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)
TUESDAY, MAY 30, 1995
Afternoon Sitting
Volume 20, Number 13
[ Page 14663 ]
The House met at 2:07 p.m.
[D. Lovick in the chair.]
M. de Jong: It's my pleasure today to introduce to colleagues a former colleague of many people in this House. Mr. and Mrs. Peter Dueck are with us in the gallery today. As you know, Mr. Dueck sat in this chamber for a number of years. He has a lifetime of service and contribution to his community and in fact to the province as well. He's obviously here to renew some acquaintances and also, I think, to find out how much longer I'll continue to bill lunches to his number downstairs in the legislative dining room. Please make Mr. and Mrs. Dueck welcome.
J. Weisgerber: I too would like to extend a greeting to Peter Dueck and his wife, Helen. Peter is obviously a good friend and colleague. I'd also like to introduce two guests that are here with Peter and Helen: Bruce and June Alsbury. Mr. Alsbury is the son of the late Tom Alsbury, former mayor of Vancouver. Would you please extend a very sincere welcome to Helen and Peter and to the Alsburys.
J. Dalton: I am pleased to welcome two visitors from Ontario: Dr. John Hopps of Ottawa and his daughter, Mrs. Margaret Officer of Brockville. For the members' information, Dr. Hopps is the developer of the pacemaker and has received the Order of Canada due to his efforts. They are accompanied by two constituents of mine, Janet and Gerry Morris, who happen to live a block away from my children's high school. So I welcome them all, and I'd ask you to do so as well.
Hon. G. Clark: I just noticed in the gallery a well-known author and a management employee of the Vancouver Sun: Gary Mason. I'd like to welcome him back to the chamber. I know he's busy discussing opportunities with the Times Colonist and elsewhere. So we're happy that he's come to visit the chamber today, and I'd ask all members to make him welcome.
F. Gingell: In the Speaker's gallery today is a lady who deserves the Order of Canada: my constituency assistant, Carla Perry, and her son. Her son has reached that certain age that all parents know, and he insisted that his mother bring him here today to listen to what lies in store for him in the amendments to the Motor Vehicle Act and what it might do to the timing of his getting that important thing: a driver's licence. I welcome them both and ask the House to welcome them.
Hon. J. Pement: I'd like to introduce today two people from that great community of Smithers, in the Bulkley Valley: Grace and Doug Brown. Doug is with the firm of Remax. Would you bid them welcome.
CONSUMER PROTECTION AMENDMENT ACT, 1995
Hon. J. Smallwood presented a message from His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor: a bill intituled Consumer Protection Amendment Act, 1995.
Hon. J. Smallwood: I move the bill be introduced and read a first time now.
I am pleased to introduce Bill 36. This important amendment to the Consumer Protection Act establishes strong safeguards for consumers who receive unsolicited services through negative-option offers, clarifies the act's definition of direct sellers and provides protection for consumers purchasing time-share contracts. This bill responds to a very strong vocal consumer revolt against negative-option marketing techniques in British Columbia. The new provision will ensure that consumers are not required to pay for unsolicited services provided through negative-option offers. The legislation also provides that consumers who inadvertently pay for services will be able to demand a refund. These provisions are retroactive to January 26, 1995, the date the proposed legislation was announced.
Bill 36 also provides a seven-day cooling-off period to help protect customers against high-pressure sales tactics when purchasing time-share contracts in British Columbia for the use of houseboats, recreational vehicles or similar property located both in and outside British Columbia. This cooling-off provision parallels the cancellation period for time-share contracts covered by the Real Estate Act.
Bill 36 introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.
HEALTH STATUTES AMENDMENT ACT, 1995
Hon. P. Ramsey presented a message from His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor: a bill intituled Health Statutes Amendment Act, 1995.
Hon. P. Ramsey: Bill 30 makes a number of amendments to existing statutes within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Health. A total of six statutes are being amended or repealed, and I will provide the details of those amendments at second reading.
I do want to draw the attention of the House to a number of key provisions in the bill. The Medical and Health Care Services Act is being amended in relation to the supply and distribution of physicians practising in British Columbia. The mandate of the Medical Services Commission is amended to clarify that it has the authority to use payment schedules to discourage the continued growth of the number of physicians in overserviced areas, and to encourage physicians to locate in regions that are presently underserviced.
The Medical Practitioners Act is being further amended in connection with matters of physicians' sexual misconduct. Since obtaining the unanimous support of members of the Legislature last year for a comprehensive package of amendments, a number of small but important shortcomings have been identified, and this bill rectifies those matters.
In addition to several items that are housekeeping in nature, there's also provision for repeal of the Dental Technicians and Denturists Act and the Nurses (Licensed Practical) Act. The three professional groups currently regulated under these acts are to be governed in accordance with the terms of the Health Professions Act.
I'm pleased to be able to table this legislation today. I move the bill be read a first time now.
[ Page 14664 ]
Bill 30 introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.
[2:15]
Hon. J. Pement presented a message from His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor: a bill intituled Offence Amendment Act, 1995.
Hon. J. Pement: I'm pleased to present to the House legislation that provides for interest on overdue fines. It's a measure that will encourage more timely payments. Currently, $133 million in outstanding fines is due this government. Well over 90 percent of the total stems from traffic violation tickets involving more than half a million motorists. The problem has mushroomed because there has not been any incentive to pay sooner or any penalty for delay. This has reduced the deterrent effect of fines and undermined police efforts to enforce traffic rules.
We are now taking corrective action, creating a strong incentive for those with overdue fines to settle their accounts quickly. While government will benefit through more timely receipt of money, more importantly, the public will benefit from the greater attention to traffic safety that this action is expected to promote.
Bill 34, Offence Amendment Act, 1995, read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.
DOUGLAS LAKE RANCH BLOCKADE
G. Campbell: The blockade of the Douglas Lake Ranch continues at this hour. Kids still can't get to school, and people still can't get to work. Unfortunately, under the NDP government, confusion is reigning supreme. Yesterday the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs told the House the government was attempting to mediate; the Premier told us that the government was trying to negotiate; the MLA for Yale-Lillooet said it was time to remove the blockade; and the Attorney General expressed the idea that he had no idea what was going on at Douglas Lake.
Deputy Speaker: Your question.
G. Campbell: It's clear what is going on at Douglas Lake: there is an illegal blockade, and there is an enforcement order has been issued.
Deputy Speaker: Could we have a question.
G. Campbell: My question is to the Attorney General, the chief law enforcement officer in British Columbia: can the Attorney General tell the House when the government will restore legitimate public services and access to the Douglas Lake Ranch?
Hon. C. Gabelmann: The RCMP obtained an enforcement order for the injunction, which was granted on Friday. The enforcement order was obtained on Saturday. The RCMP are in the process of determining how best they can ensure that that enforcement order is in fact enforced, and it is up to the RCMP to act independently from political pressure, whether from that side of the House or this.
Deputy Speaker: The Leader of the Opposition on a supplemental.
G. Campbell: I can assure that you the RCMP are not turning to this side of the House for leadership at this point, although they may well in the future. The fact of the matter is that the RCMP look to the Attorney General for leadership. The people at the Douglas Lake Ranch feel under siege; the confusion shown by this NDP cabinet, where three ministers are clearly saying three different things, encourages illegal activity and puts people at risk. To the Attorney General, once again: why does this government refuse to restore public services to the Douglas Lake Ranch and to clearly demonstrate that there is only one law for all British Columbians?
Hon. C. Gabelmann: The Leader of the Opposition may have learned how police independence in this country is protected by reading false headlines in the Vancouver Province. But, in fact, that is not the way it works. The Attorney General in this province -- as in any other province in this country -- does not direct the police as to when and how to enforce the law. The RCMP are obliged to enforce the law; they are doing so. If the member will respect the RCMP, he will learn that they're doing the job the way they are obliged to do it in this country of ours.
COST OF ROYAL INLAND HOSPITAL STAFF TRAINING PROGRAM
W. Hurd: I have a question for the Minister of Health.
Interjections.
Deputy Speaker: Order, members. I do want to hear the question.
W. Hurd: Hon. Speaker, the Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops sponsors a program for staff called Royal Care, which will cost taxpayers about $300,000 over the next two to three years: 1,400 staff at the hospital will take part in a six-hour program that teaches such things as personal communication skills and making people feel welcome at the hospital. The question to the minister is: why does he allow and endorse the Royal Inland Hospital to fund personality improvement courses while patients are sitting in the hallway at that hospital?
Hon. P. Ramsey: I'll take the question on notice.
DOUGLAS LAKE RANCH BLOCKADE
J. Weisgerber: My question is also to the Attorney General. For months the government dithered at the Apex Alpine blockade. Now the government fails to deal with the blockade at the Douglas Lake Ranch. There is an injunction in place; the
[ Page 14665 ]
government has an obligation to act. The law is the law. Will the minister send a signal to the RCMP to indicate that this government wants to see the law applied evenly and fairly across the board?
Hon. C. Gabelmann: The Attorney General was in court on Friday, participating in the injunction application which was sought by Douglas Lake. As a result of that intervention, the court issued its order. The RCMP on Saturday obtained an enforcement order. I have been in discussions with the RCMP since that date, and I have no further comment to make at this point.
Deputy Speaker: The member continues with a supplemental.
J. Weisgerber: The situation at Douglas Lake is fundamentally different than it has been at other blockades around the province. There is no question here about right-of-way. The courts...
Deputy Speaker: There should be a question.
J. Weisgerber: ...have issued an injunction. The ministry, the government and the RCMP have an obligation to enforce that.
Deputy Speaker: Question, please.
J. Weisgerber: Will the minister act today? Will the minister make a statement to indicate that he and his government want this blockade brought down, and brought down immediately?
Hon. C. Gabelmann: The law is clear: the blockade is illegal. The RCMP have an enforcement order, and the RCMP will make their decision about how and when to enforce the law.
COST OF ROYAL INLAND HOSPITAL STAFF TRAINING PROGRAM
F. Gingell: The Liberal opposition has learned of yet another staff training fiasco at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops. On February 9, March 2 and April 18 of this year, mandatory interpersonal training sessions were held for approximately 50 supervisors at Royal Inland. An American consultant, flown in direct from Oahu, Hawaii, conducted these feel-good sessions for Kamloops professionals. Recognizing the minister's responsibility to ensure that health care dollars are well spent, why has he allowed a Hawaiian consultant to be hired at taxpayers' expense to tell Kamloops professionals how to communicate?
Hon. P. Ramsey: I can only say that I wish the Liberal opposition were half as concerned about $800 million in federal cuts to health care as they are with staff-training and professional development at Royal Inland. I'll undertake to get the details of this training program and report back to the House.
F. Gingell: My mother told me that if you look after the pennies, you know, the pounds will look after themselves. The supervisors at Royal Inland spent 12 hours being trained about interpersonal relationships, at the cost to the taxpayers of at least $20,000 in wasted staff time. This $20,000 does not include the cost of flying the Hawaiian to and from Kamloops or her fees for this 12-hour program. The cost of this aloha session could buy Royal Inland Hospital at least one and likely two EEG monitors for patient care. What action has the minister taken to ensure that taxpayers' money will not be wasted, when the patients in British Columbia deserve better equipment and better services for health care?
Hon. P. Ramsey: Every institution -- every hospital and long term care facility -- in the province has a budget for professional development and staff training. I will undertake to get the facts of this training program and report back to the House. I must say, though, that it strikes me as strange that we have a plethora of allegations coming out of Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops. It must be that there's a Liberal candidate there interested in health care.
SAM BAWLF AND B.C. FERRIES CAPITAL PLAN
G. Wilson: My question is to the Minister of Employment and Investment. On April 26, 1992, Mr. Bob Williams, then of the Crown corporations secretariat, indicated that the hiring of Sam Bawlf would in no way affect the development of the B.C. Ferries capital plan. In November 1994, this minister again reassured us that because of Mr. Bawlf's involvement with Cancat, which was a subsidiary of Incat and held the distribution rights, he was not involved in the development of the ten-year capital plan.
Information obtained through a freedom-of-information request indicates that Mr. Bawlf has been directly involved in the development of the plans with respect to the fast catamaran ferries throughout 1993, '94 and today. Will the minister please tell us: why did he indicate that Mr. Bawlf was not involved with Incat and the development of those plans? What assurance did this minister receive that Mr. Bawlf has in fact given up his sole distribution rights of Incat technology in British Columbia?
Hon. G. Clark: Mr. Bawlf has severed all relationships with Cancat Canada. In fact, I have a signed, sworn affidavit by Mr. Bawlf to that effect when he took employment as a contractor with the Crown corporations secretariat. Mr. Bawlf has been involved in assisting in the development of the capital plan. He was in no way involved in adjudicating the request for proposals internationally to look at the appropriate technology.
Deputy Speaker: A supplemental from the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast.
G. Wilson: Information obtained through freedom of information indicates that in fact Mr. Bawlf was directly in communication with Incat to get the specs required to put that process to tender. Can the minister tell us on what date Mr. Bawlf in fact relinquished his rights to the distribution of Incat technology, and who bought those rights for distribution in the province of British Columbia?
Hon. G. Clark: Certainly I can give the member all of the information -- including comfort -- with respect to Mr.
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Bawlf's business relationship. We have all of that material. It's in the public domain, but I will certainly provide it for the member.
I can say that we are delighted to be proceeding with the construction of three high-speed aluminum catamarans to carry cars and passengers from Nanaimo to Horseshoe Bay and back. The trip will take less than an hour. This new technology will help to revitalize our shipyards and dramatically improve transportation from the mainland to Vancouver Island. We're very excited by the ten-year capital plan. I hope members opposite will support it.
[2:30]
REMOVAL OF B.C. SPIRIT LOGO FROM TRAVEL INFOCENTRE SIGNS
L. Hanson: I have a question for the Minister of Small Business, Tourism and Culture. Apparently, the government has decided to change the signs for travel infocentres this fall and remove the B.C. Spirit flag from the logo. Can the minister tell us why he's so hostile to the B.C. Spirit flag that he is going to the expense of having them removed from the travel infocentres? Can he tell us how much it will cost to change the infocentre logos and signs, which most taxpayers would agree is a waste of time and money?
Hon. B. Barlee: When you talk about tourism in British Columbia, we did come up $475 million last year over the year before. I do admit that the $5 million extra we received for tourism yielded $475 million, which is $95 to $1, and out of that $475 million, private entrepreneurs around the province got $405 million and the Crown got $70 million.
What we do -- unlike other governments, some of whose members are sitting opposite -- is to plan long into the future, with very good strategy, and part of our strategy is to have a wordmark that is recognized around the world. Our wordmark certainly is being recognized around the world. When you look at the business we've done overseas, it's all double digit, and the number of infocentres in the province locks in with this long-term strategy. Our strategy is obviously working extremely well, and I think the member recognizes it.
L. Hanson: I find the answer very interesting, but it has very little to do with the question. I suppose the old saying that this is question period, not answer period, fits in this place.
The cost of changing the travel info directional signs throughout British Columbia alone will be considerable. Why is the government doing this at great cost to taxpayers, when everyone but the NDP is perfectly happy with the Spirit logo for infocentres?
Hon. B. Barlee: The member should perhaps examine the increased revenue in tourism this year. I think our long-term strategy will result in an increase of another $600 million to $700 million in tourism. When we spend the taxpayers' money, with a few thousand dollars in each infocentre, and it works with the long-term strategy, I think you'll find our strategy is almost letter-perfect.
Hon. G. Clark: I call Committee of Supply in Section A for the purposes of discussing the estimates of the Ministry of Health and Ministry Responsible for Seniors; and in the House, I call continued debate on Bill 22, the Farm Practices Protection (Right to Farm) Act.
FARM PRACTICES PROTECTION (RIGHT TO FARM) ACT
(second reading continued)
F. Gingell: It has always been important for government to recognize that if the use of land is going to be tied up, then the owners of that land have to be protected and assured that the economic viability of their operation is sound. When the government brought in the agricultural land reserve in 1972 -- which was, I believe, supported by most sides of the House -- at that same time a series of agricultural income support programs were created. Over the years those support programs have been cut here and changed there and gradually decimated. That is the prime reason that most members of this House seem to be in support of this bill. If we are going to ensure that land is kept for agricultural purposes, then it is clearly important for us to ensure that farmers have the opportunity to operate their farms in a sensible and practical manner.
There are some issues that I would like to touch on very briefly so that the minister can give thought to them before we come back to discuss this bill in committee stage. The first issue that I'd like to deal with is the makeup of the Farm Practices Board. The Farm Practices Board, first of all, is going to be chaired by the chairman of the B.C. Marketing Board. Now, I would imagine that that's a pretty important and full-time job as it is, and this is an additional responsibility that is being placed on that individual's head. I believe that I am correct in saying that common practice is that the B.C. Marketing Board is made up of people who are involved on a full-time basis in agriculture, and therefore one has to recognize that we're already dealing with a very busy individual. And why has the B.C. Marketing Board been chosen to have all of the members of their board sit on this commission? We must recognize that the B.C. Marketing Board does not represent 100 percent of the people in agriculture.
I appreciate that there are ten additional members to be appointed, and I'm sure that the minister will use discretion in arriving at who those appointments are. But I believe that it would be appropriate to ensure that certain bodies are represented in addition to the British Columbia Marketing Board -- the Agricultural Land Commission, for example, and organizations that represent local municipal or regional government -- to ensure that right in the legislation itself these authorities are represented.
This act recognizes, I'm sure, the problems that farmers face. Living in an agricultural community and having a large agricultural base in my constituency, you can be assured that I am kept well abreast of those issues. But it is also true in many cases, particularly as the technology of agriculture has changed in recent years, that the reverse can be true. One can have circumstances where homes or the operations of very small specialized farms are affected by large agricultural operations -- for instance greenhouses. These non-soil-based agricultural industries can affect them, and ongoing problems and discussions never seem to be resolved.
So I'm very supportive of a process being put in place that will allow these matters to be dealt with in a sensible manner. And the way they are dealt with and the credibility
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that the board gets through its first year or so of operations are going to be particularly dependent upon the common sense and the sense of balance that the minister brings to the appointment of the board members.
The act deals in some depth with many of the issues that are of concern. I'm particulary pleased to see that the issue of highways and roads and access has been dealt with. But if one looks at the particular sections there, it deals primarily with the issue of roads that increase access -- either necessarily or unnecessarily -- to agricultural land. I would like to suggest to the minister that, before this bill comes to committee stage, he consider bringing in an amendment that also deals with the issue of highways that restrict access to agricultural land.
This is an issue in Delta, where a new road is being built through lands which the province owns. They used to be known as the Roberts Bank backup lands; I think they are now called the Boundary Bay agricultural lands. That road, which is necessary to service the new container terminal being built at Roberts Bank, is going to have limited access -- at least until it gets to Highway 17. They are cutting through some working farms and creating some problems. The port of Vancouver and the federal government have not been as helpful, as cooperative, in this issue as we would like to have seen. This is perhaps an opportunity to look at the other side of the issue, where access is being restricted by the construction of transportation infrastructure.
The member for Abbotsford, when he spoke in the first response to the bill, suggested that it's also necessary for the agricultural industry and farmers to have a means of defending themselves, not only against urbanization creeping up to their boundaries but against government itself and the bureaucracy. He mentioned particularly, I think, the issue of septic tanks for second homes on farms. It is an important issue for us in Delta, where many farming families don't have family growing on the family farm the way they used to, and they're having to go outside and hire farm help. They want them to live on the farm property, and they're being restricted from building secondary residences on the farms for farmworkers. That's an important issue.
In dealing with the bureaucracy, another issue of importance to farmers in Delta is the issue of the Boundary Bay linear park. Here's a case where the Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks, in announcing the special acquisition of certain parklands in the lower mainland, have included in that acquisition some land that is adjacent to the dike at Boundary Bay for a staging area, to allow parking for automobiles, as well as washrooms -- toilets -- perhaps a small snack bar, and information boards to tell people what to look for and the main species of birds that can be seen there.
[2:45]
The Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks have found a site that was for sale. It's presently used as an air park. But it is right in the centre of the farmland that sits south of Highway 99, from the end of Highway 91, where it touches the water, all the way back to the South Delta community. The farmers have genuine concerns that this parking lot and staging area for the linear park on the dike at Boundary Bay will just bring more and more people into the middle of their agricultural area. They will have concerns about when they can spray; they will have concerns about people breaking down their fences; and they'll have concerns about a major item, which is the throwing away of trash over the fence. One broken bottle in a pea field can have dramatic economic costs.
It's important that other ministries recognize the need for farmers to operate their farms in a sensible and efficient manner. It's not good enough for only the Ministry of Agriculture to be concerned; it's important for other ministries to recognize the effect that their actions have on farms. When one deals with the issue of moving farm vehicles and equipment around, I don't see any provisions in here dealing with the Ministry of Transportation and Highways and the problem of moving custom farm machinery over provincial highways.
There have been problems. One of the major custom operators services customers' farms with large, expensive pieces of equipment -- which farmers can't afford to buy and are much better to hire on a custom basis -- and he has customers in both Richmond and Delta. It's very difficult to get those pieces of equipment across the Fraser River at the right time, when the moment is right to do that work -- whether it be seeding or harvesting. Those problems are caused by restrictions placed on the movement of oversize vehicles on such structures as the Alex Fraser Bridge. I would welcome an amendment by the minister that would bring into this bill a reference to the need for other ministries to recognize that farming in this day and age takes place not only on the actual land within the boundaries of the farm, and that there are all kinds of situations that require good access to and proper use of the highways that give access to these properties. It applies not only to custom operators but also to the vegetable-processing industry.
There are sections of this bill that deal with the issue of subdivision and buffer zones, and the importance of ensuring that those buffer zones are in place. I don't know exactly the way it should be done, but certainly I think that one should recognize -- and it would be good if this act could reasonably recognize -- that such proper buffer zones should be defined and would clearly be a cost to and a responsibility of the subdivider, not the farmer against whose boundary lines the subdivision lies.
This is an important bill. It's not an earth-shattering bill but it's a good one, and it was necessary because this government has gone through three years of governing recognizing the pressures -- or understanding, surely, the pressures -- that the growth of urbanization has brought to farmers, who are imprisoned in many cases on land which for 23 years now has been restricted in its use. It's important that these farmers be given a charter to allow them to operate properly. It's important, too, that there be some reasonable process, in which the communities all have faith, that allows disputes to be settled in a quick and reasonable fashion. With those few words, I pledge my support to this bill and look forward to the committee section, where we can discuss many of the issues I've put out.
J. Doyle: I am pleased to rise and speak in support of Bill 22, the Farm Practices Protection Act, otherwise known as the right-to-farm act. This bill is solid evidence that the government supports farming and farmers. It is an important part of the growth strategies and land use planning initiatives that reflect the need to protect the economic sustainability of agriculture as well as resource sustainability.
I was raised on a small farm back in Ireland, and I have very good memories of working hard on that farm. I'm still
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doing that when I sometimes go back on holidays to visit my family. One of the most important things I can remember while growing up on the farm was that you never made noise as a child when the weather was on because, in a farmer's heart, as we know, that is one of the most important things you can do on any given day -- listening to the weather plays a most important part in that.
One of the things I can remember, back 20 years ago, is when Dave Barrett initiated the ALR. Without a doubt, that was one of the most important pieces of legislation that the government brought forth. That legislation, by and large, survived the Bill Bennett and Bill Vander Zalm governments, with some changes. It is important for us as a province to grow or raise as much food as possible in our country.
Speaking of items in this bill, there may be some concern for local government about part of this legislation, particularly relating to bylaw approval. An intensive consultation process with key local governments has shown positive support, however, even with the clearly stated intention to require approval of bylaws. That process was the meetings the minister and his staff held with UBCM and with regional and local governments at all levels. This bill came out of those consultations that were conducted by the minister on the need for an agrifood policy for British Columbia. The need to work with local government to further improve relationships between farmers and non-farm neighbours was identified as an issue requiring immediate attention.
Increased urbanization of farming areas is a major factor. The two triangular areas bounded by Osoyoos, Sicamous and Kamloops, and Hope, Parksville and Victoria, contain 77 percent of the gross farm receipts in British Columbia and 77 percent of the provincial population, but only 2.7 percent of the provincial land base. The most populated region, the Greater Vancouver Regional District, produces 27 percent of the value of B.C.'s farm production.
While several provinces have right-to-farm legislation, this bill is the only one to link the right-to-farm concept with the bylaw powers of local government. I spent some years in local government, and I feel the process that the minister has been through will have been most important when we get this legislation into law. This legislation demonstrates both the provincial commitment to the farm sector and a practical partnership among the province, local government and B.C. farmers. The ministry will support those goals by developing public education campaigns through existing programs to increase the awareness of the importance of agriculture to our daily lives, encouraging industry to develop farm practice guidelines and then supporting their broad acceptance, providing information to land developers and real estate agents that informs buyers that farms are close to their neighbourhood, and will work with other agencies to ensure that the needs of the farm sector are recognized.
B.C.'s agriculture, fisheries and food sectors contribute $14 billion to our economy each year and employ 214,000 people in farming, fishing, food processing, food service, retail, transportation, wholesale and support services. Six thousand new jobs have been created since 1993 in the ag-fish food sector. At the primary level the agriculture sector employs 30,000 British Columbians.
The legislation that was introduced and became law 20 years ago, the ALR, has proved to be, through the last 20 years of government, something that was done for the right reasons. I am pleased to say that since we came back into government, we have taken away the right of the minister to hear appeals as far as land being removed is concerned. That is now done by the Agricultural Land Commission, and rightly so. We have also taken away the right to put golf courses on ALR land -- which was allowed -- where cows will never graze again. That has now been removed and is not allowed in ALR areas.
I am somewhat concerned that someone like the Leader of the Official Opposition, with his development ties -- development at any price -- would see a detriment in this law for the importance of the agriculture industry in our province.
[3:00]
There are thriving cattle-ranching industries in many areas of my riding, particularly in the Columbia Valley. Those people support the ALR. When I meet with them, they say to me how important they feel that legislation was. All they want is to put in place the right to farm on their ALR land. This legislation that is now going through the House is something that I know they will support. They've asked for some additional support for farming in our province.
No matter where one lives in our province or in our country, the food that we eat at our meals, which was mentioned earlier in the morning by the member for Nelson-Creston, does not just arrive in the grocery store. It's most important that as much as possible of that food is grown and raised right here in our province. That way we are masters in our own house as much as possible. I support this bill in second reading; I'm pleased to speak in support of this bill.
