1995 Legislative Session: 4th Session, 35th Parliament
HANSARD

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

Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

(Hansard)

MONDAY, JUNE 19, 1995

Afternoon Sitting (Part 2)

Volume 21, Number 7

[ Page 15715 ]

The House resumed at 6:34 p.m.

[D. Streifel in the chair.]

Hon. J. MacPhail: In Committee A, I call Committee of Supply to debate the estimates of the Ministry of Forests; in the House, I call Committee of the Whole to debate Bill 20.

GUARANTEED AVAILABLE INCOME FOR NEED AMENDMENT ACT, 1995

The House in committee on Bill 20; D. Streifel in the chair.

On section 1.

V. Anderson: On the Guaranteed Available Income for Need Amendment Act, 1995, we need to make some inquiries as to whether some of these things are...understand them as we go through. Perhaps the minister could explain the definitions in section 1. Are the "board," the "panel" and the "tribunal" definitions any different than what we had before?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Three definitions are being added to accommodate the amendments. The "board" means the Income Assistance Appeal Board that will hear appeals from tribunal decisions. That's established in section 8 of this act; the new section of the GAIN Act is 25.2(1). "Panel" means a panel established by the chair of the appeal board; that's under the new section 25.2(6). "Tribunal" means an income assistance appeal tribunal established and conducted as outlined in the GAIN regulations that hears appeals regarding a decision to refuse, discontinue or reduce income assistance benefits. That actually just reiterates section 25.1 of the current GAIN Act; that remains unchanged. So the tribunal definition is untouched.

V. Anderson: When you say that the appeal tribunal is established by regulation, does that mean that the regulations will be changed so that the tribunal system will be different than it has been in the past?

Hon. J. MacPhail: The procedures remain the same. It says here that they are already outlined in the GAIN regulations. That's what I was referring to.

R. Neufeld: The addition of tribunal is in addition to what we've had in the past, right?

Hon. J. MacPhail: The "board" and the "panel" definitions are new.

V. Anderson: I was just referring back and noticed in the present act that "tribunal" was not defined before. So when you're saying that it's defined now by regulation, does that indicate that it will be something different than it was before? It was not listed under the definitions or interpretations that I can see in the previous act.

Hon. J. MacPhail: "Tribunal" is referred to in section 25.1, but this definition pulls out and makes permanent -- confirms -- the establishment of tribunals. But as they currently are, there is no change to that.

Sections 1 and 2 approved.

On section 3.

V. Anderson: I have some questions, and then I have an amendment to section 3 to present. Let me present the amendment first, and then we can deal with it.

I will read the amendment. It inserts subsection (3) and changes subsection (4). I'll read them as amended:

[SECTION 3,

(2) The Lieutenant Governor in Council may authorize the minister to enter into agreements with any other minister or a public body respecting income assistance or social service programs.

(3) Sixty days prior to any agreement coming into force the minister shall deliver a copy of the said agreement for review by the information and privacy commissioner who may

(a) advise the government regarding the agreement; and

(b) make public any concerns about the agreement.

(4) In this section

"agreement" includes a data-matching agreement to facilitate the exchange of information about individuals who apply for, receive or have received income assistance or social services;

"public body" means the same as the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.]

The concern here is that we do need time when these agreements are agreed to, so that there is an opportunity for the privacy commissioner to examine them and respond to them, so that privacy is not infringed upon and, also, so that all those persons affected by them have time to reflect upon them before they come into being.

I move this amendment.

On the amendment.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Let me try and alleviate some of the member's concerns. I understand his point, but let me try to alleviate his concerns and therefore suggest that the amendment is not necessary.

Section 3 of the bill authorizes the minister of the day to enter into agreements with any other ministry or agency in British Columbia respecting income assistance or Social Service programs. This will increase our ability to detect double-dipping, fraud, abuse or overpayments. We currently work very closely with the privacy commissioner's office to ensure that the privacy of individuals is protected and that the practices and procedures around the gathering and handling of information are appropriate. When we began interprovincial data-matching last year, we worked closely with the commissioner on notification to clients and consent for information-matching, and we will follow exactly the same procedures for data matches within B.C. What we are adding here are data matches within B.C.; we already have them external to B.C.

We have discussed section 3 with the privacy commissioner, and he hasn't raised any concerns. The proposed amendments don't grant the commissioner any powers that he doesn't already have under the current FOIPP legislation. Also, the confidentiality clauses contained in the GAIN Act are very stringent -- tighter even than the provisions of the FOIPP legislation. I know that many of us in this House get 

[ Page 15716 ]

very tired of me sometimes saying: "I'm sorry, I can't talk about that because of the confidentiality provisions." Nevertheless, that's good news for our clients, and I am satisfied that the confidentiality of clients is fully protected.

The other issue about having it go out to make public any concerns about the agreement, beyond.... That is the FOIPP commissioner's role, and he certainly does that with us in the course of us developing this. If we were to go public on an agreement, that's giving notice to those who might decide to take advantage of that notice, and I would suggest that might defeat the purpose of the data-matching exerce. I hope that the hon. member can be convinced that we work very closely right now with Mr. Flaherty and that he has basically.... I don't want to say he has signed off, but he has not raised concerns. Mr. Flaherty is very good at working with us in a collegial way. We always take his advice and we have amended as we go along.

[6:45]

V. Anderson: Commenting on the minister's explanation, I was interested in what she was saying. I can understand her concerns, but I was concerned by her comment that if we were to let the public know, they might take advantage of it.

