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 27, 1995
Morning Sitting
Volume 19, Number 8
[ Page 13735 ]
The House met at 10:04 a.m.
Prayers.
R. Chisholm: I'd like the House to make welcome 80 students from Sardis Elementary School with their teacher Mr. Knutson and a few adults who are accompanying them. They're here in the precincts today to learn about our parliamentary system, and I do wish that you would make them most welcome.
G. Wilson: I wish the House to make welcome a good friend and colleague from Fort St. John who's with us today. He's travelled from Fort St. John to Victoria via Cuba and has a tremendous tan to show for it. Could everybody please welcome Mr. Vince Rodriguez.
Hon. D. Marzari: I'd like to introduce to the House Mr. Gerard Farry, who was head of planning for the Greater Vancouver Regional District in the seventies. He is here this morning to watch second reading of the Growth Strategies Statutes Amendment Act. I'd like the House to welcome him, because this has been 20 years of waiting for many people, including Gerard.
Hon. D. Marzari: I call second reading of Bill 11; and in Section A we have the estimates on Education.
GROWTH STRATEGIES STATUTES AMENDMENT ACT, 1995
(second reading)
Hon. D. Marzari: It's my pleasure at this time to put forward Bill 11 for second reading. As I said when I introduced this bill to the House for first reading, rapid growth is the single most powerful force propelling economic and social change in our province. In 1991, the population of British Columbia was 3.3 million people. In 2021, it will be 5.3 million people -- an increase of two million. Our population is increasing by 100,000 every year. That's basically like adding a Prince Edward Island every year to British Columbia and a Manitoba every ten years.
Growth on this scale has British Columbians worried and concerned. They look around their communities, and they see urban sprawl. They see run-down neighbourhoods. They see growing social problems, crime, dangerous levels of smog and pollution, and traffic gridlock. In smaller centres, they worry that their communities are losing their small-town character very quickly. In larger centres, they worry about paying for their homes, keeping their kids safe, rush hours that start at 3 o'clock and end at 7 o'clock, and a hundred other issues that can be traced back to rapid growth.
What's often overlooked in the middle of all this concern is that growth itself doesn't have to be negative. Growth could and should mean increased job opportunities and economic development and the chance to improve living standards for everyone. The question, then, is: how can we capture the benefits of growth? If we start doing things differently, if we plan appropriately and if we use it to our advantage, we can make growth a force for positive change in British Columbia.
We have to take the longer view, plan appropriately and create a planning system that works for and with every community in British Columbia. Even communities that are not experiencing rapid growth are often facing a decline in population, all part of the social and economic mix which is our province. Therefore managing growth becomes an issue not for just rapidly growing communities but for communities that are in status quo or even facing decline.
This is what Bill 11 is all about. In simplest terms, the Growth Strategies Statutes Amendment Act will restore regional planning. But that description really doesn't do it justice. We've crafted, through more than a year and a half of close collaboration with the Union of B.C. Municipalities, a basis for a better, more practical relationship between municipalities and regional districts and, more significantly, between the province itself and local government. The Growth Strategies Statutes Amendment Act will make it possible for local governments to address issues of urban sprawl and deteriorating air and water quality, and to plan for safe and livable communities with green space and parks, sufficient, affordable and efficient services; and job creation.
Through amendments to the Municipal Act, the Vancouver Charter and other associated legislation, this bill addresses two major deficiencies in the existing local government planning system: the lack of coordination among municipalities and regional districts on strategic issues that transcend and cross local boundaries, and the lack of clear, reliable links with the provincial ministries and agencies whose resources are needed to implement the plans.
Ever since our system of regional planning was dismantled in 1983 by the previous government, we have expected communities to plan for growth by themselves and alone. But it's obvious that the issues we are discussing here -- of air and water quality and of transportation -- don't stop at local boundaries; they don't stop at the border of Vancouver. They push over the edges of boundaries. In fact, they push over the edges of regional boundaries as well. Our municipalities and regions cannot address the issues that face them alone. It's ludicrous to think that we can solve problems without bringing in some mechanisms for regional coordination.
In the lower mainland there are four regional districts and 27 municipal governments. From greater Victoria to Campbell River there are four regional districts and 26 municipal governments. In the Okanagan there are three regional districts and 14 municipal governments. These are the fastest-growing regions in British Columbia, and the coordination problems are immense. They desperately need a framework for cooperative action where it's appropriate.
Bill 11 will give them a framework. It will create a table for discussion, for coordinated planning and for action by municipalities and regional districts throughout the province. Under the legislation any regional district, as a federation of municipalities and electoral areas, will be able to voluntarily initiate a growth strategy to address regional issues in a collaborative way. The content of the strategy will largely be up to the regional board. The legislation does provide general goals to clarify the province's interest and expectations, and to
[ Page 13736 ]
provide some guidance on what the strategy should work towards. The goals include avoiding urban sprawl; minimizing the use of automobiles; adequate, affordable, appropriate housing; and so forth.
The bill also specifies the minimum content for a regional growth strategy. The strategy should have a 20-year time frame, which is long enough to provide real guidance towards the vision of a future which is socially, economically and environmentally healthy. It will also include a comprehensive statement about the future of the region, including the social, economic and environmental objectives of the region. In addition, there will be population and employment projections and a list of proposed actions to meet the needs of the population, including actions around affordable housing, transportation, regional district services, parks and natural areas, and economic development.
One of the unique features of the growth strategies act is its basic respect for local autonomy. It will not -- and I repeat, it will not -- add a new level of government or an expensive super-agency; we already have a good, strong system of local government. It provides for flexible collaboration between districts and municipalities. This legislation does not supplant that; it builds on the flexibility and strengths of what we have now. Unlike our previous hierarchical system of regional planning, which often bogged down in power struggles, the new system will treat official community plans and regional plans equally. Official community plans will include what we've called a regional context statement, which the regional district will basically overview. At the end of the process, municipalities will sign off on the regional growth strategy.
This replaces a cumbersome process which was incorporated in our first draft of the bill. This bill reflects 14 drafts of hard work and consultation since January to reflect the needs of communities and municipalities for a simplicity and a system which basically reflects their reality. Rather than municipalities signing off on each other's official community plan, or a regional district signing off on the detail of every municipal community plan, communities will be asked to put together context statements to show each region how their official community plan intersects with the regional plan.
[10:15]
Once again, the onus here is on the municipality to: (1) buy into a regional planning format; (2) participate in the development of some regional goals; and then (3) try to bring its official community plan into the context of the regional planning goals.
This planning process stays away from zoning. A growth strategy is a regional vision. Regional districts will not be involved in the review of individual rezoning applications. It is not the business of regional districts to get involved with the basic mandate of municipal government, which is land use planning and zoning. This is a basic difference between what went before and what will happen now. This approach reflects our government's belief that decisions affecting land use must be made as close to home as possible, and it reflects our respect for municipal government and its basic function.
Other highlights of this bill include an early facilitation and ongoing dispute mechanism, a requirement for meaningful consultation with citizens, and a provincial commitment to early and continuous involvement by key provincial ministries and agencies, Crown agencies and others. This commitment by our government to be at the negotiating table from day one is, as far as I'm concerned, the feature that puts this legislative proposal head and shoulders above anything else that's been tried in British Columbia in the last 40 years.
For the first time ever, anyone with a financial or regulatory stake in planning will be involved, will be at the table that this legislation builds, working towards common goals that will increase the quality of life for every British Columbian.
The bill also makes provisions for the province to enter implementation agreements with local governments on a ministry-by-ministry basis, where provincial actions are necessary to make the strategies work. An example would be transit investment commitments and complementary local government land use and infrastructure policies. This approach means that the province and local governments will be able to make decisions based on the big picture that emerges only when you've got every player at the table. It's a system designed for adult discussion and debate, not for a papa-knows-best system where the province knows all and citizens and municipalities have to take a subservient role. This is a system designed for politics in the best sense of that word -- politics at the local level, where compromises and discussions must occur in order for municipalities to arrive at decisions around issues that they share.
It's a system designed to encourage agreement between the local governments that live within a region together, and it carefully balances a cooperative, collaborative approach with some tough measures to ensure that meaningful planning occurs. It's not just a process; it's not just a table. Bill 11 does have teeth, including the ability of the province to require regional districts to prepare a regional growth strategy. That's a major issue. Where a region that is in high growth prefers to maintain the status quo, the province will be able to step in and insist that a regional growth strategy be prepared.
It also establishes dispute mechanisms -- dispute resolution mechanisms -- that will ensure that the process comes to a close, rather than plans unfolding and unrolling for years and years and years. There will be, in high-growth regions, a growth strategy. There will be closure, and to get to closure there may have to be dispute resolution mechanisms designed towards buy-in, because planning works best when everybody recognizes the value of the process. The dispute resolution mechanisms have been developed in concert with regions of this province and with municipalities of this province. The rules have basically been written and established by the municipalities themselves as fair processes that they feel we can all live with as we move towards the completion and closure of the individual regional plans.
That's one of the reasons I've spent the last year and a half talking to the people who'll be the most affected by the legislation -- local governments, planners, social planners and community groups -- developing a system that everyone can commit to and work with. In fact, it's been the most intense and cooperative process I've ever been part of during my 20 years in politics. All told, I heard the concerns and incorporated the advice of more than 200 local politicians, staff, planners and special interest groups before bringing this bill to the House.
I recognize that the Growth Strategies Statutes Amendment Act does not provide all the answers. It isn't intended to. It's one of a series of linked government initiatives that will provide better land use planning, better decision-making,
[ Page 13737 ]
more efficient services and a stronger economy, which will help us deal with the provincial debt while protecting medicare and other essential services. This bill reflects, and is part of, a concerted effort to provide an improved climate for investment and job creation.
Other elements of the provincial growth strategy -- to plan, direct and support growth -- include the Georgia Basin initiative; the Lower Mainland Nature Legacy; the forest renewal plan and the forest land reserve; the Environmental Assessment Act; the strengthening of the agricultural land reserve; the Canada-B.C. Infrastructure Works agreement; and a range of individual ministry programs. What Bill 11 adds to the agenda is explicit recognition of the vital role that local government plays in developing long-term solutions to the challenges that we face around urban growth.
This system will be uniquely British Columbian -- only here will we see a Bill 11. My staff and my predecessor have spent many, many months looking throughout North America -- in other provinces in Canada and in the States -- for different models of local government planning. What we have come up with here is a unique solution, based upon our belief in and a strong commitment to the integrity of local government structures. It will be stronger because it was developed here by local government itself.
I'm not alone in believing this. British Columbia and the people we all serve have already responded. I've had many letters of support from municipal governments and from regional districts. The last year and a half of touring throughout the province and speaking with local governments, districts, community groups, and administrative and planning staff has suggested to me that this consultative and coordinative approach is basically the only approach which can work in British Columbia and, with some goodwill, should work in British Columbia and provide us with the framework for regional planning around growth issues for the next five decades.
I will draw to a close my contribution to the debate on Bill 11, but in doing so, I feel it's important for me to thank every one of the hundreds of people who have engaged in this process for the past three years. They have contributed their time, ideas and energy to this proposal, and together we've recognized that most growth-related challenges are regional in nature. We have developed a system that builds on old flexibilities and brings in new flexibilities, so we can cut across traditional government boundaries and plan cooperatively.
Thanks must go to staff in the ministry for their efforts, to the UBCM for concerted concentration on this particular issue, and to the political leaders of the regional districts and their staff for their help and for the base they have built for this particular piece of legislation. With those comments, I would ask that debate on Bill 11 begin.
C. Tanner: I rise today to speak to Bill 11, the Growth Strategies Statutes Amendment Act, 1995.
I don't think we can even begin this debate without giving due recognition to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and her 20 years' effort, as I think she said, and certainly for the three and a half years we've been around here. I know this is the culmination of a career of bringing answers to these very difficult questions. We can't ignore the members of her ministry either, many of whom have been there for years. Some of them, to my own personal knowledge, have worked on this problem for many years, and have brought their intelligence and expertise to these very serious problems all over British Columbia. I also would like to thank the members of the UBCM and the members of many councils and regional districts, all of whom have had input into this piece of legislation.
Although it might be unusual, I don't think it's out of place to say I appreciate what the minister has done in bringing this legislation forward. That isn't to say I accept it wholeheartedly; I have some reservations, as does my caucus, but we do appreciate her personal efforts and we do appreciate the efforts of her ministry.
Having said all those things, I don't think anybody can ever argue with the fact that in British Columbia we are experiencing enormous growth very rapidly. It is probably one of the things that concerns, strangely enough, not only the longtime residents but the people who keep moving in. They no sooner get here than they realize that they're in paradise, or very near it, and they want to pull blankets over their heads and let nobody else come and enjoy it. You have that ironical situation where longtime residents and brand-new residents all think that we've got to keep this to ourselves. That's not possible. It's just too good, and there are too many Canadians -- in fact, too many people from around the world -- who want to participate in this country that we enjoy and call British Columbia. Consequently, we've got to face the fact that we are going to experience more and more growth; we've got to face the fact that we've got to find some way of planning for it; and we've got to find some way of making it work to our advantage and not to our disadvantage.