C. Serwa: It's a real pleasure to speak on this particular bill, Bill 22. It's also interesting to note all of the people who have spoken on the government side and on the opposition side who don't know anything about farming. When you listen to them, it's very clear that they are all venturing opinions -- I suppose the government side was written by Karl Struble, because there is a common theme running through everything; I don't know where the opposition parties are coming from -- on the right to farm. I find it interesting; I also find it humorous.
Voting against this bill, by the way, is like voting against motherhood and apple pie. The bill is not necessary, and there are reasons for it. I don't think that anybody who has spoken -- outside of the Minister of Agriculture -- understands why this bill is unnecessary. They've waxed loud and eloquent about the need and that finally this historical injustice has been attended to: the right of farmers to farm and to carry on with standards and practices. This big, long-nosed government has finally intruded into another field. Well, you're not new entrants into that field. You haven't broken any new ice; there is already a bill in the British Columbia statutes that says this. Not one of you donkeys knows that; not one of you people who spoke on that is aware there is a bill already in the statutes. All this is is a cheap, partisan political ploy to win some temporary credibility with respect to the electorate. There is not a thing that has been mentioned here in the second reading discussion today that cannot be attended to by regulation in the existing bill. And what is the existing bill called? It's called the Agriculture Protection Act. When was this bill assented to? June 28, 1989. It's already there, folks; we don't need to waste the taxpayers' time with this particular debate in trying to look good, because it all could have been
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attended to. The nuisance concerns and the regulations are all there; the right of the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council to make regulations is all there. It was not necessary. Any minor detail could have been attended by a simple amendment. But no, the government wanted to grandstand and make it appear that they are new entrants -- as many have been led to believe, succumbing to the words of the minister.
Interjection.
C. Serwa: We already brought a bill in, hon. member. This is just a shallow election ploy by a government desperate to successfully win re-election at any cost.
[G. Brewin in the chair.]
When I listen to the members, they're talking as if this is the be-all and end-all in agriculture. The government members have stood up, long and loud, and said: "We support agriculture. We're going to give farmers the right to farm."
Interjections.
C. Serwa: Oh, that's great. Thump your desks, hon. members. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. The first thing you did was withdraw from all the support programs. When the grain farmers up in the north, the Peace River area, were suffering from a drought and no crops, what happened? What did this government do? It turned away from them. What did the government do to the orchardists in the Okanagan? They have withdrawn all the support programs. "We stand for farming" -- baloney! Anybody who believes that has to be a card-carrying member.
Interjections.
C. Serwa: You haven't stood for anything, hon. members; you stand for absolutely nothing. Furthermore, you talk about economic viability. Economic viability is a necessity; it's the only ingredient that can ensure farming in British Columbia. No voice on that. They get up on their self-righteous high horse and say: "We've taken away the right of appeal to the minister's office." Perhaps the minister is lacking in discretion, or is perhaps not honourable enough to have appeals come to an elected member. All people believe that they should be able to appeal to elected members. If that's accountability, we don't have accountability today. Nevertheless, in the....
Interjections.
C. Serwa: We're going to get to this.
Not only did they lack any concern about economic viability, what did they do when they became government? They reduced the Ministry of Agriculture estimates. They cut down on the funding to enable and enhance the opportunities for the economic viability of those connected with agriculture. Some commitment! I say that's absolutely no commitment.
What did they do further? Well, they needed more tax revenue, so they changed the farmers' tax revenue in order to.... The first year they made a payment to the horticulturists in the Okanagan Valley. But do you know what they did then, hon. Speaker? They raised the land taxes by 6 percent, and they added another 6 percent of education taxes onto the agricultural community. "Economic viability. Caring for agriculture. A very necessary thing." Sure, it's fine for you who have nothing whatsoever to do with agriculture to justify your existence on the backs of those people. In British Columbia we spend the lowest percentage -- and in Canada -- of our disposable income on food; the lowest of any industrial state anywhere in the world. That's some commitment. What we have here is a government that says: "Yes, we're going to protect your right to farm. " That's fine; I agree with that, because we've already passed legislation; it's already a statute in the province of British Columbia. But there is no concern from the minister, from that government and apparently not from the opposition, because economic viability has not been mentioned here today. Economic viability, folks, is what it's all about. I don't care what you do with the agricultural land reserve; I don't care what you do with this particular piece of legislation. But I do care about sustaining farmers and farms. The only way you'll do that is with economic viability, and everybody stays away from that -- yes, indeed. So economic viability is the really important thing.
The Minister of Agriculture said that the B.C. Marketing Board is the appropriate group to adjudicate whatever the standards are to be in farm practices. But who makes up the B.C. Marketing Board? You know who, hon. Speaker? The commodity supply-controlled market organizations in the province are the B.C. Marketing Board. They're viable because of a certain facility they have, but they don't represent agriculture in the province. They don't represent agriculture throughout the province of British Columbia; they represent intensive-farming agriculture, which is carried on predominantly in the lower Fraser Valley in the lower mainland. They have no conception of the challenges for farmers in a variety of areas throughout the province, which are not in that very neat, nice little, cosy, comfortable corner where prices are guaranteed. They can go to a bank with 20 years' projections -- as they do in the dairy business -- and know that they're protected against inflation and that they will have an appropriate rate of return in order to pay off their debts and liabilities.
Why didn't the minister go to the B.C. Federation of Agriculture, which represents all British Columbians who are engaged in agriculture and a wide variety of perspectives in that organization? Why not a group representing all farming interests in the province? There is a great deal of concern about that particular area.
The minister knows full well that in the development of the types of standards that he is talking about, there are a variety of levels of agricultural management. Some of them are dictated by the type of economic return that the farmer can get. As you drive through the Okanagan, you can tell the types of pressures that are on orchards, because the heavy pruning is not being done and so we're not getting the colour and the quality in particular apples. It's sort of a law of diminishing returns: the most economically viable operation is the one that is putting in the least type of output and endeavouring to maximize profitability. That's the tragedy of the lack of economic viability.
The government fails to understand that the taxation load and the red-tape regulation load imposed on agriculture are making them non-competitive. If you look at other jurisdictions, they have a tremendous advantage over our people engaged in the agricultural pursuit. First of all, generally you
[ Page 14670 ]
have lower wage costs. You have lower input energy costs. In the Okanagan you have lower spray costs just across the line. Water taxes are somewhere around $8 to $10 per acre per year in the Columbia River Basin, and some of our growers are paying $60 to $70 per acre for water taxes in the Okanagan. All of these things add up.
The other thing is that our farmers are paying in a highly inflated local market, because they have to compete and get their input from a highly inflated local supply -- whether it's their accountants or other professionals like lawyers or other individuals whom they have to hire and pay for. We tell them to sell their products at a world market price. You can't sharpen your pencil sharp enough to make it work. It just doesn't work out; it can't happen. So all this is sort of window-dressing on the real ills in the agriculture industry.
A number of government members have stood up and talked about the agricultural land reserve, and they're very proud of the visionary move that they made. Well, I say this, hon. Speaker: it is the greatest single theft that any duly elected, democratic government ever bestowed or impacted on a population that elected them.
Interjection.
C. Serwa: Yes, it is, and I'm going to tell you why. The member for Delta South or Delta North doesn't understand why. I'm thankful for the opportunity to explain that.
First of all, it has done a tremendous disservice to the farmer. The only bargaining chip the farmers had to get adequate prices for the commodity they provided for the population of British Columbia or for export was very small. But it was a lever that they had, and it was the development rights to property under British common-law property rights. Property rights are not something the socialists talk about, because it's not something they agree with, and that's why they're fast and loose with that. It was one of the only levers they had on government and society so that they could maintain economic viability. Right now they have no bargaining position. They can't do anything with it, and the government knows that. They have unilaterally taken away all support services and prices from agriculture, knowing full well that the people are trapped. They can't do anything else, because they're trapped on agricultural land. They can't get prices, because the loyalty of the consumer.... As I said, the lowest-cost item we have here is food. They can't get the prices, so they can't sustain any quality of life.
It's all right for you fat cats on the government side to stand up long and loud on agriculture. Except for the minister, not one of you has any great familiarity with agriculture, and that's the reality. The minister is in the cattle business, and that's fine. For the last ten years we have had good, positive returns in the cattle business, which is most unusual. Usually there's a boom and bust, and the bust occurs about every eight to ten years in the cattle business. But because of the relative difference in the American currency, the cattle market has been very strong. But I'd suggest there's going to be a turnaround in the not too distant future. The cattle ranchers depend on ag leases and they depend on Crown range. By the time this government gets through with the negotiations in the aboriginal land claims they're not going to be able to rely on that resource much longer, so that's going to be very interesting. The minister is perspiring a little bit, recognizing that that's a sign of the future.
[3:15]
So you were not kind to the people engaged in agriculture, because what would retain land.... It has been said many times here today that the people engaged in agriculture like what they do. They're happy with what they do and they're good at what they do, but economic viability is the key component. As long as they can maintain and raise a family, comparable to the same economy that the rest of us live in in this dynamic and beautiful province, they will retain agriculture. Mandating something is not the appropriate way to go. You can get them to do what you want by twisting their arms, but when you let it go they're going to do what they want, and this government has to learn that. So I wouldn't be proud of the agricultural land reserve, because that's a despicable way to provide leadership.
What has it done to the residential community? Earlier we heard the Minister of Housing talk about affordable housing and how this government cares about the people who need housing, especially those in need with respect to affordable housing, etc. -- and it went on and on. This government froze the supply of affordable housing land. From land prices that were $1,000, $1,500, maybe $2,500 a lot prior to the agricultural land freeze.... For $2,500 a lot there was a developer in my constituency who, for an extra dollar, would give you another lot free. For that price.... We're talking $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 or $100,000 for a building lot. How are young people going to build their dreams? How are they going to aspire to home-ownership? And you know what did it? The agricultural land freeze.
What did it do to communities? In my community of Kelowna, more than 50 percent of the land is agricultural reserve land -- right in the city of Kelowna. No big problem; nice green space; wonderful. So we've got a series of problems. We have agriculture-rural conflict, and we have the demands placed on a city for the hopscotch or leapfrog type of development. You can't develop one block or carry on your civic planning so that the city expands uniformly with a minimal cost to the service extensions. We haven't done anything for residential home-ownership; we haven't done anything for municipalities; we haven't done anything for farmers.
What about the environment? Ah yes, the government cares a great deal about the environment, and the environmental activists have a great deal of input in government. What did we do with the agricultural land reserve with respect to the environment? As we all know, the greatest environmental threat in British Columbia is deforestation; you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that. Here's what the agricultural land reserve did. Yes, we're protecting land, providing food and land resources -- which we don't need because of technology, and I'll get into that. So what did we do? In my constituency we're forcing people to live higher and higher in the hills, up in the mountains. "It's no big problem; it's not agricultural land." They clear the land -- deforestation -- and: "It's no big problem; we're not worried about that."
But I'm concerned about it. Because what is the effect on the ungulates? British Columbia -- certainly the interior plateau -- has much high-level land: somewhere around 4,500-6,000 feet. There is lots of summer range for ungulates, but we don't have a great deal of winter range. The minister knows what winter range is all about; other British Colum-
[ Page 14671 ]
bians should as well. We have limited valleys in our area that will provide winter feed for the ungulates -- for the game, for the environment.
Does anybody care? No, they don't care. We think we're doing the right thing. The people on main street in downtown Vancouver can impose their will on the people throughout British Columbia. But I'm telling you that if anyone is concerned about the environment, the agricultural land reserve certainly hasn't done a doggone thing to enhance the environment. I think that that whole effort to feel proud about something like that is very wrong indeed.
The right to farm has to have embodied in it the right to make a living.
Interjection.
C. Serwa: Yes, I think that if we cancelled it, it would be the best possible thing to happen for agriculture in the province of British Columbia. But, you know, the interesting thing is that there was talk.... Actually, the member for Delta South or Delta North.... I can't tell them apart; their politics are about the same -- one's a socialist on that side and one is a near-socialist on this side. But the near-socialist on the official opposition said something about setting up.... Rather than the B.C. Marketing Board, which is at least representative of individuals who are involved in agriculture, he said that we should have a setting up of standards and that we should have representatives from the Agricultural Land Commission, we should have representatives from all levels of government, setting standards. He misses the point entirely. The point of setting up acceptable standards or standard practices, with normal latitude, has to be that they are based on experience, knowledge and background in the industry -- not academic interest or opinions voiced, or influenced in that manner. That shows you the type of debate and dialogue that goes on in a bill like this. It really doesn't make much rational sense, and it shouldn't count for very much, considering the source of the input.
This particular bill, with the philosophy and principles, is a good bill. It is not necessary, because it is already a statute in the statutes of British Columbia. As said at the onset, it was merely a political ploy to make the government look good and to say: "We're really doing something for agriculture."
I've said everything that I could possibly say about this government doing everything in opposition to their word. The way the public out there is going to have to measure you guys is to determine the difference between your words and your deeds. It's as simple as that. Everybody has to be accountable for their deeds. They should be accountable for their words, but because there is an abundant supply of words, they come very, very cheaply. It is deeds that measure the mark of an individual, and it is deeds that measure the mark of a government. This government has not exhibited any commitment whatsoever to agriculture -- not the slightest bit over their history.
So when we talk about the philosophy and principles of this particular bill, I think that, as I said earlier, it's like motherhood and apple pie: they're fine, but they're not the be-all and end-all.
If this government is committed, they will do something about economic viability. They are not recognizing a reality in the details in this bill. The reality is that when we talk about different management levels -- and I'll talk about horticulture, because I'm more familiar with the Okanagan -- we have a series of problems with the urban-rural conflict and the utilization of unfenced orchards, vineyards, etc., by the resident local population, who are building on non-agricultural land immediately adjacent to agricultural land. It's not the minister's problem, but it's a real problem for those who are caught in it.
We have noxious weeds, and we have controls to a degree. Nevertheless, there's a much higher cost for those engaged in the agriculture industry with weed control, for example, because adjacent fields are not looked after or, as non-agricultural lands, are being held awaiting development. Whether it's knapweed, dandelions or anything else like that, the farmer is again victimized by having to look after it.
Throughout the Okanagan, from north to south, we obviously have a lot of home orchards with maybe one tree or maybe half a dozen trees in the various orchards. Yes, Social Credit brought in the coddling moth program, and we've brought in the concept of integrated pest management to reduce the need for pesticides. The reality is that unless you have all the trees removed from areas that are not commercially run, you're fraught with problems again, and it's another cause for a high additional cost. Sprays are very expensive in British Columbia compared to across the line. It's another economic challenge for the economic viability of horticulturists, because while they may do everything possible in their orchard, the residential orchards have a great and negative impact, especially in close proximity to commercial orchards.
The potential of this legislation to turn around and bite people in the agricultural community is also there as well, depending on how the regulations are made up and where they're made up. The ability to apply them evenly throughout the province is of significant concern. When I mentioned the home orchards and the spraying, there's no protection there, so that the only time you can spray is perhaps when there is no wind drift. If a neighbour complains or refuses to give you permission to spray your trees, that's it. Otherwise, you're open for a lawsuit. There is no type of control there. I'm speaking about a part of the industry that is very important to the Okanagan, but some of the realities will confront this particular legislation.
In drafting up standards, the concern is that with latitude in agricultural practices and with the economics of agriculture, the standards that are drawn up may not be able to be adhered to in economic downturn years in the agricultural community. While there are concerns, and I applaud the intent of the legislation, I have real and valid concerns with respect to the turning around and biting of those individuals that this legislation is designed to protect.
Everything was contained in the previous legislation that allowed latitude for this particular bill. The objectives are good, but the approach is very bureaucratic, and there are questions in my mind as to the British Columbia Marketing Board being the appropriate agency and not the B.C. Federation of Agriculture. One cannot help but support this legislation in principle and philosophy, and I will do that, but I will certainly ask many questions at the stage of Committee of the Whole.
[ Page 14672 ]
K. Jones: This bill is much needed. Bill 22, the Farm Practices Protection (Right to Farm) Act is definitely needed, and many of my constituents have been asking for this type of legislation for quite some time. It meets some of their needs.
There are still other areas that need to be addressed to make farming viable. There are areas that need to be addressed in dealing with the Ministry of Health, particularly with regard to septic field approvals, which they go through constant runarounds over. They're literally prevented from doing simple drainage fields on their property where they have large acreages, because they don't meet the same rules that would be required for a major urban development facility. That has to be addressed. I urge the minister to seriously look into this problem, where the Health ministry continues to harass people in the farm areas.
There are areas of the urban uplands drainage that have been a constant problem to many of our farm people, certainly in my riding where the people are living in the upper areas above the valley. The farmers are working in the valleys. The farmers are facing the continually increasing flow of water off the hills down through the various tributaries, creeks and streams into the main waterways, which then have had to be diked to keep the fields from flooding; they continually have to rebuild the dikes and upgrade the drainage systems off their fields, which are getting saturated from uplands water drainage.
This matter of diking also causes a problem for them in that the public likes to use the dikes. Unfortunately, sometimes the public isn't very cognizant of the impact of their presence or their garbage's presence along the fields, whether it's cans discarded into a field that cattle feed on, and they end up causing serious damage to them, or it's something caught up into a farm implement that causes damage there. It's just the general interfacing we have between the farming community and the urban community. There can't be any greater example of this problem than that which occurs right in the Surrey area. Certainly we have it very, very close. And we have many problems that come with it.
[3:30]
I really strongly support this bill in its present form. There is some need to make some modifications to it, because some of the areas still are not addressed.
One of the areas not addressed very well is the area of aerial spraying and how we protect against the overspray problems -- the effects we've had in the past where young people going to school were oversprayed by an errant wind or an errant aerial spray company, which then ended up bringing serious concern to the parents and possibly seriously injuring the young people as they were going to school, walking along a public road adjoining the farm fields. This is something we have to address.
We have to make sure we have that cooperation between our farm community and our urban community to protect both interests. A balanced piece of legislation is very essential in this relationship. It's not a we-or-they situation. We cannot continue to think that a right to do something is a right for only one party or one interest. That right has to be balanced with the rights of the other people, and their needs are to be also included with that.
It's essential when we bring this kind of legislation in that we have a very simple, very inexpensive mediation process set in place that will allow these types of disputes -- which will come; there's no question about that. No piece of legislation can prevent some disputes from occurring when you bring two different interests close together. Therefore we need to have a very simple, inexpensive process for getting these resolved, and I hope that I have confidence that the proposals here may do that. I would like to put them to a further test and see whether they can actually function without becoming cumbersome. I think the intention of the ministry in bringing forward this process is that there be that form of bringing mediation to the dispute area. That is something that we certainly have to look at very closely. We'll go into further detail in the next reading of this bill.
We have to recognize that by having a bill that says "right to farm," it doesn't mean that people can put a whole barrage of bird cannons along the property line adjoining the subdivision next door and say they now have a law that says they have the right to do that. That would only bring a very negative response. We need to learn to work together, using tolerance and understanding on both sides of that fence, and hopefully we can work as friends from the urban area and from the farm area. I have had many talks with members of our farm community, and I find them to be very open and wanting to work out the problem issues that people have. People in the urban areas have also expressed their willingness to work out a satisfactory relationship, one with the other.
There is one area that I'd like to go into a little more deeply. It's one that has caused a considerable concern within our area, specifically in the Cloverdale and Langley areas, and that's related to the Fraser Valley Mushroom Growers' composting plant located at 4369 - 190th Street. This plant goes back prior to 1971. There was a Supreme Court trial at that time in which the Mushroom Growers' Co-op -- which was promoting this and which still owns this through succeeding companies -- stated that they would be neither a nuisance nor an inconvenience to the area residents in conducting their composting operation.
I am reading from a letter from one of my constituents, Mr. Frezell, who wrote this letter to the Minister of Environment last year. In this letter he noted that:
"To date, well over 100 complaints regarding air pollution, illegal pumping of water from a salmon spawning stream, discharge of effluent into salmon spawning streams, failure to contain manure effluent from waterways, contamination of a residential well by neglecting to contain manure runoff, numerous complaints of noise, odour, excessive speed by dumpster-size and larger trucks serving the plant...."
All of these are their concerns and of the neighbours in that area.
"In 1990" -- and I want you to note this, hon. minister -- "after Boundary health hearings regarding this question of health and nuisance problems, which was demanded by the community, in the middle of these hearings the provincial government at that time changed the Health Act and stopped the hearings by changing the interpretation of how this type of nuisance or health condition could be dealt with.
I have discussed this with you prior to this session, and I hope that your assurances will follow through that this legislation will not act to prevent this type of an operation from being brought up to the standards that we accept today, which means that they would not be allowed to continue to create a hazardous pollution to the atmosphere over a very, very large area of our community -- many miles are affected.
[ Page 14673 ]
I'd like to just give you a follow-up on this same letter.
"As you can see, Mr. Sihota, nothing but frustration over no solid improvement to the Fraser Valley Mushroom Growers' situation in over 20 years. Area residents are becoming extremely aware of a possible breach of the public trust in the apparent reluctance of government to properly intervene and cause a cessation of this rampant polluter. This operation is not -- I repeat, is not -- a farm. All manure is trucked to the site. It is then composted, creating a putrid fog and then is trucked away. The plant is an industry only. They grow nothing but pollution and have not made any effort, with constant neighbourhood complaint, to clean up their act in over 20 years. I ask you, as a British Columbian, to intercede on our behalf to make FVMG comply with all haste to the industrial waste policy and rescind their falsely attributed farm classification."
Other constituents who live in the same area, Mr. and Mrs. Bladt, write in a letter to the same minister:
"How does it smell? This is the common greeting among the immediate neighbours living close to Money's Mushrooms composting plant on 190th Street. For over 22 years, they've been allowed to pollute our air to the worst degree without any restrictions nor concern for the environment and population around them. The unbearable stench that is emitted 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, is irritating citizens in a minimum 15-block radius around their factory. The emissions are so powerful and unbearable that children often do not play outside. During all of our beautiful summer, we attempted to eat outside five times, and each time we had to retreat inside in order to complete our meals. We were too embarrassed to invite any friends for a barbecue. Windows cannot be opened for days or weeks. The pungent odour stays in our home, closets, crawl space, barn and cars. For example, being away over Thanksgiving in Penticton, we were surprised that the car kept smelling of Money's odour. The smell is so penetrating and influential that it comes back into our nose without even being close to Money's plant. With over 16,000 tons of compost being fabricated at the plant, I can see how great the environmental impact is on our two fish creeks -- Armstrong and Ross -- our groundwater and health. Hundreds of citizens, including children, are severely affected by Money's pollution on a daily basis. The quality of our spare time, outdoors or indoors, is destroyed. Every citizen has the right to a healthy, relaxing and enjoyable spare time."
Once again, they appeal to the minister, and hopefully there will be some response to this in the near future. This was, again, a letter that was written last fall.
These are only a few of the people who have written. They have demonstrated and tried to draw attention to something that may be permitted once again, as was done by the previous government in blocking their attempts to have a rectification of this problem. With the way this bill is worded, it may be interpreted such that it causes the attempts of the GVRD's air pollution control group to bring some change to that situation to be blocked once again.
Hon. minister, I ask and urge you to make sure that this legislation does not give them an out from doing what is necessary to correct the problems, which are a constant, living nightmare for people, covering anywhere from 176th and further west to well into Langley. I've had letters from even the industrial areas of Langley that said: "If we had known that this was here, we would never have established our plant anywhere within this range." We have people constantly bringing that concern. I would urge the minister to find a way to confirm that this legislation will not allow this attempt to improve this situation to be cast aside again, destroying the hopes of all these people.
A. Warnke: I just want to make a quick comment. The way the bill is entitled.... If it were just simply entitled Farm Practices Protection Act, then as I go through the bill I would think that it's worthwhile and certainly supportable. This is the reason that a number of members have actually spoken to the bill and offered their support for it.
On closer examination, I have a few problems with the parentheses that appear in the title of the bill: Farm Practices Protection (Right to Farm) Act. The reason I have a few problems with that is that the concept of the right to farm seems to project here, once and for all, that we have an act that is really going to address some of the fundamental problems facing farmers. Whether it's in Ontario or Alberta or British Columbia.... Obviously there are other provinces -- New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, Manitoba -- that have farming and all the rest of it.
I've paid some particular attention to those areas for several years. When you take a look at some sort of commonality in terms of what has faced the farming community in, let's say, the last 20 years, we see that the farming community has faced a number of fundamental problems. Some of them are financing, some involve available land and some involve accessibility to markets. These are three fundamental areas. As far as the farming community is concerned, these are the primary problems that farming and the whole farming industry face, and have faced, for the last 20 years -- and will face, no doubt, for the rest of this century. More important, it's what the farming community faces in the future, as we go into the twenty-first century.
[3:45]
The whole farming industry throughout the world is rapidly going through some sort of transformation. One only has to take a look at a couple of areas in the world. In the European community there has been a significant transformation of the agriculture industry. In the United States and Mexico.... We are part of the NAFTA treaty. We are part of something that's rapidly transforming itself and therefore putting on extra, tremendous pressure in addition to what the farming community has been exposed to for the last 20 years. So we're putting extra pressure on the farming community.
It is in that kind of background where the farming community.... Whether it's in Ontario, New Brunswick, Alberta or British Columbia, a number of problems have come to the attention of all people as to the future of the farming industry. We have observed that farmers have been putting forth the idea that they need something that protects the farming industry, especially the family farm. What I see in the parentheses, which I take it will be the short form, is going out to the British Columbia public and saying: "This is the reason that we have a right-to-farm act." Something pops up involving the agricultural community or the aquaculture community. Some people on that side of the House.... I suppose all members, if they lend their support to this bill, are welcome to use this phrase. The phrase could often be used in public: "Well, this is the reason that we put forward a right-to-farm act; this is the reason that we've got a right-to-farm act."
Hon. Speaker, the problem is twofold. First, right-to-farm legislation, as it appears in the title, raises some kind of expectation among the agricultural community that finally something is being done. Secondly, it offers, I suppose, to politicians, a chance to say, "Well, we've tried to address the problems of the farming community through a right-to-farm act," when in fact on closer examination, what is contained in this bill? Well, what's contained in this bill on closer examination is something pretty straightforward. It conforms to what I see would be the proper title: Farm Practices Protection Act.
