw the same thing in Britain under Thatcher, with her neoconservative policies. We've seen the same kind of thing in the United States with Ronald Reagan. We're seeing it now in Canada; we saw it under Mulroney. We're seeing the Chretien Liberals continue that trend, and we're certainly watching it. The most visible example is probably Ralph Klein in Alberta. We are hearing those same kinds of extreme and dangerous policies every day from across the floor.
We have heard the Leader of the Opposition, similar to Bill Vander Zalm, say that all government corporations are on the block if he is elected and that he will look at privatizing all or any of them. We have heard that he will get rid of regulations, that it's far too cumbersome and that we shouldn't have all this environmental regulation. We've heard them say that it's okay to mine and log in parks. They've already promised clearly that they're going to lower taxes. They're going to completely eliminate the corporation capital tax for big business and shift the tax burden off of business and highest income earners, to the tune of about a billion dollars. They objected to our fair labour legislation that we brought in through a process of labour and business working together, and they've made it clear that they're going to go back to Bill 19.
One of the members across was urging all the municipal governments to support his right-to-work legislation. I quote from his January 21 letter: "This right-to-work legislation will guarantee the right of resource workers to access their employment free of illegal blockades, confrontation and interruptions." Well, maybe that was about the environmental picketers, but it sure sounds like any kind of picketers to me. Right-to-work legislation is clearly a part of dismantling the power of trade unions. So we've seen objections to that. We saw objections to the fair wage legislation that guarantees that workers in the construction industry won't be exploited; they'll get decent wages for their work. It also requires levels of skills and increases the amount of apprenticeship.
We see the opposition objecting to the Island Highway project agreement, which not only has effectively kept costs under control and the project on track but ensures that the workers on that highway are B.C. workers and even Vancouver Island workers. Ninety percent of the people working on the Island Highway are Vancouver Island and B.C. workers. They have argued that it's okay for Alberta companies to come in and take those jobs that are paid for with B.C. tax dollars. The Island Highway project agreement also doubles the number of apprenticeships and takes down some of the barriers to people who haven't traditionally worked in the construction field. They objected to that, although it has been amply demonstrated that that agreement does not increase the cost whatsoever.
Similarly, they've objected to the health accord. It saved $79 million this year and allows for an orderly transition of workers as we reform health care. It is going to save $450 million over the life of the agreement, but they object to it. They'd rather just toss workers out on the street, and slash and burn, as we see in Alberta.
They've endorsed the huge cuts in social spending that we've seen in Alberta and by the federal government. In fact, the opposition parties have said they'd rather see a Ralph Klein in British Columbia.
But I think the scariest of all is the agenda, which we hear again and again, to privatize both education and health care. The Liberals have agreed with the federal Prime Minister, who says that medicare should cover only catastrophic illness. Their candidate, Dr. Gur Singh, who is the former head of the B.C. Medical Association and Campbell's first choice for Minister of Health if they ever become government, says that he opposes public responsibility for medicare and instead thinks that physicians should be very involved in managing the health care system "even to the point of taking over." Singh agrees with the federal Liberals that medicare should be cut back to cover only catastrophic illness, saying that the idea of medicare in the beginning was to make sure that nobody lost his house because of medical bills. That was forgotten when politicians tried to please people by providing first-dollar coverage. I would argue with that, and I think Tommy Douglas would, too. But that's what we're saying.
The Campbell Liberals have passed a resolution -- we've heard it echoed in the House by their Health critic -- that they support "outsourcing of health care to private sector providers." Hon. Speaker, if you take all the arguments that
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we hear across the floor and put them together, you've got the New Right agenda that we saw happen in New Zealand, in Britain and in the United States and by our federal government. We on this side of the House reject that. We will follow the balanced approach that has engaged us in the race to the top, which is creating jobs and protecting medicare in this province. By every economic indicator, by the record number of jobs created and by the health of our social services in this province, it's very clear to me that we're not doing badly. In fact, we're winning that race to the top.
So there's a clear choice as we get towards the next election. There's a very clear choice, and I hope that the people of British Columbia will look at the policies and proposals being put forward by the opposition benches. Legitimately, they have another view of how society ought to be operated, but there's lot of evidence about what effect that will have.
S. O'Neill: It's a pleasure to rise today to speak in this budget debate, for this is a budget about taking a balanced approach: balancing a need for reduced government spending with a need for investments in our future.
I did not often see eye to eye with our former Premier W.A.C. Bennett -- in fact, I disagreed with most of his policies. He did seem to prefer monuments and megaprojects to people. But I did admire one thing about him: he had faith in the future of British Columbia, and in spite of his rhetoric, he firmly believed government had a role to play in that growth. Well, this budget is also about the future of British Columbia, but no megaprojects, no nationalization of utilities; instead, an investment in people -- affordable investment for the nineties and beyond, not the 1950s.