We need to have an open and honest system. If there are matching agreements, I don't think they should be hidden or be something that the public doesn't know about. The more open the system is and the more upfront we are about it, the more people are going to respond to it and use it fairly, because they will understand it. We've already discovered many times that the misuse in the system is because people don't understand the system and are not aware of how it operates. So I'm concerned about her suggestion that if we let the public know, they would misuse the system even more. That's an unfair interpretation, and I hope the minister will clarify that for us.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Almost all of the public are extremely honest. I was referring to those who would take advantage from a dishonest point of view. Let me try to alleviate the member's concerns.

Notice of consent includes a list of the agencies participating in the data-matching or information-sharing agreements. That notice of consent has to be given by the client at the time of application, and that information is shared with the client or potential client. Then we list the specific shared information that's to be matched. There are penalties for falsifying information. We also do periodic -- what we call -- cheque-stuffers. That's a notice we send along with the cheque, in very plain language, to explain the procedures. We do that quarterly with clients, so they're not surprised by anything.

V. Anderson: We just need to highlight that the minister says the clients have the opportunity to sign this. But the reality is that they don't have any choice if they need assistance desperately, because unless they sign it -- if I'm correct -- they won't get the assistance. So it's a forced signature.

I'm reminded of a young man in a Sunday school class when he was told about Paul on the Damascus road, who had become blind and was promised that he could go and would find release. The young lad said: "Well, he didn't have any choice. He either remained blind or he went." It's that kind of reality here. We can't overstate that clients are signing this and giving consent. The reality is that they have no option but to get, as he said, the service that they need desperately at that time, or not come forward.

Amendment negatived.

V. Anderson: Could the minister just expand a bit on what she means by "matching agreement"? Because that's a key point to this act.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Agreements include data-matching agreements, which may be entered into or authorized under this section in respect to individuals who apply for, receive or have received social assistance. As you know, the act provides in a very balanced way agreements for sharing data outside British Columbia, and we've taken full advantage of that. This allows us to share information with agencies inside British Columbia -- for instance, the Workers' Compensation Board, ICBC or the student loan program.

Section 3 approved.

On section 4.

V. Anderson: Section 4, section 6(2) says that "no person shall be required to give evidence in court in respect of it...." Could you explain the significance of this amendment and why it's been added?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Actually, this amendment results from a decision of the B.C. Supreme Court, Moreau v. Moreau, where it was held that the support or preventive services provided by the Ministry of Social Services to families at risk are provided under the authority of the GAIN Act. As such, the evidence obtained while providing these services cannot be disclosed in child protection court proceedings without the addition of this new paragraph.

So the current situation is that where families have received support services which may enable them to retain their children or to prevent a permanent apprehension, that evidence couldn't be introduced, because the payments were made under the GAIN Act. So if there was no amendment, the ministry's ability to prove neglect or abuse of children in court would be seriously impaired. But the flip side is that we would also be seriously impaired in showing the work of parents or a family in terms of getting support services. This is basically saying that in the case of child protection court hearings, information around family support services can be revealed.

Section 4 approved.

On section 5.

V. Anderson: Could you explain why this particular section has been repealed? There are some real concerns. I need to highlight the section that's being repealed, which is section 8. It said:

"The minister may, in accordance with the regulations, adjust the income assistance prescribed for basic needs of food, clothing and shelter by reference to adjustments in the consumer price index for Canada published by Statistics Canada under the Statistics Act (Canada), or any other index approved by the Lieutenant Governor in Council."

[ Page 15717 ]

Is the minister now saying that we're taking away the ability to adjust income assistance by taking into account price index changes? What is the reason for taking that away?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Actually, this section has been unproclaimed since its inception in 1976. We could go back to the debates of around 1975 or so -- whatever government was in power at that time and whatever its intent was -- but certainly it has never been proclaimed. We have the flexibility now to determine benefit levels in accordance with the changing economic conditions in the province. This would not allow that flexibility. It's not going to be proclaimed, and therefore it should be repealed. It's basically a housekeeping amendment.

I would also like to note that the Minister's Advisory Council on Income Assistance just released its second report and made some comments and recommendations on rates. In looking at ensuring adequate income assistance, none of the options considered tying rates to the CPI, but there were some very useful suggestions on other mechanisms for determining rates.

Section 5 approved.

On section 6.

V. Anderson: Section 21.1 is a new section: "Subject to the regulations, the minister" -- again, subject to regulations -- "may enter into an agreement for the repayment of income assistance by, or may take an assignment from, an individual who is eligible for income assistance." Can these assignments be taken only by agreement, or can these assignments be dictated, if you like, only by a decision of the minister? What kind of assignment? Is it just against the money they're currently receiving from the minister, or is it assignment against other assets? What are the implications of "assignment" here?

Hon. J. MacPhail: The agreements are by consent. What this does is allow us to enter into repayment agreements and avoid having to pursue more odious recoveries of overpayment. It's by consent. It's to enter into repayment agreements with, or accept assignments from, income assistance recipients who are anticipating other income, and to ensure that there are no duplicate payments for the same time period. It's for repayment agreements based on their GAIN cheque, their GAIN amount. That's the payment over which we have authority, so it's that payment that is affected by the repayment agreement.

R. Neufeld: I understand from press releases that the minister sent out earlier that these things are taking place already. If this is a new section, under what piece of legislation were we already going into agreements with people on income assistance in the past year or more?