[ Page 14674 ]
That is, the one part dealing with the right to farm, which basically.... What's in it? It's not a comprehensive part at all. The so-called right-to-farm part just simply says that the farmers have some freedom from those who claim that they don't like your odour, they don't like the dust, they don't like some of the noise that farm machinery projects and all that sort of stuff. Well, there could be such chronic and nuisance botherations by people who do not like the farming community or what's being done next door to them. So there is a freedom from that.
Another aspect of the so-called right-to-farm part is that you're allowed to conduct normal farm practices on farmland -- farmland being defined in the bill here. Then there is the establishment of yet another appointed board, the Farm Practices Board, which could hear, I suppose, applications and go through appeals and that sort of thing. And that's basically it under this particular part of the so-called right-to-farm act. That's good, and every member so far, from what I've heard, has got up and supported that. I don't have a problem with supporting that, unless there's something hidden that I wasn't aware of. Our Agricultural Critic, the hon. member for Abbotsford, has got up and said basically that the farming community doesn't have a problem with that. For that matter, I suspect the public doesn't have a problem with it, either. So it's acceptable.
But what still bothers me is that the part certainly could have been entitled something else -- "Practices of Normal Farms," call it that or whatever. What I'm a little bit concerned about is that the title of the part says "right to farm." "Right to farm" appears in the title, and it suggests something: that finally we're making a big breakthrough and that, really, we're protecting the farmers from those problems that have faced them for the last 20 years.
Again I stress this: the three main areas that really affect the farming community, that really bother the farmers, who feel they are getting some sort of threat from society as a whole as it progresses and expands, are financing, available land -- because there is land encroachment on agricultural land -- and accessibility to markets. I emphasize that in terms of those three sets of problems, nothing appears in this bill -- not one of them. Mind you, maybe it's difficult and too ambitious. That's fine. If it's too ambitious to address those three major concerns because they are complex in nature, I don't have a problem with that, unless, of course, I've missed something and the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has some intention of introducing yet another bill this session which is a right-to-farm No. 2 kind of act. Well, fair enough; then obviously it's an acknowledgment of what the farming community has to face.
Again, if we stick to the principle of farm practices protection -- and that's the title of the bill -- then I would say yes, this is a pretty straightforward bill. Obviously, members support it. Obviously, I don't have a problem with it. But if the purpose is to provide substantial help to the agricultural community and to farmers, then I suggest there's really not much here at all, other than those very basic, simple things to help.... It's almost minor in some ways, other than to suggest that farmers should be free from being pestered by their neighbours -- that they're creating an odour or dust or too much noise in the community. I can appreciate farmers needing some protection from that, but in terms of real substantive help I just don't see it.
So I don't have any problem supporting the bill, but I do fear its intent -- that if we pass the bill, then the minister and the government are in a situation to say, "Well, we've passed the right-to-farm bill; now the farmers have the right to farm," and in fact it doesn't mean that at all. Those are just a few comments. Perhaps at some later date, maybe if there is another bill introduced into the House where we can get substantively into the linkages between the right to farm, in forms of legislation, and agricultural trade policies and that sort of thing, if we have that opportunity, I would like to speak to it again.
One final note: if the intent is to raise some sort of an awareness of the British Columbia community at large and I suppose conduct what we would call the politics of exhortation -- that we should maybe look at how we can enhance the farming community -- on that note it would have my enthusiastic support. Anyone who engages in the politics of exhortation to emphasize the problems facing the farming community certainly would have my support.
G. Wilson: I rise today with respect to Bill 22 and seek not only to put forward the position of the Progressive Democratic Alliance with respect to this bill, the Farm Practices Protection Act, or the right-to-farm act as it's being called, but also hopefully to broaden in a philosophical way the discussion around the whole notion of agriculture in British Columbia and where it fits in terms of its role in a larger context in North America and globally. I realize that this bill is technical in nature, in the sense that it is attempting to put together an opportunity for farmers to practise their craft in a somewhat unmolested way as there is encroachment of residential and sometimes commercial or even industrial activities on what was traditionally farmland.
I should say, in terms of pedigree for this discussion, that I've spent a fair number of years involved in the hog industry and hog farming. I've certainly practised, in terms of small-scale agriculture at least, the issue of farming in an area that conventionally or traditionally would not be seen as an agricultural community. So I do know the problems that some farmers face regarding the concerns that people in the community may have for odour, for the trucking of livestock and often for aspects of farming activity that they may feel is less than desirable in a residential area.
I have followed this debate with some interest. I have heard the stories told by a number of MLAs with respect to what has been going on in their own communities in terms of the impact that farmers have had -- notably the member for Okanagan-Penticton, who talked about issues in his riding, and also the member for Delta North, who talked about matters in relation to the adjoining communities in Delta South. I have heard members of the official opposition in terms of their general support of this bill. In all of it, I think, with the possible exception of the member for Okanagan West, who was the first member to really start talking about the economics of agriculture.... He takes a somewhat different perspective on the matter of the agricultural land reserve than I do. The Progressive Democratic Alliance believes that we should protect the agricultural land reserve. We'd like to do it in a different way; we'd like to establish an agricultural land bank to provide an opportunity for farmers to cash out in their later years so they can realize something from what they have done in terms of their industry.
[D. Lovick in the chair.]
[ Page 14675 ]
I think that one of the things we clearly need to find in this bill is the notion of how important agriculture is. In British Columbia we tend to take a lot of things for granted. I think that globally, populations -- certainly those in the developed world, and even those in the developing world that are more fortunate and are in the upper levels of their own income-earning powers -- tend to take for granted the fact that we have food and that we always will have food. I think that is something we perhaps shouldn't do, because since 1986, world food reserves topped at 459 metric tons -- enough for, essentially, world consumption of about 101 days. It's sad to say that today, if we were to look at the diminishment of those estimated food reserves, we are down to less than 20 days. We forget how important agricultural land and the protection of the agricultural industry is in terms of the survival of human populations.
I want to put in context what we're attempting to do here by recognizing that those of us who enjoy the wealth and bounty of this province must be cognizant as we do so of the billion people in this world who live in absolute, abject poverty; of the 1.5 billion people who have absolutely no access to health care of any description whatsoever; of the 1.7 billion people who have no access to safe, consumable water and can't drink their water; and of the fact that one in three children in our world today is seriously malnourished. These are facts of life in 1995, and while they're not apparent in this beautiful province, we as part of this global community have to recognize that we must have a role to play. One of the ways we have a role is to protect in our own lands the capacity and ability for us to provide food for ourselves in a self-sufficient way so that through surplus generation and production elsewhere, we can allow that food to find its way to those people who need it.
I heard, I think, the member for Delta South talking about the greenhouse industry. He talked about peppers and various other cash crops that are important in our economy. But clearly, we have to recognize that we need to get serious about the preservation and protection of agriculture -- not just as an industry, but also as an essential part of the survival of our human civilizations -- in order to adequately feed a growing global population which has passed the six-billion mark and will, within a generation, be approaching roughly 12 billion people.
As unthinkable as that is, even the most optimistic world population projections tell us that we're going to be looking at ten billion people by the year 2030. That's the most optimistic: ten billion people, all who have rising expectations for consumption of our resources; all who have a thirst, as we do, for clean, potable water; all who have a demand for food on a daily basis so that nutrition can be maintained and their lives can be kept in a manner that will support them in a reasonably healthy way.
[4:00]
We have to recognize that if we do not take steps today to protect the agricultural base and our ability to produce and to feed those of us today, we will in no way be even close to being able to meet the demand we might find 20 or 30 years down the road. And 30 years down the road isn't a long time. I'd certainly like to think that I will still be around as much as 30 years down the road. I'll only be 75 or 76 years old, and I'd like to be able to be consuming....
Interjection.
G. Wilson: What's that? And perhaps the embellishment of our age.... But nevertheless, I'd like to be around.
If we look at the number of people who are going to be there, we have to understand that the consumption of those populations, in terms of human consumption of food, is going to be absolute. This is not a projection or a theory. We must also know that one-third of the world's people today -- a full one-third of the people who populate the globe in 1995, at the end of May -- are under the age of 25. One-third of them are in their prime years of reproduction. This is not a mythical population. This is a population I like to call the "R" generation -- the generation of reproduction. Those people are now actively involving themselves in their life force, which is going to regenerate, to double and to increase the demand on our agricultural land.
When I see a bill that comes in that says, "Farm Practices Protection Act," I'm pleased that we have at least started to address the critical and most urgent need we have in the province, and that is to take agriculture seriously as an essential component of a healthy community and a healthy society.
The member for Okanagan West was correct when in 1989 he said that the Agriculture Protection Act, 1989, brought in by the former Social Credit government, is already on the statutes. The question, therefore, is: what's the need? Why do we need to have this Farm Practices Protection Act, the so-called right-to-farm act?
Having put it in context in a global sense, let me try now to focus in on the local sense. I believe this will be a very controversial bill when it hits the public. It hasn't seen a lot of controversy here, because the elected members of this Legislative Assembly have been provided the opportunity to stand up and say to all the world how much they support farmers. They want farmers, because after all, let's be clear, all of us have farmers as constituents, and all of us would like to have the support of farmers as we march toward the next election.
Lest everybody think I'm too cynical on this, let me say that I think that this is in fact part of what we're doing here today. Long overdue as it may be, we are now trying to move at least one step in the direction of providing some protection for people who have their investment in the farm communities.
This will be a controversial bill, and it is going to cause some serious concerns in our communities. I anticipate that it will cause serious concerns because of the nature of two clauses in this bill. The first one is in the definitions section, saying that a farm operation will also include "applying fertilizers, manure, pesticides and biological control agents, including ground and aerial spraying." That is clearly going to cause some concern. Notwithstanding the fact that many farmers adhere to the application of chemicals, and notwithstanding the fact that chemicals have become a functional part of farming, I happen to believe that we should start to move away from chemical farming. I think there are better ways for us to address those concerns without the use of widespread pesticide application, especially aerial application. Let me say that the process that's been set up to regulate concerns around the use of pesticides has been set up by the Farm Practices Board. Where the controversy is going to come in is with another act, which is called the Pesticide Control Act, where there is an established board that has to make regulations and has to provide a licence for the application of pesticides.
I have in my office a number of examples where people have applied to try to put a prohibition on the application of
[ Page 14676 ]
chemicals in areas that have become residential. The areas were mostly farmland but are now residential, and people are concerned about aerial spray drifting onto schools. There is concern about contamination of well water in areas where application of pesticides is made above the drainage systems, so that it drains down into aquifers that are then pumped back up for domestic consumption of water. The board that regulates the Pesticide Control Act has taken a very pro-industry stand. They have said that this is necessary for the economic well-being and economic welfare of people who require those pesticides and the application of them. But I signal to the minister that this is going to be an extremely controversial section, because the very people who are going to be making some kind of assessment on the basis of that are going to be people who come from the British Columbia Marketing Board and ten additional members who will be appointed by the minister to the Farm Practices Board.
The legitimate question that people are going to be asking -- especially those people who have young children who may be affected in areas where communities have grown up and there are children playing in or near or adjacent to areas where farmers are applying such a pesticide -- is: where is the public input into that process? Who from the public sits on that board? Where are the laypeople who are going to be able to make regulations with respect to what, in fact, does constitute acceptable farm practices? That's going to be an issue that the minister is going to have to deal with, because those questions are going to be asked. The minister's response may well be -- and I look forward to it when it comes -- that the appointment of the ten additional members will be from the community and will provide those agencies and groups that have been active in these issues in communities an opportunity to sit on this board. If that's the case, then perhaps we'll need to explore that in some detail when we get into committee stage.
But we have to recognize that the right to farm does not mean the right to abuse that privilege of the provision of farming -- and all activities we do in the public domain are a privilege within our community and our society. The freedom to be able to practise them comes with responsibilities.
Think of the Farm Practices Protection Act and start to apply it perhaps to forestry. We implemented, and this government put in place -- and I give them credit for it -- the Forest Practices Code. The reason they put in a Forest Practices Code is that they wanted to protect the right of foresters, loggers, to go to work and practise their industry and craft in a sensible, environmentally sound way. And the reason they put the code in is that past forest practices had depleted watersheds, had caused massive slope erosion, had denuded huge areas of land without reforestation and had wiped out salmon-bearing streams. They had involved themselves in all kinds of activities that back in the 1950s were certainly deemed to be an acceptable part of forestry practice, but in the 1990s we know better. In fact, we now say that these are not viable ways to proceed in the forest industry.
We have to look at the same concept with respect to the provision of a farm practices act. There has to be a code that is provided that allows us an opportunity to recognize that where, in the past, the chemical industry -- and keep in mind that most of the fertilizers that we have for the farming communities and the delivery of those fertilizers.... The agricultural schools of Canada are provided enormous amounts of research dollars from the very chemical industries that develop the herbicides, the pesticides and the chemical fertilizers, because it's big business. It's multibillion-dollar business. Keep in mind, also, that much of the research that's done in terms of the types of crops that we can produce, in terms of the diversification -- the cross-breeding, the in-breeding, the genetic engineering of our crops -- is done also with heavy financing from the chemical industry, because the chemical industry has a vested interest in seeing those seed types and those crops produced, because they respond to the very chemicals that they produce and sell to farmers in order to expand their billion-dollar industry.
But it isn't necessarily the best way to go. It isn't necessarily the best environmental protection that we could put in place to simply give a free hand to those chemical industry companies to come forward and say: "Great. Now we have a free hand to apply whatever we want to apply to the land, whatever we wish to put into the air, whatever kind of herbicide or pesticide that may be deemed to be in our financial best interest in order to maximize the production of a crop." The control over our seed type and our crop type is falling into the hands of fewer and fewer corporations. The opportunity that we have to diversify our economy in terms of agriculture is becoming less and less driven by the farmer and more and more driven by corporate enterprise outside of the borders of Canada.
Keep in mind that we have to also recognize that as we start to look at this new engineering and research within agriculture, there is an opportunity for us today to say that we are going to redirect our thinking with respect to the provision of protection for farming. And in redirecting that thinking, what we're going to start to do is put our emphasis on locally controlled, locally produced and locally maintained agriculture production in Canada. If we do that, we have a bounty that we are able to provide. We are blessed with enormous wealth in terms of our opportunities, our water and much of the land that we have. Albeit a small proportion of the overall landmass of Canada, the agricultural land we have is excellent for the most part, and what we must do is provide an opportunity to make this a viable industry.
If I can come back by way of tying my first remarks together with this local question, given that we're dealing with a philosophical approach to it, I think back to the great threat of the green revolution. To those of us who were around at that time -- the late sixties and early seventies -- and watched it, we believed that this was a revolutionary period in agriculture in the world. The green revolution was going to turn all of the arable farmland into the production of a huge bounty to feed the world's populations.
It didn't happen. It didn't happen because it was driven largely by the large chemical corporations that put in place the kind of seed type, production and crop type that would only respond to the very expensive and narrowly controlled emphasis of those chemical corporations. It was a dismal failure. That's why today we've got 1.5 billion people who are starving to death in this world, who have no adequate nutrition whatsoever. That's why we as legislators, as people involved in the provision of governance and leadership in Canada, have to turn around and say: "Yes, we want to have a viable agriculture industry, but no, we're not going to repeat the mistakes of the past."
When we look at a bill such as this, and when we understand the definition of what constitutes a farm operation and what constitutes a normal farm practice, we need to address
[ Page 14677 ]
this in the context of what we know today in the modern world and how we can, through the biological assessment of our potential, put in place a more chemical-free agricultural system that doesn't require us to have the same kinds of toxins put into our soil, our water and the air. Those toxins tend to be cumulative and systemic in nature, and tend to build up in our soils. Through the greatest irony of all, they are going to deplete the agricultural land base that we are trying so desperately to protect through the agricultural land reserve. We must move in that direction; we truly must move there quickly.
The second area that has received no comment at all in this debate -- and I do want to touch on it, because I know that it's an area that's going to cause some concern in my own riding -- is under "farm operation" definition (h), which is the definition of aquaculture. Aquaculture and the right to farm in aquaculture.... The same kinds of provisions are going to be covered by this act. It is interesting that aquaculture is brought up again in section 2(b)(iii), which talks about aquaculture "as permitted by a valid and subsisting licence, issued to that person under the Fisheries Act, for aquaculture...." It goes on to talk about matters with respect to the Health Act, the Pesticide Control Act and the Waste Management Act.
[4:15]
These acts have been woefully lacking in the protection of our marine ecosystem, with respect to some practices in aquaculture. I want to make a distinction here, because there are some very viable, very well-meaning and very well-intentioned farmers out there who are trying to introduce this new system. But in the Broughton Archipelago, there are serious concerns with respect to the use of antibiotics in the farming process. Feeding fish these antibiotics seriously jeopardizes the local ecosystem, because much of what is fed into the net pens falls through, fouls the bottom and then is picked up and eaten by bottom-feeding fish, which in turn move up the food chain as they are picked up by predators such as seals, otters, whales, and so on.
Similarly, the location of net-pen aquaculture is of critical importance. This bill deals with the matter of noise, and I'm going to talk about that in one section. We must also recognize that noise and complaining about noise may be more than simply noise that local inhabitants and constituents who are nearby deal with. The location is critical, because if you put these net pens into or adjacent to or close to the mouths of salmon-spawning streams, when those salmon fry come down that river and into the ocean and swim through those net pens, they will be consumed. It's ironic that you hear farmers say: "No, no, no, no. Our fish don't eat other fish. They just eat pellets." Well, that clearly isn't true.
Similarly, the location of those farm fish in terms of escapement is critically important, because we have allowed -- and I think this is a travesty, frankly -- the farming of Atlantic salmon in British Columbia waters. Notwithstanding the fact that there is a move for research by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans -- for biological control, for genetic management of these Atlantic salmon -- they do escape. They do survive, and they are being caught by commercial fishermen in their nets. We do not know what is going to be the long-term implication of the escapement and survival of Atlantic salmon, as they breed with the species of Pacific salmon and potentially cause sterility and concern in that stock. So in this matter, because aquaculture is covered in Bill 22, we need to pay very careful attention in the committee stage debate.
Let me say also, on the matter of noise, that we have the formalized normal practice of the use of what are called seal scarers. I've raised this in this Legislative Assembly with the former Minister of Environment and with this Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, so this minister knows my concern. The seal scarer is essentially a high-pitched sonar device which they use beneath the net pen, to create such a tremendous noise as to put imbalance into seals, whales and other predators so that they will no longer come close to the fish farms.
We have no understanding of what the effect of these seal scarers on those mammals is going to be. Seals, sea lions and whales -- particularly orca, especially in the Broughton Archipelago, which is one of the principal areas for orca -- are affected by that high-pitched sonar, because it is part of their navigational and communications systems. We have no knowledge as to what happens when those high-pitched sounds create deafness which, according to some noted biologists, is now occurring in the seals in their study area.
Yet if the right-to-farm act allows that as a normal farming practice, because it clearly has been used from the onset of aquaculture in this province, then we've got a big problem. We have to know who.... I wonder if the Marketing Board, which has absolutely no concept of aquaculture whatsoever, is going to be in a position to even know whether it's a sensible or proper way to proceed. So I have serious concerns about that. We have to deal with that matter as it comes forward in committee stage.
Let me conclude by saying that we will support this bill in principle, because we have to spend a good deal more time trying to work out a system that will provide an opportunity for farmers in British Columbia to be able to make a living. We put forward a White Paper, which I know members of the minister's staff and others in the agricultural community have seen, with respect to the creation of the agricultural land bank. We and many farmers think that's a good idea. It provides an opportunity for partnership between the government and the farming community. It alleviates the concern that I heard expressed by some people here today who argued that farmers are enslaved on their land because they cannot, because of the agricultural land reserve, sell their land off.
The agricultural land bank concept, as I've mentioned in this House before, provides an opportunity for farmers to cash out without sale of property. It does allow for orderly transfer from that particular group, who may wish to retire with some equity, to be able to provide for new farming enterprise to come in without a hardship either to the taxpayer of the province or to the farmer. So it's a workable situation. We'd like to advance that notion and get it into the thinking of this government, perhaps for future legislation.
Let me say also that we believe we can support this in principle because we fully acknowledge that, with the rise of population and the expansion of our residential communities, there is going to be ever-increasing conflict between existing farmland and the growing residential communities that are happening. This is not unlike the conflict that exists between residential communities and the forest land reserve. In many rural communities, where people live next to what they think is a pristine provincial forest, they wake up on a Sunday
[ Page 14678 ]
morning to see that there are slips on the trees and on Monday or Tuesday to find that a company is going in to harvest those wonderful trees that they believed were going to be there in perpetuity.
The same kind of thing is true of farming. People who buy into a community have to realize that farming is in large measure a seasonal operation and that there will be different times in that season of operation where noxious smells may be a problem, some noise may be a problem or there may be a problem with respect to certain activities that are common to that particular practice. I understand that there has to be protection for the farmer. But in order to have adequate protection for the farmer, there has to be a greater degree of community input and control, and the community must become educated to recognize the working nature of the farm. Community members -- at least organizations within the community -- must be provided opportunities to sit on whatever board exists.
I will leave it to the member for Okanagan East to speak in more detail on this particular point, but we believe that the existing board that is structured for the Pesticide Control Act should be integrated with the board that is being recommended now. I firmly believe that the single greatest conflict that will happen in the years to come will be over the application and use of pesticides and the effect those pesticides are having on groundwater systems, on air purity and on air quality. If we have a pesticide control board, it seems foolish to have those two boards sit and adjudicate on matters independent of each other. We should merge those boards and have one authority with respect to how those boards will operate. We'll deal with that in more detail as we get into the committee stage, and I know that my colleague from Okanagan East, who comes from a very agricultural community, will have more to say.
I thank you for this opportunity to put the Alliance comments on record. We congratulate the minister for coming forward with this bill. We do think there are some problems with it. We have outlined what they are, and we hope we will find the minister accommodating to some amendments that we'll be putting forward.
J. Tyabji: It's not often that I get to follow the Alliance leader in debate. They always say that he's not a good person to be following in debate, for obvious reasons. Having said that, agriculture is obviously something that some of us have taken a lot of time on in this House, and the majority of my response to the Speech from the Throne was specifically directed to agriculture. So I am very pleased to see Bill 22 before the House. I think it's a good first step.
The Okanagan is an area I have lived in since 1973. We moved there from Toronto when I was eight years old. I don't think a greater contrast could be found: to come from a city with superhighways, skyscrapers and cineplexes to what was at that time the sleepy little town of Kelowna, with roughly 23,000 people. At first my sisters and I weren't very impressed with the change in lifestyle, because we couldn't figure out how to get to the movies and see all the movies we wanted to. But as we grew up, we started to appreciate the orchards, lakes, sunshine and the richness of the valley. I grew up on an orchard, and my family has continued to be involved with agriculture. I should declare in the debate that my father is quite involved with the fruit industry and that my sister is quite involved with the wine industry. Those are also industries I've spent a lot of time in. So I come at this debate with a very close, personal perspective on it.
Having said that, it's very important to recognize that in Bill 22 the amendment to the Land Title Act will probably be one of the most significant changes to the way in which development will occur in the agricultural sector. We live in a time when people tend to look at the bottom line and at financial interest as the way in which decisions should be made and as a last resort of decision-making. It's very important to recognize that one thing the Land Title Act amendment does in this bill is necessitate, in considering development of a parcel of land, that we must now look to whether or not the anticipated development of the subdivision would unreasonably interfere with farming operations on adjoining or reasonably adjacent property.
That's a very important addition, and it will be very interesting in committee stage to see if the development agenda of the Liberal opposition is going to be able to support it. If this Land Title Act amendment had been in place for the last decade, we would probably have a different result in the Okanagan Valley. We've had a lot of rapid growth there; the majority of that growth has occurred on the valley bottoms. I have seen orchards that I used to play in as a child mown down for a series of walled, pink condominium developments, and parts of the valley that were primarily rural have now become strip malls and four-lane roads.
An Hon. Member: For that matter, where are the Liberals?
J. Tyabji: "Where are the Liberals?" is an interesting question. But I know we're not allowed to say in debate where the members of the House are, so I won't point out that they are not present.
I think we have to look at the larger picture. It's interesting; 1988 was my first step into the provincial arena in a provincial by-election in Penticton. At that time, the number one issue we brought forward under the leadership of the person who is the leader of the Progress Democratic Alliance -- at that time he was the leader of the other party -- was the issue of the free trade agreement and its impact on agriculture in Canada.
Too little do we debate what has happened to our agricultural industry in Canada since the free trade agreement passed. I will remind the members of this House that Canada used to be looked on with envy by the rest of the world for our agricultural resources, our vast wheat fields, the richness of the agricultural sector and the strength of the internal and domestic agricultural industry. At that time, the agricultural industry in Canada was unique in large measure because of the small bases of business. When I say that, I'm talking about the fact that there was family farming; family farming was the basis of the business in our agricultural industry. What has happened to that?
In those areas where family farming has continued, the personal debt load of the members of the families has gone up astronomically. The member for Okanagan West spoke very passionately on economic viability. It's important to recognize how precariously those families' personal finances are perched and the great cost of continuing to farm. The current situation is not the way it was a decade or 15 years ago, where
[ Page 14679 ]
one member of the family could go into farming as a career and that could be the main career. In fact, primarily the husband would be the farmer, and the wife would be at home in a support role with the family. Now what we have is both parents off the farm working in other areas in order to supplement the family income so they can continue to farm.
What strikes me as unreasonable is that there is an attitude in society, which we've mentioned before, that the greenbelt is there as a birthright of our communities, and that the farmers are lucky to be able to live on their agricultural land and therefore they shouldn't resent the fact that they have to work off the land in order to supplement their life on a farm. That's a ridiculous notion. When we look at farming, we should look at the global picture, which has been articulated well by the leader of the Alliance Party, and at the fact that our food reserves are down and that agribusiness has been growing at an increased rate. We only have to look to the United States to recognize how multinational corporations now own the largest tracts of farmland. In addition, there are now food monopolists on the planet who are in very powerful positions and who are lined up just waiting to buy up large tracts of Canadian land so they can expand the food monopoly.