If we are going to be able to make investments, we have to have our fiscal house in order. The minister has done this, as this budget is balanced ahead of schedule. Government spending has been steadily decreasing, and this will continue with this budget, with per capita spending actually decreasing by 2.3 percent. This has been done not by cutting services, not by going on a search-and-destroy mission, but by carefully cutting waste, streamlining government and eliminating duplication.
[11:30]
W.A.C. Bennett knew that just like business, government has to invest in infrastructure. Unfortunately, his son didn't learn that lesson, and we're still paying for that lack of foresight. Not investing in infrastructure is being penny-wise and pound-foolish, as my grandmother used to say. You end up paying eventually and usually paying more.
Investing in a sewer system for Sicamous means protecting Shuswap Lake. It means jobs; but even more important, it means the opportunity for growth. Because of a water system for Grindrod, school children need no longer drink bottled water, and the residents will have water they can drink. Investing in roads, water and sewer systems means a better way of life and more jobs for these small communities.
Communities that are dependent on the forest industry are being affected by years of overcutting. They are now facing the results of past shortsighted policies. Last year this government moved to help keep those communities alive with the forest renewal plan, a plan to retrain workers and repair environmental damage. But the world has changed, and it's essential to protect jobs in the forest sector. The focus may shift and the jobs may change, but the industry is essential to the economy of British Columbia.
Yes, the world has changed, and we can deal with that change in any number of ways. We can face it with a bunker mentality, with fear and wringing of hands, or we can face it with confidence and optimism, and look for opportunities. Governments can cower and cut or they can invest in the new future. Already more Canadians work in the sophisticated electronics industry than in pulp and paper. In B.C. more people work in telecommunications and communications than in forestry. More Quebeckers have jobs in health and medical care than in construction, textiles, clothing, furniture, cars, forestry and mining combined. In Ontario, hydroelectricity employs more people than the auto industry. More Nova Scotians are teachers and professors than fish processors, construction workers and forestry workers combined. These are the new jobs for a new world, a world where knowledge is an asset.
I was pleased to see that this budget has increased spending on education, both K to 12 and post-secondary, has created 4,800 new full-time post-secondary spaces and has continued funding to Skills Now.
It is often said that small business creates most of the jobs in British Columbia, and increasingly those small jobs are knowledge-based. Government, in partnership with business, must ensure that our young people have the knowledge and the skills to fill those jobs. For too long, Canada has relied on immigration to provide skilled workers for our industries. It's time to do our own training so that British Columbians and Canadians can take their place in today's economy.
The recently announced National Centre for Advanced Wood Products Processing is a truly significant initiative. It builds on our natural resources but moves us into the next century. It is an investment in B.C.'s forest industry, its people and its future. Although the centre itself will be at UBC, I was encouraged to hear that it will be linked to other universities, colleges and B.C.'s secondary schools. This will enable people throughout the province to become skilled workers in the growing value-added sector. We will no longer cut it down and ship it out, but will turn our natural resource into a knowledge-based industry that will provide new economic opportunities and jobs for our children.
One item in the budget has attracted little attention, and that is the $4 million to the arts community. To many people the arts are a frill: nice to have when you can afford it -- sort of like buying steak on payday. But the arts are more than a frill; they provide jobs for thousands of people across this province, from the music industry to our vibrant and growing film industry and to writers and painters. The jobs are not only for those performers but for a host of people providing support services. Even more important than jobs is the role that the arts play in defining us as Canadians and British Columbians. This becomes increasingly more important as this province becomes more culturally complex. I would like to take this opportunity to recognize and express my appreciation to those thousands of volunteers who work so hard on behalf of the arts in British Columbia, for without them our lives would be much poorer indeed.
While making those necessary investments in our future, the government recognizes the need to spend tax dollars carefully. This budget makes more than $100 million in savings by eliminating waste and duplication, and by doing it carefully and thoughtfully. There seems to be a belief out there -- certainly among the opposition and the federal government -- that civil servants are expendable; that they do nothing but cost the taxpayer money. But what they don't seem to realize is that they also provide very valuable services: they teach our children, keep our streets safe and care for us when we're sick.
As we streamline government, we must do it with care and compassion. We do not need a search-and-destroy mis-
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sion. B.C. and Canada are well served by their civil servants, and they should not be the first to be jettisoned at the first sign of restraint. Like all taxpayers I'm glad to see the tax freeze continuing and the government spending my tax dollars efficiently, but I don't want it to come at the expense of our children, our sick or our poor.