Hon. J. MacPhail: The authority comes from.... There are general clauses in the act that allow the minister to do this, and they're also specified in the regulations. We made a decision that it's better to clarify this up front and be specific about it, because we are taking more assignments, and that this deserved a note via a clause in the legislation. But there is general authority captured in the legislation, as well as in the regulations.

R. Neufeld: Would you care to tell me where in the present legislation you can go to gather this power?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Section 21 of the GAIN Act and section 4(2) of the regulations.

Section 6 approved.

On section 7.

[7:00]

V. Anderson: We get into the meat of this bill in section 7, where it introduces in new section 25(3) quite innocuously: "An appeal lies to the board...." I noticed that this statement was in the previous act, before this came into being, and I'm asking the minister: in the act, before it's appealed.... "An appeal lies to the board under section 25.3 from a decision of the tribunal...." Can she indicate to me what was meant by "board" in the previous act -- in this present act -- and whether this reference to "board" has a different meaning? If so, where has the meaning been changed -- and why?

Hon. J. MacPhail: I need clarification, so I'll just.... You're referring to sections 25(3) and 25(4) of the current GAIN act?

V. Anderson: Under the current act, section 25, titled, "Appeals to a tribunal," in subsection (3).... In fact, this act repeats subsections of the present act, and then goes on to make some variations. But what I'm wondering is.... Section 25(3), which says, "An appeal lies to the board under section 25.3..." is carried over from the previous act. To what did "the board" refer in the previous act, and does it refer to the same thing in this act? If it doesn't, why has there not been a change?

Hon. J. MacPhail: I hope this helps: sections 25(3) and 25(4) of the current act have never been proclaimed, so they have never been in force.

V. Anderson: No, I'm talking about subsections (1), (2) and (3) -- 1 in brackets, 2 in brackets and 3 in brackets -- under section 25, which is titled: "Appeals to a tribunal". "Where an individual is dissatisfied...." The same as here; the same brackets as here. Is the minister saying that appeals were never allowed before? Number 3 in brackets, not section 25.1....

Interjection.

V. Anderson: But is she saying that subsections 25(1), 25(2) and 25(3) were never proclaimed?

Interjection.

V. Anderson: Subsection (3) was never proclaimed?

Interjection.

V. Anderson: There is no subsection (4).

The Chair: It would probably aid debate if it was carried on through the Chair.

V. Anderson: Okay. Sorry, Mr. Chair.

[ Page 15718 ]

Hon. J. MacPhail: As it stands now, sections 25(3) and 25(4) of the GAIN Act have never been proclaimed. So the addition of 25(3) under our new act -- our amendment act -- is separate and apart from.... There is not an existing situation in the current act now.

V. Anderson: Then perhaps the minister would explain to me how, under the current act.... Where was the authority to review the decisions of tribunals? Where did that come in under the current act? Where did the decision to review tribunals come in under the current act?

Hon. J. MacPhail: All legislation is subject to judicial review unless specified otherwise. We have always had tribunal decisions here and then judicial review for decisions that are outside of the law. But we've never had an appeal.... I mean, it's gone right to judicial review.

V. Anderson: I'm interested to know that, and I think a lot of other people in the community will be surprised that that is the case, but I can understand what the minister is saying at this point. Can the minister say why, since it has not been proclaimed over a number of years, it is being proclaimed at this point? Subsections (3) and (4) are to be proclaimed, I notice here. What is the (4) that was to be proclaimed? Are you not bringing it forward? Subsection (3) is what you're doing now, but where is (4)?

The Chair: That's not part of section 7, as I don't see it here.

Hon. J. MacPhail: If the hon. member has the legislation.... Do you want me to read from the current GAIN Act? Is that what you're asking me to read into the record: section 25(4), the unproclaimed section of the current act?

"The tribunal's decision respecting social services may be reviewed by the minister on application to him by the individual affected, or where he considers it advisable to do so, and he may vary or cancel the decision where, in his opinion, the tribunal did not have sufficient regard for...."

Then it lists the purpose and intent of the social service, etc. So I guess ministerial prerogative was listed under section 25(4). That was never proclaimed, though.

One of the issues that is at odds under this act -- the current act -- is that it refers to social services, and of course the hon. members are well aware that social services.... That was the old method by which we defined both people on income assistance and those needing family and child services. They have now been divided into income assistance and family and child services. So under these sections, the old act is not clear in terms of what can be appealed.

Let me just take you through what section 25(3).... No -- sorry about that. In section 25(1) there's no change except for gender-neutral language. Section 25(2) repeats the current section 25(5) but deletes references to the unproclaimed rights of a tribunal decision in relation to social services. That's what I've just outlined to you. There are no longer social services under GAIN; it's income assistance. Section 25(3) is the next level of appeal from the tribunal, and that's the Income Assistance Appeal Board.

V. Anderson: This is most helpful. So the old section 25(3) is replaced, then, as well. Sections 25(3) and 25(4) of the GAIN Act, you say, weren't proclaimed. So section 25(5) has been moved up into the new section 25(2); that is really what you're saying. Section 25(2), then, in essence, covers section 25(5) of the GAIN Act. Is that what the minister is saying?

Thank you, that's helpful. I see the minister nodding in that regard.

There's a question, then, on section 25(3), on the grounds by which the appeal may be made to the board, which I presume is the new board that we're talking about. I notice in the study that was done -- a review of the income assistance structure which is in process -- that those who did the study indicated that there were three bases of appeal. One was on the facts of the case. The application of the law was another one. Whether the tribunal exceeded its mandate, or whether both facts and opportunities could be there for that....