If I can get into my vein of thought to follow up on the free trade agreement, the Prime Minister at the time who was so pleased with the outcome of the free trade agreement, and who started the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was then endorsed by incoming Prime Minister Chretien.... It was Brian Mulroney who brought about the agricultural trends that are in existence today. He currently sits on the board of directors of ADM, the largest food monopolist on the planet. Why don't we ever see that reported? Why don't we ever see how much money he's making now from the American corporations that benefited from the free trade agreement that he brought about? Why don't we ever see what happened to the farmers whose backs were broken by the deals he negotiated, the very deals that benefited the people who put him on the board of directors afterwards?
[4:30]
That's what infuriates me as a Canadian; we sit here and treat farmers as it they're welfare bums because they get the occasional bailout from a government that hasn't developed an agricultural strategy that's adequate to meet their needs. And it's not just the needs of the farmers, because the farmers only have needs if they're going to continue to operate agriculture as an industry. If we have made a decision that we don't welcome agriculture as a domestic industry, then let's acknowledge that; let's have them stop wasting their time beating their heads against the wall. They can go away and do something else, and we can recognize that's just the decision that we've taken. But we haven't taken that decision. What we're trying to say to the farmers is: "We value agriculture; we like the greenbelt. Here's an agricultural land reserve -- you're stuck on it. Now we're going to protect your farming practices but we're not going to allow you to be viable. We're not going to give you the kind of support that you should have in terms of land taxes, in terms of an agricultural land bank proposal that has come forward from the Progressive Democratic Alliance -- a workable proposal that would not be subject to GATT and that would not be considered to be an unfair trade subsidy by GATT." If we are going to develop an adequate agricultural strategy, we should do so with the recognition that as Canadians and as British Columbians it is part of our sovereignty to have some self-determination of our food supply.
What we don't talk about often enough is that we are in the second-largest country in the world, with a very small population; we have roughly 30 million people. The United States, which is a geographically smaller country, has ten times our population. The pressures to open the gates are going to be stronger and stronger as the developing world starts to see the opportunities in Canada. If we allow our agricultural base to atrophy, as it has done, and if we assume that farmers are just whiners and complainers and a bunch of welfare bums, and that they're always getting bailouts, and we don't take the time to actually look at the situation, that farm income insurance was cancelled, to recognize that we do not have the support systems in place that the European community or the United States does, that every time we go before the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade we are hammered with respect to agricultural positions at the table, that we have not allowed an apple marketing board in the Okanagan when they've asked for one and asked for one -- and that we copped out from allowing that marketing board because we used the excuse that GATT was going to say supply management was no longer legal....
That was two years ago. We could have had an apple marketing board for two years. If we'd allowed an apple marketing board at the time it was first asked for, it would have been around for years now. That network would have been in place so that even if and when GATT finally rules that there will be no more marketing boards, that network would be in place anyway. That's an invaluable network, and they could do, informally, many activities that would not be deemed vulnerable to GATT. What's interesting is that the very government that said there will be no apple marketing board -- and the federal government that said: "There will be no apple marketing board because we are worried that marketing boards might be deemed no longer legal under GATT" -- has actually built them into the structure of the Farm Practices Board. Obviously there is some indication that they will be around for a little while.
Without a comprehensive strategy and a recognition of not only the role that agriculture plays now but the role that it used to play.... In the role that it used to play, that could have been developed so that it could be so much greater than it is now. Without an adequate agricultural strategy, we are doing very little more than putting in place a new Farm Practices Board, putting in place some protections -- and the amendment to the Land Title Act that I mentioned is very important -- to farming in a structural sense. But the structural sense will mean nothing if the personal debt load of the farmers is so high that they are forced into bankruptcy. Or worse yet, that they are forced into selling out to some sort of agribusiness, some sort of larger conglomerate, some sort of offshore or southern-based corporation that will end up being able to drive the agricultural industry in our back yards.
The leader of the Progressive Democratic Alliance said very clearly that pesticides will be one of the most contentious issues raised under this bill. That is absolutely true. What is interesting is that the litigative advantage to any kind of challenge, either under the right-to-farm act or the Pesticide Control Act, will clearly be on the side of the pesticide corporations -- any kind of litigative advantage, because if we are
[ Page 14680 ]
talking about a member of the general public who wants to come forward and say.... For example, one of the main raisons d'etre of the group in Kelowna called EarthCare was to advance the public's interest in the application of pesticides, in order to counter large-scale applications of pesticides. In those cases, those groups are going to be at a serious disadvantage in trying to challenge anything under this bill, because they won't have access to banks of lawyers or to the kind of money that would be needed to challenge some of the provisions of the act. So that is going to be a problem.
More than that, we have to recognize that the pressures that will exist on our domestic agricultural industry to follow some of the foreign trends to buy into agribusiness -- where we will have genetic manipulation, as the Alliance leader had mentioned -- and to go against the seed banks, which we see happening.... As the minister is probably aware, if you buy a piece of produce that has come in from another country and you try to germinate the seeds, what happens? It doesn't work. Most of those products have actually been designed so that the reproductive controls are held by the people who produce them. They have either been genetically engineered so that you can't reproduce them with the seeds you get from the produce at the store, or some of them have been irradiated so that you can't generate them from that produce.
What that means is that when we look at some of the seed banks that exist in B.C.... The minister may be aware that Salmon Arm actually has one of the largest international seed banks in the world for diversity and original genetic forms of seeds. Those small organizations are under so much pressure to cave in and allow the genetically engineered products to take over. In fact, the products produced from those seeds have a very limited market there. They're blocked out of all the large networks -- they're not allowed to trade on the same networks that the other growers are allowed to trade on.
That makes us vulnerable. In fact, those seed banks should be encouraged, because what we have there is the ability to allow for domestic innovation. We know that the seed stock that is in those banks is unique in that it is the original seed stock from which the other strains have been produced through genetic engineering. Those banks may end up representing our only opportunity to ever go back to the original stock if what we're doing in our genetic experiments -- our pesticide and soil experiments.... If those experiments fail -- if we find out that three generations of genetically engineered corn, for example, doesn't live or doesn't reproduce or has a problem or is somehow weak in a certain aspect -- where are we going to get the original strain? In most cases, those strains three generations away don't exist anymore except in these seed banks -- these small, privately run, non-profit societies -- where they're under a lot of pressure to give up their battle to try to contain some store of original products.
I flagged that because, although we talk very often about the Summerland Research Station and the Okanagan Valley Tree Fruit Authority.... In this bill, something that I find a little bit disconcerting -- but which I'll give the minister the benefit of the doubt on until we get to committee stage -- is that there are, actually enshrined in legislation, practices that make use of innovative technology in a manner consistent with proper, advanced farm management practices and any standards prescribed. I recognize that we want to acknowledge that innovation has to be protected in the same way that other farm practices are protected, but the fact is that innovative technologies under normal farm practice is almost a contradiction. If it's innovative technology that's just coming on stream, it's hardly a normal farm practice, it's hardly something that's been going on for a while.
I'm a little concerned about that, because there's a lot of controversy within the domestic farm industry, the family-based farms -- the small, as we call them, mom-and-pop shops -- who are saying: "I'm not sure if we should be proceeding with all this engineering. I'm not sure if we should be forced to replant the hybrids that have come in from European stock, that we've put into a laboratory, that the laboratory has developed and that in one generation, are working." Now we're financing the replanting of a lot of strains that are not tested. A lot of farmers who've been at it for a while are saying that's not a good idea. What I'm concerned about is that I don't know where we're protecting any of that -- any of the traditional roots of farming that exist -- or where we're making sure that we're not totally vulnerable to agribusiness and to international control of that, in the event that some of the experiments driven by the government policies fail.
I'd like to close my comments on this by focusing on the fact that we have a proliferation of bureaucracy in the environment, in agriculture and in forestry, which is unnecessary. A simple review of the statutes will show that, with respect to farm practices, we have the Agricultural Land Commission -- we could potentially have the Environmental Appeal Board -- the pesticide control board and the B.C. Marketing Board, which is going to be on the Farm Practices Board. The Environmental Assessment Act could come into play. The Environment and Land Use Committee, which is in the statute, could come into play. The local health committees could come into play with respect to the water issue, and the Waste Management Act with respect to effluent and farm waste. There are regional managers of Environment who will come into play in some capacity. Local government, whether it's municipal or regional, have their own environmental officers, and they have bylaw enforcement officers. The economic development commission will come into play with respect to agriculture as a local industry.
I'm sure there are more that I've missed. There are so many different boards and commissions in place that I think it's incumbent on any government which would like to have an effective method of dealing with this to give the public one door -- just one door -- that they can go through and know that if they have a problem, they can go through the door, and the person on the other end is going to be able to direct them to whichever board -- hopefully, just one board -- can deal with their problem.
To use an example that would come up in agriculture, if somebody is in a subdivision adjacent to a farm -- which is the case in most parts of the Fraser Valley or the Okanagan Valley.... If the person is concerned about a farm practice that may be deemed to be normal, but perhaps the spray being used is in a grey area as to whether or not it's allowed, or whether it's allowed in that concentration, who do they go to? Do they go to the Environmental Appeal Board? Do they go to the pesticide control board? Do they go to the Farm Practices Board? Do they go to their local representative of the B.C. Federation of Agriculture? Do they go to the provincial government or the federal government? Do they go to local
[ Page 14681 ]
environmental bylaw enforcement officer? Who do they go to, and how do they know that once they go to that person, that will be the only person they have to go to? That's a big problem right now.
What we'll see, I think, in committee stage are some specific examples of how the current pesticide control board has failed in its mandate of protecting the public trust when the public wants to come forward with problems about pesticide application. In fact, this government may have done something with Bill 22, but it has done absolutely nothing to innovate on pesticides. It has done very little to restore public confidence. I don't lay all the blame at the feet of this minister, because it's not just in agriculture; it's in environment and forestry that we've seen public requests for changes, for a more accountable process, for a different approach, for taking off the regulatory book some pesticides that have been allowed. There has been aerial spraying by this government. We know this is the fourth year in a row of the gypsy moth spraying. There have been millions of dollars spent on that without a public process, and absolutely no challenge by the public to any of the existing boards has had any effect whatsoever.
With that in mind, we should recognize that this act, although it's a good first step for farmers, doesn't address the economic viability question raised by the member for Okanagan West. It doesn't do anything with respect to an overall strategy for agriculture. And it's not a component of that, although there is a Buy B.C. program, which is starting to pick up steam and which this government has brought in. I think it's important to recognize that that is picking up steam, but there's still nothing to reduce the personal debt load of farmers. There's no end in sight for the problems that they're facing when they're trying to continue to operate the family farm.
[4:45]
In committee stage when we go through this, I think we'll have to recognize that each of these provisions, while providing some limited protection to farmers, must also provide protection to people who, through the lack of this bill being in effect before, have ended up living in a subdivision right beside a farm. If they have a small wading pool for the children and there is going to be spraying in the orchard next to it, to what extent when the spray settles on that pool should there be a public concern? There has been in the past. There has been no provision to deal with that in the past, and there is no provision to deal with that in this bill. In fact, if anything, it will be much harder for members of the public concerned about spray drift to have any recourse for that. That's something we should be concerned about, given that there haven't been any stricter controls on pesticide use, or legislation, or any amendments to the Pesticide Control Act brought in in the tenure of this government.
I'd like to say that I think this government should be commended for starting on the right track. I hope that we can have a constructive debate in committee stage, and I would hope that the second reading debate in this chamber today on the right-to-farm act will provoke further legislation from this government and perhaps even a little bit more support from Treasury Board for a long-term strategy for agriculture in this province that is ten years overdue.
F. Jackson: I would just like to take a few minutes to add to the debate, although I have no intention of going into the detail of some previous speakers.
I would like to express some concern about what we're doing here with Bill 22, because one of the basic purposes of this bill is to give people the right to grow food. I wonder what would happen if we invited somebody from Chad or Ethiopia into the chamber today to join in this debate, and I'm referring to the people that we see on television whose children are dying in the dirt with flies in their eyes. I wonder what they would think of the priorities that we're discussing here, we who have houses and pieces of land probably bigger than most of the villages they live in; we who have cars that travel farther and faster on a weekend than most of them do in their lives; we who need to watch our daily share of television and video productions, whereas most of them are quite happy to see the sun come up in the morning. Over the last three years, we've heard endless references to information highways, and I don't think I've heard one reference to growing potatoes. They would wonder where we are.
I would not suggest that we should give up our houses, our cars, our videos and our technology. But I think we need to see the production of food put in its proper perspective. I think that we also need to reinforce not only this bill but the agricultural land reserve and the ability of farmers to continue to do something very simple that they're good at, and that is producing food.
The member for Okanagan West suggested that we should make sure that this is economically viable, and I don't think anybody would argue with that. He also criticized the agricultural land reserve. I suggest that the agricultural land reserve is one of the basic reasons that agriculture is viable in any shape or form in this province. He mentioned that by creating the agricultural land reserve we caused a problem for farmers, and we took away some kind of bargaining right that they had. I would wonder what bargaining right any farmer has when his land is covered by shopping centres or any other industrial development. He's certainly not in the business of producing food anymore, and I think that is what we're talking about here today.
The idea that somehow food production -- and I'm looking at some notes that I have here -- might be a nuisance, that we might be creating smells and noise and dust in food production that would be a nuisance.... I wonder what our visitors from Chad and Ethiopia would say about a society that complains about the noise of food-growing. Our priorities would have to be questioned.
One of the first pieces in here refers to community conflict. The member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast said that we will indeed see some of the results of the bill. I think where we'll see them is in our constituency offices, where farmers and their neighbours will probably come to use this legislation for one side or the other. The member for Surrey-Cloverdale has a problem in his constituency, and I have some sympathy for his problem. However, I don't think this legislation is designed to allow people to become a nuisance to their neighbours. I would suggest that there is very little pressure on downtown Vancouver from agricultural encroachment; this bill is designed to protect our agriculture from the encroachment of downtown Vancouver. The idea that somehow we must have this conflict stems, I guess, from bigger problems in our society: population growth, which the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast referred to; and running away from our ability to feed and provide resources for that growing population.
[ Page 14682 ]
I think we desperately need legislation like this. We desperately need legislation along the lines of an agricultural land reserve which will protect all our land use values. I think that more than anything, we need a change in our society's approach to the production of food. Whether we manage to feed ourselves in this province or not may well be open to debate, but the fact is that maintaining the capability to produce some food in this province certainly takes some of the load off the other food-producing areas of the world. I would suggest that if we can get society to do that, then there will be more support for what the government is trying to do through this legislation -- and through the agricultural land reserve, which has stood the test of time. This bill is evidence that the government supports farming and agriculture, and the need for farmers to survive in our society so they can carry on doing that which they said was so simple and which they do so well: the production of food.
I think all members in this debate today -- except one -- have supported the agricultural land reserve and what it was intended to do. I would like to take issue again just a bit with the member for Okanagan West. He referred to "the fat cats over there who have no connection with agriculture." My father was the last of three generations of shepherds. My early years involved agriculture in all shapes and forms, so I do have quite a close connection to what agriculture is about. I have a great deal of sympathy for people who try to make a living in the business. As far as being a fat cat is concerned, I'll trade bank accounts with the member for Okanagan West any day.
Our support for this legislation is not open to debate. I think what is more important is where we go from here. I would suggest that if we can find some way through the barriers that have been placed in our way by legislation outside the borders of this province, we can continue to provide for the providers in our society. That is really what I have to say today, hon. Speaker -- without great detail, but with, I hope, some feeling for the people out there who produce our food.
A. Warnke: I ask leave to make an introduction.
Leave granted.
A. Warnke: It's on your behalf, hon. Speaker, that I would like to welcome to the chamber today Mr. D. Lewis, a teacher at Edison Elementary School in Bow, Washington, in the United States and his students. I ask all members to make them most welcome to the city of Victoria.
Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, I will call upon the Minister of Agriculture, whose comments will close debate.
Hon. D. Zirnhelt: Well, I've listened with considerable interest to the constructive comments made by members opposite and members on this side of the House. I'd like to just conclude with a few things that I think would ease people's minds but would also to tell them what this act is not about to do.
First of all, the question was raised by the member for Okanagan West that there is no need for this act. I'd like to remind members that with the current act which this one replaces, if there's a nuisance dispute, the farmer -- not the complainant -- has to prove that it is a reasonable farm practice. The issues have to go through an expensive legal process; there is no dispute resolution process in the former legislation. The minister cannot set standards unless local governments ask him to get involved, so this act allows us to start the process of setting some standards. The definition of farming in the existing act is very narrow; we need to have a wider definition. And under the old act, local governments can still use and are using nuisance bylaws to indirectly control or restrict farming activity rather than being up front about zoning.
There has been some criticism about the makeup of the board. I discussed with a number of my advisers and a number of boards about what would be the appropriate agency. The Agricultural Land Commission was in fact considered, although they are a busy board, and they have what some people in the farming community.... The B.C. Federation of Agriculture thought they might be in a position of conflict of interest. I chose a board closest to the purpose of this legislation, and that is dispute resolution. The Marketing Board is the superboard that deals with disputes among people in the agriculture industry, so they are familiar with dispute resolution. That's primarily why they were chosen.
But the contention that the B.C. Marketing Board only represents the vested interests, as it were, of those who control supply -- supply management.... I'd like to remind people that there are three people on the existing B.C. Marketing Board who represent producers that are not supply-managed: the tree fruits industry, the berry industry and the beef industry are all there. There is a consumer rep, so some broader public is represented on this board. It is fully my intention to honour a commitment that I made to the UBCM to invite local government to nominate someone to the board. It's clear that some of these other organizations have already expressed an interest in having someone from their organization represented. So there will be a broader background on that board. It is the easiest way to minimize bureaucracy, in this case. There's an existing agency that will be used and therefore will keep costs down.
[5:00]
With respect to the comments from the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast about community input and control, it's really critical in the development of bylaws that the communities be involved in the bylaw hearing process. Where we look at a review of bylaws, there will have to be public hearings. So there is provision for that level. Members have criticized the legislation for not having a balance -- it's all one way. My view is that in the development of bylaws we force this partnership. The provincial government has the opportunity to override bylaws that are inconsistent with support of farming, but there has got to be a lot of debate and development of the bylaws in the first place.
This bill is not here to guarantee -- and I don't think any government can -- competitiveness of the agricultural industry. It helps, in that it reduces the regulatory burden on farmers. It has the potential to do that, and that's really one of its main purposes. But I have to remind members that there is no direct relationship between the amount of money spent by government on agriculture and economic viability. In fact, I have to submit to this House that we have the lowest level of support of all governments in Canada, but we have the highest paid-up capital -- the financially healthiest industry of all
[ Page 14683 ]
those across the country. Profits are up, and the net debt is down. While from time to time in certain sectors the debt may go up, all things taken across the piece and across agriculture as a whole, B.C. agriculture stands in good shape.
This legislation is not everything to agriculture, in the sense that it cannot by itself be a one-door concept. With respect to the comments about the Pesticide Control Act and other acts, farming operations still have to be conducted according to those acts. If those are inadequate, perhaps we have to discuss that, but we'll get into some details in committee.
Finally, I would like to say that the farmers support this bill, the municipalities support this bill, and this House supports this bill. We intend to get into some minor arguments, I suppose, around certain sectors of the bill.
With that, I move second reading of Bill 22.
Motion approved.
Bill 22, Farm Practices Protection (Right to Farm) Act, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.
Hon. J. Pement: We are changing the agenda. We are going to bring forward second reading of Bill 9. The debate was adjourned.
WATER PROTECTION ACT
(second reading continued)
Deputy Speaker: If I recall correctly, the member for Malahat-Juan de Fuca adjourned debate. Is that correct? Therefore I recognize that member.
Interjections.
Deputy Speaker: I'm sorry -- Esquimalt-Metchosin. I still haven't learned the names of all the constituencies.
M. Sihota: When I adjourned this debate, hon. Speaker, I was talking about your familiarity with and in-depth knowledge of Vancouver Island, and you've proven me to be sort of right: you're only one riding off.
I must confess I only found out a few minutes ago that we were going to resume debate on this issue. I was talking about this legislation in the context of what this bill means to British Columbians and why this legislation is before this chamber. It's here basically for two reasons, as I said at the outset. The first is to assert our sovereignty over our natural resources, over our water basin in British Columbia, and to say that, constitutionally, we in this province have a responsibility over water. It is indeed our obligation to protect the water resource for future generations.
The second is the issue I want to start on first, which is to point out that the other reason for this legislation to be before the House is as a statement that in this Legislature we must take steps to protect the integrity of our salmon resource in British Columbia.
I think the point that I was making at the time was that the salmon resource in British Columbia is a measurement of the state of the health of our environment. As the salmon move from their spawning grounds to the ocean, they confront all the indicia of human activity that is imaginable. They confront industrial pollution, logjams from forest activity, pesticides that find their way into watercourses, and sewage that is untreated. As they work their way into the ocean, salmon have to face the consequences of human activity, particularly as it relates to overfishing. It's amazing the degree to which salmon can survive the efforts of some international fisheries as they try to capture as many salmon as they can. As every school child in British Columbia knows -- because all children in this province at some point have the opportunity to study the life cycle of the salmon -- the salmon return to their spawning grounds only to face, three years later, the same types of human activity, but it's accentuated. That human activity has seen increases in industrial pollutants, in untreated sewage discharged into watercourses, in logging and in the impacts of other human activities over the last three years.
[G. Brewin in the chair.]
Most British Columbians were unnerved this summer when they learned that 1.5 million salmon had disappeared from the Fraser River system in British Columbia; some 1.5 million salmon that we had expected to return disappeared. Surely the disappearance of 1.5 million salmon from the Fraser River system had to be a stark reminder to us of how fragile the salmon resource in British Columbia is and the degree to which it truly is a measurement of the health of our environment.
If the fragility of the resource was not apparent to us when those salmon disappeared, surely it must have become apparent to all of us when we heard the alarm bells ring in John Fraser's report, which he tabled in January of this year, I believe. Mr. Fraser indicated that we came within 12 fishing hours of taking the salmon in British Columbia to death's doorstep. Another 12 hours of fishing activity in the Strait of Georgia and the Johnstone Strait and the mouth of the Fraser River would have depleted the salmon resource in British Columbia in its entirety. It would have taken us, without a hint of exaggeration, to a situation that is analogous to what's happening on the east coast of Newfoundland, where we have seen the disappearance of the cod species. Here in British Columbia we came within 12 hours of taking salmon to death's doorstep.
We have all taken our environment for granted. We have taken our forest base in this province for granted. We have taken our water base in this province for granted, be it for human use or for industrial use. We have always taken the view that we will never run out of the salmon stock that we have in British Columbia. But this summer nature gave us a warning as to the degree to which our environment in British Columbia is under stress.
It seems to me that we can either ignore the warnings of nature.... We can continue to harvest our forests in the fashion that we have; we can continue to draw down our water resources in the way that we have; we can continue to deplete our salmon resources in the way that we have. But it strikes me that that would be ultimately selfish on our part as a generation. Future generations, young people in British Columbia, ought to be able to have access to the same resources and the same environment that we've enjoyed as a
[ Page 14684 ]
generation. Surely it is our obligation, as a generation and as a society, to ensure that future generations have access to an environment that is at least as safe and as clean and as bountiful as the one that we inherited.
It seems to me that there is no higher calling for all of us who work here in this Legislature, serving the public interest, than the calling to respond to and protect the integrity of our environment in British Columbia for future generations. If we lose the integrity of our land base, if we lose the integrity of our water base, then we have bankrupted that which has given us so much prosperity in this province of ours. We have denied young people -- future generations -- the ability to be stewards of that land base and that water in the same fashion that we have. Surely we must heed these warnings and recognize that we have an obligation to achieve goals of sustainability, so that which is cut in our forests today is replanted for tomorrow's generation and that which we take out of our water today is available for tomorrow's generation. It seems to me that government can either recognize the fragility of our environment, recognize these alarm bells that science is warning us about.... We can either react to the stress that this planet is under and that nature is under, and to those warnings, or be oblivious to and ignorant of them.
I want to say with pride that on this side of the House we as a government have responded quickly and with dispatch to these warnings of nature. We have endeavoured....
Interjection.
M. Sihota: Yes, we have, hon. member. I will stop the roll that I'm on by saying to the hon. member, whom I have a lot of respect for and who I know shares my passion for the environment, that we as a government made a very conscious decision. I see the Minister of Fisheries here, and I give him tremendous credit. We as a government have endeavoured to respond with dispatch to the alarm bells that rang when 1.5 million salmon went missing from the Fraser River system. And when we heard the alarm bells from the Fraser report when he said that we took salmon to the edge of death's doorstep, we announced....
Interjection.
M. Sihota: I'll talk about aquaculture in a minute, hon. member. I am proud of what we were able to do on aquaculture and what we are doing to this day. As a government, we very quickly announced the establishment of forestry riparian zones under the Forest Practices Code. In the past we had been witness to logging activity that went right to the edge of streams in British Columbia. As a consequence, we were witness to slides and silting in our streams. That was unacceptable. In this province we were witnessing logging activity which went right to the edge of streams. All of us have images in our minds of logs that have found their way and jammed streams and rivers in British Columbia and denied salmon access to their spawning territory.
[5:15]
We made a very conscious decision, as a government, that where forest activity and fishing activity interface -- where they came together as one -- government was going to consciously stand up and protect the integrity of the fish resources in British Columbia and that laws and regulations will be slanted in favour of fish. There would have to be a zone we call the riparian zone, which does not allow any logging activity up to 50 metres adjacent to a stream in British Columbia. It is inviolate; it's an area in which you can't engage in logging activity. It's shocking to think that other governments, other political parties and people of other affiliations had for so long countenanced and agreed to the allowance of logging activities right to the edge of these streams.
I am pleased to say that we as a government announced historically in British Columbia the protection -- not only of these 50 metres, but up to another 30 metres, depending on the size of the stream -- of areas where logging activity could only occur in a managed way. So you couldn't clearcut. You had to engage in managed forestry activity so as to protect the integrity of those streams, to protect the water resources in British Columbia and to protect the fish in British Columbia.
When the time came and those alarm bells rang, when other governments talked, when other people paid lip service, this administration responded with a historic and world-class provision under the Forest Practices Code.
Interjection.
M. Sihota: I listened to the hon. member. He says -- and I will take on any hon. member on any side of this House on this issue....
Interjection.