[10:30]
But there is always somebody's ox that's going to be gored when the changes come. There's always somebody who says: "We cannot have change, because if we do, we won't have what we started with. What I came here to enjoy is different, and I don't like that." And there's always a municipality that's got a different point of view than an adjoining municipality, just as there are in regions. Quite frankly, while in my view I represent the best part of this province, I'm quite sure that the other 74 members of this Legislature think that they do too. They happen to be wrong, and I happen to be right, but that's just a matter of fact. My constituency of Saanich North and the Islands is a very rapidly growing area, as is the whole of the southern end of Vancouver Island. I've always found it an irony that on the southern end of Vancouver Island we've got 12 municipalities -- 11 until recently; now 12. I find it strange that we have such a duplication of municipalities in the lower mainland, and I think the rapid growth in the Okanagan area illustrates that a lack of planning can create havoc.
I don't think there is any doubt in anybody's mind that we need to have some direction brought and some thought given to how we're going to cope with the 100,000 people who are coming into this province every year now. When the minister mentioned that we had 3.3 million people in British Columbia in 1991 and that in 25 years' time we're going to have 5.3 million people, it really brings home to us the enormous growth that we are experiencing and the absolute necessity of planning for those people. We can't just let them go anywhere willy-nilly; we can't just let them do whatever they please, because if they do, we're going to have anarchy.
What we need to have is some planning; we need to have some organization; and we need a method with which we can
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plan. I would recommend to the minister and to members of this House a plan that my party, my leader and my caucus are coming out with. It's called a community charter, which in our view will solve some of the problems -- in fact, the problems that the minister has identified, and that is that we have to deal with the municipalities on an individual basis. We feel, unlike the minister, that if you give those municipalities more authority, if you give them the right to make their own decisions in their own areas, in the long run they'll make better decisions than the decisions being made for them in Victoria or Vancouver -- particularly in Victoria. We don't think that the present Municipal Act acts in the best interests of the municipalities; we think it acts in the best interests of control by Victoria over the municipalities in the province. Consequently, our long-term recommendations would be to give the municipalities the authority to make decisions for themselves in as many areas as we possibly can. While there will be the odd exception, generally speaking you'll get better planning, you'll get better cooperation and you'll get better regionalization than you would if you try to impose the various solutions of this major and large problem from Victoria.
Other members of my caucus will be speaking to this bill, some of whom -- one in particular -- have had recent personal experience which can be used to the advantage and the knowledge of all of us, as to what happens when we use that awful word "amalgamate," when we put two towns together and make them work together. I've recently been there a number of times, and what I saw in the community was cooperation which was working. We've recently had another amalgamation up in the Okanagan area which, as I understand -- other than one small isolated area -- seems to be working.
By coincidence, in the last six months I have been suggesting that we should be talking about closer cooperation between the three municipalities in my constituency: the three major municipalities of North Saanich, Sidney and Central Saanich. I've found a very, very popular response to the fact that (1) we have too much government; and (2) it's too intrusive. In fact, our local regional newspaper ran an article about three weeks ago, and of the 608 people who responded to that article, 90 percent of them said: "Yes, we think we should amalgamate, or at least we should talk about it. We should find the pros and cons, have a referendum and make a decision." For the information of....
Is it the accent or the quietness of my voice, Mr. Member that can't hear? Are you with me?
An Hon. Member: Oh yes.
C. Tanner: Oh, that's fine. I thought I'd lost you for a moment.
Interjections.
C. Tanner: It's early in the day, Mr. Speaker, and I thought they might do me the privilege of paying attention just for a few minutes. I don't often get.... I don't speak that much, and when I do I actually thought they'd be fascinated.
By coincidence, I got into politics 25 years ago through an amalgamation. I lived in a suburb of Whitehorse in the Yukon. When it was suggested that we should amalgamate the city of Whitehorse and all its environs, I was fiercely opposed. I thought my little subdivision was going to be swallowed up by the big city, and they'd be making decisions downtown which wouldn't be in my or my children's or my neighbours' best interests. I was most vocal in my opposition for the first couple of months, but then I started to look at the facts. In fact, at the end of the discussion, which lasted about six or eight months, I found that I came out on the other side, and that I was very much for the amalgamation. In 1971 we created the largest geographical city in Canada, which was something of an irony in my view, because what we're talking about is 30,000 people in one of the most remote parts of Canada. Subsequent to that, in the last 25 years, the city of Whitehorse has been an eminent success, and so has the surrounding area.
It's almost like I've gone full cycle: I started in politics in amalgamation, and it looks like I'm going out on the same basis, because I don't intend to run again.
I want to tell the minister that we will not be fighting this legislation just because we're the opposition. We'll be offering reasoned alternatives. We will be criticizing, because that's what we've got to do. But I should warn her that we have two major reservations. One is that I don't see in this legislation the absolute written commitment to this legislation of ministries in the provincial government. I know it's suggested; I know they're willing; but I don't see that written commitment in the legislation, and that concerns us a great deal.
The other major concern we have.... While we like the idea and think it's not bad, and the UBCM endorses it -- as do many municipalities -- the other problem we have immediately is that we suspect that there is going to be a duplication of administration and bureaucracies in the planning area. When I say that, I mean that most regions have planners, most of the major municipalities have planners, and it seems to me that those people are quite capable of making the decisions, with the assistance of the Municipal Affairs ministry of the provincial government, and that we don't need another layer of bureaucracy laid over top of what we've already got.
There is no doubt at all in mind that the public is absolutely opposed to any more government. I don't need to get into the political rhetoric that has been made many times in this House that there is an entirely different philosophy on our side of the House than on that side as to how government is intrusive in people's lives. It will be absolutely fatal to this whole process if we get another layer of bureaucracy. Whether you call them planners, provincial government ministry employees, superregional experts, or whatever, it will be absolutely fatal if we add one more bureaucrat to this process. We have too many in place. We have to use the facilities and the people we already have, and we don't need to add any more.
We will be making our particular and detailed criticisms when we get to the committee stage of this bill. I would say that I am publicly on record in the lower Island as suggesting that we should have no more than three municipalities here. I don't mind sticking my neck out and taking my lumps. The minister has already expressed her view of my opinion in the paper. Minister, I thank you. In my view it was pure politics, but you're entitled to it.
I think the fact is illustrated beautifully on the lower end of the Island by the necessity of a plan to cope with the situation we have now. In my view, we do not need 12 municipalities in the lower end of the Island, we do not need 29 municipalities in the Vancouver area, and we do not need a multiplicity or duplicity of municipalities and regional areas
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in the Okanagan. Those three areas are almost at the point of crisis. We have to do something about it. This is an attempt to find a solution. I appreciate the minister's -- I was going to say lifelong; I can't say that -- longtime attempt to find a solution. I don't think it solves all the problems, but it's a start.
We have to face one factor. In the end of the day, the minister retains unto the provincial government the hammer to force, if you have to, amalgamation or regionalization. I don't have much trouble with that, but I am quite sure it is going to be one of the most difficult things for the municipalities to absorb. In fact, in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick within the last three months we saw the arbitrary amalgamation of municipalities. I don't know what the reaction would be. I suspect it might have been somewhat difficult. But if you go through all the steps, do all the planning, do all the consultation you possibly can, have a referendum, and all those things fail, I suppose that eventually somebody has to have the intestinal fortitude to make a decision.
We will be talking in detail when we get to the committee stage. I thank the minister for presenting her bill. I can assure her it's not going to be easy, but we will do the best we can to give her some good suggestions.
L. Fox: I am pleased to stand in my place and discuss the principles of Bill 11, the Growth Strategies Statutes Amendment Act, 1995.
I understand that the UBCM supports this initiative, and I understand that there have been long deliberations with the UBCM in the development of this legislation. I also understand that in the GVRD, in the CVRD, and perhaps in areas of Kelowna and the Okanagan and the Nanaimo region, there is a need to deal with air-quality and water-quality issues, and with transportation issues. So we recognize some of the thrust and purpose that went into developing this legislation.
But in reading the legislation, one has to be quite concerned. In most of the province this legislation is a non-event, because they have gone to the section that says they can opt into the program -- and it is a volunteer program. Many smaller municipalities that sit just outside the vicinity of a larger municipality.... The regional district says: "Well...." They aren't really looking in the rural parts of the province too closely at this legislation. I'm sure the minister has not had a lot of input with respect to that from those regions of the province.
What concerns me is when I see a news article where the minister says, "Cooperate or else," and in fact identifies that she has authority to even do such things as withhold grants, to force municipalities to play ball. That kind of dictatorial approach is not something that I support. In many, many areas of municipal legislation, we see that ministers have the ultimate authority, but not often do we see that authority used -- not very often in my history in municipal politics. I can think of one or two times that the respective ministers have used the authority. This statement that was in the newspaper was somewhat of a surprise to me, and I hope that the minister, in her closing remarks in this debate, will clarify the article and perhaps set me and the rest of British Columbia somewhat at ease by saying that she is not intending to use the mighty arm of government to force municipalities to comply.
Let me say at the outset that I'm not convinced that we couldn't have addressed many of the issues and concerns by broadening the scope and the mandate of the existing regional districts. Perhaps -- and it isn't clear in the legislation -- the planning regions that will develop out of this new hierarchy of bureaucracy will be something which may, in fact, overlap more than one regional district. That's not clear, and I look forward to the discussions in committee stage to clarify those kinds of issues.
From my experience in municipal politics, it seems to me that it wouldn't have taken a lot of change to the Municipal Act to give regional districts much of the authority, within their existing planning departments, to deal with the issues that are put forward in this legislation. That would have done a couple of things. It would have given me some comfort that there was going to be some accountability in the process, and some process for the residents and taxpayers to hold this initiative and this planning group accountable.
I'm concerned when I see the mechanisms in this legislation for arbitration. I'm concerned when I see that it's once removed, then, by legislation, from having municipal leaders be responsible for the decisions made, and that there is no process. The municipality can merely say: "Look, we represented your views, but we were forced by this arbitration process into this particular initiative." That's a concern for me and for taxpayers in British Columbia.
[10:45]
There are other issues that come to mind; a clause in Bill 25 that was withdrawn last year comes to mind. We know that right now there's no protocol in place between the Ministry of Transportation and Highways and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs to deal with the issues around dedicating land for future highway needs. There's no protocol in place to pay any particular landowner should the planning process dedicate his or her land for future highway needs. One has to question whether or not there is an opportunity through this new bill for the planning, at least, of a respective piece of property without having the ability or need to compensate that property owner within a reasonable length of time. I'm sure we will get some clarification from the minister around that issue and this legislation.
There are a number of other issues that concern me. I think it's probably more noticeable in the lower mainland, certainly in the Victoria region, but also in the general vicinity of Vancouver within the GVRD. It seems to me that this legislation has an opportunity to pit one municipality against another. You could very well see municipalities fighting one another rather than working in a togetherness mode, and perhaps see the mechanism being bogged down because there's a breakdown in the spirit of cooperation. This legislation with that arbitration clause could indeed promote a breakdown of cooperation between municipalities. I'm not saying it will, but it has the opportunity to do that.
I put to you a type of situation. If you have two neighbouring communities, one community sees its opportunity in industrial development and another community adjoining that one doesn't favour that type of development. As I understand this planning process, if indeed there was going to be a substantial change in the planning of that municipality around accommodating new industrial development, they would have to seek the approval of this new planning group in order to have that initiative move forward. Even though it's the elected people's and the taxpayers' wish in that municipality, they've still got to achieve the sanctions under this new
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legislation -- for the other communities to approve that. That is indeed a removal of the autonomy of those elected individuals within that respective municipality. As well, it is one more indicator of how the municipalities could be pitted against one another with their respective values.
If we look at the historical experience within the regional districts -- and I think the minister is aware that I was on the regional district for eight years -- what happened is that if a municipality brought forth a planning initiative because it was supported by the taxpayers of that community, that particular principle was respected by the regional district. No other municipality within that regional district ever -- or very seldom -- opposed that initiative in that community. Along with that, if we saw industrial initiatives and policies put forward by a community -- certainly in the rural parts of British Columbia -- we oftentimes saw the regional district come forward with principal support in principle for that municipality's position if it meant lobbying Victoria, or whatever ministry, to achieve that initiative. So we've had a good spirit of cooperation.
Very rarely have we seen the weighted vote used. Yes, it has been used. But it's not used often in the regional districts. That's another point I wanted to get to in this legislation, and I look forward to discussions around how we utilize the weighted vote in this process.