Can the minister explain what they have undertaken here? After "on a question of law," is it "or" or should it be "and"? Is it either-or or both? As it's written.... I'm just trying to understand. Can either one or the other, (a) or (b) under subsection (3)...? Or is it that both sub-subsections under subsection (3) can apply at the same time?

Hon. J. MacPhail: An appeal can be made based on whether there was an excess of jurisdiction -- which would cover (a) -- or an error of law, or it can be both. But it doesn't have to be both; it can be one or the other.

R. Neufeld: I don't want to be difficult here, but did I understand the minister to say that in the other legislation subsections 25(3) and (4) were never proclaimed? You substituted a number of sections. Now you're proclaiming section 25(3) from the old act and section 25(4). Is section 25(3), then, altogether new?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Sections 25(3) and 25(4) of the current act were never proclaimed, so it's as if they don't exist. The new section 25(3) is numbered section 25(3), but it's a brand-new section. Sections 25(3) and 25(4) of the old act are out of there -- they're repealed. The new section 25(3) deals with the establishment of a new appeal board.

R. Neufeld: Can the minister tell me, in this past year, '94-95, how many appeals were made to tribunals?

Hon. J. MacPhail: About 700.

R. Neufeld: The previous year there were about 338. I guess this is part of where we.... I don't have a problem with the other parts of the bill, but I do in setting up another board to be appealed to. Can the minister tell me what thought went into removing the tribunal process totally and placing just an appeal board -- not having a tribunal at all? What would be the problem with that?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Again, a point of clarification. Is the hon. member asking what process went into contemplating that and why it was not pursued? The hon. member is nodding yes.

Our government is committed to a community tribunal system, full stop. We'll probably be the only ones committed to this in legislation in, I bet you, a couple of years from now. Certainly the federal government has opted completely out of 

[ Page 15719 ]

a community tribunal system. In almost all of the cases, it makes sense that the community establish what a person is entitled to within the law. It is a system that has long roots. We said, as a government, that we would shore up the integrity of the community tribunal system and that we would remain committed to it.

R. Neufeld: Talking about the integrity of the tribunal system, I don't believe everything I read in the newspaper, but I did see the minister's name quoted a number of times just recently, talking about some of the terrible decisions that were made by tribunals in allocating resources to people in need or on assistance. So I can only assume.... In fact, I remember a fiery response from the minister with regard to tribunals and boards. I really have some problems, if the minister feels that way about tribunals -- I'm not sure.

[7:15]

Tonight she's speaking a little more indifferently of those people; I think she's starting to say they're doing a good job. But it was just within the last two or three weeks that the minister was berating them for giving far too large concessions. That was my question about why we would even have a tribunal system. If it wasn't working that well for 700 submissions to the tribunals -- or 338 the year before -- why would we not just skip that process altogether and go into a process of the board being set up to look into the appeals?

Hon. J. MacPhail: I guess this is the dilemma of a government having two opposition parties, where one wants to keep the status quo and make no changes to keep up with the times and the other wants to gut a system, in quite an overreaction. I'll try to walk that fine line right down between the two opposition parties.

My fiery response is to those decisions where clearly they're outside of the intent of the law and the law itself. Therefore limited resources available within the income assistance budget are going where they should not go, and others receive less because of that.

What we have here is a community tribunal system that generally works; it has served our community well. However, when it doesn't serve the community well.... We had examples last week, and believe you me, there are additional examples that were not part of that article and that would probably upset people equally. When the tribunal system doesn't work, we're saying.... We're not establishing a new layer of bureaucracy. It's a very efficient appeal board, appointed independently of the ministry, that can operate with efficiency, fairness and speed at, I would suggest, about one-half the cost of what it might cost for one case to go to judicial review. We're putting in place another alternative to judicial review, because you can imagine what the spectacular costs of court cases are. If this appeal board meets once each month of the year, which is what we anticipate it will have to do, that cost is $20,000 in total per fiscal year.

R. Neufeld: Could the minister provide us with the number of tribunal cases that went to the court system this last year? How many went to court out of the 700? How much did that cost the taxpayer?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Our government has recently been pursuing judicial review more. We think it is important in terms of the integrity of the system, so there are about ten that have proceeded to judicial review within the last year. However, the decisions are outstanding, because the courts are so clogged and take so long. That's another area where we can bring closure to a matter much more quickly with the provincial appeal board.

R. Neufeld: In relation to the 700 appeals, ten are for this past year, and in 1992-93 there were 338 appeals. Do you have the information there on how many were taken to judicial review?

Hon. J. MacPhail: We do pursue cases to judicial review that will perhaps have been repeated over and over. There might be 20 cases that have reflected the same decision at the community tribunal level, and I challenged one through judicial review. You're asking for what happened in 1992-93? I don't have that information available, but we can certainly get it for you.

R. Neufeld: I appreciate that, and I look forward to that number. I'm certainly not advocating -- and I didn't in my second reading remarks -- that we take all this to the court system. I quite understand that we already have enough problems with our court system, especially when it comes to family matters and those kinds of things. I certainly agree.... But in looking at some savings, the minister talks about how the board will be very efficient and how it will operate very well. I have no reason to believe it won't. But why couldn't we put some of that efficiency into the tribunal system? The minister says -- and I appreciate what she says -- that there are so many awards given out that really shouldn't be given out. Why couldn't we put some efficiency in at the tribunal level and not even have the board? Obviously there's a lack of understanding of the law in some cases, and those kinds of things. The minister made note of that. Could the minister just explain why we wouldn't go about it that way?