M. Sihota: That's right, Social Credit. Look, I wasn't planning to give a long political speech, hon. member, but if you want to get into politics about it, Social Credit brought in "guidelines." Guidelines, hon. member, that said to the logging industry: "These are guidelines -- not law, not regulation, not enforced, but guidelines. If you feel like it you can log to the edge; if you don't feel like it, you don't have to. We'll let your conscience be your guide."
What happened? It was business as usual. The distinguishing feature between those on this side of the House and those who now, fortunately, inherit that side of the House lies in the fact that when industry came knocking on the door asking for business as usual, people on this side of the House said: "No. We will protect the integrity of a $300 million economic resource, the salmon in British Columbia; we'll protect the integrity of the world's largest salmon-producing river, the Fraser River." That is why we brought forward those kinds of provisions: to protect the integrity of the....
Interjection.
M. Sihota: It galls me to think that the hon. member first comes to the defence of his guidelines and then, when he knows that I have dealt with that, says I'm speaking on the wrong act. I'm not.
Secondly -- and I want to acknowledge the efforts of my colleague the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in this regard -- I think it was in October or November of 1994 that this government, before the Fraser report came down but after the fish disappeared, announced a historic $16 million
[ Page 14685 ]
watershed restoration program. That's $16 million under Forest Renewal B.C. -- previously unforeseen in the history of this province. We announced that $16 million program to clean and rehabilitate those streams in B.C. that had been adversely affected by logging activity.
Inasmuch as we were prepared to bring forward regulations and laws to begin to deal with the future, we also said: "Look, there are areas in this province where logging activity has damaged streams. We are seeing salmon disappear, and it is our view as a government that in order to ensure that future generations have access to a salmon resource in much the same way we had, so kids can catch their first salmon and aboriginals can benefit from the spirituality of the salmon resource in British Columbia, we will commence the work that is so long overdue and clean up watercourses in British Columbia under the watershed restoration program."
We took the money from Forest Renewal B.C., and in the face of all the Fisheries ministers coming here to Victoria for a convention, and in the face of all that commentary by Mr. Tobin, the federal Minister of Fisheries, in terms of him trying to deal with this issue rather than again engaging in rhetoric, the Ministry or Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food joined forces and delivered to the people of British Columbia -- to future generations and to the environment of our province -- a $16 million watershed restoration.
J. Tyabji: What about the Broughton Archipelago?
M. Sihota: I'll get to the Broughton Archipelago. You keep on making up your list, hon. member, and I'll speak to each one of those issues. I took the privilege of saying that I'm going to be the designated speaker, so I've got the liberty of time on my hands.
I want to make it clear to all hon. members in this chamber that that was money last year. On this side of the House we will make sure that an amount far greater than $16 million will be allocated this year to watershed restoration in this province to protect the integrity of the salmon resource and our watercourses in British Columbia.
Interjection.
M. Sihota: This government, hon. member, has hired more conservation officers. The previous government was laying off conservation officers. Each and every year that we've been in office, started by my colleague the current Minister of Aboriginal Affairs.... To his credit, one of the first things that my colleague did was to come forward and increase the number of conservation officers in British Columbia, because he knew the vital role that conservation officers play in this province in terms of protecting the integrity of our water, our wildlife and our fish in British Columbia.
Williams Lake.... Alexis Creek, I believe, now has a new conservation officer, as a result of the work of the member from Cariboo and the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs. We have new conservation officers, I believe, in Terrace, as a result of the work of the Minister of Transportation and Highways and my colleague from Skeena. We have new conservation officers throughout every corner of this province. Every corner of this province has seen increases in conservation officers. There were two, I believe, last year in Campbell River; I believe there was another one in Duncan. Another one was added this year up in Nakusp, and I could go on. That's an indication of our commitment to protecting the integrity of the environment here in British Columbia. This legislation is further reflective of our passion for and our commitment to the integrity of the environment.
C. Serwa: Lip service. That's all it is -- lip service.
M. Sihota: Hon. member, it was lip service on the part of your political party when you were in office, when you said that conservation officers were a resource and then did not fund them and, in fact, cut them back. On this side of the House there was action in terms of this government.
Ninety million dollars has been allocated by this government for sewage-treatment upgrade by this administration. Again, historically we had noted that there was sewage flowing into the Fraser River, at the mouth of the river -- I think, as someone said, the mouth is where the river begins -- out of the Annacis and Lulu plants on the lower mainland. My colleague the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, myself and other hon. members approached the federal government with the Premier of this province and suggested that the only way these problems could be resolved was if all levels of government got their act together and contributed on a one-third, one-third, one-third basis to a municipal infrastructure program to begin to deal with sewage treatment. We appreciate it. The degree to which untreated sewage -- and 85 percent of the problem, by the way, is from Annacis -- or poorly treated, inadequately treated sewage was being dumped in the Fraser River was causing problems to our fish habitat in British Columbia. And it's amazing -- if anyone has taken the time to just go by boat from Lulu Island to Annacis Island or the other way around, depending on which way you're going up the Fraser -- to think what those fish must swim through as they make their way from Richmond to New Westminster: industrial pollutants, sewage treatment and other effluent. The report released today by Mr. Waddell of the Fraser Basin Management Board exemplifies the degree to which fish have to confront pollutants as they make their way up to their spawning grounds.
All I'm saying, again, is that when these alarm bells started to go off, when salmon disappeared from the Fraser River system this year, this government responded by making an unprecedented commitment of $90 million to upgrade sewage treatment plants along the Fraser River -- again putting our money where our mouth is, not paying lip service but delivering in a tangible and meaningful way to the benefit of the environment here in British Columbia. On January 23, 1995, if memory serves me right, in yet another historic initiative by this government, the Premier of this province announced the cancellation of the Kemano completion project. Hon. Speaker, 1.5 million salmon disappeared from the Fraser River system this summer, and our concern for the fish species in this province, for the fish resources in British Columbia, in part brought the government to the point where we felt that we had to make the decision we did with regard to the Kemano. We made it very clear as an administration that fish came before diversion of major watersheds in British Columbia.
J. Tyabji: What about aquaculture? When are you going to face that? I'm waiting.
[ Page 14686 ]
M. Sihota: Well, I'll deal with the hon. member's concern about aquaculture. You know....
An Hon. Member: What about medicare?
M. Sihota: Well, you know, the former Social Credit member, knowing that he's been shamed into sort of recognizing that his party's respect for the environment was so shoddy and inadequate, now wants me to talk about medicare. Hon. member, when that's in order I'll be happy to speak on medicare and again make the point which I'm going to make in a few minutes from now, in terms of the impact.
But I want to say that the hallmark of the previous government was the fact that it backtracked on pulp mill effluent discharge standards. Its hallmark with regard to environment regulation was that its Environment minister, to its credit, Mr. Reynolds, resigned when industry came knocking on the door and persuaded the Premier of the day to back down on pulp mill effluent discharge standards.
Perhaps while I'm on that point.... I'll get to Broughton Archipelago in a minute. As another initiative of this administration -- this happened before the disappeared salmon, si I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it -- this government, with a lot of pride, brought forward the toughest pulp mill effluent discharge standards in North America.
It goes to the point that I was saying earlier on. You know, industry will come knocking on the door.
An Hon. Member: Remember when Bill Vander Zalm overruled Jim...?
M. Sihota: Industry came knocking on the door to Bill Vander Zalm.
An Hon. Member: He'll be back.
M. Sihota: He might be back.
Industry came knocking and said it could not be done scientifically, technologically or economically. There are some Liberals today -- Social Crediters yesterday -- who will succumb in the face of that kind of pressure.
This administration said our obligation to future generations is such that we will put up the challenge to industry to find the science and the investment that's necessary. They criticized my colleague the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, when he had the privilege of being the Minister of Environment at the time, for demanding that we go from 2.5 AOX per tonne to 1.5 AOX per tonne -- said it couldn't be done scientifically. Well, in January 1994 this government had the privilege of congratulating the industry for not just meeting but surpassing our guidelines.
Interjection.
M. Sihota: Sorry; our legislation. They had 1.4 AOX per tonne. I'm glad to see that even the hon. member from the Social Credit Party is now converting into recognizing the importance of guidelines versus laws, something that obviously went past his head when he had the privilege of being Minister of Environment in British Columbia. We had the privilege in January 1994 to congratulate industry on surpassing those standards -- 1.4 AOX per tonne. And we also congratulate industry for expending $1 billion to come to that level.
I guess what I'm saying is that there are times and places when governments have to stand up for the environment, when they have to speak passionately for the salmon, when they have to look industry straight in the eye and say that we will not wither under that pressure. Standing passionately for the environment means bringing forward these tough environmental regulations -- and then getting the satisfaction of knowing that when industry understands that government is going to be unbending, industry will perform.
Today, herons' eggs that weren't hatching in the past are now hatching in Howe Sound. Shellfish areas for harvesting that were closed are now open. That's a legacy of this administration. That's the depth of our commitment to begin to deal with protection of water resources and fish habitat in British Columbia. On aquaculture we made a determination as an administration.
I think the hon. member wants to make an introduction, and I'd be happy to accommodate that.
[5:30]
F. Jackson: I ask leave to make an introduction.
Leave granted.
F. Jackson: On behalf of the Speaker, I would like to welcome to the Legislature a group of grade 7 students from Voyager Middle School in Everett, Washington, with their teacher Mrs. Cann. I would like to ask the House to join me in making them welcome.
M. Sihota: We're talking about protecting the integrity of the salmon resource in British Columbia and about speaking for the environment to ensure that future generations have access to an environment that is as rich, as bountiful, as safe and as clean as the one we inherited -- so that they can benefit from the resource base in this province much in the same way as we have as a generation.
I was talking about aquaculture. This government currently has a moratorium in place with regard to the release of any further licences for aquaculture purposes. What we have said is that future licences will be governed by the environmental assessment legislation, based on our findings in the Broughton Archipelago, the most sensitive area in this province. A lot of other governments -- New Brunswick, for example -- are handing out licences as if there's no end to them. This administration has said there will be a process of environmental assessment to ensure that the cross-fertilization of Pacific to Atlantic salmon doesn't happen, and to make sure that disease which can be a problem isn't a problem in terms of the salmon resource.
Riparian zones, the watershed restoration program, Kemano, pulp mill effluent discharge, aquaculture initiatives. That is not the end of the initiatives that we've brought forward since 1.5 million salmon disappeared this summer. We as an administration acquired and converted into parks a number of
[ Page 14687 ]
critical islands in the Fraser River as part of our lower mainland legacy. We recognized that those shorelines and those rivers were a natural ground for nutrients for salmon as they made their way up through the area in the Fraser River that I talked about earlier on.
So part of our initiatives to protect the integrity of the salmon resource in British Columbia was to acquire those lands and islands in the Fraser River so as to make sure that the nutrients which were being denied, through urban development and urban sprawl, were available.
It seems to me that in the long run, government is also going to have to recognize -- and it's one of the areas this administration is working on -- the whole area of urban streams. Fifty percent of the salmon that make their way up the Fraser River alone have their spawning grounds in urban streams in this province. Therefore we have to make sure that we don't, unwittingly and without thought to the environmental impact, continue our practice of blacktopping urban streams, and that we do not allow for development adjacent to those streams in a way that impacts on the fish habitat.
Someone in government has to speak for the fish that have to protect the integrity of our water resource in British Columbia, and enhance an overwhelming need in this province to bring forward legislation or provisions with regard to riparian zones around urban streams.
I also want to say that this government's initiatives with regard to protecting the water resource in this province do not stop with the initiatives that I've outlined, nor do they stop with the legislation that's before the House.
When you look at the disappearance of 1.5 million salmon from the Fraser River system this year.... One of the reasons so many fish disappeared was that the temperature in the Fraser River system rose just a fraction of a degree. Fish had to expend additional energy to make their way up the river, and in other cases became confused and swam back down towards the ocean, because they discerned that the water temperature was not taking them to the place they originally spawned in. Science tells us that a minor increase in water temperature can have a profound economic and environmental effect: economically in terms of the loss of that salmon resource for future generations to benefit from; and environmentally, in terms of loss of that salmon resource for the province as a whole.
In taking a broad approach with regard to environmental protection, that's why this administration has made a conscious decision to deal with the impact of greenhouse gases. Emissions from automobiles which go into the air are trapped by the ozone layer and therefore cause the temperature on earth to rise only marginally. Yet we have seen with our own eyes, this summer, what just a marginal -- nominal, to us as human beings -- increase in water temperature can do to a resource as fragile as the salmon. When I say that the health of our environment is in many ways measured by the salmon resource in British Columbia -- when you think about it in the context of greenhouse gases -- it becomes apparent why we have to take a broad approach with regard to the protection of our salmon resource.
I don't think there is any more significant global challenge to all of us on this planet than the challenge of dealing with greenhouse gases. I have to say that I have never been at a gathering of ministers as depressing as the meeting in November of this year -- the Ministers of Environment, in Bathurst, New Brunswick -- followed by the meeting in Toronto in February, where ministers were asked to bring forward plans to deal with greenhouse gas emissions as a part of our international commitment to stabilize greenhouse gas emission levels at the 1990 level by the year 2000. These were covenants that we signed in Rio. I know that the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs had the privilege of attending on behalf of this province in Rio in 1992, I believe it was. We made a commitment as a nation to ensure that we would stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels.
The world looked to Canada, because we have a reputation not just as peacekeepers, not just as a nation that has shown the social compassion of developing medicare programs, but also as a leader in terms of environmental protection. People held out hope that this country would develop a plan of action for greenhouse gas emissions which was second to none in the world. We came forward as a province. We submitted our plan, because it's up to the ten provinces and the two territories to submit their plans. We were able to show how we, as a province, had stabilized the 1990 levels by the year 1995.
Yet no other province came forward with a plan. Alberta said that they would leave it up to industry to take the initiatives necessary to stabilize, that they were afraid of losing customers in Arkansas for their petroleum products and did not want to take these initiatives. I said at the time that Alberta had its head stuck in the tar sands, and I'll say it again.
But I was trying to make two points at the time, and they were as follows: inasmuch as Alberta, which produces 23.7 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions in this country -- it only has about 11 percent of the population.... Inasmuch as petroleum products may be important for its economic base, salmon is critical for the economic prosperity of British Columbians. Those emissions, in which Alberta leads the way in Canada, have a direct impact on water temperatures here in the Fraser River.
Interjection.
M. Sihota: I want to say to the hon. member that I know the Reform Party's position on these greenhouse gas issues. I know the way in which they do a burn when we start to deal with carbon-related issues and taxation around those kinds of policies. I found myself sitting at that meeting in Toronto....
An Hon. Member: I think this is a filibuster.
M. Sihota: I want to say to the hon. member that I asked for the opportunity to be the designated speaker, and it is not a filibuster. It's not a filibuster to stand up in this House and speak in defence of the environment of British Columbia. I've been here as long as the hon. member has, and I've seen people in this House engage in filibusters, and I know when people are filling time.
An. Hon. Member: Wasting public funds.
M. Sihota: If the hon. member thinks it's wasting public funds to stand up here and speak in defence of the environment, then it speaks volumes to his sense of priority.
At that meeting in Toronto, in a very depressing moment I found myself thinking of my son, four years old at the time,
[ Page 14688 ]
and about how I felt when I was talking the other day about catching my first fish and thinking that there might be a day and a time when I may want to take him to the Cowichan River where I used to fish as a kid. I never want to see the day when I would say to my son: "Look, son, there used to be a lot of fish in this river; there aren't many now. I could have done something about it, but I didn't." The reason I take so much pride in the initiatives of this administration is, one member in this chamber once said to me that we may be the last generation on earth that can make an impact in terms of protecting the integrity of our environment for future generations.
We have established the heritage river advisory board in order to ensure that land use planning processes take into account the importance of rivers. We have established new fisheries in places like Duncan, and we have brought in pulp mill effluent discharge standards. Ironically....
Interjection.
M. Sihota: And I see that there are few of them in the House. What's troubling is that most of these initiatives which are designed to protect the entire integrity of our environment....
Let's just step back and take a look at the big picture here. We have a government in office in British Columbia today managing a province that is prospering economically, that has created 40,000 new jobs since 1991, that has the best job creation record of any in this country and that has the highest credit rating of any in this country, yet at the same time has the highest environmental rating -- an A-minus -- of any in this country.
[5:45]
We've been able to demonstrate on this side of the House that our vision is one which says that economic prosperity does not have to come at the expense of environmental protection. For so long in this province we have seen people who have benefited or have sought to benefit politically by pinning economic development against environmental protection. In the most profound way, in the most historic sense of the word, we as an administration have been able to demonstrate how we can have economic and environmental prosperity and that we can create an environment here that creates jobs but also protects the environment.
Ironically, all of those pillars -- and I guess we'll find out about this legislation -- that I spoke about, which have taken society in the direction we have taken as an administration, have been opposed by the opposition Liberals. We know what the record is, as much as we know what the validators are. The validators, in terms of the success of this government's administration, are found in the highest credit rating and the highest environmental rating in the country. We know, on the record, what the opposition Liberals have done. They voted against the Forest Practices Code, which gave to this province, to this environment and to the salmon resources in British Columbia the riparian zones that I referred to a few minutes ago, which made the statement that when forest and fish activity interface with one another, the bias is in favour of fish.
I have no illusions saying this, because they voted against it, and I regret that at this hour there are so few of them in the House. I notice there is one who has, from my observations, some conscience on these types of issues. The Liberals preferred the past -- the business as usual, the logging to the edge of streams. They voted against the Forest Practices Code in this House.
The other pillar I talked about was the forest renewal plan, Forest Renewal B.C. The Leader of the Opposition in a statement, which I have no doubt he will come to regret deeply, said that the Forest Practices Code was bad business and bad politics. They opposed it. Yet it was Forest Renewal British Columbia that gave this province the watershed restoration program -- $16 million last year and significantly more this year -- to clean up the impact of logging activity in British Columbia.
The Leader of the Opposition, the leader of the Liberal Party -- yet another testimony to his lack of concern about the environment -- called sewage treatment in Vancouver on Lulu and Annacis islands a luxury that we cannot afford. I guess the Leader of the Opposition isn't fazed when he reads today's report from the Fraser Basin Management Board, where it talks about the degree to which we have pollutants in the Fraser River.
[D. Lovick in the chair.]
I guess there's not even a scintilla of environmental consciousness in the Leader of the Opposition. I suppose that he today still rests his record on his comment that sewage treatment -- upgrading of Annacis and Lulu islands -- is a luxury that we can ill afford. There's not a passing concern about salmon, not a passing concern about the integrity of the Fraser River system. There's no hint of environmental consciousness. I guess this leopard could say that he did, after all, oppose the Kemano project -- to try to find one green spot on his body. But that hasn't fooled anybody, and he knows it. That's why the Leader of the Opposition has not said one other green word to date -- not one other green utterance, no sense of commitment to environmental values, no further reflection of the depth of the environment ethic in this province. He has no understanding of the psychology of this province or of the commitment that most British Columbians have to the environment.
Interjection.
M. Sihota: He may have a little bit of political opportunism and a little sprinkle of lip service, but yes, the hon. member is right: a heck of a lot of ignorance.
We created parks in this province, in the lower mainland. We are still announcing them. We announced another one today, and there are more to come, hon. members. What did the Leader of the Opposition say? He could not bring himself to give this government any credit for the vision of the Lower Mainland Nature Legacy, the 99 parks that we've created in the last 18 months. It was one less development opportunity for him, one less acre to develop, one less 33-foot lot that he could give to his friends in the development industry.
What was his complaint? "Where's the money coming from?" All of those lands which we have announced -- and, of course, are about to announce -- cost less than one highway interchange. Yet this advocate for the development industry would, I'm sure, rather see the money go into the
[ Page 14689 ]
pockets of his developer friends as he's giving them a break on the corporate capital tax. In the process, have the Liberals again...?
Interjections.
M. Sihota: Look, I'm not.... I want the record out, hon. Speaker, because it galls me the degree to which the opposition in this province does not show an ounce of environment ethic, not an ounce. They're led by that developer, that downtown Howe Street hack, the Leader of the Opposition. He couldn't even bring himself to congratulate the government on the establishment of this wonderful legacy of parks.
Interjection.
M. Sihota: The hon. member asks which one he is going to sell off. I guess that's a good question. That reminds me that the Leader of the Opposition, in yet another testimony to his lack of understanding and commitment to the environment, said in this House that he would accept a Vancouver Island land use plan which allocated 12 percent in terms of protected areas. The question he failed to answer, of course, was, given the fact that 13 percent and some -- I think 13.2 percent -- had been protected; which park designation would he rescind? Was it Carmanah? Was it the Gowlland Range? Was it the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail? Was it Panama Hill? Was it Jedidiah Island? Which would he get rid of?
Interjections.
M. Sihota: Hon. Speaker, given the hour.... I want to talk a little bit more about the salmon resource when we continue this debate. I know that those who have taken the time to heckle during the course of my comments, particularly from the Alliance Party, will be 100 percent supportive of the protection of the Tetrahedron -- as opposed to maybe 87 percent.
In any event, let me at this point move adjournment of the debate. We can continue with this review of the Water Protection Act when we next resume this debate.
M. Sihota moved adjournment of the debate.
Motion approved.
Committee of Supply A, having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.
Hon. J. Pement: I will remind the House, pursuant to standing orders, that we will be sitting tomorrow afternoon. I move adjournment.
Motion approved.
The House adjourned at 5:58 p.m.
The House in Committee of Supply A; J. Pullinger in the chair.
The committee met at 2:39 p.m.
ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF HEALTH AND MINISTRY RESPONSIBLE FOR SENIORS
(continued)
On vote 42: minister's office, $461,000 (continued).
L. Fox: I just want to make a couple of comments with respect to what the minister said just prior to moving the recess, when he talked about the royal commission and what I suggested didn't flow with the royal commission. First, the royal commission has substantial recommendations, but this government seems to choose -- and has right from the inception -- to pull out of the royal commission what it wants, while ignoring other facts.
It's very clear, in my view, that Justice Seaton, when he did this royal commission, recognized there was a need to define what we intended to do to meet the five principles of medicare. To that end, he recommended the setting up of a provincial council, which would have explored, among other things, definitions of what we meant in terms of delivering that service provincially. So I strongly believe that when the government chose to ignore, for whatever reason, that section of the royal commission, it missed a very important step in defining the objectives we were going to be making under the Closer To Home initiative.
The other issue that I wanted to speak on very briefly in the wrap-up was that when I asked whether there had been any studies done in British Columbia on user fees, the minister came back and suggested that user fees are illegal under the Canada Health Act -- which we all know is the case -- so the implementation of such in today's world would not be possible unless the federal government revisited the Canada Health Act. But not four or five questions earlier in this morning's estimate, the minister himself made the statement that the Canadian government, if they continued to withdraw transfer payments for the purpose of health, within ten years wouldn't be contributing anything to the provincial health scheme, so therefore they don't have any leverage to enforce the Canada Health Act.
Hon. P. Ramsey: Maybe six.
L. Fox: Maybe six years, he says now.
The minister made that observation himself, so I had difficulty that on the one hand, he makes that observation, and on the other hand, he suggests that they wouldn't do any studies, because the Canada Health Act wouldn't allow that implementation. It's rather awkward for me to understand how those seem to work together. Perhaps before I go on, the minister might want to respond to those.
Hon. P. Ramsey: First of all, on the issue of the recommendation of the Royal Commission on Health Care and Costs for establishment of a health council, I think the third party and the government shared the view that this was a good idea. Indeed, my predecessor in this portfolio introduced legislation, the Health Council Act, Bill 68, back in the spring of 1993. We thought Justice Seaton had a good idea in establishing an arm's-length council which would look at a variety of issues under the act. Its purpose was to increase public awareness and knowledge of the underlying factors that promote and impair the health of British Columbians, to set health goals for the people of British Columbia and to monitor the achievement of those goals.
[ Page 14690 ]
I must say it's been one of the ironies of the debate in this chamber so far, hon. member, that the Liberal critic for Health has repeatedly castigated the ministry for failing to have specific, measurable goals for various aspects of the health system. It was the Liberal Party that filibustered that act to the point where action on it was withdrawn by the government.
[2:45]
What we have done in the meantime to fill the gap is instruct the provincial health officer to undertake the cross-ministry work of researching and presenting health goals that reach far beyond the Ministry of Health. This may involve a variety of ministries across government. The provincial health officer will flag issues of extreme urgency and issue more comprehensive annual reports on the health status of British Columbians.
I agree with the member that the recommendation for a provincial health council was a sound one. Regrettably, the opposition filibustered the bill to the point that we decided the gain wasn't worth the candle. We have sought to achieve the same ends, but by other means.
As far as the question the member asked about research into user fees, there are a variety of venues around the world that impose one form or another of user fees. Prior to the Canada Health Act in 1984 there were a variety of provinces that imposed user fees. Indeed, one province attempted to do so after 1984 and was fined for the privilege of introducing them. It was on the basis of some of that work, hon. member, that I made the observation that user fees are one of those zombie remedies for the underfunding of the health system that break through the ground every few years and need to be stomped back into the earth.
I would be pleased to provide the member with a variety of studies done in this country. I'm pulling together research from jurisdictions here and around the world which analyze the effects of user fees on access to health care.
L. Fox: I have a couple of very quick observations. I know there are others who want to join in. There will time for me to come back later.
I just met with a coalition of health care deliverers. They had joined forces in an apolitical way to address some of the issues in health care from a non-political perspective of how best we could deliver health care to the people of British Columbia. One thing that becomes very obvious to me -- and it's pretty prevalent in this room -- is that when you take politics out of the equation and deal with an issue that's near and dear to all our hearts, it's a lot easier to come to a compromise and a common direction that is in the interests of British Columbians.
One thing we did agree on in our meeting -- and I think the agreement was unanimous on all sides -- is that we have to identify once again what we mean when we state the five principles. It's all well and good that the minister, as I understand, is prepared to embrace those principles in legislation in British Columbia. We may very well see that come forward. But in doing so, I would hope that the minister would define what each of those principles stands for from 1995 to the year 2000.
That's the issue I was trying to get at this morning. That's what's relevant in the minds of my constituents. Yes, we have the Canadian Health Act that very clearly gives us these five principles, but what does that mean to me, living in Smithers, Terrace, Quesnel, Vanderhoof -- wherever? I think that would be very, very helpful.
I really believe that the intent of the Provincial Health Council was to help identify those principles by taking them out of the political arena and putting them in a non-political committee. I leave the minister with that, and I'll come back to other aspects of the regional services factor after the member for Richmond Centre.