But there is an element and an opportunity here of really infringing upon the rights of the elected individuals within municipalities. There is the opportunity in this legislation to take away the accountability of those councils to the taxpayer. There are all those other issues that we will address at substantial length in committee stage.
I want to wrap up by once again recognizing that we have a challenge in the growing parts of British Columbia -- a challenge that I'm sure everybody in this Legislature recognizes. Whether this is the right tool or the wrong tool to meet that challenge will be more clearly identified during committee stage.
D. Lovick: I want to congratulate the two members from the opposition benches who have spoken. I think the comments they made are in the spirit of producing good legislation in this province. Rather than an automatic, knee-jerk reaction that says, "As an opposition, we'll oppose it," they're saying: "Yes, the concept sounds okay, but we have some questions." I admire and appreciate that. I think all of the people of the province are well served when we function on that basis.
I note that the Liberal member made reference to the possibility of a growth in bureaucracy with this legislation. It's certainly a theme that we've heard a great deal of in this chamber. I would just point out that the intention of the legislation, as I read it, is exactly the opposite: it is, rather, to use the existing structures more effectively.
The concern is valid, but allow me just to make an observation. The member and I both share constituencies that are part of the Gulf Islands and the Islands Trust. He knows full well, as I do, that one of the difficulties you encounter when dealing with the Islands Trust is perennial complaints from the constituents they serve about the lack of staff and the lack of resources. It's the old argument, where everybody says, "We've got too darned many bureaucrats; government is too big," except when it's a service that they happen to want. Somehow we have to reconcile those two competing motives, if you like.
The Reform member.... I was delighted to hear the member for Prince George-Omineca respond as he did. We on this side of the House have been sitting here waiting, if need be, to use a statement he made in April of last year suggesting that planning for the future is of extreme importance. So I'm really happy that he didn't say that he didn't really mean that. Quite the contrary. The issue then becomes: how do we do it, and are we doing it properly?
I'm concerned, though -- and this is just a gentle criticism, if I might -- that his concerns about whether the legislation is, in his words, "dictatorial" seem to be based less on the legislation and more on the newspaper accounts. I hope we'll clear that up. I would just remind the member that standing behind every statute ever produced anywhere in the world is an authority.
C. Serwa: A big stick.
D. Lovick: Exactly so. The member for Okanagan West, who has some experience in these things, says that standing behind it is a big stick, and he's quite correct.
The key in legislation is, to use the minister's phrase, to get buy-in from those affected: to try to persuade people that it is indeed in their best interest to give up some of their freedom to move, if you will, in order to achieve their common interest. That is the nature of all law and of all legislation. It seems to me that this particular measure does a rather good job of balancing those interests. It says: "Yes, we want to work and cooperate with local communities, but at some point the provincial government, through the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, has an overriding obligation to the people in the larger communities who are not otherwise represented." In other words, the general interest isn't represented; the particular interests are. That's the minister's job: to represent the general interest. It doesn't necessarily follow that that is a dictatorial exercise of power; that's simply a systemic feature of the way we operate.
We're involved now in second reading debate of this bill. As everybody in this chamber knows but perhaps those watching the debate may not know, second reading is about the principle of the bill. What is the general overarching purpose and intention of the measure? What are we trying to accomplish? Happily, then, as I said earlier, opposition members have said that they have some sympathy for the principle, but they're worried about the details. That's as it should be. That's a perfectly legitimate response.
I want to touch a bit on the principle, and in doing so, say why I am very pleased to support this particular measure. It is probably safe to say that almost all the fundamental issues confronting us in this province are ultimately issues of growth. They are connected to growth. As I was thinking about this measure and the problem of dealing with growth -- and after all, the bill is called the Growth Strategies Statutes Amendment Act -- I was thinking of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, who once said that human beings' tragedy is that they can't live with each other, but they can't live without each other.
That is the same predicament we face when we talk about growth. We know we are going to have it; we know that zero
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population growth is not going to happen. Those of us living in this magnificent, wonderfully privileged part of the planet know we will always be subject to growth pressures. We know we can't stop it, but we pretend it won't occur. The question then becomes what we do about it. How do we manage it? How do we shape it as best we can? How do we ensure that it is beneficial to the largest numbers possible?
It wasn't very many years ago that growth was seen to be an unalloyed good. It was absolutely good, and nobody argued twice about it; it was bigger and better, onward and upward. In fact, I think that's the ethic that has driven North American culture from the beginning: onward and upward, and more chicken in every pot, etc., etc. It is only relatively recently that we have begun to say there is also a tremendous price we pay for growth, and at some point, our overall good is threatened by that kind of growth pattern. That is what we have now recognized as fact. It seems to me that this is our raison d'etre for this particular bill -- to say yes, we are going to have growth, but let us ensure that we deal with it.
[11:00]
When I was travelling around the province a few years ago doing environmental assessment consultations on behalf of the Minister of Environment, one of the things we encountered all the time, when we got into some of the less formal discussions with people around the table, was that the real problems in terms of growth and impacts on the environment weren't necessarily the discrete, large projects. It wasn't a question of whether we were going to have a new pulp mill in Houston or a mine opening somewhere in the Kootenays. The issue was the incremental problems and pressures on the environment.
The incremental problems are precisely what I think this bill is trying to deal with. The issue isn't so much a new factory or mine going in. It is whether we can continue to draw the same amount of water from a given reservoir, lake or watershed system that we have taken for granted -- or do we have too many people here? Do we then need to find a way to control that development and growth? I think that's what this particular measure is designed to do.
We are talking about working together with municipalities and local communities to get as many players who are directly affected by growth issues as possible sitting around the table to have what the minister referred to as adult discussion. I like that phrase "adult discussion." It's sad that we don't function that way all the time, and I am as guilty as anybody for that. We are probably ready for that leap. I think we all know we can't go on as we have been, and that we need to recognize our common interests and work toward them.
I will give you an example. Some months ago, I attended one of the growth strategies symposia that was held in Nanaimo, which is my community, and the minister spoke. I must confess that I went there very skeptical indeed, but the minister spoke in a non-threatening way and said that this is what they were going to try to accomplish. I was sitting around the table with representatives from all of Vancouver Island -- and I think we represented the entire geographical space of the Island. These are, for the most part, hardened, experienced politicians used to negotiating and fighting for their particular interests in their communities. What I found amazing, sitting around the table, watching the reaction to the minister, was this kind of nod, this acquiescence, this acceptance: "Yes, we have to do this."
The problem, as we all know, occurred once we broke out of the larger construct and went into our discussion groups -- when, in short, we were no longer talking about our common interests but, rather, our particular interests. The moment that happened, the cracks began to form, because we listened to conversations across the table like: "Well, wait a minute, we in our particular area" -- and I won't name names, municipality, regional district, local improvement area, whatever it might have been -- "really don't want to have building inspection, thank you very much, because we don't have a problem." The adjoining, neighbouring municipality said: "Well, you may not have a problem, but you carry on doing that stuff, you carry on functioning that way -- without proper septic and sewer arrangements and so forth, because of no building inspection, and because the Ministry of Health obviously can't ever keep up in terms of things that are simply being built that they don't know about -- we will have a problem with what you're doing." That is where the shoe begins to pinch -- to coin a phrase.
We all know we're in it together, but nobody wants to make the first move. It's rather like the two kids in the school yard, right, each pulling on the end of a rope or something, and they both say: "Well, if I let go, will you let go, and can we do this at exactly the same time?" Because if they don't do it at exactly the same time, somebody falls on his or her nether portion -- rear end, derriere. I was looking for a euphemism and the member for Okanagan West can always give me a euphemism, and I thank him for that.
That's our predicament, in essence. We know we're in it together, but until we have some kind of regulatory regime -- some kind of structure we can all agree with -- nobody is prepared to let go of the tense rope.
To give an example -- in case anybody thinks I'm overstating this or this is all speculation -- look at what happens when we don't have clear enough agreements, and we don't have a regimen or a legislative mechanism to back up those agreements. Look at what's happening in Canada today, for example, with the province of New Brunswick. Look at that most recent story in terms of getting -- was it the Purolator Courier service to New Brunswick? Essentially, by offering huge incentives to that company to relocate from another province to New Brunswick....
The same phenomenon, of course, happens in the United States. It's usually referred to as the Alabama experience. The notion is that one particular part of a commonwealth -- one particular part of a larger community -- says: "We want to look out for our interests and the heck with our neighbours." It becomes a beggar-thy-neighbour approach to functioning. That, I would submit, is exactly the danger we are in unless we have something like this legislation. We need to put in place a mechanism that makes it very difficult for anybody to do that to their neighbours. Understandably, if there is no mechanism -- if it is, indeed, some kind of law of the jungle, and it's everybody for him or herself -- then we're going to have that problem. If, however, we have a mechanism, a structure, that says we can all work in this together, we can put all our common interests on the table -- and our competing interests on the table -- and we'll be guided by those with experience, background and resources to show us how to resolve our differences, then, it seems to me, we will all be considerably better off.
Another brief example of that -- two of them, one at a federal level and one at an international level; well, both at an
[ Page 13742 ]
international level. Think in terms of that horribly sad story in terms of the east coast fishery and the turbot war with Spain and the European Union. What's happened there? What's happened is that we thought we had something like international covenants that protected us -- law-of-the-sea legislation and so forth -- but we discovered that apparently they aren't worth the paper they're printed on. Guess what happens as a result. We're in danger of destroying that common world resource because we don't have the mechanism.
Similarly, a couple of years ago we had the world community gathering together in Rio de Janeiro to talk about our common future and the threats to the environment. Two years later we had a similar meeting in Berlin. The conclusion -- sadly -- from both of those meetings is that, yes, in principle we all agree with this kind of stuff and we're going to do something about protecting the ozone layer and the planet, but when we get to it, nothing happens, because again we can't agree, apparently, on that common regulatory environment in which we all agree to give up some of our powers in order to protect the larger community.
That's what's behind this legislation. It says we should recognize our common interest; it says we should try to achieve that necessary balance between the regions and the local communities; it says that the larger communities have obligations to the smaller ones. It does, in short, all of those necessary and important things.
I agree with members opposite that we can't simply accept this wonderful concept without question. We need to look at it; we need to make sure that the legislation does indeed do what it says it does. It seems to me that that's what the committee stage of a debate is about. I'm looking forward to that committee stage debate. I think there are some questions -- I have some questions, frankly -- about the legislation. But the principle of this bill, I think, is uncontestable. It is desirable; it's necessary. I praise the minister for sticking with this for some 20 years and finally bringing it forward. I think all of us will be thankful at the end of the day that we have brought this legislation forward.
G. Wilson: This piece of legislation will, I'm sure, in years hence be looked back on as a very major piece of legislation in the history of our province, because we are without doubt one of the least populated regions of the globe in terms of the amount of resources we have, the amount of livable space we have and the opportunities we have to be able to expand and to accommodate additional people. The reason I raise that is that we also are in a part of the world where we have tremendous strains being placed upon our infrastructure and our local land use policies, and we have, I would say, strains that are being brought to bear by the effect of densities of populations and settlements.
While we have an enormous amount of space and a relatively limited population, we have to recognize that our population growth is occurring at an enormously rapid rate. I believe that if, in fact, we've just gone through Generation X, then we are headed toward Generation R. Generation R will be Generation Reproduction, because global populations.... I think that as we look at growth strategies and talk about amendments and statutes which amend acts within this Legislative Assembly that affect the people of British Columbia, we cannot do that in the absence of understanding that what we are really looking at here is the capacity to manage a tremendous population increase that will occur not just within this province, and not just from migration within this country, but also from external pressures that will be brought to bear as we see our global population rise from six billion to 12 billion people in the next 30 years. We recognize a 12 billion population figure as being unthinkable at this time, yet we know also that cities such as Calcutta build a Vancouver every year because the number of people expands exponentially through their domestic population increase. They accommodate that growth in a variety of different ways. We in British Columbia have had no experience, quite frankly, with that level of growth and that extent of population expansion.
We must also know that three billion of the current six billion people are under the age of 30. And that three billion people will, as surely as we are in this chamber, reproduce. This is not hypothetical; this 12 billion figure is not a hypothetical figure and not something the doomsdayers are putting forward. These are real people who are going to have families. Their families, if we look at the average population increase, are going to produce on this globe a doubling of the world's people in the next 30 years.
What's interesting about that is that they talk about a 20-year period in this piece of legislation -- the need to plan for a 20-year period. That's a very significant time. In my very first speech when I was elected and was serving as the Leader of the Opposition in this chamber, I said that we in British Columbia need to put in place a growth strategy that accommodated a 60-year plan. I was audibly laughed at by members in this chamber, who said: "What a ridiculous notion! It's hard enough to plan from election to election, which is a four-year plan, rather than thinking about a 60-year plan."