Hon. J. MacPhail: It's a good point, and we are doing it. It doesn't require legislative change. At the same time that we announced Bill 20, we also announced that we're putting more resources into the training of community tribunal chairs and wingers -- what do you call them? I call them wingers -- or the community tribunal representatives. This is all done on a volunteer basis. We're going to actually cover expenses so that we ensure a broad representation of community members. So we're shoring up the integrity of community tribunal systems along that line. However, that doesn't mean that we still don't need an appeal board. We need an appeal board to avoid having to go to court where errors are made by community tribunals.

R. Neufeld: I appreciate that. Again, I only have 1992-93 information, because that's the last full year for which we have reports. There were 2,017 administrative reviews that were taken care of within the system either by front-line workers or the regional manager, or however that process ends up. In fact, I can agree with the minister that the community tribunals are probably the exact way to go, but I would really like to see us shore those people up with the information or the help that's needed to function effectively -- and do away with the board altogether so that the appeal would come back to the minister's office if it had to. There's not a need for a lot of these appeals to come back. Obviously a 

[ Page 15720 ]

lot of people have either found some loopholes or found that their buddy down the street got a pretty good award or whatever -- so hey, why not try? And that's what I mean.

Maybe we should have been looking at shoring up the tribunal system a lot sooner, and we wouldn't be faced with the problem of trying to bring in legislation that's just going to create another level. Because that level is going to have to be supported with help. Even though the minister says that they'll only meet once a month, obviously they're not just going to walk into a room cold and deal with 300 applications, or whatever it takes. There's going to have to be a fair amount of work given to those people so that they can work as efficiently as the minister says. I think you could have done it with the community tribunal system had you just taken a little bit more time and worked with the tribunal system.

Hon. J. MacPhail: We are developing a training package that is exactly as you say. We are going to make a bigger commitment to recording decisions in a fashion that allows people to review those decisions and learn from them. We're doing exactly what you say. If the criticism is, "You should have done it sooner," then so be it, but the system has been in place for more than two decades. I take full responsibility for the system, but I take credit for moving it into the nineties and the twenty-first century as well.

Let me just also say that 40 percent of the appeals have to do with the definition of GAIN for Handicapped and the turndown on that. We have taken steps, of course, as you know, to change that definition to truly reflect the needs of people with disabilities. We took that step before changing the appeal system. I anticipate that the remaining ones, which are based on the errors in law, will be taken care of by the provincial appeal board. I just wanted to say that many tribunal decisions are made with no legislative authority and don't reflect the intent or substance of the GAIN Act or regulations, and tribunals also award benefits that are not even at issue. We have to make sure that the Income Assistance Appeal Board will provide for a timely review of tribunal decisions, unlike the courts that we've just addressed. It will result in a reduction of decisions that are errors in law, for which the taxpayers are ultimately responsible. Tribunals will learn from the higher level of review, and it will provide for consistency in decision-making and application of income assistance benefits so that your level of benefit doesn't depend on what community you live in. And it will provide, as we've already said, for the continuation of community-based decision-making.

R. Neufeld: Interesting stats, and I appreciate what the minister said about the handicapped. I think that probably was a move in the right direction. I don't have a lot of problem with that, but if 40 percent of the 700 cases that went to the tribunal had to do with handicapped and you're looking after the handicapped, obviously you're back down to about 300 or 400 cases that are going to go to a tribunal. Now you're setting up another board, so they are automatically going to go to the board. They are going to go through the tribunal, even if we try to make the tribunals more efficient. I mean, that's human nature. We're going to take it to the last letter of the law, the furthest you can go. So it will go through there, and it will go to the board again. That's all I'm saying. It's a total waste of a lot of.... It's not a waste but a cost to a lot of people that could be dealt with at the tribunal stage.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Your point that we need to have a stronger community tribunal system is taken, and we're doing that. If you're suggesting that appeals should continue to be made by judicial review, where a case could cost up to $70,000, I disagree with you.

V. Anderson: This is, in a sense, the crux, so we're taking more time on this particular issue. I was interested to look at the GAIN Act, probably in 1983. It has subsection (3) in it, which is in the present bill, just as it's written now. It wasn't in the act in 1993, but it was in the act, according to the copy I have, in 1983. That's why I was asking. The exact wording of subsections (1), (2) and (3) are in the act of 1983. They weren't proclaimed, but they were there. It was changed in 1993, and so we have come back to previous wording. That's been the cause of some of the confusion. That's okay; that's what it is.

According to a study that was done on behalf of the minister, of the 200,000 income assistance cases, 2,355 came to appeal, or 1 percent of all cases. The minister has rightly pointed out that 0.4 percent had to do with handicapped status, which the minister indicates she's going to change. Those changes haven't taken place yet, but the minister has indicated that she's going to change that.

That leaves 0.6 percent, taking that 1 percent figure. The minister indicated a few minutes ago that those were errors in law. But those other areas had to do with, for example, quit work, job search, miscellaneous crisis grants, dependency, common-law relationships and a whole host of 25 other categories. That 0.6 percent indicated some 30 categories other than the 0.4 percent, roughly, for handicapped. The numbers in the study are similar to what the ombudsman has to deal with, so they do not seem to be out of whack with what it is.