Many of my colleagues have spoken eloquently and indeed passionately about medicare. I have three sons, one of whom has had a chronic health problem for the past 25 years, and I'm quite convinced that if I lived in the United States, my family would now be destitute and I would have had not only the anxiety of a sick child but the added anxiety of dealing with poverty. The changes to our health care system are needed, but we must do them, as I say, with care and compassion. Budgets are not just about bottom lines; they're about people, jobs, direction and balance. This budget meets all those criteria.
Deputy Speaker: I thank the member for her comments and now recognize the member for Cariboo North, looking resplendent.
Interjections.
F. Garden: Thank you, hon Speaker. I've been going through these Scottish jokes all morning, so you'll understand.
Interjections.
F. Garden: They're still carrying on, but I know what a little bit of jealousy does to people. There are only two types of people in the world: Scotsmen and those who would like to be. Fortunately I'm a Scots-Canadian, which makes it even better; I've got the best of both worlds.
I think it's appropriate that a Scotsman, or a Scots-Canadian, be up on his feet in this House today talking about the budget, because as with all the other jokes, it's been suggested that Scotsmen are tight. Well, they're not really tight; they're just thrifty. Okay? They know how to stretch a shilling or a dollar. It's been said of us at one time that if a Scotsman took a shilling out of his sporran, Queen Elizabeth blinked at the light.
It's with a little bit of pleasure that I stand here in my place talking about this budget, because I honestly believe that this budget is a balanced budget. It's the kind of budget that anyone who is thrifty and economically minded would be proud of. It's a balanced budget, notwithstanding some of the comments we hear from the opposition.
Some of the comments were that there's a $114 million surplus -- or that it's a deficit, depending on how they talk one day to the next. But I can recall that only two and a half years ago, the emphasis was on the deficit. We weren't arguing about whether we had a $114 million surplus or not; we were talking about a deficit left to this government by the previous government, and we couldn't figure out whether it was $2.8 billion or $2 billion or.... We were talking billions. Here we are, and that same opposition has their eyes off the deficit, and they're giving us a little bit of a hard time over what they consider a modest surplus -- or deficit. They're on to the debt problem. I'll be talking about that a little later.
I would like to say this right at the outset: Liberals have predominantly governed this country over the last 40 years, with a few blips here and there for Conservatives. The Liberals and their successors in the federal government -- not NDPers -- have left this country in the worst financial shape that it was ever in. That's certainly something that they can't blame on NDPers.
An Hon. Member: What about provincially?
F. Garden: The provincial government in Quebec.... I hear a colleague across the floor saying "provincially." The provincial Liberals in Quebec have left that province in a terrible mess. Previous to that, they left that new government in Ontario with such a deficit that it's been literally impossible, based on the recession that they also inherited at the time because of terrible provincial politics.... They could hardly get out of it, but they worked valiantly at it, and they're doing a good job.
I want to get back to this province. I want to get away from the gloom and doom that the Liberals are talking about; I want to talk about the encouragement and the hope that this government is bringing to the people of B.C. with this particular budget. Their remedies would be to leave the rich alone, cut the corporations' taxes and cut spending in just about every avenue -- "We've got to get rid of the debt"; not the deficit anymore, but the debt -- and throw people out of work. The federal Liberals have shown the way: 45,000 people on the street, and they leave the Royal Bank and all these other big corporations alone. I mentioned this in my answer to the throne speech, but it bears saying again because this is a philosophy of Liberals.
Our program, balancing the budget, creates jobs. It creates jobs on the basis that we've now got that deficit under control; we can now look at the investments required in this province without that continual drag of financing, that deficit from year to year. We've got a legacy of about $10 billion because we've been financing deficit. Now we can go ahead with our debt management plan and provide the infrastructure and jobs the people in this province are looking for. The hope we're giving them through this budget and the investments will do that.
I'd just like to mention for a minute a couple of the initiatives that.... I'm going to get away from knocking the opposition, because I don't have too much time for that. We've got too much work to do, building on the hope we're giving the people of British Columbia and providing jobs. When you provide a person with a job, they get confident, and when they get confident, they start spending money, and that also proliferates into more jobs throughout the economy.
When we brought in our forest renewal plan -- and we're continuing through this budget to make investments in new training methods for people who will be affected and can go on into these silviculture jobs -- it brought stability to the forest industry in this province. When you bring stability, you also bring confidence, and when you bring confidence, that creates investment. Already forest companies see what the plan is. They're starting to invest in this province and they're starting to provide jobs.