But a 20-year plan, as is called for in this legislation, is only the very beginning, because we are looking at a fluid situation here. Our growth strategies are going to have to change as rapidly as our population is changing and as the effects upon our land use are changing. If we do not accommodate some form of measure of management, we are going to be in serious difficulty and serious trouble.
[11:15]
We've already seen in our municipalities municipal governments that have not paid a great deal of attention to upgrading and planning for water supply, sewers and the kind of infrastructure that expanded populations demand. We also have heard a great deal from people who talk about the opportunities for widespread development, increased growth and the conversion of what's left of our agricultural land into suburban condominium developments, golf courses or other recreational facilities.
Never before in the history of this province have we demanded such leadership as is demanded now. We have to have visionaries who recognize that the population 30 years hence will be very different from the population that exists today. We have no experience to draw on, because global populations have never been at the level they are today and will never diminish to the levels they have been in the past.
I can tell you that it used to be that the population would double over a 120-year period. Then population in the early 1900s was doubling over a 60-year period. By the 1950s, it was doubling over a 30-year period. By the 1990s, it's starting to double over a 15- to 20-year period.
Let's be honest here: 12 billion people is unthinkable today. We're having a hard enough time feeding six billion.
[ Page 13743 ]
Our marine resources are depleted now. We worry about a turbot war, fighting about some poor fish that was so low on the totem pole that nobody paid any attention to it until the cod was all gone. A minister who doesn't understand that we're about to lose the finest west coast fishery in the world with our salmon....
We don't recognize that our water resources which we take for granted here are coveted by our neighbour to the south, who's losing potable water and demands ever-increasing amounts of water to be able to supply their irrigation demands so they can continue to be the "breadbasket of North America." And that's assuming that the seismic activity, which we all know is about to occur, isn't going to disrupt those lines, flows, dams and so on.
We have to have visionary people who recognize that we now have to move beyond just the question of growth strategies. We have to establish an economy based upon a limits-to-growth strategy -- an ability to recognize that there are finite, real limits to our ability to continue to expand and to our capacity to absorb the primary base resources of this world and still maintain some kind of livable community. It's a fact. This is not a theory.
It's on rare occasions that we can, in second reading philosophical debate, get into a whole series of other, kind of tangential, areas. But take a look at what happened in the northern portions of Africa, an area I'm very familiar with, having spent a good deal of time of my life there. That was an area that just 60 years ago had rich grazing lands; they are now desert. It had artesian bores and wells that were able to at least provide water to the herders who needed to go there. Those artesian bores are either now contaminated with salt solutions -- contaminated with salt water -- or are often simply gone; they're dry. The aquifers south of the border are being contaminated by the kind of herbicidal and pesticidal uses we're putting on our land.
I don't stand here as a fearmonger. I'm not standing here to say this is something that we all ought to be fearful of. This is not the sort of hellfire-and-damnation kind of speech that I heard out at the Abbotsford by-election the other night. What I'm saying is that we have very real, very serious problems with respect to human population expansion and the demand upon the resource base, because every one of those new six billion people who are going to come upon this earth in the next number of years....
It's interesting. I notice a group of young people from a school in the audience who have come into the gallery right now. I'm not sure where they're from; I welcome them here, and I'm sure we all do. This is the generation -- this generation of young people sitting in the gallery listening to this debate -- that will be most affected by this legislation. It is this generation that will expect to have the same kind of lifestyle, if not an improved lifestyle, with greater expectations in terms of the resource wealth than we have today. They'll expect that it will be there for them. The great tragedy is it will not, and the reason it will not is that we got sold a bill of goods with something called the Brundtland commission. Sustainable development it was called. I can tell you that we need -- very clearly need -- to deal with that issue.
I understand that the member for North Vancouver-Lonsdale would like to formally introduce our guests today, and I would certainly yield for that introduction at this time.
The Speaker: Thank you, hon. member. Shall leave be granted for the introduction?
Leave granted.
L. Krog: I want to thank the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast, who has demonstrated his usual incredible courtesy.
In the gallery today are a number of students from the grade 6 class of Pauline Haarer school in Nanaimo, with their teacher Sophie Mahun and several parents. My daughter, Jessica Krog, is one of them. I ask the House to please make them welcome.
G. Wilson: Just so those young people that are here aren't misled by my words, the hon. member hasn't jumped to North Vancouver-Lonsdale; it was just the heckling from the member behind me that brought it to my attention that the introduction could be made.
The issue of this growth strategy is one that is of such incredible importance that we really do have to have a limits-to-growth strategy. I believe the Alliance Party is the only one that has put down in writing and documented what we believe to be a workable limits-to-growth strategy, recognizing a new economy built upon that model. I encourage members to read it, to criticize it, to contribute to it, to try to amend it and to incorporate it into their policy platforms. This is not something that will rise and fall with partisan politics; this is something that every single individual in this room today, and those listening and those in the province, are going to be affected by.
I congratulate this government for taking this first step. I think it's long overdue. But I don't think it goes anywhere near far enough with respect to the vision that we need to have a comprehensive set of documentation brought to us so that we can make long-term planning decisions.
If we look at growth strategies, we have to recognize that regional local economies are dependent upon some reasonable assessment of what we have. I've been arguing since 1987 that this province needs a comprehensive resource inventory which is not just the counting of trees but an inventory of all of our primary resources, our fundamental resources in terms of our air quality, our water and our land. We need to know to what extent we are able to continue to expand, to extract from those resources and generate wealth. When we look at that, when that imagery is finally done.... Regrettably, it hasn't been done, and I think that is one of the main failures of the CORE process. One of the reasons we've had such difficulty is that it wasn't done. When that is done, I think everybody will recognize finite limits to our ability to grow in those areas.
Therefore, if we're to accommodate the lifestyle that all of us enjoy and wish to maintain, and a strong, viable economy, we have to change our way of thinking. We must stop talking about labour and start talking about work as a concept. We must recognize that we will no longer have the same concept of the journey to work, and travel, as we move towards home-based industries and a rezoning and a combination of those. We must recognize that our love affair with the automobile and the internal combustion engine driven by our fossil fuel economy will soon come to an end, by necessity, because we can't accommodate six billion people all wanting it. It can't happen. It can't happen if they double to 12 billion if it can't
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happen with six billion. So we need to start now to plan to bring in the new concepts of transportation. And those transportation strategies have to be built not just for the year 2000 but for the year 2020, 2030, 2040 and beyond.
We have to recognize, also.... One of the big criticisms I had with the Columbia River Treaty in terms of growth strategies was: what did we do with billions of dollars of assets that came back in? Did we put it into the local economy to diversify that economy and to help that region build a new economy within the limits-to-growth strategy? No, we didn't. We put it into the generating capacity of three more dams to export more hydroelectric power to the United States, when everybody who's looking at that issue knows we're moving toward gas-generated-turbine electrical power. We're not moving to big dams and water and expanding capacities. We're moving to gas-generated turbines; that's where we're headed. Why would you not put that money back into the region, where it could do more good, rather than simply expanding the opportunity for B.C. Hydro to be able to export power?
That's where growth strategies start to really take effect. We have to realize that we have to allow investment back into the regions. That strategy has to be something that is encompassed by all British Columbians. I'm a firm believer in a level of autonomy for local government in terms of land use decisions and community planning. I spent many years in local government, as members may well know.
I have some very serious concerns when we deal with a concept which I think is being promoted by the Liberal opposition with respect to something called a community charter. I'm not quite certain how this is going to work, because it hasn't been very clearly explained. It seems to say that we're going to just toss back or download to local governments the demand for local or regional planning, and they're going to allow local governments to plan for themselves. That is so shortsighted; it's just amazing that it would come from people who, I would have thought, would have had a good deal more understanding of how the systems work. We're not moving towards small, isolated little plans that have no integration or no long-range planning.
What we have to be doing, and what this growth strategy may well start to accommodate -- but it falls far short, in my judgment, even though in principle we can support it -- is starting to move towards a provincewide base of planning and documentation that will allow us an opportunity to accommodate growth in the interior, in the north and in the Kootenays, by expanding and making those economies viable so that we can get away from this urbanization we have been looking at today.
Generation R is going to be highly mobile. It is going to be a population that is most incredibly well-connected through our new electronic highways and Internet communications. Generation R, it was claimed, was primarily going to be through populations expanding in the so-called Third World. Well, today, in 1995, there is no such thing as a First World, Second World or Third World. There is only one world; it's our world. It's a very small world, figuratively speaking, and becoming smaller that way, because we are becoming connected so intrinsically through our economies, and we are becoming so connected through our communications, that what we have to do is recognize a limits-to-growth strategy. What is affecting us more here today is what's happening outside our political boundaries, because those pressures are going to become internalized as human populations change.
I think that this Growth Strategies Statutes Amendment Act is a reasonable first step; but we also have to recognize that we do have to find ways in which we can accommodate a new economy -- a new economy that is based on a limits-to-growth strategy. And that's not something to fear; it's something that we should take on as a challenge.
When the Industrial Revolution came along and revolutionized the economies, people said: "Oh, it's going to absolutely kill the local communities. It's going to kill cottage-related industries." It didn't. What it did was change the nature of the economy. And what we did was modify and change our own society to be able to benefit from the wealth that came from it.
But it also failed to recognize that there is a finite ability to be able to extract our resources without cost. There is a finite opportunity we have to be able to continue to use our timber, our minerals, our water, without a cost. What we have to do is build an economy that rebuilds those primary resource bases. We have to build an economy that takes our waste management problem -- a horrendous problem; one of the biggest costs to local government is the waste management problem -- and says that within our new limits-to-growth strategy, we will build a very strong industry that will take those so-called non-usable goods and make them usable, through a proper recycling of our goods.
And we'll also recognize, hon. Speaker, with respect to our limits-to-growth strategy, that there will be opportunities for us to be able to have urban expansion. But those opportunities have to be adequately and properly planned, as an aging population puts greater demands on the services that we currently take for granted.
[11:30]
The Alliance Party, the other day, on Friday of last week, unveiled its White Paper with respect to a plan to protect the agricultural land reserve -- something that the minister alluded to in her opening remarks in her speech today, and something we feel very strongly about. We are recognizing that if we are to protect the agricultural land reserve, given that there is an enormous pressure right now for expansion because of the population expansion and growth that I've been referring to, we have to do it as a society, as a whole. If the agricultural land reserve is worth protecting -- and we firmly believe it is -- it cannot be done off the backs of the farmers alone. If there was one thing wrong with the legislation when it came in, it was that when this government -- the government from 1972 to 1975 -- brought in the ALR, they didn't do anything to help farmers maintain a viable and effective industry. Indeed, they made it more and more difficult for them to succeed. But by the same token, it shackled them to their land, so that people who have years of investment in agricultural production find themselves now shackled to land that they no longer are able to sell on the free market for development purposes, because it is going to be agricultural land.
The concept of the agricultural land bank is a good one. It is currently being tested in the agricultural sector, as we have put it in our White Paper out for discussion. It effectively calls for a partnership between the government and the farmer so that there can be a free market assessment of lands, which will
[ Page 13745 ]
then be put on deposit so that the mortgage owner will be the government and the beneficiary will be the farmer. Farmers will be able to gain interest on the value of the land that's on deposit, and that will be protected in perpetuity. There's no more threat of foreclosure from the kinds of difficulties that farmers have now through conventional financing. Furthermore, it will provide long-term security opportunities for people in the agricultural industry who wish to diversify their production and change crops so that they can keep up with a modern and changing market.
This land bank concept has a further attribute, to the extent that it will also allow farmers an opportunity to cash out, which is something that they don't have an opportunity to do right now. Farmers are hard-working, diligent British Columbians who are as committed to trying to keep their agricultural sector alive as anybody else, but they find themselves shackled by virtue of provincial legislation that really prohibits giving them the ability to get conventional financing in shape through all kinds of government programs that come and go with various Agriculture ministers as elections come and go.
The agricultural land bank is a very solid idea. It's an idea that was effectively used in Japan -- in a slightly different form, to be sure -- where rising populations were starting to come up and take over coveted rice-growing lands, and they decided they had to protect that. Similarly, in Germany, after the war -- there was a move toward industrialization in both Germany and France -- they decided that this was something they had to do.
Let me say, with respect to growth strategies, that it is not enough to simply say that local governments may or must look after long-term growth strategies. We need visionaries who are prepared to say: "This is how we are going to do it." Take that out to people and say: "Look at these ideas. Help us to develop these ideas in new and different ways." That is what we in the Alliance are attempting to do: listen to those visionaries who are out there in B.C. There are many who have excellent ideas, who are able to come forward and say: "Look, we have a problem; here is our solution."