[7:30]

They go on to say about the present system.... The reviewer believes that the income assistance appeal system in British Columbia is basically sound -- the one we now have -- even if there are elements in it that need improvement. It sets some of the highest standards in the country for timeliness, and it does tend to meet its deadlines. The review by the minister says that we have one of the best systems in the country. That's why the community at large is asking why we are trying to destroy this. When the minister says that it's untimely and that she's going to train people to undertake these reviews, what's she's saying, in effect -- as people are hearing it -- is that she's going to orient these people as to what they can and cannot do. Therefore they will just become obeyers of the regulations, which has been the problem with social workers.

This same report points out that the basic problem in the system at the moment is that front-line workers do not have acts, rules and regulations that they understand or can implement. The acts, rules and regulations are interpreted differently in each part of the province because of where they are.

It goes on to point out six areas of change. One of the last areas of change that it suggests is another appeal system, because it points out that the policies within the system must be changed, first of all. I highlight the first requisite: that the government update its policy goals for the income assistance program and for the income assistance appeal system as a key part of that program. Then it says that it must update its manual for that program and that they broaden the com-

[ Page 15721 ]

munity base, which the minister has talked about. Only when all of these things have been done could there be a possibility for the review board that she's talking about. The review is not the beginning of the change; it's the result of all of these other changes taking place. So I'd like to suggest, according to the minister's own study, that we've got the cart before the horse, that we're changing the board system before we have put in place the requirements that would even begin to make this new system workable, and that they go against the study that was instituted by the minister herself.

I would like to suggest that at this point it's too early to be bringing this extra board into place. What's needed is to revamp the systematic abuse within the system. Then the board is not likely to be needed, because that 0.6 percent would be drastically reduced from within the system itself.

Hon. J. MacPhail: The status quo is unacceptable. Let me just put that on record, and that's exactly what that report says. The report from which the hon. member reads -- which he FOI'd and which I commissioned -- recommends exactly what we are doing. The report's author does not in any way say that there has to be an order to making the recommendations. The report says to move on all of these fronts. You know what? We're moving on all of the fronts, exactly as is recommended in that report.

The kind of provincial appeal board.... There are six.... The provincial appeal board that we're bringing forward is recommended in that report. The regulations around the old appeal system were drafted two decades ago. Of course they need changing. Are we moving on those changes? Absolutely. I made that statement in my second reading opening remarks on Bill 20.

Somehow the hon. member, who has a government before him.... The only government that's committing the community tribunal system to legislation is somehow being accused of tearing the system apart. We're not tearing the community tribunal system apart; we're building on its strengths. Through that ten-month review we heard from staff, clients, the public and community advocates themselves who were concerned about fairness and accountability. I must also say that the advocacy groups themselves asked for consistent, formalized training. To somehow interpret that we're directing them to act in a certain way is just mischievous.

The use of this report, which I commissioned, to in some sort of way undermine what we're doing is a misuse of information that the hon. member received under FOI. In fact, our government is acting on that report in an expeditious, fair and consistent manner, and we're acting on it on all fronts.

Section 7 approved on division.

On section 8.

V. Anderson: Now that the section has been passed that the board comes into.... Perhaps the minister could now explain the exact nature of this appeal board and how it is going to operate. She says that it's going to operate and, as I understood her, that this process, including updating and training the present tribunal system and the board, is going to cost no more than $20,000 altogether. Am I accurate in that the updating of the tribunal process and the operation of the appeal board, which we're going to be discussing now, will be done within a $20,000 budget?

Hon. J. MacPhail: No. The training costs and the expenses are outside of that for the community tribunal system. That has nothing to do with the appeal board. If the appeal board operates one day a month, 12 months a year -- which we expect -- the cost will be around $20,000.

V. Anderson: Is the minister saying that the appeal board will sit in only one place? It will sit one day a month in one place, and it will be dealing with.... What will it be dealing with? Will it be dealing with transcripts that come from the original appeals? What will the material before the appeal board be that they will be dealing with?

Hon. J. MacPhail: If the appeal board needs to travel, it will, but that will be after a review is done of the case in the most expeditious and least costly fashion to all parties. Transcripts and records will be reviewed. That will be the first step. If it can't be decided on that basis, it will do what it needs to do.

V. Anderson: Is the minister indicating that under tribunals from now on, since they will go to the board, there will have to be written documents and records kept of all of the actions, discussions and presentations that take place in the tribunal? Otherwise, how will the board be able to decide on the basis of decisions and documentation used?

Hon. J. MacPhail: There will be a requirement that the chair record in writing his or her decision and the reasons for the decision at the tribunal level. But if the hon. member is suggesting there would be some sort of court recording or whatever -- absolutely not. Currently, it's not even consistent in terms of community tribunal decisions being written down. We will be establishing that.

V. Anderson: That's a main concern that we're getting from across the community -- that the written decision.... There's no court that will normally take a decision without having the backup documents for that decision. There is not going to be any confidence that the reasons for the decision -- the medical documentation, the questions and answers that go on in the court that enable the tribunal members to make their decision.... None of that material is going to be there. It's a question. Is the minister saying that this documentation -- the material that people bring forward and the questions and answers that take place in the tribunal so that the tribunal members have a basis on which to make the decision...? Is the minister saying that all of this is irrelevant to the appeal board? I just don't believe that's possible.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Hon. member, we have to have some confidence in a system where we're spending large amounts of taxpayer dollars. A system that doesn't record a decision now is not one that has the confidence of the taxpayers in the spending of taxpayer dollars.