D. Symons: If you want to respond....
Hon. P. Ramsey: Perhaps just briefly.
As I say, hon. member, we saw value in the idea of a provincial council as well. Since that was not to be, we chose other ways to effect the same end. I don't disagree with anything the member said about the importance of establishing health goals for the province. We can talk a long time about the principles of the Canada Health Act and what we mean by portability or public administration. We spent some time this morning talking about universality, which means everybody is in and nobody's out.
Accessibility and reasonable access are, I imagine, things that will be defined by reasonable people, and obviously there's always room for debate on those issues. In some provinces, the topic which seems to be under the most heat right now is the issue of what we mean by comprehensive health service -- what falls within that basket and what falls without.
As we work toward the full empowerment of regional health boards and community health councils, one thing we have done is provide them with the "Core Services Report." This details the health services that must be provided to the residents of a region, through either the community level or the regional level, or access may be ensured through the provincial level. We have not shied away from the task of specifying in considerable detail, hon. member, what we mean by comprehensiveness in health services for the people of British Columbia. I would be pleased to provide you with a copy of that document if you don't have it. I think it is useful to review it as we talk about what we mean by health services in this province.
D. Symons: I appreciate the member for giving me an opportunity to get in here. Unfortunately, as the House is sitting in two venues, I am due in the other one for a bill that is coming up in a few moments.
Health care is certainly on everybody's mind. I guess we could say it is a topic that is getting closer to home for everybody. The first question I have is in regard to the Caregivers' Association of British Columbia. They have written me, as I'm sure they have written the minister and maybe many of the other MLAs, inquiring, basically, for funding to assist them. I gather that they give support to caregivers who, on a volunteer basis, care for family members who are frail, elderly, chronically ill or disabled. Apparently they run a central office at a cost of about $100,000 a year. They print a bimonthly newsletter that runs $30,000 during the year. Basically, I think they're looking for funding somewhere in the neighbourhood of $130,000 a year. I gather that the cost of the care they give, if it was not done on a volunteer basis but
[ Page 14691 ]
through the ministry and by paid staff, would be considerably in excess of the $130,000 they need to operate their organization.
I'm wondering if the minister might give me a little bit of background if he's familiar with the Caregivers' Association of British Columbia -- CABC. I really only have the information they've given me via a constituent who lives in Richmond and is a regional representative for the association. Do you have information on them? Are they a bona fide group? Indeed, from the information that they have supplied to me, it would appear that they perform a useful service. By using volunteers, they might be saving the ministry a great deal of money and be worthy of government support.
Hon. P. Ramsey: In answer to one of the last questions -- is the Caregivers' Association of B.C. a recognized and reputable outfit? -- you bet it is. They do a lot of good work and serve as an umbrella organization for a variety of volunteer organizations across the province that work through seniors' centres and sometimes health units. Sometimes they work in conjunction with a particular facility or set of services to assist paid caregivers in providing services, particularly to the elderly. We value their work greatly. We have also said clearly that we have to find ways of supporting the unpaid caregiver more than we have in the past.
Last fall -- I'm not sure if you're aware of this, hon. member -- I asked the respite advisory committee, which is looking at how to assist the informal caregiver, to develop better options for providing respite for unpaid caregivers. They are working with the Caregivers' Association and others to bring forward recommendations to me and to the Ministry of Social Services. In the next month, I believe, the report should be done.
To date, through that committee we've supported three different projects, interviewed a variety of caregivers and sought their recommendations on a whole range of issues around giving support to members of the family and friends who provide care on a daily basis to people around the province. As far as a specific budget request from the association, I'll have to get back to the member on the current status of their request.
D. Symons: That was the basis of my question. You seem to have indicated, I believe, that they are a bona fide group and that they do provide valuable service. It would seem that in light of your answer, giving them some financial support to enable them to continue to provide that service would appear to be in order.
In the long term it might be much less expensive to put a few dollars into an organization that helps volunteers out there, rather than have a possible collapse under the difficulty of operating with too few dollars, then have the government pick up the pieces and have paid assistance for the care that these people give for free.
Just to move on to another matter that's somewhat related, I also have a letter from the Canadian Mental Health Association regarding what they consider to be an unfair situation in that the freeze on wages and benefits compensation for non-unionized employees in the mental health sector freezes them at a lower level than the unionized members. They are somewhat concerned that there is a differential here between whether you're unionized or non-unionized, and that that differential is unfair to the people who are in the mental health field and do not belong to a particular union bargaining group. I wonder if the minister might make some comments on how they're attempting to overcome that difficulty and in what time frame it may be answered.
In the most recent letter they've got back, the answer from Ms. Cull, when she was Minister of Health, was: "I appreciate receiving your letter. You've raised important issues which are currently receiving attention in the Ministry. I hope you can understand the delay while these issues are under review." That letter was dated -- if I can find this -- July 1993. I wonder if the government has moved on that difficulty: "I hope you can understand the delay." There's quite a delay there. What's the latest?
[3:00]
Hon. P. Ramsey: I had to seek some information, because all that correspondence the member is referring to goes back a couple of years. In this area, as in so many others, our challenge is to fund agencies that deliver services appropriately for the cost they incur, and also to monitor very carefully wage increases in the broad public sector. The second issue, as far as wage and benefit packages in the broad public sector, is now, of course, the mandate of PSEC, the Public Sector Employers' Council. They have undertaken that good work, and the result has been -- as I think the member knows -- a good program of asking public sector workers to work within the financial means of the province to pay, while rectifying some historic injustices.
The larger issue, though, that I think the member's referring to, goes back to what I suspect was a disagreement with this group in 1993, as it was with other groups a couple of years ago: what do you do when you're funding two agencies that have vastly different wage bills? Should you as a government pay for wages that are in excess of what's actually delivered by the agency? I would submit that the correct answer is that you look at what's actually paid to workers and base your funds on that reality, not on some one-size-fits-all contract that doesn't address real differences in the cost of delivering services.
D. Symons: I'm not quite sure if I follow the minister's answer. Whether it's a unionized or non-unionized agency, they are providing service to people with mental health problems, and whether somehow the service that they're delivering is different, depending on whether it's union or non-union -- I don't think so. I don't think that would be the reason.
I do have a further letter, which I found looking through the material they have given me, from John Greschner -- I'm not sure if he's one of your assistants here or assistant deputy minister -- written on February 21, 1995. It's a little bit newer than the one in 1993. But it's interesting, the similarity, when you read the last part: "I believe it's important that you be aware the government is actively pursuing a plan" -- remember, that was referred to in the other letter -- "of phased-in wage equity with all health sector employees, both union and non-union, the priority being lower-wage workers. You should be seeing the results of this policy in the coming years." The first question was asked two years ago, and this one is talking again in the future. I am wondering if the minister might give them some hope that the future years do not mean as long a wait as we've waited to get to that stage
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where they're still promising help. I'll be quite pleased to share this correspondence with the minister so that he can see the file number.
Hon. P. Ramsey: I'd like to introduce the committee to Mr. Greschner, assistant deputy minister for strategic programs in the ministry.
Let me try to explain again. It is not a question of union or non-union; it is a question of the actual wage bill for delivery of service of a particular agency. I submit that whether a wage bill is higher because you may have to deliver services in a more remote region of the province where the cost of delivering a set unit of services is greater because of travel or other factors or whether it varies because of skills or other factors, some recognition of that should be built into contracts.
We had this debate last year, hon. member. It was around child development centres, and it was with a member of the third party, but essentially the argument is the same. That's one issue. I hope we have an understanding of why there might be a differential there.
The second issue to which the member refers -- and I think this has been an issue for workers in the field of mental health -- is that there are some areas of health care which are traditionally underpaid. They have been among the lowest-wage earners in the public sector. It is sometimes very difficult to figure out how somebody could support themselves or a family on some of those wages. We have brought in a wage equity program which, as the correspondence the member reads says, will phase in, over a period of time, some redress to that historical situation. We have done it by setting some clear guidelines for what overall compensation increases should be in the public sector, through the Public Sector Employers' Council. Within those guidelines, we've also provided for a program that offers a considerable boost in wages to those at the low end of the scale.
I might refer the member to the recent settlement with the home support workers of the province, which provided for wage increases year over year of close to 7 percent a year for five years -- a phased-in program to address historical wage inequities. There are some workers in the mental health field who have suffered similarly from what we believe have been historically inequitable low wages. As with the home support workers, PSEC is taking measures to rectify that unfortunate failure to recognize the importance of the services that these people are providing.
D. Symons: I was aware of home support, and I applaud the minister for working on those inequities and trying to rectify them.
I wonder -- I'm not sure, because again, with the operation of our two Houses, I'm not always able to monitor what's happening in this one when I'm in the other one -- if the question of Elliot Murphy has come up in the Health estimates so far. I happened to read in church that -- this happened two weeks ago -- there was a motion passed at the Anglican synod that:
"The synod requests the Minister of Health in B.C. to urgently address the gap in the health care system as demonstrated by cases such as 14-year-old Elliot Murphy; further, that appropriate long term care facilities be provided for patients who, while medically stable, need continuing nursing care in an institutional environment."
This was carried unanimously at the Anglican synod two weeks ago. I'm just concerned that, in a sense -- and fortunately I happen to know Mr. Murphy -- this particular case is the one that caught the media's attention, and I brought up the problem that Elliot is not the only one.
What bothered me particularly were the situations where there seemed to be an eviction notice from Sunny Hill, the minister denied that this was the case. Three times in the last year people have come to me with the impression that they're being pushed out of the hospital.
It happened about three months ago, where the husband of a person I'm dealing with in the media took ill and was in Richmond General Hospital with a heart attack and a deteriorating heart condition. He kept coming back to the hospital, and they stabilized him in intensive care and then basically said: "I'm sorry, you have to go home."
Apparently, in speaking to hospital administrators, there's some sort of policy that if a bed is occupied by somebody who isn't at a certain medical stage, the hospital suffers a financial penalty for keeping that bed occupied when, in the ministry's mind, it shouldn't be. On a fairly frequent basis this person was sent between hospital and home, much like a yo-yo going back and forth. I certainly got the impression in speaking to his wife that he was being shoved out of hospital prematurely. The gentleman solved the problem by dying -- solved that aspect of it.
In another case it was a person who had decided to stay at home to die of cancer. This woman found it difficult to find financial support -- at least there were caregivers in the family helping her -- to have a nighttime nurse to give intravenous injections for the pain. It took quite a long time -- and I intervened somewhat -- and eventually the help came. Again, there seemed to be almost a reluctance for this home part to be there.
There seem to be gaps in our medical system. Elliot falls into one of these. Maybe staying in an acute care hospital bed isn't a solution, but there should be somewhere he can stay where care will be given and where he won't be given back to a family who cannot give him the degree of help that he really needs. He needs all sorts of rehabilitation exercise and all these sorts of things that go along with it so that his body won't deteriorate while he stays in this semi-coma state. I'm sure that Elliot is not the only one in this state.
We've been praying for a year and a half at church for his recovery, and it's amazing that there seems to be something there. I know a doctor friend who said right after the accident that he wasn't going to live. Apparently he's living, and he's got a will to live. I've had so many other friends who have been in accidents and have been told that they wouldn't live, and they're here today and back teaching, and so forth.
The body is a marvellous thing, and we've got to do all we can in the process to help the person involved in the injury and also, I suspect, to help the family cope with that -- not to put any undue burden on them such that the family may suffer immense harm because help isn't there when it's needed. Elliot falls into this category. Could the minister comment please?
Hon. P. Ramsey: I think the member opposite will understand if I don't address the specifics of a particular case. It's really not appropriate to discuss particular treatment of an individual in committee. Let me say this, though: Sunny Hill carries out excellent work, but its role is not as a long term care
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facility. Its role is to assist with adjustments that people need to make -- particularly children -- and then to assist the family and caregivers with making sure that the individuals who move on from Sunny Hill receive the care they need in a more appropriate setting.
The philosophy that they work on is to stabilize and then to work with the family and other caregivers to make sure that all needed supports are in place. As I said during the media interview on this case, there is no eviction notice posted on this individual's hospital door.
As far as the case of patients being discharged, it is, as I think the member knows, a physician's responsibility to admit and discharge patients. The hospitals are not funded on a per-bed or per-patient basis. There is no financial penalty that accrues to the hospital for one action or another. It is the medical staff's call as to whether the condition of the patient warrants hospital care or whether that care can be more appropriately provided in another setting. That is what is done in Richmond and around the province.
Finally, I think the member's question about the provision of support for people who choose to spend the last days of their lives in their own homes is an excellent one. I think this is a choice that increasing numbers of British Columbians are making. Your colleague the Liberal Health critic and I had an extended discussion about the Richmond Hospice Association and the excellent work it is doing in providing hospice-like care in homes or hospitals. We also discussed the work they're doing toward the establishment of a freestanding hospice in Richmond for those who want that sort of a facility to spend their last days in.
I regret that the member's constituent had difficulty in getting the home nursing support that he required. At times, I also feel that parts of the system don't necessarily mesh smoothly. That's one reason why we are asking administrators and governors at the regional and community levels to integrate: so that they can address the care needs of individuals in a more integrated and coordinated fashion. The bad news is that it took a long time; the good news is that the service was eventually provided.
D. Symons: I thank the minister for the answers. The one answer I didn't hear that maybe I would like to hear is.... If we go back to the Murphy case and similar cases, when you say that Sunny Hill has done what they can for him, I wonder where he and others will go next. Where is the stage between the needs that are provided at Sunny Hill and the home which can't provide what he needs? Is it somewhere between the two? What does the ministry do to provide these services to people? That's the big issue in this case.
[3:15]
Hon. P. Ramsey: In cases such as the one the member is talking about, the goal is to find a venue where care can be provided. In many cases, it may be a long term care facility or an extended care facility. It might be a residential care facility or a group home of some sort. The important thing is to make sure that the necessary services are provided. In many cases, the need for those services is quite high. The at-home program and other programs deal with people who require very high levels of care. I think the ministry has an excellent record of meeting those requirements in a residential or group home situation.
I'm not sure what the answer is in every case. That's why I don't want to comment on the individual case here. Those who are working with the family are exploring the options so that the family will feel comfortable that their son will have the care he needs. That's the goal of everybody I've met who is working with that family. But we need to make sure that we're not asking an institution to deal with a situation that's really not appropriate for it.
D. Symons: On quite a different topic, I'm wondering if the minister might be able to give me -- and this may involve getting back to me at a later date.... I am curious as to the countries or hospitals outside British Columbia or Canada in which the ministry pays for services provided to Canadians who are in another jurisdiction when they need health care. I gather that our health care system will pick up the bill up to what they would have got if they had become ill in British Columbia. I wonder if I might be able to find the next three jurisdictions that have been at the top of the list in money spent, the number of health care claims from people outside British Columbia and the dollars paid out outside British Columbia.
I think that's going to be an answer you will not have at the top of your head at this moment, so I'll leave it with you, unless you care to respond to it.
Hon. P. Ramsey: I will get that information for the member. I asked staff for a rough estimate of the overall part of the health budget that might be spent out of province; that will probably be the largest one. The member is asking specifically for out of country. The estimate I have for out of province and out of country might be two-thirds of 1 percent of the Health budget. In terms of proportions, it's a very small proportion of the Health budget.
D. Symons: I didn't think the minister would be able to come up with an answer. I applaud the staff on being able to come up with that quickly; I thought it was an obscure question. We're probably looking at considering that other parts of Canada could.... We are looking at less than half a percent, I would suspect. In the large budget of the Health ministry, even half a percent is a significant number of dollars. If you could get that information, I would appreciate it.
The last question I have at this time involves the news release from the ministry back in the month of March, talking about grants promoting youth participation in health care. There is a $100,000 grant to promote "the participation of B.C.'s young people in health issues affecting youth," and I wonder what you mean by promote. Is this simply an advertising campaign, and in what way is this being promoted?
Hon. P. Ramsey: One of the more interesting events I attended in the last couple of months has been a gathering of youth from all around the world to a conference that was held jointly with health professionals from all around the world, pediatricians largely. They met in Vancouver, and there were over 1,000 delegates. Something like 300 of them were actual youths, those who were recipients of the services that these health providers were designing and delivering services for.
The McCreary Centre Society of Vancouver was one of the principal organizers of that conference and a recipient of a grant to continue their good work in this field. This is far more than a public relations campaign. The McCreary Society's
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goal, both through this conference and through the young people who came together there, was to encourage young people to take an active role in the design and delivery of health services in their own communities. In this member's community, an excellent initiative was undertaken by the steering group that led to the Richmond Health Board. They actually had a separate steering committee that looked at the needs of youth. I met the members of that committee when I attended the designation ceremony in Richmond. That's the sort of initiative that this grant was made for. That group of young people within Richmond formed a very active voice to the governors who are going to be designing and delivering health services, saying: "When you're thinking about where you spend dollars or what the needs are, don't forget the youth of the community." Their needs might be quite different from those we discussed through the family Caregivers' Association of B.C. That's what the grant was given for, hon. member. I think the McCreary Society has done excellent work in the past and will continue to work well within this province to make sure that the voice of youth is heard.
F. Gingell: I have in my hand a memorandum that deals with the Delta Health Council. A story in our local newspaper indicated that the council would assume the management of five agencies. On Thursday, May 18, at a meeting of the Delta interagency administrators committee, the chair of the council responded to a question by members of the committee and was asked to name which five agencies they were planning on taking over. The response was: number one, the Delta Centennial Hospital Society; number two, the Delta Home Support Services Society; number three, the Delta Advocates for Community Mental Health; number four, the Kinsmen retirement home. The fifth was unnamed and was referenced as: "We are still thinking about this one."
The individuals who sent me this memorandum are the two senior administrators and the general factotum of one of these organizations. So you can imagine that it came as quite a shock to them. I'm sure everybody understands that that's what this is all about. Has the ministry put into place any advice and guidance as to the right way to go about this process? The last thing we want is for the community to be torn apart by disputes over these issues. In a community that is as old and stable as ours, these organizations are the result of people who have lived in the community many, many years. The local police chief, who is now retired, is on two or three of these boards. I wonder what action your ministry is taking to set up a process by which this process should proceed without causing unnecessary upsets.
Hon. P. Ramsey: First, I'm rather surprised that this came as a shock to some of the health organizations in Delta. It's not as if the idea of amalgamation of some of the 700 boards and agencies that deliver health services into 20 regional boards and 80 community health councils is exactly new. This is an idea that, as you know, we have been working towards for a touch over two years now in this province.
The last of the regional health boards was designated earlier this year. They are now getting on with the work, with their community health councils, of developing health plans which do specifically talk about which agencies they contract with, which agencies are expected to amalgamate and a timetable for doing that, and they are going to be presenting those to the ministry as we authorize the operational authority for regions and boards.
I think the member said it well. Everybody knows that that's what this is about. The goal for Delta and for others is to maintain good communications with the agencies in the area and to assure the people in Delta that while the administration and some of the support services for health delivery in Delta may be changing, the quality of those services will not. The goal, as the member knows, is to make sure that we have effective decision-making as close to where services are delivered as possible, to get integration of those services and to squeeze unnecessary bureaucracy out of the system.
F. Gingell: From what you say, I take it that you don't feel it's important for there to be good communication -- communication meaning, in this case.... I see the look of shock on your face. There had been no communication. There had been no discussion between these particular organizations and the community health council. It literally came out of the blue. They were at an interagency meeting and for the first time a finger was pointed and someone said: "We're going to take over." They didn't talk about amalgamating. They used the term "assume the management of," and they said: "You, you, you, you and we're not sure about which of you is the fifth." I would have thought there would have been some process prior to that point whereby these people who are all long-term professionals would have got together and talked about the issues.
You know, we deal with some of these organizations with a whole bunch of assets and we're not sure who they belong to -- whether they belong to this non-profit society or whether they belong to the government. Much of the fundraising has been done through charitable and local fundraising exercises and gifts from members in the community, and they were gifting to this local organization, not the government. My question really tried to focus on the issue of whether there have been some instructions about the process they should go through to arrive at this -- I agree -- fairly early step.
Hon. P. Ramsey: I might ask the hon. member if he would like to check back with some of the administrators in Delta. I doubt that Delta is greatly different from some other communities around the province that are working toward presenting administrative and management plans to the ministry. In most of those communities, the sorts of interagency meetings the member refers to have been going on for some time.
If we're talking about a particular agenda item that somebody missed, that may be one thing, but to pretend that somehow the overall goal of the establishment of councils as the amalgamation of agencies and getting some efficiencies into delivery of health services was not apparent strikes me as a bit ingenuous on the part of the person who may have talked to you. I know for sure that at least one person knew about it, because the CEO of Delta Hospital is also the interim CEO of the Delta Health Council. The information I have -- or at least, he has informed my ministry -- is that he's been talking extensively with agencies in the area about how amalgamation might proceed for health delivery in Delta. If the member has indications that that is not true, I would suggest one of the appropriate places to take that concern would be the Delta council and the administrator who is doing that consultation for them.
[3:30]
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F. Gingell: I certainly will phone David Richardson and find out David says. I just got this the other day. The two particular people who have written to me -- and I'm certainly happy to share this with you; you don't need freedom-of-information to get it from us....
An Hon. Member: Have you severed it already, Fred?
F. Gingell: Yes, I've severed it already. The people who have written are people who have been involved in the management of one of these agencies for a long, long time. They are not new; they have been around this whole process. They are saying to us: "This is the first time that anybody has discussed this issue with us, and it came out as a blatant fact." It came out: "We are planning on taking you folks over, and we can deal with this at some other time."
This morning at the Public Accounts Committee we were dealing with issues of the downsizing of Riverview Hospital and the movement of patients into the community. We got into a short discussion of the problem of ensuring that there are resources available for the patients who are removed from the hospital and put into community facilities -- which your ministry strongly supports and is working hard on -- and at the same time, the problem of reallocating those resources from the hospitals.
When one looks at the plans the government has for acute facilities for mental patients, one appreciates that these facilities are going to be interregional: they're going to be required to service many regional boards. One wonders exactly how the financing of that might happen: whether you first of all allocate resources to the regional health board and they buy these services -- you'll have to instruct them that they must buy or else the facility won't have the proper funding -- or whether you fund those facilities direct and instruct them that they must make their services available around the community, or whether you fund the board of the council in which the facility happens to be geographically located. One didn't get the feeling this morning that the matter is settled -- it's somewhat under discussion. Can the minister advise the committee if they've come to any conclusions yet as to how this funding will take place?
Hon. P. Ramsey: The question is not unlike the discussion I had with the Liberal Health critic around the regionalization of tertiary facilities in the Vancouver region. The answer is the same. The provincial need -- or, in some cases, the regional need -- for facilities will be assessed by the ministry. The funding will be provided to the regional health boards in which the individual facilities are located.
L. Stephens: I'd like to talk a little about our Langley community and the good things we're doing there in health care, and to thank the ministry and the minister for the phase two expansion that we have underway. This will provide some really necessary services out in Langley: a new maternity unit, a new ambulatory out-patient care unit, expanded physiotherapy and occupational therapy space, a new cafeteria and we'll add a histopathology section to the laboratory. So we're pleased to have those services added to our hospital.
We have a phase three in our proposal. I know our CEO of the hospital is looking for the remaining phase two expansion funds to be committed and for the planning funds for our phase three expansion that we're looking to do. We need them acknowledged or supported by next March -- no, we need them earlier than that. I know our hospital has been in touch with the ministry to get some commitment for the remainder of phase two and also for the planning funding for phase three. I wonder if the minister would comment on both of those and on whether he can provide me with any information.
Hon. P. Ramsey: I would like to add to the member's good words about the hospital facilities in her riding. Clearly the CEO there, Pat Zanon, has done an excellent job. As the member knows, and as the committee might also want to know, under the leadership of the board and Ms. Zanon, Langley has recently achieved a four-year accreditation for Langley Memorial. I think that's the first one in the province. The member has every right to be proud of the quality of the institution in her riding.
It's also good to hear a member of the opposition stand up and say that we need more capital funding. It's always good to hear that. After further consultation with the GVRHD, I hope to announce that phase two will be going ahead very soon. I expect that will be something that the member and I can share some good news on fairly soon.
As far as phase three planning, we are trying to figure out how we can accommodate that within the debt management plan the Minister of Finance presented to the Legislature in the budget. As we have done during our term in office, we will do whatever we can to provide capital funding for hospitals and other facilities around the province. We clearly need to look, though, at doing that within the debt management plan that this government has announced.
L. Stephens: I thank the minister for those comments. I bear in mind the need to control the funds that are available and the need to use them efficiently and effectively. To that end, I would say that in our hospital we have provided the kinds of efficiencies that the minister speaks of. To that end, too, we have phases one, two and three. I am sure the minister is aware that when you embark on such a plan of expansion and acquisition, in order for it to be efficient and effective it needs to proceed in a timely and expeditious manner. Needless costs will not be incurred if things are progressing along a path that is of benefit not only to the community but to the province's debt management plan. I would like the minister to bear in mind that those kinds of factors also come into play and that we support equity and fairness for all. We feel that we have done a very good job and that our plan is proceeding in a very efficient and cost-effective manner. I will be calling again on the minister in regard to this particular proposal.
One further thing, of course, is that we are forecasting a $2.6 million shortfall at the hospital. This is comprised of the $1 million, one-time funding that was put forward by the ministry to assist hospitals in dealing with changes in direction. The $900,000 in unfunded costs from collective agreements was an added expense that hospitals had not budgeted for because of new staff coming in. There was a $500,000 loss of revenue from changes in the Medical Services Plan billing rules for emergency department patients, and there were $200,000 for non-labour inflation costs. These are the areas that make up the $2.6 million shortfall we are faced with. They are really not of our making, so to speak. I wonder if the minister could talk a little bit about what may be available or how we can make this particular shortfall less onerous.
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Hon. P. Ramsey: The 1995-96 budget allocation letters to all hospitals in the province will be going out this week. As well, we are sending out letters that address the issue of the MSC adjustments for billing. I would advise the member to check in with her hospital after funding correspondence has been received from the ministry staff, and if there are issues that she wishes to raise with me or staff, please do that perhaps sometime next week.
L. Stephens: I will indeed do that, because an end result of this $2.6 million shortfall, which we would have to deal with, would be a closure of 42 medical surgical beds and some reduction of operating-room time for elective surgical procedures. So these are some of the things that we would have to do if we weren't able to get some kind of relief.