Those of us in the Alliance are absolutely committed to looking at these growth strategies in terms of their solutions in the building of a new and more viable economy. The agriculture land bank is but one. In the next couple of weeks, we will be bringing out the Alliance's White Paper on transportation strategies for the movement of people not only in the lower mainland but all over British Columbia. It is a strategy that says we must start to look at the coastal part of B.C., at our marine highway. It says that we can no longer rely upon the traditional corridors of transportation, but that we must start to build, within our coastal community, access to the coastal area, so that we can enhance port development and export.
If we are going to have a good economy based on limits to growth, we have to recognize within our transportation strategies that we must have a vision of building the new facilities that will be needed in the 20-to-30-year range that we talk about. If that is to be, it is to be done in cooperation with local government, the provincial government and the federal government.
I would like to close by speaking about where I see the failure in this bill. I think there are a number of problems with it. When we get to committee stage we will be proposing one or two amendments, which I hope the minister will accept as friendly and constructive. Where this bill fails -- and what I think is so incredibly shortsighted in this sort of community charter nonsense -- is that is doesn't recognize that there are extremely deeply held allegiances to local boundaries. It doesn't recognize that there are incredible jealousies that develop at the local level. Any member here who has ever been on a local government or board will know that if we are to ride over that, if we are to provide, for the people of those regions, some integrated planning process that removes duplication in the planning process and brings together community planning so that we can do long-range community planning with a view to implementing a limits-to-growth strategy and a new economy, then it means that we need to have direction, guidance and leadership from the provincial government, from those people who are elected to the provincial government. It means that we need to break down this partisan two-party system or four-party system, or whatever it is that we've got, where the opposition is on this side and the government is on that side. We need to start to realign ourselves with respect to the regions that we represent.
It's tragic when you talk about growth strategies to recognize there is such an incredibly different attitude in the urban parts of British Columbia to what's in the rural regions. The regions of this province are all but ignored under the current system of government. The reason is because, by population, we clearly elect more people from the urban centres than from the regions. So the people of the Peace River, for example, complain that they don't get heard effectively enough -- notwithstanding that they have good representation here, and I would say that they have hard-working MLAs -- because the mind-set of government is for the people in the urban centres. We are developing our strategies and policies on the basis of an urban plan, and the growth strategy must recognize that one of the ways we can get around that is to build into our new economy, our new limits-to-growth strategy, a manner of decentralizing our investments to get people into the rural regions through incentive programs that will allow them to enjoy the phenomenal quality of life that exists in rural British Columbia.
We are among the most fortunate people in the world. When I talk about global population, I don't talk about this in a hypothetical way. Those people are real; those people exist today; and those people are going to want to have what we enjoy and take for granted. The fact of the matter is, we can't accommodate it. We cannot accommodate it, because we have never planned to any degree to put in place the services, the resources or the needs that they will have.
So this is a very, very important piece of legislation. I think that it really is time, when we start to look at the implementation of a growth strategy for British Columbia, to recognize that the implementation must also accommodate a limits-to-growth strategy. As I've said before, the Alliance is the only party to date prepared to embark upon that, to explain it, to defend it and to take it to the people of British Columbia in the next election. I believe it's something the people of British Columbia will endorse wholeheartedly, and I believe they will because it looks to the next generation and the generation beyond. It provides a manageable, properly developed economy that reduces the expenditure and cost of local government and provides the people with a greater opportunity to use the money they earn to build the communities in which they live.
[ Page 13746 ]
I congratulate the government again for introducing this as a first step. But it's only a very small first step as we start to move toward a far greater degree of foresight in order to be able to put in place the kinds of policies that we will ultimately need in this province.
R. Kasper: This growth strategies act will have an incredible effect on the communities that I represent: those of Langford and Sooke in the Capital Regional District; and, in the southern portion of the Cowichan Valley Regional District, the communities of Cowichan Bay, Glenora, Cobble Hill, Mill Bay and Shawnigan Lake. They will all be affected by this legislation.
Some of the problems that the south Cowichan region of the Malahat-Juan de Fuca riding, which I represent, is facing right now are inadequate water supplies, and groundwater systems that are owned and operated by private utilities. There are also water systems that are administered by improvement districts. Those communities that are serviced by those utilities and improvement districts are under severe pressure from the demand for additional water services because of major land use decisions that occurred in the past. Many of those decisions were made when we did not have any form of regional planning in the province -- going back to 1983, when the regional planning process was eliminated in the Municipal Act.
Not only are there problems with the adequate supply and quantity of water, but we're dealing with sewage problems. Sewage problems are not unique to one particular community, but I know that it has probably become one of the most controversial issues that the residents within the south Cowichan area are dealing with right now. It's to the point where there are potential environmental disasters just in dealing with the day-to-day issue of pumping out one's septic tank for sewage disposal. Regional and local governments have been unwilling to come to grips with this issue, and if there has been a regional growth strategy in place five or ten years ago, or the ability for the region to deal with these issues when they were making major land use decisions, perhaps we wouldn't be faced with the problems the community is currently faced with.
It doesn't end there. The region is also grappling with the question of garbage disposal. Garbage is being generated from more people moving into the community who have additional waste to distribute, and the region as a whole is unable to deal with that issue. Slowly but surely, they're going through a regional refuse and disposal program, and they will hopefully come to an appropriate resolution of the problem.
But it's the land use decisions that have been made in the past that have brought the water and sewage problems and the garbage disposal issues to a head. I term it "unsustainable development." A development has been allowed to take place without getting into proper analysis of how to deliver the necessary infrastructure services that can ensure the taxpayers of the region an opportunity of having a cost-effective way of dealing with water services, sewer services, garbage disposal, transportation and issues such as schools.
It is not only the development that has occurred in the past and that the region is facing right now that makes this act so important; it's the proposed development that is currently on the drawing boards and has reached some initial stages within the community. I cite the proposed Bamberton development within the Cowichan Valley Regional District. If there was any reason why it's important to have this legislation in place, it's the Bamberton development. I cite the MacKay report that was commissioned by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and that extensively reviewed the Bamberton proposal. That report cited a number of deficiencies on the application that was submitted -- those dealing with water, transportation, and the future impact of garbage and sewage disposal -- and the impact that those things would have on Saanich Inlet and surrounding environs. As a result of that report the minister and the government saw the wisdom, and last year initiated a growth strategy process for the Cowichan Valley Regional District. They also initiated an impact analysis of Saanich Inlet and a full environmental assessment of that project. I cannot help but stress that not only is it the current development but it's what's on the books right now -- not only within the Cowichan Valley area, but development within the Capital Regional District and other parts of the province -- that make this legislation so important.
[11:45]
I'd like to talk about the purpose of the bill. The issues that both the regional districts and the local governments -- be they improvement districts, fire protection districts or school districts.... There will be an opportunity for public input for those who are concerned about the impact of growth and development within their community. But the purpose will ensure that we avoid such types of development as sprawl and the use of unsuitable lands for future growth and development within communities. The bill will afford an opportunity to protect environmentally sensitive areas within the region. There will also be the ability to protect our resources, our agricultural base and our forest reserve areas, to ensure that we have sustainable employment and also a sustainable food supply within our region.
The legislation will also reduce the negative impact that growth and development has had on our air, land and water. Those are the types of issues that can be addressed, should be addressed and shall be addressed by those regions.
I mentioned earlier that to ensure that the quality and quantity of our ground and surface water will be protected.... It's that water which gives the lifeblood for all communities. It's not only what we need to sustain our lives but also what provides the recreational opportunities that many of us pursue. They depend on good quality and quantity of ground and surface water.
I cannot help but stress that public consultation and public input will be an important element for the regions and communities affected by this legislation, because it's an opportunity for the taxpayers -- who will be paying the cost of providing the roads, sewers, water collection and distribution systems, fire protection and schools that growth and development will create additional demands on the community for -- to have their voices heard during this process. When we look at what's going to happen within our regions over the next 20 years, the taxpayers will know what course is laid out for future growth and development, and that the major land use decisions that are made are not going to have a negative impact on their local economy or pocketbook. It's going to be done in a way that is truly sustainable, both from an environmental point of view and from the ability-to-pay point of view.
In many cases, many jurisdictions have made land use decisions which have never taken the taxpayers into account.
[ Page 13747 ]
They've allowed for rampant development, and then, when the problems come -- the need to upgrade sewage disposal systems and water services -- it's those poor taxpayers who have to pay the freight, not those elected officials who made inappropriate decisions in the past.
I close my comments in support of this legislation by encouraging all members of our locally elected communities to support and to work with this legislation. I also encourage all members of this House to support this legislation. Noticing the hour, I move that the debate be adjourned.
R. Kasper moved adjournment of the debate.
Motion approved.
Committee of Supply A, having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.
Hon. D. Marzari moved adjournment of the House.
Motion approved.
The House adjourned at 11:52 a.m.
The House in Committee of Supply A; G. Brewin in the chair.
The committee met at 10:11 a.m.
ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF EDUCATION
(continued)
On vote 22: minister's office, $410,000 (continued).
L. Stephens: The member for Chilliwack would like to continue his line of questioning where he left off.
R. Chisholm: I'd like to go back to the first question that I asked the minister yesterday, and that was the 4 percent and the 3 percent. I understand there might be a difference of opinion over the percentages, but basically the question was: what advice do you have for a school district that is growing so rapidly, that has a 3 percent increase in funding but a 4 percent increase in students, and that is going to see the same thing next year? They are looking for advice from you as to how they could bring this situation under control. After all, we're talking about students and facilities for students at this point in time.
If you have any advice, this would be an appropriate time for you to state how they could facilitate this with their budgets. I think they would appreciate that. They were asking that specific question yesterday when I was talking to Dr. Lees. If you've got any advice, it would be most appropriate.
Hon. A. Charbonneau: Over the last three years we have been trying to improve the standards, relevance, accountability and quality of education, and I believe we're doing a good job on that. At the same time, we're trying to contain costs. As you know, we inherited a very large deficit of $2.4 billion. Some of that deficit was driven by rather large increases in education -- year-to-year salary increases of 7 percent, for the most part. We have been bringing that down, such that the increases last year in salaries were in the 1 percent to 2 percent range. That allows us to bring down the rate of increase in expenditure.
As opposed to every other jurisdiction in Canada, this government has been able to increase funding to education each and every year of our four budgets. The total increase is something on the order of 23 percent over that period of time. We have fully funded enormous enrolment growth while maintaining our special needs funding -- in fact, enhancing special needs funding for the $30 million severe behaviour initiative -- the creation and expansion of the inner-city school initiative, the creation and expansion of a school meals program and this year the creation of a special technology fund.
As opposed to every other jurisdiction in the country that has been slashing education funding, we, as the singular jurisdiction, have been able to increase it year to year. Does this mean that every district is ankle-deep in extra funds? No, by no means.
[10:15]
I have asked all districts to tighten their belts to the maximum degree possible, to find every bit of savings that they can -- particularly on the administrative side -- and I have urged all employees of the system to constrain their own demands with respect to salaries, benefits and perks. Through the Public Sector Employers' Council, we have advised all districts to freeze salaries of all excluded administrative staff, and the vast majority of districts have cooperated with us in that.
The intent is to sustain the level of dollars going to the classroom to the maximum degree possible, and I believe that we have succeeded in that. The individual districts that are receiving -- such as Chilliwack -- about a 3 percent increase for about a 3 percent increase in enrolment.... As I mentioned to the member yesterday, because of the extraordinary expansion of facilities in Chilliwack that this government has funded, they have lost approximately 235,000 in the so-called student density factor, which is in the order of 0.5 percent of their funding. As well, there was the transportation issue that I made mention of.
If you were to allow for the justifiable decrease in student density, and the perhaps error in transportation, the increase in Chilliwack would have been around 3.5 percent for an enrolment increase of 3 percent, and that is commensurate with every other district in the province.
R. Chisholm: For my next question, I'd like to go on and now maybe some good news for the minister. In our community we are getting some good feedback on your new graduation program and on your decision to have letter grades reimplemented. As always, the change in policy had some growing pains. It could have used a bit more pre-planning and money to make it happen. But the system seems to have responded. Our Chilliwack School Board is making good progress at working with the University College of the Fraser Valley on nurturing relationships with the higher institutions that are helping students get matriculation for
[ Page 13748 ]
secondary work on apprenticeship-type and career programs. This is good news. In my view, the more your ministry can help facilitate this sort of thing, the better. Would the minister like to comment?
Hon. A. Charbonneau: I believe the new policies that have been brought in -- both in the intermediate program and the secondary, or graduate, program -- have been well received. The change in focus of the curriculum to applied academics and the increasing attention being paid to all those career paths that are not necessarily post-secondary and academic-focused have also been well received. The injection of funds through Skills Now, the reintroduction of letter grades with respect to grades 4 through 7 and the introduction of the new, structured, written report card in the primary levels and grades 4 to 7 have all been well received by the system, broadly speaking. In particular, they have been well received by parents.