What we're saying is that, first of all, any information can be provided by anyone. The parties can provide it to the appeal board; they're not limited in the information they receive. But at a minimum, tribunals will now be required to record their decision in a prescribed way. Forms will be estab-

[ Page 15722 ]

lished; there will be training on that. They will have to write that down, with the reasons, and that will have to form part of the package that goes to the appeal board. There will not be limitations on information. If a party to the proceedings wishes to provide information, absolutely.

The other thing to remember is that it's only errors of law. It can't be appealed to the appeal board just because someone doesn't like the decision; it has to be within the very narrow context of an error in law. The reasons for the information that the provincial appeal board will consider is on those narrow grounds.

V. Anderson: We just passed a section that said that it was an error of law or it was on the grounds that the tribunal based its decision on an erroneous finding of fact or was made in a perverse or capricious manner, without regard to the material before it. Unless the material before it is transferred to the board, how are they going to make that decision?

The difficulty with these kinds of decisions is that the minister has staff and lawyers and trained professionals. It's quite easy for them to transfer that material to the appeal board, but people on low incomes do not have trained professionals to write the documents for them. Some of them don't even necessarily read and write English; they're illiterate, or they speak another language and are not literate in the English language. They don't have the facilities -- the typewriter, the computers -- to provide that information for the appeal board. There's going to be absolutely no confidence in what is going forward when only one side of the issue is being professionally put forward to that appeal board, and the others are not having their material presented in a fair way at all. It's a real imbalance. Those who are on the side of not having the professional ability, the writing ability....

[7:45]

When we have people coming to us to appeal, they can tell us their case verbally. We say, "Write it down and send it to us," and time and time again they say to us: "We cannot write it down. We don't have the ability or the facility to write it. We can say it but we can't write it." The concern is that this is being appealed with all the power and all the strength and all the material coming from the ministry side, not from the people who are concerned and have brought the appeal in the first place.

Hon. J. MacPhail: This section is all about fairness for the clients and the taxpayers. So far I haven't heard one iota from the hon. member on behalf of the taxpayers.

Look, the alternative to this is to go to court. The system that the hon. member is describing may be a criticism if one goes to a judicial review -- however, I don't accept that, either. What this system does is provide fairness to clients who are on low incomes. In fact, the ombudsman, in supporting this amendment to the act, lauds it by virtue of the fact that it makes it fairer for low-income people. So the ombudsman is in disagreement with the member for Vancouver-Langara.

This section is not about lawyers, and it's not about the ministry dominating the discussion; it's about a community tribunal decision, where there is a chair, mutually agreed upon, a ministry representative and a client representative. The three people make a decision. When that decision has no legal merit or is not a correct decision based on the GAIN legislation -- it is outside the GAIN legislation -- then it's on those narrow grounds that the appeal board reviews it.

Our government, for the very first time ever, funds advocacy groups -- substantial funding to advocacy groups -- and we are committing now to training....

An Hon. Member: At taxpayers' expense.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Yes, that's absolutely true.

We are committed to training community tribunal members further.

[D. Lovick in the chair.]

R. Neufeld: The minister quoted 700 as the number of cases to tribunals last year. This is a hypothetical question. Does the minister expect tribunals not to make decisions now and just send them on through to the board?

Hon. J. MacPhail: No, a decision by a tribunal has to be made in order for an appeal to exist.

R. Neufeld: Maybe I should reword it. If they just turn down every request, then there is the opportunity for that person to go to the next step. Does the minister anticipate that happening?

Hon. J. MacPhail: No.

R. Neufeld: I think you'll find in a lot of the decisions that the efficiency the minister spoke about earlier may be a little difficult to achieve, because tribunals may just turn the person down and have the appeal put over to the board. I don't know whether that's in the interests of all concerned.

I want to question the minister a little about the board. It will consist of not less than three members and not more than six members appointed by cabinet, each of whom has "prescribed qualifications" or meets "prescribed criteria." Would the minister please explain those two terms?

Hon. J. MacPhail: The required qualifications for board members will be established by regulation, and I certainly welcome the member's input into that. The qualifications will likely include experience in administrative law procedures and on appeal or arbitration boards, and experience with income security, health, education or community programs.

R. Neufeld: For my benefit, could the minister tell me if most of the appeals happen in the lower mainland or are they scattered all over the province? Do you find most of them coming out of the Vancouver-Victoria area just because of the population base?

Hon. J. MacPhail: They're scattered all over the province according to the population base.

R. Neufeld: Subsection (4) says: "...every member who is not a public service employee within the meaning of the Public Service Act may be paid remuneration fixed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council for their services." Does this mean that people in the public service who are working for government at the present time could be appointed to this board?

Hon. J. MacPhail: No, I don't anticipate that. This is a preventive double-dipping clause that's standard across our g

[ Page 15723 ]

overnment. If a public service worker at any time does get an appointment such as this where there's an honorarium, he or she is not allowed to take that. It's a standard prohibition.

R. Neufeld: I certainly wasn't trying to indicate that someone who works for the public service would double-dip. I was trying to get out of the minister whether people who are working now for government would be appointed, but I'm assured by the minister that this will not happen in all likelihood.

Subsection (5)(b) says: "...the board may, subject to the regulations, establish its own procedures for the expeditious consideration of appeals...." Maybe the minister could just enlighten me a bit on what that means exactly. Does that mean that this appeal board can follow their own scheduled rules and regulations?

Hon. J. MacPhail: All the procedures will be prescribed in regulations. Certainly there is new technology available that expedites hearings, and many of those techniques are already in place. But they'll all be prescribed in the regulations.