I'd like to ask a few questions about the regionalization, and I apologize if the minister has heard this ten or so times before. If he has answered these questions, just tell me and I will look them up in Hansard.
The GVRD has, I know, been asking for some indication of what their role will be, and I wonder if the minister could perhaps talk about whether or not that has been sorted through, particularly around the capital cost-sharing that the GVRD has been concerned about. That's one question I wonder if the minister has some further information on.
[3:45]
Hon. P. Ramsey: I apologize to the member for the time I took to make sure I was up to date on the latest work on this.
As the member knows, at the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention last September at Whistler, I made a firm commitment that elected bodies -- regional districts and municipalities -- would be responsible for levying property-based taxes for hospital construction, and we had no intent of giving that authority to regional health boards. Since that time, work has been ongoing between the ministry, the new regional health boards, the GVRD and the UBCM to find solutions that worked.
I've been informed by staff that we think we are close to formal sign-off on agreement on how that process will work and carry out those principles that I enunciated at Whistler. A meeting was held last Friday between the chairs of the regional health boards, GVRD people and some of the municipal politicians from the region. I believe that all parties are now looking at a solution that they can live with, and I would expect a formal sign-off on it within the next little while.
L. Stephens: With the GVRD participating in the regionalization in a way that they have an interest in that.... Can the minister clarify the roles of the regional health board versus the community health council, the roles of the regional health board versus the community health council, and also the role of regional transition teams that have been established to make that transition into the regional health councils? Can the minister talk a little bit about how you're going to get from the councils to the regional boards and the hospitals and the transferring of all the power into the regional health boards and how that time line is proceeding?
Hon. P. Ramsey: I'll attempt a few comments and see if I've addressed the issues. I'm not quite sure what target you're setting for me, hon. member.
We have asked community health councils and regional health boards to really work on two things: presenting a health plan for their community or their region and a management plan. The regional health board has the responsibility of presenting the consolidation -- an integrated management plan -- for the entire region, including all those of community health councils which fall under it. So we'll be looking at 20 health plans and management plans. I expect they'll be starting to come in in the next month or so. As they are approved, we will then put in place a formal transition to empower regional health boards to actually be the deliverers of health services in their regions.
There is ongoing work around labour relations and capital budgets in the area. The ministry has put out essentially a volume -- you may have seen it -- on how to go about doing all the formalities of the transition of governance to regional health boards and community health councils.
We have set several principles for the transition teams. We said very clearly that we do not expect regional health boards to be hiring large numbers of administrative staff during the transition time; they will be working with loaned staff. This has worked well in most regions of the province. That's the principle that we will continue to work under. As I've said repeatedly, we're not interested in creating more bureaucracy; we're interested in squeezing some of the existing superfluous administration and support functions out of health delivery and making them as efficient as possible in delivery of health services.
I think Ms. Zanon is doing a good work in an interim role in that area, and I expect that the community health councils for the Langleys will form a very vital component of the South Fraser Valley Regional Health Board.
L. Stephens: We do have a very good health council under the direction of Kim Richter, who has been working since the beginning to help move the whole New Directions initiative along. She's a very talented lady who is able to bring resolution to the table. The transfer of funds to the regional health boards.... You were alluding to the management plan and the other plan that was going to be initiated -- in the next six months or so, I would suspect they should all be in place. You talked a little bit about the bureaucracy, and I'm having a little bit of difficulty understanding if you're transferring the functions of individual hospital boards to the regional health board. The administration, I will acknowledge, can be compacted into smaller units, and you can achieve some efficiencies in that way. I assume that this is what the minister is wanting to achieve by eliminating these individual hospital boards. The member for Delta South alluded to it a little earlier: the assets of those individual hospitals and those individual boards, those individual hospital foundations that have been fundraising, and so on and so forth. Our board is now looking at a $3 million initiative to provide additional services, equipment, and so on to the hospital. Could the minister tell us where these foundations come in and whether or not their roles will remain, or will they be altered in some way, and what may that be?
Hon. P. Ramsey: This is an issue that I've addressed with a number of foundations and auxiliaries for hospitals and other agencies around the province repeatedly in the last year, and I will repeat the answer one more time for this committee. Foundations have every choice of staying intact and attached
[ Page 14697 ]
to whatever institution or set of services they wish. For instance, there are fundraising organizations out there that devote their energies to the broad field of mental health. Sometimes those dollars go in an institutional-based service and sometimes in a community-based service. Those fundraising objects are going to be respected by community health councils and regional health boards. There is no intent for councils or boards to essentially redirect funds from the purpose they have been raised for. So that is one of the hallmarks of this.
A foundation could have a choice to reconstitute itself with a broader mandate, become the foundation for the Langleys CHC, and, like the council itself, broaden its view of what health is and what voluntary donations might be used for. That's their choice. They can stay attached to an institution or broaden their mandate, as they wish.
L. Stephens: Under the regionalization and the transfer of the administrative function from the individual health provider -- the hospital -- to the board, is the board the designated employer? If so, how would that process work with regard to human resources and employees?
Hon. P. Ramsey: The member may remember that last year in the Legislature we debated Bill 48, which contained some amendments to the Health Authorities Act and among other things established the position of a commissioner to advise the Minister of Labour, and through him the cabinet, on labour relations in the broad health sector. Mr. Jim Dorsey was appointed commissioner back in January. He has to date submitted two interim reports to the Minister of Labour. His final report is expected to be in by the end of June. Having that report in place and having cabinet and government action on representation and labour relations in the health field is one of the important building blocks for empowering boards and councils.
Yes, boards and councils will be the employers. How they organize their human resource function within a region or community is part of the planning that they must do. Whether they wish to centralize within a community -- go to one for the region -- that is really their choice. As long as it is efficient, they have a variety of options available to them. The boards and councils will be the employers. We have undertaken as government the necessary work to deal with some of the thorny issues of labour jurisdiction to enable that transfer to take place smoothly.
L. Stephens: Those thorny areas of jurisdiction are what I want to talk a little bit about. I understand we have the employers' council at arm's length from government. It would deal with the health boards, I assume. There is the need, though, to.... I believe there are 19 to 21 unions represented in the health care field, and I assume that they will need to be rolled into one. How would that happen, if indeed that is desired? Could the minister talk about the form that might take?
Hon. P. Ramsey: The HEABC, or Health Employers' Association of B.C., will be the bargaining agent for employers in the health field. Those employers will, of course, include the community health councils and regional health boards. Work is ongoing between the HEABC and the new employers; some of the existing employers won't be in the future....
The member is right: there are close to 100,000 unionized workers employed by health organizations around the province. They are represented by 19 different unions, including the United Steelworkers of America and the IWA. Mr. Dorsey has been seized of the task of recommending to government ways of rationalizing union jurisdiction in the health field -- having due respect for historical patterns of representation, for a movement towards equity in the terms and conditions of employment and for the new governance models that are being put into place through the empowerment of community health councils and regional health boards. As I said in my previous answer, Mr. Dorsey has been doing good work with unions and employers since January, when he was appointed. His final report is anticipated by the end of June.
L. Stephens: The question is: when does the minister anticipate having a strategy or plan in place after the final report and cabinet has had an opportunity to talk about how they are going to proceed? Is there a time line? When would the minister like to have the union worker component finalized and the plans in place that will plug that component into New Directions and regionalization?
[4:00]
Hon. P. Ramsey: I have only a very short answer to that: I want that work to be completed as soon as possible after June 30.
L. Stephens: I would like to make one comment as far as those contracts are concerned. If the minister has input -- and I'm sure he will -- in the final look of it.... Flexibility of contracts is really important, and so is a worker's ability to provide, to do other jobs and to make it manageable. I think many unions now recognize that flexibility is one of the most important aspects of managing today for the benefit of everyone. I just wanted to highlight that. I see the minister nodding, so I assume that he agrees. I'm pleased to see that, too.
A couple of things about continuing care: I think the minister knows that we have a long term care facility in Langley. The minister was helpful in proceeding to retain it, and we are thankful for that. Long term care beds are hard to come by. We have a large percentage of seniors in our community, so it's important to us that we maintain those beds.
I'm sure the minister is aware of Abbeyfield housing. I would like to know the minister's view of this kind of facility for seniors. It has a small-community, residence sort of atmosphere, with seven to ten people who are able to have their own rooms with their own things, yet have a communal living space as far as kitchen, living room and those kinds of things are concerned. They're able to stay in more of a family atmosphere but still receive the kind of supervision that they perhaps need. I wonder if the minister would comment on that.
Before that, I just have to say that I used to know a number of older people who were living in their own homes. While they were able to function there, they were very isolated and became very depressed and all those kinds of things. They really would have wanted -- and expressed to me their desire -- to go into a small home or to have someone come and board, but it just wasn't feasible for them to do that on their own.
If there were these kinds of facilities where a number of seniors who are perfectly capable of looking after themselves
[ Page 14698 ]
by and large, but need that companionship and a little bit of assistance -- perhaps medication, eating proper meals and all those kinds of things.... I wonder whether or not the minister has looked at this kind of an option for senior care in the province and whether or not he anticipates anything along this line.
Hon. P. Ramsey: I'm glad the member opposite shares my enthusiasm for the Abbeyfield concept. I toured a couple of facilities of this sort and I must say that I've been very impressed. It provides exactly the sort of supportive environment for seniors who do not really require a care facility but do perhaps require more assistance and support than they might get autonomously in separate housing facilities.
I must regrettably say that the funding of such facilities falls under the Ministry of Housing, not the Ministry of Health, since they are clearly not care facilities nor designed to be. They do not meet any of the standards for a care facility. They are designed to be supportive of the people who live there.
I think that a lot of the initiative for such ventures that I've seen is coming from seniors organizations in individual communities who are seeking either fundraising for a building or acquisition and renovation of such houses and are working with activity centres or other focuses of seniors activity in their own communities.
It strikes me that that sort of groundswell is how the Abbeyfield movement got going in England in the first place. If we're going to replicate that here in British Columbia on a larger scale, I'm delighted. I'm aware of several initiatives that are going on and, wherever possible, I'll lend a nudge and a helping hand. It is not a facility that the Ministry of Health is directly involved in funding capital acquisitions for.
L. Stephens: I apologize if I misled the minister. I wasn't suggesting that the ministry should be looking to capital-fund something like this, but rather that it support the concept and determine whether or not these kinds of facilities should be available.
One of the difficulties with providing something like this is the Ministry of Health licensing department, which has regulations around how many people can be living in a home and whether they must have an elevator. This has happened to three different individuals in my riding who have wanted to get this kind of a facility in place. They've gone to the Ministry of Health licensing and long-term care and found all kinds of regulations and rules around square footage of rooms and all that kind of stuff. It makes it virtually impossible for this sort of housing to happen. Perhaps the minister could look at the policies and licensing around this issue of individual homes being able to provide this kind of service to seniors.
[D. Schreck in the chair.]
Hon. P. Ramsey: Hon. member, you have raised an issue I am not familiar with. If you provide me with the details of it, I'll get back to you and your constituents on that. Clearly we want to facilitate the establishment of such ventures as Abbeyfield houses and to make sure that proper standards are met, but not require cutting through an excess of red tape.
L. Stephens: I will get that information to the minister.
Around the issue of long term care facilities, is there a ministry policy on the closure of older long term care facilities? Is there a plan to phase out or to do whatever to older facilities? Is there a magic number of 20 years, 25 years or 30 years or whenever?
Hon. P. Ramsey: Yes, we do have an ongoing plan of renovation and replacement. We want to make sure that facilities meet current standards, and part of those standards -- as the member knows from the work that she and I both undertook with the long term care facility in her riding -- is looking at how close to multilevel standards we can get all facilities. In the ministry we have undergone a change in thinking about long-term care and have sought to diminish the number of moves that a senior might have to undergo in receiving care. The multilevel concept, as you know, allows somebody to age in one place rather than requiring relocation at a time in his or her life when it could be very, very stressful. So that drives some of the redevelopment and renovation of existing facilities. We want to ensure that facilities are renovated and brought up to current standards in a timely fashion.
L. Stephens: As the minister knows, with the particular facility in Langley we're speaking of, part of the agreement was that those renovations and upgradings to the physical plant be put in place in order to allow the service provider agreement to continue. And that is progressing. Because the facility is of a certain age, there are exemptions to section 8, I believe, that exempt them from some compliance with the licensing and so on. There's some difficulty there that they're trying to sort out. If they can't sort it out at that level, then I will be speaking to the minister about that, as well. So I just want to warn him that he can expect a call from me if we don't get it sorted out at the appropriate level.
On the multilevel focus for the new long term care facilities, I wonder what kind of a transition there is to get from where we are now to there, particularly in some of these older facilities. Will the older facilities have a time line to them? Will the people who own these facilities know up front that they have up to five years or eight years or whenever it is to divest themselves of that particular facility when the new rules and regulations take effect?
Hon. P. Ramsey: I was trying to ascertain if there was one set plan where, say, by the year 2001 or something, everything had to be renovated. The answer is no. We are not interested in closing facilities down and therefore reducing the stock of rooms that we have available in long-term care. We are also looking at moving forward as much as we can in a timely way to do the renovations. In the last three years, some $20 million was spent on renovations to existing long-term care facilities, and that process will continue.
The owners, be they a non-profit society or a private agency, are notified well in advance of plans to renovate and of the requirements to renovate. I'm unaware of any contract we have with such an operator that would provide for any notice shorter than a year, if negotiations had failed and closure were imminent. We attempt to keep in contact with them all and, where renovations are obviously going to be needed, to work with them to make sure that those happen.
L. Stephens: What I was thinking of was that the objective of the ministry is to move to multilevel care. There is a
[ Page 14699 ]
vast difference between multilevel care and what some of the facilities are now. Some of those older facilities are not going to be able to be renovated, and they will need to be closed at some point. There is a point when the owners of these facilities, whether they're non-profit or private, will have to make a decision on what point in time they are going to close. I'm asking whether the ministry has an idea of a time line on some of these older facilities, and whether they will be able to plan their own phase-out, if I can put it that way, so it is an orderly transition.
[4:15]
Hon. P. Ramsey: I'm not sure I can provide a great deal more detail to the member other than what I have said. The continuing care division and the future community health councils and regional boards will be working closely with the operators of private facilities. Where phase-out is looking like something that's going to happen, they'll be giving them as much advance notice as possible. There are contractual provisions that provide for a certain level of notice. I think the member and I are sharing a view that a year is probably too short, and longer terms are provided. I know that is something that's shared by staff in the continuing care division as well.
L. Stephens: That should probably provide some comfort. I would presume that as the regionalization moves along, this is another area that will have greater detail and greater definition -- hopefully, hopefully.
Another area I would like to ask about is the baby-boomers, who are going to be coming into retirement age around the year 2002 or so. Does the ministry have some idea of what's needed to provide seniors' services for this onslaught of boomers who are moving into their retirement years.
The Chair: The hon. minister, to forecast our future.
Hon. P. Ramsey: I was a bit concerned. I'm sort of preboomer myself, and I'm not going to be ready for retirement by 2002. I hope you are speaking of folks much younger than....
Interjection.
Hon. P. Ramsey: Ah, the member indicates that she is the boomer of whom she is speaking. Aha.
Interjection.
Hon. P. Ramsey: One of the challenges we face in looking at the growing population of seniors in the province is how to deal with their care needs. There have been a number of articles in the Vancouver Sun recently on dementia, which affects some frail seniors and is an ongoing issue for this ministry.
One of the things we all need to recognize is that needs are changing. I suspect that our generation may well be more active and live longer independently than other generations have. This seems to be the ongoing trend. As a result, the continuing care division and those working with assessment of needs have been adjusting their estimates of how many long term care beds per thousand seniors are required or how many hours of home support are required, because the needs are changing. So it's an ongoing challenge.
As government, we have said that we want to continue to build additional facilities and we are doing that. At times, I know those budgets seem stretched and wait-lists seem longer than one would desire. We are at the same time building more facilities, continuing to increase home support budgets and looking at cooperative efforts to assist people in supportive housing ventures -- whether it's the Abbeyfield model or other models -- as well as looking at the other side of the coin, the desire of seniors to remain active and independent and non-institutionalized well into their seventies and possibly their eighties. It's a very different model of care for seniors than that of a generation ago.
We face both those challenges: a growing population.... We now have 13 percent of British Columbians who are 65 or older; I think by 2005 or 2006, ten years from now, we reach 18 percent. By the time we get well into the twenty-first century, we could be looking at 22 percent of the population being 65 or older. I hope that the member and I will be among those seniors enjoying British Columbia.
L. Stephens: Those are the only questions I have; I thank the minister for his responses.
R. Neufeld: I have a few brief questions for the minister in specific regard to Fort St. John in the north. I'll start off with the one I'm sure he's expecting -- the doctor-patient ratio. We've had ongoing discussions, letters going back and forth between the minister, myself, the city, the hospital board -- you name it -- individuals and people from the community.
In late March, our doctor-patient ratio was somewhere in the vicinity of 2,100 or 2,200 per doctor. I've been given a projection from the Fort St. John district hospital; I'm sure the minister has it also. In May, we're at 2,571; you might as well say 2,600. As of today, I received a letter from Sheelagh Garson of the community health council stating that we're now at about 3,000 per doctor and going on a fairly stiff curve. We've got a real problem not only in Fort St. John but also in some other small communities; I'm quite familiar with Fort St. John and their problems. We have some other hospitals in the north that may not be experiencing the same problem right now but will be shortly -- as soon as some of the doctors who have been there for a long time start retiring. We're not going to be able to convince doctors to move from the lower mainland or from overseas into areas such as Fort St. John and Fort Nelson. I just wonder what the minister has done.
I know the UBCM has endorsed three separate items, and maybe what I'll do for the minister is read them into the record so that the minister can respond to the three resolutions. These were unanimously endorsed by the UBCM executive on May 6:
"1. Institute a professional recruitment service to assist undersupplied regions of the province in recruiting physicians.
" 2. Provide a pool of physician 'locums' to supplement regions of the province with critical physician supply shortfalls.
"3. Investigate the feasibility of invoking the 'notwithstanding' clause of the Canadian constitution to allocate MSP billing numbers to physicians on a geographic basis. This was attempted previously and overturned by the Supreme Court. It is the UBCM's opinion that the public's good overrides any individual's rights, as all areas of the province should be able to have at least a minimum level of physician service."
[ Page 14700 ]
I'll start off with those three questions and ask for a response from the minister.
Hon. P. Ramsey: I thank the member for raising this issue that is important to his riding and to mine. The problem of recruitment and retention of health professionals is periodically initiated in many communities in the north. Regrettably, in the last 18 months it seems to have been Fort St. John's turn, and it has been a very unfortunate turn.
As the member knows, last fall it appeared that some of the issues centred around visa requirements and making sure that foreign-trained physicians were getting the appropriate credentials and being able to retain them and return to practice in Fort St. John. At that time I undertook with the ministry to do whatever we could to snip through that red tape and make sure that physicians were able to continue their practices in Fort St. John. That was done. More recently, we have had this issue of attracting and retaining general practitioners in the area. Let me address this on a couple of levels.
First, I would agree that two out of the three proposals from the UBCM merit serious examination. One of those is the idea of a recruitment centre or facilitation within the ministry. As the member knows, right now that's done on sort of an ad hoc basis by ministry personnel who are asked to investigate, assist and work with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of B.C. and the BCMA in attracting and assisting a hospital or community with recruitment. I think the establishment of that sort of facility or function within the ministry on a permanent basis deserves serious consideration.
Secondly, other provinces have looked at the provision of locum services on a call basis, and I think that, too, merits serious examination by the ministry. It may alleviate at least some of the stress on physicians who are there.
The one that I must say I don't wish to explore further is the idea of embarking on a ten-year battle through the courts to challenge the constitution or to use the notwithstanding clause. As the member does know, the previous government put in place a regional billing number scheme. I have said that I personally supported it and thought that it was an excellent idea. The courts have told us that we trampled all over certain constitutional rights in doing that, as a province, and I think there are other solutions that work better than embarking on that sort of legal challenge at this point.
I would suggest that there are a number of long-term solutions to the issue of physician recruitment and retention in the north. One, of course, is to train people in the north. I believe they would choose to practise there in increased numbers. I was very pleased, therefore, to announce the establishment of a family practice clinic at Prince George Regional Hospital late last year. That facility will train 12 residents in family practice on an ongoing basis. They will be much more familiar with practice in the rural and smaller settings of the province than if they had been trained than in tertiary facilities in the lower mainland.
I think that is an important piece. The other piece involves measures to control the supply and distribution of physicians. I introduced amendments to the Medical Services Act in the House today which will allow the Medical Services Commission to undertake to set fees that are specific to the needs of particular locations.
R. Neufeld: We already do that.
Hon. P. Ramsey: The member says we already do that. We do it in a very crude way. We do it on the basis of a northern isolation allowance, and we do it on the basis of new practitioners getting a variable fee -- 50 percent if they locate in an overserviced area, 100 percent if they locate in an underserviced area. What we are proposing is that the Medical Services Commission work with the BCMA on the elaboration of a model that says there are market forces which we may be able to control in order to tilt the table and provide financial incentives for a physician to practise in a way that is based more on the needs of communities. We want them to quantify that in terms of the fees which are available for those who practise there.
[4:30]
There are really only two other ways that we could effect a broad distribution of physicians. One I've already referred to, and that's regional billing numbers. The courts have said no. We could embark on another five-year project to see if we can get a yes for some modified version of that. I don't think that's the course we should pursue.
The other is to look at models for the remuneration of physicians that would allow for redistribution. Recently, provincial Health ministers were presented with a study called "Paying the Piper and Calling the Tune," which was produced by researchers. It looked at instituting a capitation model for physician and general practitioner resources across the country. All of us undertook to examine it and explore its feasibility. The principle, hon. member, is quite simple. In general, a physician would receive a set amount of money for providing services to a patient for a year or a longer period. It would be based on the number of patients, not on the number of visits. It's a move away from fee-for-service. It's a fee for providing a broad set of services to an individual for a year.
The broad theory is that there are only so many people who could sign on with a general practitioner. Those who wish to stay in the lower mainland or Victoria and compete within an overserviced area could choose to do so. Those who wanted to move where the resources are more plentiful -- in an area like Fort St. John, for instance -- could choose to do so. It is, again, an attempt to regulate the market for physicians' services.
Those are a couple of ways of dealing with supply problems. With the BCMA, we are exploring all measures that could effect a more equitable distribution of physician resources across the province. The physicians and the BCMA know this is of great concern to this government and members of this Legislature. To date, we have found them cooperative in seeking solutions.
R. Neufeld: Just to go back a bit to when the minister explained about working visas for foreign-trained doctors. I understood the situation to be a little bit different. At one point a doctor -- say in South Africa -- could come to British Columbia and practise in Fort St. John or Fort Nelson for a period of a year before they had to advertise in Canada for a physician to replace that person. If there was a Canadian that would take that position, that foreign doctor was gone.
As I understand things, because of our oversupply of doctors in British Columbia, there was a move by the British Columbia and federal governments to change that to three months. That's what led initially to the problem in Fort St. John of doctors being recruited. At that specific time they were
[ Page 14701 ]
recruiting a surgeon and, I believe, another doctor -- and I'm just going by memory -- out of South Africa to come to Fort St. John. Those doctors would not uproot their families -- they weren't people just out of school, but people probably in their forties -- and move to British Columbia and to Fort St. John for just a three-month stint. Since then -- and with thanks to the minister -- that has been changed back to a year, I believe. So we can get on with trying to get doctors.
In the meantime, we've lapsed a year and a half, and I think that's part of why we have a real problem in Fort St. John. For a year and a half, there was a void of new, well-trained, professional doctors in Fort St. John. That was one of the issues about the visa. I appreciate the training in the north that the minister talked about at Prince George. That is a process that will probably work. I know the process works with training teachers: they do it in Fort Nelson, specifically, and Fort St. John in the colleges. The retention has been high. People that live in the north then train for that position and do stay there. In the interim, we've got some real serious problems. It's not just something that we can kind of smile and say, "No, we don't want to deal with the 'notwithstanding' clause," or whatever. I'm not sure I really want to deal with all that, either.
But let me tell you that there is a real problem. We have doctors who are burned out. They are working 16 to 18 hours a day. You cannot keep that up. At one point in time someone is either going to get the wrong operation or we're going to have doctors just fleeing because they don't want to be exposed to the problems that will come when they're so overworked. It's a real problem. I know I've talked to the minister on lots of occasions. In fact, I'm going to go back to a letter of this past December that the minister wrote me, and I just want to read a paragraph out of it: "I assure you that this ministry is aware of your community's efforts to retain physicians for a reasonable period of time, and I expect this will be provided for through the adoption of the provincial physician supply management system." People in the north are still waiting for this position. This is from last December, after a year or so of lobbying the government to help us deal with it.
I know it's difficult; you can't just snap your fingers, but there must be something you can do. I talked to the BCMA, and they say, "Well, you know, it's the government" and the government says: "Well, it's the BCMA." That doesn't help or fix what we have in Fort St. John. What we have in Fort St. John is a time bomb that could go off, and then what are we all going to say? Are we going to point fingers at someone else and say, "No, it was over there," or "No, it was over here"? When the previous administration had billing numbers by region, it was the doctors who fought that one, and I appreciate the doctors initiating that.
I want to make a simple comparison with the Motor Carrier Commission in British Columbia. I know it's not exactly the same as doctors' billing numbers, but it's close. We issue only so many operating authorities in different regions of the province. I believe the province is broken up into 21 regions. That works. So I wonder why it wouldn't work to have different regions and say: "This is how many billing numbers there are. If you want to go there, you'll have to go there to practise." Instead, what we have is a 1-500 ratio or a 1-600 ratio in the lower mainland, and a 1-3,000 ratio in the north. That's the real crux of the matter. That's the issue.
The minister was talking about what he tabled in the House. That hasn't worked, for some reason. The minister talked about it being ad hoc. Yet when I go back into the statutes and find some of the things that have been done, they haven't worked. I will just read a couple: "The payment schedule may" -- and this is section 21(2)(d) -- "in respect of a particular benefit or class of benefits, be different for different geographical areas of British Columbia, as specified by the commission." It's already there. Subsection (3) says: "...without limiting paragraph (a), by increasing or decreasing any amount in a payment schedule." We go to subsection (4): within a specified geographical area, payments can be made differently.