I think also the career and personal planning, the introduction of the work experience component and the injection of new technology show that we're striving to make the system more relevant for young men and women, such that they will stay with us all the way through and prosper in school as they go toward their chosen academic career. I believe it is the job of the system to value all children, to value all options and to assist parents and teachers in increasing the standards, the quality, the level of structure and the level of excellence in the schools. If we all work together on this -- as districts, teachers, superintendents, principals and vice-principals are -- then we will succeed.
R. Chisholm: I guess my next question is: will we be seeing an enlargement of this program in career opportunities and that type of thing in the upcoming year, with more emphasis and resources put in this type of direction?
Hon. A. Charbonneau: In the Skills Now area, Treasury Board has granted me an additional $7 million this year. This is going to allow us a modest expansion of some of the programs in place or allow us to entertain some new proposals: the technology money, and I'll be putting the plan out in the next few weeks about how we are going to expend that technology money, which will also assist; and the cooperations that we are putting in place between K to 12 and the post-secondary institutions, so we can have a more seamless transfer of students on a variety of career paths between the two. For example, at the Clearbrook technology centre we have a couple of years of high school and the first year of college. All these things are steps in the right direction, and I am pleased that the member supports them.
R. Chisholm: There is some feedback from parents in Chilliwack about what your personal planning courses are trying to accomplish. There is a great portion of my community of Chilliwack who feel strongly that certain types of worldly education are better taught at home. That may not be the strong sentiment in all British Columbia communities, but it certainly is in mine. So I am wondering if the minister is prepared to see any flexibility in local design of these personal planning courses that are now mandatory in the new graduation program.
Hon. A. Charbonneau: At the outset of this, I think we must all recognize the role of the family. That is done explicitly within the integrated resource package for the career and personal planning course, which becomes mandatory in grades 8 to 12 this year. There is a section that highlights parental involvement right at the outset and states explicitly that the family is the primary educator in the development of children's attitudes and values; the school plays a supportive role. It goes on through a number of areas, encouraging parental development with respect to sensitive content, as some parents may be uneasy with the content of the curriculum. There are specific instructions to teachers to inform parents of the objectives of the curriculum before addressing any sensitive issues, to obtain the support of the school administration before beginning instruction and then to allow parents, having been informed, the opportunity of having their children excused from portions of the curriculum if they so choose.
R. Chisholm: I take it by your answer, hon. minister, that the school board will be allowed to adjust these programs within the community as they see fit. Will it be a set curriculum, and then the parents can just opt out with their student?
Hon. A. Charbonneau: No, the board cannot change the curriculum. The board is responsible for the implementation of the provincial curriculum, but on a student-by-student basis, based on consultation and the flow of information between administrators and parents, the needs of individual students can be met.
R. Chisholm: I have another matter for right now that is common throughout the province. I understand there is a sort of blanket requirement to take -- I'll use the politically correct term -- challenged children into our public classrooms regardless of the seriousness of their physical challenges, regardless of their behavioural disorders. Could the minister enlighten me about the policy a bit and comment on whether or not the Ministry of Education is reviewing this policy. Is some flexibility around the corner?
Hon. A. Charbonneau: I will attempt to give an answer. If I have not hit the mark completely with all aspects of your question, please ask a further question.
The policy of the ministry is one of inclusion to the maximum practicable degree. That has been the policy for some time. Generally speaking, I believe it is a good policy. Parents, children, teachers and administrators all concur that the integration of special needs children within the regular classroom serves very valuable purposes. There are, however, always circumstances under which other arrangements ought to be considered. I have had a major review of the special needs policy going on for quite some time, and it will be reporting out to me. The draft has been out to the system for consultation, and it's now about to be finalized. It will include some instruction -- some language, if you will -- that says that if there are those circumstances that benefit the child, or where there is a significant danger or hazard to other children, then for their sake, arrangements other than a class-by-class integration of all special needs children will be possible.
Last year, in one attempt to address this issue, we initiated the $30 million severe behaviour initiative. We were encouraging boards to look at the potential of other means of delivery of the curricula in a way that assisted those children and their families to the maximum degree possible. The new
[ Page 13749 ]
policy on special needs will be a wide-ranging policy which will provide some direction to all boards with respect to all special needs matters.
R. Chisholm: The one question I'd like to ask from that answer is: have you any estimate of when we'll see that review -- any time frame?
My next question is along the same lines. In general, the policy over the last couple of decades of integration of hearing-impaired, visually impaired and challenged children, I think, has worked fairly well. But the opportunity the system tries to provide to just one child, without the resources to properly do it, can sometimes affect the learning environment for 24 to 30 other children in the same class. Has the ministry published a paper on this problem or done some task force work with the professionals in the system in recent months? Is there any documentation that the members could review on this situation? Can you see more resources going towards this particular area?
Hon. A. Charbonneau: That issue will be covered within the new policy, and the new policy is nearing completion. We should be at a point of being able to release it within a month. From the draft policy that went out, we've had almost 1,000 replies from the system, 1,000 pieces of constructive criticism. We've gone over them all and will include some of the constructive criticism in the final edits and final development of the policy.
[10:30]
I recognize the point that the member is getting at, that a highly disruptive child, even one in a classroom of 25, can result in a degradation of the learning environment for the other children. It can also greatly increase stress levels on the educator and on the administration in the school. As well, at the end of the day, the child is not helped to the degree that would be desirable.
We're addressing all of these issues and certainly we're sensitive to the specific issue that the member has raised.
R. Chisholm: I'd like to talk a little bit about violence in the schools. The Chilliwack School Board is taking a fairly proactive approach in this area; they have a violence prevention committee at work. I think this is good. My question is sort of information-gathering on their behalf. What has the ministry done to look at this question? Do you have any good advice for the system? Are you getting cooperation from the Attorney General's ministry?
I think our school districts, certainly on a per capita basis, are in fairly good shape, but people are alert to what is happening elsewhere and want to prevent the spread to their community. We are starting to see some violence in Chilliwack. The concern is starting to raise its head. Can the minister comment on what he sees coming down to prevent this in our school system, and how can we be proactive?
Hon. A. Charbonneau: We're certainly cognizant of the problem. However, to put things in context -- and I think we should always strive to do that -- schools in British Columbia are very safe compared to what we read of from time to time in the American system. Nonetheless, whatever levels of violence we do have are unacceptable, and we must strive to reduce them. There is an interministry committee on criminal gangs led by the Attorney General that the Ministry of Education has had some role in.
The ministry has also developed and distributed a handbook called Safe School Communities -- a violence prevention handbook." That has gone out to every school in the system. As well, there is counselling for children; there are courses on conflict resolution; there are components of curricula that deal with sensitization to issues of racism and other prejudices; and there's a process called first step second step, where children are led through a conflict resolution process as a group. I've sat in at schools, at both the intermediate and senior levels, where classes have been having discussions on issues related to conflict resolution and racism, and I find there is a tremendous amount of good work occurring in the area; however, there is more yet to be done.
R. Chisholm: Is there a specific organization within your ministry that takes care of this issue or is looking into this issue, and what might it be? These committees are just springing up and starting up now because they're just seeing it rear its ugly head -- this thing called violence in the schools -- and I think this is the guidance they need. They need to know whom to talk to and how to get in touch with the right people to find solutions to their problems that are now beginning to appear.
Hon. A. Charbonneau: There is a specific branch. Work in this area generally occurs in the social equity branch, and they deal with anti-racism, anti-violence and gender equity issues. Another initiative underway in the ministry, on a pilot basis, in conjunction with four or five other ministries, is the Kids At Risk initiative.
Quite often, it is those children and youth at risk coming from situations -- sometimes family dysfunction, extreme family stress for whatever reason, or communities that are in extreme financial stress -- that then lead to the societal problems and the family problems, and then those family problems come in the door of the school with the children. And sometimes that leads to the behaviour problems and to the violence that we see in our system. On the Kids At Risk initiative, the pilot, the idea is to try to solve these problems at the root rather than just expect the classroom teacher to deal with the problems of society and the family and the community while, at the same time, delivering quality instruction to 25 students, and sometimes having to manage the activities of a personal attendant, a teacher's aide and perhaps a parent volunteer. All that at the same time is too much. As a result, we're stressing out our educators, and that is not serving any of our purposes.
The idea of Kids At Risk is to get at the root of the problem by having the expertise available from other ministries, whether it's Social Services, mental health or community health, Attorney General, Women's Equality or Aboriginal Affairs -- wherever that expertise lies. The idea is to bring that expertise into our schools and let the professionals in the appropriate area deliver the consultation and give the advice that children and their families need, and to try to do that at as early an age as possible or as early a stage as possible when a child or a young man or woman is entering a difficult period in their life. The idea is that we reach out and try to help them in a comprehensive way quickly. If we can do that, we will lessen the problems and the magnitude of the problems. I
[ Page 13750 ]
believe we will see an improvement then with respect to severe behaviour problems. We will also see an improvement with respect to violence in our schools.
R. Chisholm: My next questions are a bit more generic. In the last few days we've just gone through the process of averting a strike in Chilliwack. I was browsing through the Blues, and I didn't see where anybody had addressed the question. At this point in time, the teachers have to remain at work, but we have the problem with the support services, where they can go on strike and then the teachers won't cross the picket line. I can see where this would happen again and again around the province.
I'm wondering if you have any solution -- or anything in the works to try to avert, I suppose, holding the school system up for ransom, holding the children up for ransom, while somebody settles their strike, their problem with their employment. You appear to have solved half the problem, but not the whole problem. Unfortunately, I foresee this type of thing happening over and over again. We were just lucky in Chilliwack that we didn't have a strike and that we don't have 10,000 children out of school at this point in time. I'm just wondering what your views are on this, and where you see a solution to this problem.
Hon. A. Charbonneau: This government supports free collective bargaining, but we have put in place, as you said already, a provincewide bargaining system for teachers. We have also put in place a provincewide organization, the K to 12 employers' association, that now has a responsibility on behalf of trustees to carry out collective bargaining with support staff. I am pleased to say that since we put that structure in place, we have not had a disruption of education. A number of contracts have been settled, a number of potential strike situations have not developed and the parties have resolved the issue at the table. I expect that will continue to be the case.
If anything does develop in that area, or if the member wishes to pursue those issues a bit further, he should take them up either with the Minister of Finance in the estimates, as she is the minister responsible for the Public Sector Employers' Council, or with the Minister of Labour on general labour issues.
R. Chisholm: You can rest assured that I will take them up with those appropriate ministries, because I can foresee where this could break down, and then we've got the children back in that position of being in jeopardy when it comes down to education and all that. So I think it needs to be explored a little bit further, and hopefully we can come up with some sort of resolution to the problem.
My last question to the minister is.... We are seeing, for instance, studies in the United States where grammar and the writing capability of students have been assessed at being very poor. We've known for quite a number of years that that same problem exists here in Canada, whatever jurisdiction you want to talk about. I'm sure you've hired people in the past.... You see it every day, when you talk about the young people coming through the door and then writing the tests or whatever the case may be. With the Americans finally looking at this, I'm just wondering if we are doing something within our system to try to strengthen the abilities of the younger generation -- their writing skills and that type of thing. I haven't seen this emphasized anywhere, and I'm just curious if our system is looking at this problem, because this problem has been growing for a number of years within this country and this province.
Hon. A. Charbonneau: The issue is often greatly exaggerated in the media. In fact, our system delivers quite well with respect to the general abilities of reading and writing when we compare ourselves to jurisdictions anywhere. However, we have to keep in mind a couple of things. First, people often cast their memories back to the fifties, or sixties and want to make comparisons. Well, in the fifties when I graduated from high school, there might well have been 25 or 30 or 35 percent of students that had already left school. They were dropping out in grade 8, grade 9 and grade 10, so the students that were graduating in grade 12 reflected, for the most part, those who had an academic bent and were staying with the system.
Today we have virtually all children in school. If you look at the participation rate among 17-year-olds in Canada, I suspect that you might find 97 percent of them still in the system. Some of them have fallen a year or two behind; some of them at the grade 12 level do not graduate with their Dogwood diploma, hence they are counted as dropouts. That is a problem we must strive to overcome.
Very often, when we hear people talking about or defining standards, they are comparing apples and oranges. They are comparing those students of 20 or 30 or 40 years ago who had an academic bent with all students, including special needs students, today. Again, 30 or 40 years ago there were no special needs children in our schools. They were in institutions or they were kept at home -- in a room upstairs, perhaps. Today they are in our system.
Thirty or 40 years ago we did not have the same level of English as a second language, where so many young people are striving to learn English but perhaps not performing at the level of English that we choose.