[11:45]
A typical example is in my area. West Fraser Mills is in the process of setting up a new plant in Quesnel. It will provide well over 100 jobs when it's finally built, and construction jobs in the meantime. They're doing that because they're confident in the knowledge that we've got a plan that goes many, many years into the future and will provide them with a stable fibre supply. Again the policies of this government are starting to take root and show these big companies that we have confidence in them and that we'll provide the wherewithal for them to continue in this province.
Right now in our community we've also got a group of people working on the Skills Now centre. These are just ordinary Quesnel people from all walks of life. They cover the whole political spectrum, but there they are working together
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to get that skills centre up and running. They're enthusiastic because they see the program; they see the value of this government providing funds through this budget so that it provides jobs. It's just unfortunate that all these young people left, because these are the people of the future, the ones this budget provides jobs for. There's this group of people there; as I say, just ordinary British Columbians working together with the confidence and the hope that this government has given them through this budget and their initiatives.
We also have in the community -- and this goes throughout the Cariboo -- a new community resource board being formed. Again, these people are appointed not on a political basis but for their skills, energy and confidence in the Cariboo. They're getting together. They'll work with industry and the forest renewal plan, providing jobs for British Columbians and especially people in the Cariboo.
That's what this budget does. It's not gloom and doom or cutting people out of jobs. It's saying we believe in you. We've got some money to invest. We've planned that investment; we've got a debt management plan. We've laid that before the people, and we're confident they'll support us on that. Because of that plan, these people on these resource boards and in these communities can now look to the future -- not with apprehension that they would lose jobs when all the trees were gone, but with hope and confidence that because of this government's initiatives, they can see down the road.
They can see that their kids are not going to have to leave the Cariboo. They can see this by our investments in the university of the north, which I presume would never have been built if we'd had to cut according to our friends across the way there. But I'm sure not one of them would stand up and say we should never have built the university of the north.
The university of the north has brought to Prince George a confidence that I have never seen since I moved up to the Cariboo. It's providing stable jobs, through the faculty and the people who look after the upkeep of the university. Not only that, it's brought training to kids and people in the north who don't have to come down to the lower mainland. They can now afford to go to a university close to home and can get on with their training. We need these young people. We have a program for them. We're going to provide a future, through investment and through people getting confidence in this economy. We need the university of the north. It's just sad that the opposition would even think of cutting in these areas.
I don't want to go on at great length -- because I see the time's moving on, and I want to make room for the speaker who's following me to do the things he needs to do, coming to adjournment time -- but I just want to say this about the debt management plan. Every corporation and every company and every small business presents a business plan. I had a small business myself, and I needed money. I needed to go to the bank and borrow money. Before I could get a nickel for my business, I had to present them with a business plan. Sure, it was a five-year plan as opposed to what we're saying for 20 years. Nevertheless, it was a plan.
If I hadn't shown how I could manage that debt and still run the business, I wouldn't have got a nickel. The same applies to a mortgage. You can't get a mortgage unless you can show that the rest of your bills are in order and that you can afford to pay for your groceries and can afford a mortgage.
It's the same with a big corporation. They have to show to the banks, when they go borrow the large sums of money for investment -- and I presume West Fraser may be doing that.... They've got to go to their financiers and say: "Here's our plan; here's how we can afford it. What do you think?" Based on that, the banker makes a judgment and the lender makes a judgment.
It's the same with somebody and a house. If you went to the bank and said you were having to borrow money to pay for groceries, but you still wanted to buy a house, they'd chase you out of the bank.
That's literally what we've done. We've said we've got the deficit under control, we've gone to the financiers of the world and said, "Here's our investment, here's how we're going to provide jobs for the people of British Columbia, and here's how we're going to pay down the debt," and they've accepted that. We have the highest credit rating in Canada, and we'll continue to have that, just because of smart government that's been shown from this side of the House.
So I would like to leave by again saying let's get out of the doom and gloom. We can do it in British Columbia. We can give the people out there hope. We can go out to them with a plan, and say that we'll give them a job and we'll still pay down the debt. We won't do it the federal Liberal way or the provincial Liberal way. This is a people way. This is the British Columbia way. Stay with us, continue with us, and I'm sure that our future is assured in a profitable, economic and wonderful place to live -- British Columbia.
B. Jones: Given the lateness of the hour, and given the fact that the CGAs -- one of those reputable organizations that has been very supportive of this year's provincial budget -- are hosting MLAs across the way, I would adjourn debate until later today.
B. Jones moved adjournment of the debate.
Motion approved.
Hon. A. Edwards moved adjournment of the House.
Motion approved.
The House adjourned at 11:52 a.m.
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