So just slipping that one little section in the bill you tabled in the House hasn't worked -- and I know we're not suppose to be discussing it here, but the minister brought it up, so I think it's probably fair that I should be able to comment. Section 10 of Bill 30 doesn't say much that's not already there, and that's not working. That's not working so it's not going to fix anything, unless there is some other magic bullet here that isn't already in the statute that the minister can explain to me. Maybe the minister can explain to me what we do when the time bomb goes off? It's almost ready to explode. To your new community health council chair, Sheelagh Garson: "We're in trouble." I just got the letter today, and I'm sure it's on the minister's desk.
The Chair: Hon. members, the Chair has not intervened since the Chair recognizes that the matter under debate is one that goes back to at least the days of the original Emmett Hall royal commission report and is an important matter of public policy. The Chair would caution all members in conducting this debate to please refrain from engaging in a debate on the specifics of the legislation before the House, as that is clearly contrary to the rules of our proceedings.
Hon. P. Ramsey: I will refrain from debating the legislation and its effectiveness. We will have that debate in another chamber at another time, hon. member. We will decide whether this is an advancement of the legislation that is there. He can decide whether he wishes to vote in favour of it or against it. I think at the end of the day he'll probably vote in favour of it for reasons that we'll debate in full.
Let me repeat what I said in response to the motions that the member read from the Union of B.C. Municipalities. I agree that we need to look at entrenching physician recruitment within the ministry, and we need to look at how best to do that. I agree that we need to explore the provision of locums and how that can be done more efficaciously, but, again, note that this is a stopgap measure that doesn't substitute for permanent recruitment of physicians.
I have also said, and will continue to say, that I've instructed people in the ministry to work with the college, the BCMA and with the hospital in Fort St. John to get some leads on some people who wish to locate permanently in that community and provide service. The only thing I would say to the member is that I think the situation is worse than he describes. I think the ratio of general practitioners to population of the province as a whole is around 780 to 800 -- somewhere in that range. In the lower mainland it's around 435 or something, I think, per general practitioner. In his community right now it's approaching one per 3,000. Clearly this is not equitable distribution of resources, and there are any number of causes for
[ Page 14702 ]
it. We are, as I say, working hard to address the need that has arisen in his community. As the member knows, I have a similar issue in my own community which has given me a few sleepless nights as well.
R. Neufeld: I guess we really need to look after this issue by getting locums and those kinds of things worked out as, of course, a short-term solution to a larger problem. I'm not going to discuss the bill that the minister tabled in the House, either, but we have to look at it, not just for Fort St. John but for rural B.C. as a whole. We just happen to be at that point in time where we're really being hit. Somehow between the ministry and doctors there must be something that can be done to deal with the issue. We just can't just go on saying: "I don't know what we're going to do." Something has to be done, and if we have to get to the place where it becomes so serious that you have to invoke the notwithstanding clause, then the ministry just may have to look at that.
Maybe that's the stick that's needed with the medical profession, if that's the problem. Get doctors into the rural part of British Columbia or just quit issuing billing numbers. In fact, have a recall in the lower mainland -- really. Maybe that would bring it to a head. If the people in the lower mainland were faced with one doctor for every 3,000 patients, maybe we'd get some action. I guarantee we would. Let me tell you, you'd have action between the ministry and the doctors in no time flat. That's the way it seems to work. It works that way for everything else where you have a big population and you get a lot of people hollering. Somebody comes up with a magical solution. But because it's way up there in the northern part of British Columbia, we kind of just push it away, and we hear about it every once in a while when somebody asks a question in the House or when we have estimates. That's not going to get us anywhere; that is not the answer.
[4:45]
I think that before we get to the point where we really have a serious mishap in Fort St. John, where we could see most of the doctors leave.... I don't know what we're going to do when that happens -- really. Maybe we'll move everybody from Fort St. John to Prince George. Maybe the minister can look after them there. But then, they fly them from there to Alberta anyway. I know it's a difficult situation, so I'm not trying to make light of it. It's something that we have to deal with. But I can guarantee that if you had a physician ratio in the lower mainland of one to 3,000, your ministry and the doctors, the profession, would have a solution within a few days. You would have it figured out in no time flat. That's what I'm asking for here: deal with the smaller communities in rural B.C. the same way you would with the masses in the south, because it is going to be a problem.
From there I want to move on. I'll just leave it; it's more of a statement than anything.
Hon. P. Ramsey: First, I want to assure the member that I take this concern very seriously. I'm facing a different version of the problem in my own community. Let me say this: I agree with him that some of the measures we have discussed and what the legislation addresses are medium to long term. I have also asked the ministry to give me a short-term strategy that can address the urgent need in Fort St. John, and I expect to be able to tell him and Fort St. John what the elements of that strategy will be by the end of this week. I do take this very seriously, and I appreciate the member bringing it forward again.
I don't know whether the member for Vancouver-Little Mountain was ready to volunteer his services to Fort St. John or not....
An Hon. Member: I heard him say that. I think a five-year appointment right now would be appropriate.
T. Perry: If the Whip will give me leave, I'll be there tomorrow.
Hon. P. Ramsey: Given the number of interjections from this side of the House, I'm sorry I raised that possibility.
Let me just repeat, hon. member: I do take this seriously. I have instructed the ministry to provide me with a short-term strategy to address the needs in Fort St. John by the end of this week.
R. Neufeld: Just a couple more issues.... A gentleman -- I'd rather not mention his name right now -- was referred from Fort St. John to Alberta for a cancer operation. I guess it's not just Prince George that you send people to Alberta from, but also Fort St. John. Anyhow, it was a referral, and he stayed there for 30 to 60 days after the operation for some kind of treatment. Of course, during that period of time he purchased drugs. Pharmacare has refused to cover the costs of those drugs because he did not get permission from Pharmacare before he purchased the drugs.
It's my understanding that if you're referred from British Columbia to another province for an operation, it would just be automatic, if you do stay there for a period of time afterwards, that you would need medication, and all that would just kind of follow one another. I don't quite know how the patient is supposed to know that before he goes.
Maybe the minister could explain to me what the policy in place right now is for people who are referred out of province for operations and for drug care and Pharmacare.
Hon. P. Ramsey: If the member will provide me with the details of the case, I'll ask staff to review it. I will get back to him on what the applicable policies are and whether any provision can be made for this individual. I think I'll leave it at that.
R. Neufeld: As I understand it, the gentleman has already made application and been turned down. I don't have all the information here, so I can't give it to the minister right now.
Is there a policy -- that's what I'm asking -- in place at present, when a person is referred from British Columbia to another province for an operation and has to purchase drugs while they're out of province, that Pharmacare would cover those costs?
Hon. P. Ramsey: One of the reasons why I would appreciate the member providing me with more information on the circumstances here is that I'm having a tough time understanding precisely what happened. If a person was referred to
[ Page 14703 ]
an acute facility -- a hospital -- outside the province, the drugs are covered when he or she is staying in that hospital. I'm trying to ascertain under what circumstances the person was discharged from hospital and chose to stay in Alberta.
R. Neufeld: He stayed in Alberta for medical reasons, for follow-up.
Hon. P. Ramsey: Those are precisely the details that I would need to review -- whether this was part of a course of treatment that was prescribed and anticipated or whether it was the person's choice to stay in another province. I simply need the details to be able to review it.
R. Neufeld: I'll get the details. Obviously there is no policy. The ministry deals with those issues just on an ad hoc basis; I'm surprised there isn't a policy.
The other thing I would like to discuss a bit is Mission Air and the travel assistance program initiated by your government. A number of years ago I presented a private member's bill for travel assistance for people living in rural B.C., built on much the same model as Mission Air out of Ontario. At the time, I proposed that anyone who works for government in any way, including the bureaucracy, the professions, teachers and all those who are paid by the public purse, would have to gather travel points and allocate them to a central pool to be used for travel assistance. At the time, the minister that I presented it to told me that was not possible because they could not get the airlines to agree -- in fact, it was the Premier who wrote me a letter.
It's interesting to know that it happens in Ontario. The same airlines fly in British Columbia. One is Canadian Airlines International, the other is Air Canada and all their Air Canada connectors; in fact, all Canadian partners participate. So Mission Air does have cooperation from those two airlines to gather points.
What I'm asking is if in British Columbia we don't have our own program -- if we're just so against using travel points from anyone who's paid by government -- to facilitate people flying from the north to the south for medical reasons, then maybe what we should do is participate in Mission Air. Canadian Plus sends me a little notice every month or so, saying that I can donate my points to Mission Air. I haven't donated any yet, but I may. I would rather see something done in British Columbia under the present travel assistance program that we have. I think there're enough people in British Columbia who fly and are paid by government that we could have an awful lot of travel points amassed within British Columbia for British Columbians' purposes.
The travel assistance program helps some, but it's not as much as travel points would help, specifically such as Mission Air. There are people from northern British Columbia who have used Mission Air -- in fact, one person from Terrace. There are little testimonials in their last brochure that came out. It's been in operation for eight years. I'm asking the minister to supplement the travel assistance program that his government put forward. Would he be willing to take forward that all people who work for government amass their travel points, send them to Mission Air -- if that's what we want to do, have an Ontario operation look after our travel assistance -- so that it will help people travel out of the north for health reasons?
Hon. P. Ramsey: Recently, we did some work reviewing the travel assistance program which this government has put into place, the only such program that residents of the interior and the north have had for travel assistance. While I agree with the member that it has been an advancement over what was there before, I also share his view that it could use some improvement.
One of the things that I asked the Northern and Rural Health Task Force, which I appointed last summer, to examine and report on was ways of enhancing the travel assistance program. I'm willing to look at anything they suggest or that the member suggests, as far as ways of enhancing the program. I share his view that geography is, at times, too much of a barrier, and if we can lower those geographic barriers, we ought to.
I must say, though, that I did review the whole issue of travel points at that time, and the information I received at that time was the information the member refers to in the letter from the Premier. When the travel assistance program was negotiated with carriers in the province, the issue of amalgamating and amassing travel points from public servants was explored with them, and they were not interested in pursuing that avenue. They gave a rather firm no. If there is some wrinkle that we can work to make that no into a yes, I'm quite willing to do some of that exploration, because I'm as interested as the member opposite in removing geographic barriers to access to health care.
R. Neufeld: As I remember, it was Air Canada that did not want to participate, not Canadian Airlines International. I will send the minister the information I have. I am glad to see that he would rather see it as a process that happens within British Columbia. If we can do those types of things, it would only help all British Columbians. If in reaching out to people -- the school districts, municipalities and all those areas -- you were to amass all those points, I think a lot of people from Terrace, Prince Rupert, Prince George or Fort St. John could travel to different areas of the province or to the lower mainland for specialized services. I'll send the minister the information I have.
My colleague from Prince George-Omineca dealt with this last item I have, which has to do with the cost of drugs and the markup from the manufacturer's rate. I read the Blues, so I got a flavour of the questions and the answers from the minister. Fort Nelson is a small community that has one drugstore, for instance, and that person feels he is going to be affected quite a bit by this change to 9 percent of manufacturer's price, because he's not going to buy his drugs at the same price that Save-On, Shoppers Drug Mart or those people can.
The minister talked about a RIP program. It's in the Blues as R-I-P, but I'm not familiar with it. It's obviously a rural incentive program of some kind. Maybe the minister could expand on that a bit for me, please.
[5:00]
Hon. P. Ramsey: Yes, it's a rural incentive program. It tries to provide assistance for pharmacies that may be the only pharmacy in a community. I don't know if that's the case in Fort Nelson. Yes, the Fort Nelson pharmacy is enrolled in the program, but I don't know if I have a list of what they received last year. It pays on a scale of the numbers of prescriptions
[ Page 14704 ]
written. For up to 750 prescriptions for these rural pharmacies, they will derive some benefit from the program, with maximum benefit around 375 prescriptions written per month. The amount paid goes like this, and this may be more information than the hon. member cares to know: "The amount paid to a pharmacy will be ($3.50 times the number of prescriptions) minus 0.007 (number of prescriptions)2 plus 0.005." Now you can take that to the bank. What it means in real terms is that we have said to the smaller pharmacies in the province, I think the total is going to be....
So as we put into place this 9 percent, we also enriched this program. The maximum additional payment per pharmacy that's a small one would be around $435 to $437 a month of income from Pharmacare to help offset some of the increased costs of acquiring drugs. We've budgeted some $200,000 for this program provincially to assist the small and remote pharmacies.
L. Fox: I have a few questions that come out of the discussion this minister has had over the last hour and a half. He mentioned some studies in respite care in response to some comments made earlier, and I wonder if he wants to elaborate on the scope of those studies and give me some idea as to what the parameters of the studies are.
Hon. P. Ramsey: In a way, this grows out of the discussion the member for Langley and I were having about what happens when we baby-boomers hit the seniors level and need some care. Increasingly, long term care facilities have almost an unwritten motto above their doors: "We'll do whatever we can to help you stay out of here."
One of the things they look at very intensely is how they provide respite to informal caregivers by providing for short-term admissions or weekend admissions -- some time-out for the caregiver. Increasingly, long term care centres around the province are providing adult day care in order to provide a different venue for care rather than home. And increasingly, that network of long term care facility, adult day care, respite care and home support is being seen as a network to assist the informal care provider and help a person stay independent as long as possible.
That's what the committee has been asked to look at. What can we do to assist the informal caregiver? What's the best way of structuring some of these various forms of care so that we are providing a net of services for somebody who needs some assistance to live independently, but surely doesn't want to be admitted to a long-term institution?
L. Fox: That helps me to understand the scope of what they're doing. I want also to follow up.... The member for Richmond Centre and, I'm sure, all members of the Legislature got the letter from the caregivers, because all members of my caucus did. As we get letters from many different organizations around the province on many different issues, for the most part they're looking for support and looking for money.
I'm aware of the Caregivers' Association, and I take the minister at his word that in his view and his government's view -- and I think all members of the House would agree -- they're a very worthy organization and do good work. But what the letter really prompted me to question at this time during the estimates is just how associations like this are going to be qualified and are going to be funded, if they are to be funded.
When I talk about being qualified, how do they move through the New Directions in order to be recognized as a provincial deliverer of services? Do they do it within the New Directions system -- in other words, going to 20 regions -- or do they do it outside of it? If, in fact, they do it outside of it, what process will be in place, then, for the ministry to explore, with the respective regions, the question of whether there should be priority funding given to this provincial agency? I think that's the broad question that came to my mind. I'd like to hear the minister's response.
Hon. P. Ramsey: Associations that seek to represent provincially will, I assume, continue to present funding requests at a provincial level. For organizations like the Caregivers, which is very active in regions, the route for acquiring funds to operate regionally or on a community basis will be through their community health councils and regional health boards. Frankly, hon. member, that's the only way that their role in providing services can be properly recognized and planned for. I don't think it's good enough to say that we in Victoria know what is best and that we will overlay that upon what the various regions intend to carry out by way of formal and informal support for the caregivers.
In my community the seniors centres are very active in doing outreach to seniors in the region. They've been working under federal and provincial grants, and they've obtained those grants provincially and federally for local operations. I suspect they'll continue to see grants from funding agencies. I've been directing these and similar organizations to make their role known to community health councils in their communities and regions so that the role of informal caregivers can be recognized by those who are doing health plans.
L. Fox: I'm trying to sort all that out, because, as I understand it, the statement was in conflict with itself. Initially the minister said that provincial agencies will still receive funding through the ministry, then the minister went on to say that caregivers should look to their local regions. As I understand it, this particular association provides a service for caregivers outside its region and in fact may even provide it provincially.
I'm not trying to be difficult; I'm really trying to understand the process here. If a Vancouver-based agency that provides a provincial service to other local or regional agencies goes before its regional board, what process is in place that will evaluate the question of whether its service is valuable to all 20 regions? What process will evaluate the question of whether its request conflicts with other dollars that are being spent within those respective regions, perhaps by local or regional groups? How is this going to be sorted out? That's my real concern. If there is going to be provincial funding rather than funding coming from 20 different regions to a provincial agency, how is it going to be handled? Did I misunderstand the minister? I thought he said there would be provincial agencies directly funded by the ministry.
Hon. P. Ramsey: In a regionalized health delivery system, there are clearly some functions that should remain uniform. There are associations that seek to publish a newsletter or do a variety of things that may assist caregivers across the province. There's no sense in duplicating that 20 times.
I meant what I said. Some of those agencies will continue to seek and acquire funds centrally for provincial services. But the great majority of services provided by an association like
[ Page 14705 ]
the one the member refers to are done within a region. They work with seniors groups and do workshops for caregivers. I suggest that their more appropriate source of funding for that sort of local activity is as part of the budget and funding of a regional health board or community health council.
I'm not trying to be difficult about it. I really see that very often such organizations have very different mandates. I think it's important that they be recognized and built into health plans for regions and for communities. The best way they can do that is to get involved with the councils and boards that are putting such plans together.
L. Fox: Let me just ask one more question along that line. I'm trying to understand how a provincial association would identify where they should go for funding. Is there going to be some criteria developed for provincial funding which regional boards would understand, and that could be published, so that agencies would know whether or not they fit the criteria for provincial funding and whether or not they have to go before the regional board or a number of regional boards for funding?
Hon. P. Ramsey: This is one of the challenges that we are working through as we form a new partnership between the ministry and the 20 regional health boards -- to make sure that we're not letting valuable organizations or services like this fall through the cracks.
Let me draw an analogy to a larger issue that I know gained some prominence earlier in these estimates. The B.C. Cancer Agency has a provincial mandate. We intend to fund the separate facilities that form part of the network of care provided by the Cancer Agency through the regional board. Clearly the Cancer Agency will be working with the regional boards and the ministry to form that partnership and to make sure that care is provided for treatment of cancer in a variety of sites across the province. Similarly, an organization such as the Caregivers' Association has elements of its mandate that need to be recognized provincially, but much of its service delivery is going to be done within regions. We need to involve the regional boards as well as the ministry in funding decisions on those.
This is not an either/or; it's a partnership. We are working with the regional boards, not simply saying: "Here's a cheque. Have a nice day." As they present plans, we'll be looking for how they deal with this and other issues.
L. Fox: It prompts one more question. If I understood the minister correctly in the example he used, the way the provincial cancer agency is funded is that the ministry would allocate on some basis -- I'm not sure what the formula would be -- part of the regional funding of 20 regions to pay for that agency. It would be tagged, it would be given and then taken back.
[5:15]
One would have to wonder, then, what process regional boards would have for giving some input into those allocations. I don't question that we should fund the B.C. Cancer Agency provincially; that only makes good sense. It's a provincial service, and I'm not sure that we could fairly allocate with any kind of expertise dollars from any particular region. I'm sure the caseload changes from year to year, and it should be a provincial responsibility anyway. Why would we include that funding in the regional funding? If it's tagged or identified or earmarked already to be paid back to the provincial agency, and if there are a number of these -- and I'm sure there would be, because there are many areas we could look at that would be equal to the Cancer Agency -- why would we allocate that money in and then take it back? That is the first question to ask.
If there is a process for budgeting and allocation, how would the regional boards be involved in that budget discussion?
Hon. P. Ramsey: We thrashed over the B.C. Cancer Agency rather thoroughly earlier in estimates, and I'm inclined to suggest that the member review some of the debates that have gone on. Let me try to briefly outline what we're talking about here. We are not talking about saying to all 20 RHBs: "Well, here's your pot of money for cancer services. Now we're going to take it back and give it here." We are talking about working with the Cancer Agency to ascertain the provincial need for this provincial service. We're talking about allocating to the RHBs, in which specific services are located, amounts to run those services, and we're asking RHBs then to build the administration of those services and support for those services into operations within those regions.
For example, the new clinic that we're building in Kelowna will be managed administratively for support services in the health region there. We'll be asking the Cancer Agency to ensure that clinical practice is uniform across the province, and it is working with us and the RHB to identify funding to provide those services. We're not interested in saying to all 20: "Here it is. Now we're taking it back. Now it's going here." No, we'll work with them. So I hope I've cleared that up. There's lots more information that the Liberal critic and I exchanged for quite some time in Hansard.
L. Fox: I appreciate the fact that you talked about the cancer clinic, because I did read that, but what we're talking about was precipitated by the letter from the caregivers. We were talking about how provincial agencies that provide a global service to the province would be funded. I think it was the minister who suggested cancer; it certainly wasn't me, just so that's on the record.
I'm still not clear as to how these agencies are going to recognize where they go -- if they believe themselves to be provincial in scope -- to identify themselves, whether they have to go to 20 regional boards or whether criteria are going to be developed by the ministry in terms of how an agency qualifies or doesn't qualify for funding direct from the ministry.
Hon. P. Ramsey: I've taken my best shot at this. Let me say it again: it depends on what their role is and what they want the dollars for. If somebody says, "I want to do a provincial newsletter to all caregivers that I'm able to identify in the province," I expect they would probably show up at the ministry door and say: "This is a good thing that we should be doing to ensure quality of informal caregiving throughout the province."
If they're interested in setting up a network of informal caregivers so that they can exchange ideas and information, spell each other and do the sort of work that happens in
[ Page 14706 ]
Prince George, I would assume that if they want to get a data bank and a phone bank going, they would come to the Prince George Health Council or perhaps the Northern Interior Regional Health Board for support.
L. Fox: I guess it comes down to the minister and the ministry continuing to be lobbied by agencies that perceive themselves as being formed to offer a provincial service. They'll have to be turned down there before they look at other funding opportunities. That's the essence of what I get out of this. There doesn't appear to be a willingness to put any criteria forward as to how agencies must be identified in order to be funded provincially -- that's fine.
Just a few more things I want to talk about....
An Hon. Member: You're running out of time.
L. Fox: I've got all day, hon. member, and so do you. I've sat here all afternoon giving all your folks their time, so if you'd kindly be quiet while I continue around my issues, I would appreciate it.
The Chair: Through the Chair, please, hon members.
L. Fox: Earlier when you were discussing the regional transitional from existing hospital boards into community health councils with the member for Langley, I was very interested to hear that you were very close to signing an arrangement with the Greater Vancouver Regional District. I would assume that there's some understanding as to how the existing liabilities that are contained in terms of debt by the respective regional districts are going to be handled. I would also assume that there's a formula in place as to how we're going to raise capital where there is one or more regional districts involved within that respective regional hospital board. I'd be interested to hear a little more background.
I know that in my neck of the woods -- and the minister is well aware of the concerns; I'm sure they're that way around the province -- there is a liability that may still be a number of years down the road. Is the existing regional district going to carry that liability without any recognition of the new regional health board structure? I'd just like to hear some background in terms of how these issues are going to be dealt with.
Hon. P. Ramsey: I regret that I'm not going to get into the details of the shape of the agreement that is emerging with the UBCM. They need to do some work within their organization to make sure they have approval to proceed, and I would not want to get out ahead of them in the work that they are doing. We have procedures in there for dealing with the issues the member has suggested. I would say that I think we are close -- where's some wood to knock on? -- to a good agreement on how capital debt is managed, incurred and disposed of in the northwest. I sure hope so. I must say I've thought that before, but I think we are close to an agreement on how to deal with it in the northwest.
L. Fox: I understand that we're in a very sensitive area, and I'm not wanting to pry into the negotiation. I guess I'm more concerned about how we move forward and how we look after the interests of the respective taxpayers in this process, especially where there's more than one regional district. That happens in a number of cases around the province; it's not just in isolated cases. There are a number of cases around the province where two or more regional districts -- usually two, or parts thereof -- are within the local regional health board.
Given that in many instances they fund up to 40 percent of an initiative through the existing regional hospital boards -- and others, of course, to 20 percent -- I guess my concern is that there's a significant amount of arm-twisting done through the existing process, especially in a large geographical regional district, to get support at the other end of those regional districts for their respective health initiatives. I'm concerned that whatever structure we set up here....
Let's look at the Prince George region, for instance, where you have the regional districts of Fraser-Fort George and Bulkley-Nechako. Say you had an initiative in Prince George that was a worthwhile initiative but the politicians who are involved in the Regional District of Bulkley-Nechako say: "No, Prince George has too much, so we in the Bulkley-Nechako Regional District can't support that." Because of the taxing agency, obviously there has to be some authority and some approval process for them to levy that tax.
So I'm very, very concerned that we would once again get into a situation where you could have real animosity between regional districts and specifically between municipalities within those regional districts, as we've seen in Bulkley-Nechako with the Smithers hospital, where the west and the east have different views in terms of the need. I would hope that when we get through this process we have somehow resolved the kinds of political issues that exist within the financial structure or approval process of the regional hospital boards as we see them today.
Hon. P. Ramsey: The member raises a number of issues that are being addressed by those who are working with the UBCM. I must say that one proposal that he and I probably share a liking for was put together in the northwest, where three regional districts essentially came together and said: "Hey, we'll levy across all regional districts for facilities constructed in them." That is one of the models that is definitely being worked on by the UBCM. I commend the people of the region who worked to bring it together and present it to the ministry and to the UBCM.
If the member knows how to get rid of rivalry between one part of a region and another or one town and another, once and for all, please share that secret with the Legislature. I'm sure many of us sitting in the minister's office would be very pleased to know the secret. I expect that small-p political discussion about where to locate facilities and resources will continue as long as there are communities and municipalities that govern those communities. I think the largest difference that regionalization will make, hon. member, is that there is going to be no sorting out of some of that competition in the minister's office in Victoria.
[5:30]
As I have said repeatedly to various groups that come to lobby me on one issue or another -- such as where I should put a CAT scanner on the north end of Vancouver Island -- it's time that regions of the province started making those
[ Page 14707 ]
decisions for themselves and addressing the politics of it within their own regions. It is no longer good enough to simply lobby hardest and best to the provincial government. They must work out rational health plans for the citizens of their own regions. That is the challenge that many, many regions of this province face -- surely the North Island does, and surely the northwest does. The challenges are many. But I think it is a challenge that most people in the regions welcome, because the competition has not been profitable, by and large, to rational planning in those regions and has resulted in many cases in distortions of where services for health are located.
In summary, we are looking -- I hope in the very near future -- at moving forward with the UBCM to implement the pledges I made to their convention last September. Locally elected municipalities and regional districts will continue to decide what taxes to levy and will work with regional health boards for capital planning within their regions.
Having said that, and noting the time, I move that the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.
Motion approved.
The committee rose at 5:31 p.m.
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