So we must always keep it in mind that it is an apples-and-oranges comparison. Having said that, however, it is my view, often stated, that we have had too much concentration on the academic skills in our high schools and that we must shift the focus of our curricula, all of it, toward what I am calling applied academics. There is a place for literature. I personally enjoy literature and would encourage all young men and women to take it, to study the novels, to study poetry and to study plays. But what we need for more of our young men and women is a basic ability with the English language -- reading, writing and comprehension. I would like to see and am in the process of seeing the curriculum in English shifted more toward applied academics. Then I think the member will see that there will be more young men and women who see the relevance of it to their own career plans. Their interest levels will rise as a result of that relevance, and we will see them doing better on the fundamentals of reading and writing. Furthermore, I would like to attack the problem at an early age, at the grade 1 or grade 2 level, with specific help as much as possible because all of the subsequent education of that child is essentially founded on the ability of a child to read and comprehend. If we have shortcomings at this point in time, they are that we do not do sufficient diagnostic work and we do not invest sufficiently in the first or second grade to catch and correct the fundamental problems of reading and comprehension. It's an area that I'm going to pay some attention to in the future.
[ Page 13751 ]
[10:45]
R. Chisholm: I thank the minister for the answers he gave me yesterday and this morning. What I was referring to were reading and writing skills. As a matter of fact, that wasn't from the press; that was from the education leader. The professionals themselves are very much concerned about this situation and realize there's a problem. I'm just glad you see it too when you're addressing the situation.
V. Anderson: I would like to ask the minister if he would share with us some of the work that's being done about multicultural concerns within the education program, and then we can go from there with more specific questions.
Hon. A. Charbonneau: I think the largest new initiative with respect to multiculturalism has to do with language issues and the new language policy that was introduced by the ministry last spring. We have extended the provincial examinable status to Mandarin, Japanese, and by next June, Punjabi. We've done that for a variety of reasons. First, it was the right thing to do, but it also reaches out to a multicultural society. In the long run it meets our own economic interests in British Columbia. The other is that at the intermediate level we had a policy -- up to last spring -- of mandating a second-language instruction in grade 8. I've extended that to range from grade 5 to grade 8 -- not only the languages that I've mentioned, but we also are looking to a variety of aboriginal languages, of having curriculum materials developed in a variety of aboriginal languages. Furthermore, there are boards that are now taking advantage of this situation by establishing immersion classes in immersion schools in some of those languages.
We have a way to go yet. Cantonese is one obvious further addition; Korean, another possible addition. We also have been reaching out to the multicultural community by having some of the ministry publications available in French, Mandarin and/or Punjabi. It's something that we have to be cautious of because of the obvious expense implications, but it is something that I felt we needed to do, particularly with respect to communication with parents.
V. Anderson: A follow-up on the comment, particularly about the communication with parents.... One of the realities that I find in the community is that our children live in multicultural reality in school because they live with each other, they learn from each other, they share with each other and they become friends with each other. Their parents, by and large, do not have the same opportunity. The resulting effect is that we separate children culturally -- in a multicultural culture -- from parents who have come from a unilingual culture. We are increasing the distance because of education with the children as against non-education with the parents. It seems to me that in order to be fair both to parents and to children and not create the gap, we have to have more interaction between parents and children and children and parents in relationship to the school, so they can come along at the same time and even understand -- as parents -- what's happening within the school. I think unless we can work to bridge that gap more effectively than I've seen it done, apart from community schools where there has been some work done in that regard.... I think this is a major concern in many of our communities at this point and would appreciate your comment.
Hon. A. Charbonneau: A variety of efforts are made to communicate with multicultural parents and to facilitate communication between parents and children. I have had representatives of multicultural organizations and individuals representing multicultural groups visit with me, both in my office here and in my office in Kamloops, to talk about the difficulties they have in seeing their children lose literacy skills in their own language. They're wondering what we can do to assist that. The grades 5 to 8 second-language program that I mentioned will help there, because we will now be able to deliver education in terms of literacy in other languages to many young men and women. It's up to school boards to determine just which language groups that is offered to.
School districts and individual schools also use immigration services to provide interpreters. We have schools that in their normal functioning deal with in excess of 20 cultural groups. They make tremendous efforts to find interpreters to work with them. Of course we cannot expect the system to be able to communicate in 20 or 30 languages, but we are trying to help the largest groups at least -- the Chinese and Punjabi groups, along with the traditional foreign groups of French, Spanish and German.
Through some adult ESL work, we are assisting parents to come to the school and obtain some ESL training themselves. We help with some multicultural grants that districts can apply for, and we have issues related to multiculturalism, affirming and celebrating diversity, and assisting with self-concept.
Again, those are some of the things that teachers can use in their classrooms. There's a teacher's guide to anti-racism education. We have a video called "Change: Coping with Your Changing World." Here's another: "The New Canadian Kid" video, which would help some of our multicultural children. It's a very large challenge, and it is a challenge with which I would celebrate the federal government becoming involved a little more. They, of course, control the immigration policy, yet the settlement grants that are available are next to nothing. They are certainly little, if any, help to the K-to-12 system. I think it would be appropriate for you to assist us in lobbying the federal government to see that they come to the funding table with some dollars to assist all of us in meeting and overcoming some of the multiculturalism challenges.
V. Anderson: First, let me just follow up on your last comment with regard to federal-provincial cooperation. Could you indicate what kinds of conversations are going on now between federal and provincial areas of multiculturalism, which affects the local community schools in British Columbia both on the language side and on the funding side, and on the multicultural side and on Canadian citizenship, which is a fundamental aspect of the program? So there would be the three areas: funding multicultural awareness and experience, the adult involvement, and the citizenship areas between federal and provincial.
Hon. A. Charbonneau: The amount of interaction directly between this ministry and the federal government is minimal. I would suggest that the hon. member raise this issue in the broader context of multiculturalism when the minister responsible for multiculturalism, who has the responsibility for interaction with the federal government, is going through his estimates.
V. Anderson: We will do that, of course, but I will follow up that question for a few moments. There were two respon-
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sibilities, I think, that came out of the Multiculturalism Act. One of them was that each ministry was to have a multicultural plan that they would put forth through the multicultural plan for the ministry, and they would report on that at the end of each June, I believe. Could you indicate what the nature of the multicultural plan is, and what the report was and the results from the report were, which I presume was done last June?
Hon. A. Charbonneau: The policy involving that plan came into effect last year. We do have the reports in from districts with respect to that. The ministry has its report; it can be made available to you. We do have a multicultural plan that any and all districts can take advantage of, and I can provide you with a copy of that plan. As time goes by and we finalize additional reports for the year, we can make those available to you as well.
V. Anderson: I would appreciate getting copies of both the plan and the reports as a result of that. It will be helpful when working in community with people in order to find out if many people are really aware of the plan, and what the results are.
Coming back for a moment to the relationship of families, education, I think we always agree, is a family concern. A prime part of education is the family, and the schools are complementing the family in that regard. We have a kind of agreement or disagreement sometimes about who's responsible for what.
But one of the recent immigrants I talked to the other day -- he was from Taiwan -- said that when he came here, he and his family had the opportunity for a number of weeks to have English-language training and experience as a common unit, children and adults together. He found this extremely helpful and important, and much better for the maintenance of family cohesiveness than other people he had talked to, who had had training separately from each other. Just this past week, he made a strong recommendation. He felt that the schools were a logical place for that kind of opportunity to be made available, either during school time itself -- which would be his preference -- or after school hours. In such a setting, there is a common understanding of the growth of the child and of themselves in relationship to language. He felt that this would make a tremendous difference to integration, not only of the children or the adult, but of the whole family unit, and would enable them to come together. Just last Sunday, he stressed very strongly that this was something he hoped would be considered.
Hon. A. Charbonneau: I concur with the member's observations and comments that individuals representing various families have made to him. To work with the family as a unit -- in ESL, for example -- seems to me a very good idea.
This year we have invested just under a million dollars in adult ESL. If that can be delivered to the family unit, all very well and good. We know, however, that the overall ESL problem in school is one of daunting proportions. This year something approaching $60 million will go in as augmentation funds to support ESL. We're under a lot of fiscal pressure in the system as a whole, so we have to be cautious of every dollar that we spend. I would like the member opposite and all the parties in the House to do as much as they can in encouraging other service providers, if you will, within our communities -- community organizations, some of them multicultural organizations -- to swing into action and provide learning or instruction in ESL to ESL families as units.
[11:00]
A lot of it could be done on a volunteer basis. If we all pay attention to this issue -- and I would include, of course, churches and other community organizations -- we could probably assist many, many families in the transition into living in Canada and at the same time alleviate some of the cost burdens on the K-to-12 system.
V. Anderson: I appreciate your comments. For the last four years in the church that I've been a part of, we've had exactly that ESL program, with volunteers from the community dealing with adults -- but not altogether, because whenever school's out, the kids all come as well. Even in the summer holidays, the kids have volunteered to come and be part of that along with their parents. This has been extremely helpful.
It's been a real learning education for the English-speaking persons who were there to share in the conversation, because it dealt with the areas of life that they were interested in -- how to do their citizenship papers, how to read the daily newspaper, how to understand what is going on in the community and respond to it, and how to find a way to participate. One of the real difficulties of the community undertaking this is to find facilities to meet in that are available to them. Is it possible that the school might take some initiative to make their facilities available on a more regular basis and say to other community and volunteer groups that if they're interested in organizing these kinds of shared programs, along with our school community, we'd be prepared at least to give some supervision to that?
The other area that we found very difficult is that a lot of these people don't know what kind of material to use in helping people with English as their second language. The interesting thing is that when we went to the public libraries and the bookstores, there were many books and materials on how to learn German, Russian, Chinese and everything else, but there was very little material in the public domain on how to learn English or on how to help someone else learn English. Even if you're my next-door neighbour, you and I are trying to communicate. You can get a book on how to learn Chinese from them, but it is very difficult to get a book on how you could help them to learn English from you. Those kinds of resources and that kind of initiative would bring people together and bring a lot of confidence and interaction, because for most of these people -- well, almost all of them -- the school is the central focus of their community as long as their children are there. If there is some way the school could take the initiative in supporting them with facilities and just overseeing them, this would be extremely helpful.
Hon. A. Charbonneau: I agree. We have school infrastructure out there that is worth literally billions and billions of dollars. In too many instances, it is utilized for only six or seven hours of the day. I support the model of the school as the heart of the community; I support the community school concept. We ought to be using these facilities for as many hours of the day, as many days of the week and as many weeks of the year as possible. There ought to be the necessary levels of cooperation among the school board, the administration of the individual schools, the municipal coun-
[ Page 13753 ]
cils and organizations in the community to make proper, valuable use of these facilities.
There's some equipment included in the schools that from time to time could be used in the evenings and weekends, and there are also library materials and learning resources. In the lower mainland, and in many other districts, there are also a great deal of ESL materials available that, I am confident, community groups would make very responsible use of. So I would encourage you to encourage all your community activists to work with their school board in order to have the school board understand the issue -- and I'm sure that they do, broadly speaking -- and then take the additional step of convincing their school board to make the school facilities available.
V. Anderson: I think one of the chief concerns in community school development -- I think that's really key to the multicultural interaction in most communities -- was.... I'll take our own Vancouver area, and I know North Vancouver has done a fair bit of study on this, as well. We had a number of community school programs underway in the Vancouver area. A few years ago, with the budget cutbacks, it was felt that this was one area that would have to be cut back. But the hue and cry from the community people said no way, these had to be somehow worked into the budget.
One of the realities is that the service could be provided relatively inexpensively, because the building and facilities are already there. One of the key factors is simply a coordinator, a person who has the time to work between the school and the community, and coordinate the interaction. That coordinator is not, as far as I'm aware, provided for in any budget that comes from the Ministry of Education nor taken into account in the Ministry of Education. A few dollars for a coordinator -- say $30,000 or $40,000 -- would mobilize hundreds and hundreds of people as volunteers in a program using the other facilities. Is there a way in which the ministry might move to enable that kind of function to be extended to more and more schools with the funding, such that it doesn't have to be taken away from the regular school budgets? I think that's a key factor.
Hon. A. Charbonneau: As part of the funding last year, a special grant was made for each community school, and that initiative has now been made permanent by rolling it into the block. That amounts to about 75; it includes funding for a coordinator for the community schools. That is funded out of the additional allocation made for each school that meets all of the criteria for being designated formally as a community school.
There are, I believe, six such schools in Vancouver which have received the additional funding, and they would have the ability to hire such an individual as you have suggested. Furthermore, districts can apply for and obtain funding under the inner-city school initiative. On the basis of a proposal, they could utilize some of those funds as well to hire a coordinator such as you have suggested.
The Vancouver School Board, as a whole, will receive just under $340 million this year, which is a 2.6 percent increase over last year, with an enrolment increase of about 1.4 percent. Although boards, by and large, are doing a good job, I think that the Vancouver School Board made one unfortunate decision recently in that they permitted, in the face of a freeze on administrator salaries over $80,000 a year, a.... The orders from the Public Sector Employers' Council were to freeze those salaries and benefits, and in the face of that instruction, they went ahead with a 2 percent increase retroactive to July 1993, I believe, plus a further 2 percent retroactive increase to July 1994 for senior administrators.
That to me was a very unfortunate decision, because it said that funds that should have been available at the discretion of the board to do something like enhance the inner-city school program, to enhance ESL, to enhance community outreach, to hire such a coordinator, they instead chose to put into the pockets of already very well paid administrators. That was most unfortunate, and I would suggest that the member raise that issue with the Vancouver School Board.
V. Anderson: Has the information about the standards of community schools, by which schools across the province could make application for community school coordinators, been made available across the province? Is it widely known that this is now being supported? In the past it really wasn't supported by the ministry. Is it widely known that this is now being supported, and are they given help in moving in that direction? I think it is a very crucial move for using our schools and particularly for meeting many of the multicultural concerns that we have.
Hon. A. Charbonneau: Yes, this new policy.... The grants were made known widely last year. This year the change in funding to schools -- the funding formula, the distribution methodology, the inclusion of community schools as a special category with special funding allocated to each -- is well-known in all districts. Any district that takes the necessary action to have a school accredited as a community school, to belong to the appropriate community school association, then becomes qualified to receive those funds.
V. Anderson: There are just two other areas I'd like to touch on briefly. We did ask briefly a moment ago about interministerial committees, and I understand there is an interministerial committee on multiculturalism, which I presume education is a part of. Could you say something about the input of the Ministry of Education into that, and who represents the Ministry of Education in that interministerial undertaking?
Hon. A. Charbonneau: We do indeed participate in the interministerial committee. An assistant deputy minister, Mr. Paul Pallan, is our representative on that committee. Again, the multiculturalism plan that I alluded to earlier and the reports that are prepared under that plan, I will make available to the member opposite.
V. Anderson: The last question I would raise, at least at this point, is the area of ongoing -- well, initial -- teacher training in the area of multiculturalism. Until recent years, at least, that was not a part of awareness training -- or cultural competence, as it's often referred to -- and not part of a teacher's experience. When I was doing community work under Ecumenical Action, it was usually teachers who came to those multicultural interfaith events to get some background and some understanding.
[11:15]
In the ongoing need of teachers for this interaction with parents and with students, could you indicate what kind of
[ Page 13754 ]
initial multicultural training teachers get as they come into this process, what kind of cultural competence they're expected to have, and what ongoing support and continuing education they have for this process?
Hon. A. Charbonneau: We do have teacher training and in-services with respect to multiculturalism, preparation of teachers and the further training that can be accomplished in that area. There are grants available to districts. The ministry then forms partnerships with districts -- or in conjunction with districts -- and delivers in-services to teachers self-selected or selected by the district to become involved. In that whole process we also involve the Teachers' Federation.
C. Evans: Thank you, hon. Chair. And thank you, folks, for letting me rise here -- for a minute. Yesterday, in a heated discussion here -- not heated, but quite vigorous -- about funding for building schools, we heard both points of view: that the province has to try to save money because we don't want to borrow too much, and that we have to build schools because we have a growing population base and hundreds of portables with thousands of kids in them.
I rose and talked to the minister about the possibility that some people might use volunteerism and old-fashioned pioneer community spirit to solve the problems of the funding issue. We had a somewhat positive exchange, where the minister expressed support for people trying to solve problems in a creative way.
Today I'd like to focus that discussion on the community of Burton. For members who may never have visited Burton, I'll just give you a short description. Burton was an agricultural community and a logging community about an hour south of the town of Nakusp on Arrow Lakes. Thirty years ago, we had reason to burn it to the ground. We moved all the people out, burnt all the buildings and bulldozed the land, because we wanted to build a reservoir there. In our goodwill, we the people of B.C. rebuilt Burton and paved some roads on a hill just above where it had previously been. Actually, it's an exaggeration to say "paved some roads." We cleared a grid, laid down some gravel, ran a waterline up the mountain and offered the people a chance to buy back a lot in an instant townsite.
It has taken several decades, but the village of Burton, the unorganized area, is now a fairly thriving community. I'm real pleased to say that a lot of people living there are now young people, working people and people raising kids. The Arrow Lakes School Board has decided to build a new elementary school there, and the ministry, in its wisdom, is supporting it. I think it's just a wonderful story.
But there's a bit of a wrinkle. Burton is so far from town that the kids don't get to go into town to play basketball or volleyball without considerable effort by parents hauling them back and forth. In the wintertime, it's quite a dangerous, twisting, turning mountain road and quite a long drive. So the parents in Burton asked the school board: "Well, do you think we could build a little gym onto the school, and then everybody in the community could use it?" The school board said: "No, it doesn't fit within the guidelines of the elementary school that we have to build."
I've worked with the people of Burton on a lot of projects, and -- just to digress for a second -- they wanted a park. They wanted to enhance an existing provincial park when I was first elected, and we didn't have any money to help them. So they got a bunch of volunteers and a bunch of machinery, and they did the work for free. The province just brought the gravel and spread the gravel on the road, and they gave the work to the province. Now there's a beautiful new park at McDonald Creek. They saw what they were able to do from that experience and remembered the days when communities just went out and built the school and maybe the teacherage in order to attract the teacher.
So they came back with what the school board chair, Janis Palmer, in a letter to you, hon. minister, described as "perhaps the most innovative display of community spirit anywhere in the province." They said: "Okay, if we can't afford a gym, how about if we bring our cats and clear the land for free, and then bring our tractors and stump the land for free, and then bring our backhoes and lay waterline? Then what do you say if we dig the hole to put the building in? What do you say we agree to backfill the hole after you build the building, and we agree to landscape it after the whole thing is done? What if we do the same thing now that people did when the first Burton was built and do all the work? Then could we capture some of that savings from our own labour and get a little gym?"
It's all going on right now. The people are out there because it's breakup, and this is the time of year when that kind of equipment is available. They haven't got to roadbuilding yet; site clearing is.... Actually, site clearing is completed, and roadbuilding is in process. Then they'll dig the hole and pour the building.
What I need from the minister is some assurance that we're not going to break these people's hearts. I have a really big fear that they're going to do all this work, and then when the school is built, there will be the $100,000 that they saved. And instead of getting a little gym, we'll scoop the money. I wonder if we could talk a little about whether there's an opportunity for the volunteerism of the people of Burton, trying like the phoenix to rise again, to be rewarded. Then maybe we can talk, if we can figure out how to make it work, about how to show other people not the rancour that sometimes exists in this building -- to borrow or not to borrow, to build or not to build -- but a solution.
Hon. A. Charbonneau: The member for Nelson-Creston has raised a really interesting and instructive case. I think we should all put our minds to how we can uphold a reasonable set of policies, yet meet reasonable needs and reasonable requests of communities at the same time.
The policy that I refer to is that if any construction project on a school anywhere in the province comes in underbudget, the ministry scoops the money back and into a pot, so to speak, because other projects in other districts around the province will, no doubt -- for whatever reason -- run overbudget. So we use the money that we save underbudget in these projects to fund the moneys for overbudget expenses in other districts. All districts comply with this, and fundamentally it's a good policy. The member is raising the interesting issue of where the underage occurs as a result of the labour of people in the community, with the approval of people in the community -- the effort they make on some elements of construction, site preparation and site finishing.
There are other issues of volunteerism where there's policy that we need to be careful of, because we have partners in labour and we have partners in business. We have businesses
[ Page 13755 ]
that exist in order to tender on public buildings and public schools, and be awarded contracts in a fair and open way. We have labour that wishes to, of course, work at a decent wage in delivering those schools. We have a situation here -- probably somewhat unique -- that I think we should all put our minds to. I'm certainly going to be asking my facilities people and my financial people to put their creative minds together to see whether there may be a way to respect the larger, and sound, policy issues, yet at the same time do the right thing.
I was most impressed with the delegation that came from Burton to talk about this. I met with them in the Vancouver cabinet offices -- some parents and some officials from that school and that district. And it was a singularly impressive argument that they made -- very reasonable in every respect. I told them at that time what the larger policies were and why I felt there needed to be certain decisions made. But I did indicate to them that I would take their request under consideration and would be getting back to them.
Partly as a result of the efforts of this member in representing his constituents, I am going to have my staff redouble their efforts to determine whether or not there is a fair, equitable, open and honest way in which we can distinguish this case from others, in which case we can make the required decisions without being in violation of generally good policy. I would be more than pleased to advise the member if we are successful in doing that.
C. Evans: Thanks, I'm real glad to hear all that. There's another issue on this subject, and this has to do with the question of general contracting or project management.
Members know that there are two ways to get something done. When you have a building to build, you create some specs, let out a contract and look for a general contractor that will bid the whole thing. That contractor then looks after all the subtrades and is the contractor of record. Or there is project management where, instead of looking for a general contractor, you look for a reputable individual who can organize the various parts -- break the building down into its components, create a timetable, see that the stuff is delivered and find the workers.
We used project management very creatively in building the Lucerne school some years ago in New Denver -- also a little town, but about ten times bigger than Burton -- and wound up with just a gorgeous school which I think is way, way beyond what people might expect to find in any relatively small village.
But I think there have been some changes in policy, and now the government frowns a little bit on project management. I can understand that; I think there may have been some problems in the past with people slipping a job to a friend or getting somebody who wasn't quite reputable to manage the project. There have been a lot of people arguing that, in every case, we should make our contracts to a general contractor. Well, I want to ask the minister, again, to ask his staff if they could be flexible. Here we have a situation where there is no general contractor in the village capable of building a school. There is no general contractor within an hour of the village capable of building a school. If we go the general contractor route, we are talking automatically about bringing somebody from at least Vernon or Cranbrook or Castlegar, if not Calgary, Kelowna or Vancouver. If we go the contractor route, it's going to be really hard for that person to organize their schedule around a bunch of people from the neighbourhood with cats and backhoes.
[11:30]
The school board would like to be able to hire their own person to act as project manager and to ask their own person to organize the subtrades and the community to allow the cost savings that we are all trying to generate here. So my question would be: in the case of a town where there isn't a single person bondable to do the job, do you think we could use remoteness as an argument to allow contract management rather than sticking to the big-time contractor rules?
Hon. A. Charbonneau: Again, this is the perennial struggle between policy on the one hand and when might there be exceptions to policy on the other hand. The notion of having a general contractor is a very good general notion. It is a very good policy because it is a public tendering process so we know that we are getting value for dollars. It is an open process, so any taxpayer in the province can have a look at how it was done. The contractor is then bonded in such a way that if something goes terribly awry in the project, it is the contractor who is on the hook and not the general taxpayer.
From time to time, we do project management under emergency conditions, where a school simply has to be up and running or replaced as quickly as possible -- for example, after a fire -- and we don't have the time to go through the full tendering process. We also do it in the instances of large and complex renovations -- and the member is familiar with L.V. Rogers in Nelson. Because of the history of thebuilding, having many buildings cobbled together and many previous renovations, it's impossible to sit down beforehand and lay out exactly what the work is going to be in order to get tenders. So you must tender it or, if you will, handle it in phases as you uncover things, and a project manager is a good way of doing that. Then there are instances of being truly remote -- more remote than Burton. Those are the normal circumstances.
I've been trying to hold to that as much as possible, because if we go the project-management route, even with the best of intentions, if something doesn't work out right -- if the plumbing, the construction, the electrical or anything else is done wrong -- then it is the taxpayer who has to pay to have it redone.
We come now to whether there should be exceptions to the policy. We have instances where the construction is of a very straightforward nature and where local people -- subcontractors whose company consists of one person, perhaps -- no doubt have the ability to construct a small project or participate as a subtrade in the construction of a small project. They're perfectly well qualified, and the board may in fact be able to hire someone reputable and qualified as the project manager. It is, however, a larger decision than a single school in a single district, because every district will be able to make the argument, under a variety of circumstances, that their project is unique in some way and hence they should be able to project-manage.
[ Page 13756 ]
Generally, I have held the line against that, because we have had some bad experiences where substantial cost overruns have occurred. With the best of intentions, they still occurred, and it was the taxpayer who was on the hook. Having said that, I will take the district's request, the parents' request and the member's request under consideration and will report back.
C. Evans: This isn't a question; it's just a comment. I just would like to say thank you very much to the minister and that if any of this creative stuff gets in a jam because of the contractors' association, the trade union movement, the opposition parties or any institution that might be in the way by virtue of its inability to respond in a creative way and assist you, I would volunteer to go and chat with those people on your behalf to see if we can clear the way.
The Chair: Thank you, hon. member. In view of the time, I wonder whether we could have a motion to rise and report progress.
Hon. A. Charbonneau: I move that we rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.
Motion approved.
The committee rose at 11:36.
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