V. Anderson: I would like to amend section 8 by deleting section 25.2(5)(c) of the proposed section to be added -- that is, by deleting subsection (c), which now reads: "...is not bound by the legal or technical rules of evidence or its own decisions." That leaves it very wide-open for them not to be bound by legal or technical rules of evidence or its own decisions. I would like to move that that section -- 25.2(5)(c) -- be deleted.

On the amendment.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I hope in my clarification.... I'm surprised at this amendment from the hon. member, who advocates so strongly in favour of a community tribunal system. I'm surprised by this amendment. The reason that this is there is to allow the flexibility of community tribunal decisions, so that the board is not bound by its own decisions -- they are not precedent-setting. The disadvantages of a precedent-setting system -- which this amendment would confirm -- is that it is administratively cumbersome and very expensive to provide a reporting system, and you have to live with the bad as well as the good decisions. What we're trying to do is expeditiously have a fair, administrative appeal review that allows for individual community tribunal decisions to be upheld or denied. Each case should be individually reviewed. The hon. member's amendment would deny that possibility and have it a rigorous, arbitrary, legalistic system, where there would be no flexibility.

Amendment negatived.

V. Anderson: Under 25.2(6), "The chair may establish a panel, consisting of 3 members...to consider an appeal...." I'm presuming there have to be three members for every appeal. At the maximum there can only be six board members, so there can only be two appeal panels operating at any one time. If I'm right in that, could the minister clarify for me that there is a maximum of two appeal panels? There are only six members on the board, and it takes three members.... Therefore when it says it has to be three to six, it's almost taken for granted that there will be six members on the board.

Hon. J. MacPhail: There will be six board members, and they can configure in any fashion of three members they want. If the hon. member is somehow indicating that there will be two permanent panels, no, that's not the case. There will be six members that configure in any fashion amongst three of them.

V. Anderson: But it takes three members to make a panel. At the most, there could be only one panel of three or two panels of three that could be operating at the same time. That is what I'm trying to clarify. It says anywhere from three to six, so that if the board is only appointed with three, then all members of the board would have to be there in order to have a quorum. There have to be at least three members of any panel to make any decision, as I understand it; and "a decision of the panel must be decided by a majority of votes...." So in effect it is voting the same as a tribunal, because two of the three in a tribunal make the decision. If I understand correctly, the same policy is here. Is that right?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Yes.

V. Anderson: These board members -- these three or six, whatever it may be -- I understand, are going to be paid expenses. They'll be paid travelling expenses, overnight expenses or whatever else it takes as they travel throughout the province. Will they also be paid an honorarium or a retainer? Or what is the method of payment for these persons who are on this board? Each one is on for a two-year term, I understand.

Hon. J. MacPhail: It's not a salary; it's not a full-time job. The members when sitting will receive a per diem that's prescribed by government regulation.

V. Anderson: Can you give us an approximate amount of what that per diem would be?

Hon. J. MacPhail: It is $350 per chair per day and $250 for a member.

[8:00]

V. Anderson: That's $850 a day every time a panel sits, plus travel, housing and overnight expenses if they go out of the province. The minister has said they're only going to meet once a month, but if they start to meet more than that -- plus the other expenses that are going to be involved in keeping records -- I don't see how the minister is going to keep that within its $20,000. It's $850 a day plus expenses for three persons every time they meet. There will be meal expenses and travelling expenses, so it's going to come close to $1,000 for each day the panel meets. Is that not correct?

Hon. J. MacPhail: I have said -- in effect, your estimates are under my estimates -- that we anticipate annual costs to total $20,000 per year. I just remind the member that the alternative is judicial review, where decisions can cost up to $70,000 per case.

Section 8, section 25.2 approved.

On section 8, section 25.3.

V. Anderson: The appeal process here, that a person.... Under section 25.3(1), one "may appeal the tribunal's deci-

[ Page 15724 ]

sion, in whole or in part, by way of a stated case." Would the minister indicate what "a stated case" means? What's required to put a stated case forward?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Any person affected by a tribunal decision, including the minister, may appeal the tribunal's decision by giving the board a written notice of appeal. The board will base its decision on an agreed statement of fact.

V. Anderson: Could you explain an agreed statement of fact? Who makes it, and who's agreeing to the statement of fact? Who are the persons agreeing to the statement of fact, and who is providing this stated case?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Well, agree means that everyone has to agree to a statement of fact, and a statement of fact is a description of the case. The parties to the case would be the ones who have to agree to it. I would assume that it would be the appellant and whatever the opposite of appellant is.

V. Anderson: Is the minister saying that the two parties -- the ministry on the one hand, and the person who has brought the appeal on the other hand -- have to sit down and agree to a statement of fact after the tribunal is over? I just don't see how they will be able to do that in the majority of cases. Or is she saying that the three members who are the tribunal board have to agree to a statement of fact? How are they going to do that? I just can't see them.... I'm quite convinced that in the majority of cases both sides are going to come forward with a different statement of fact and different documentation to back those statements of fact.

Hon. J. MacPhail: The tribunal will have a written decision -- I've made that clear -- and it will be of a prescribed form. There will be a written decision. The client can include a statement of fact as well.

V. Anderson: That was the problem I raised before. The majority of clients are not in a position to write down a statement of fact with the same professional ability as a statement of fact that will come from a social worker. So you're going to have two different versions of the statement of fact. I don't see how you can get around that. You're going to have two different statements of fact -- the one from the ministry and the one from the client -- and in many cases the client is going to need outside assistance to provide that statement of fact. How are they going to have the ability to get that outside assistance?

Hon. J. MacPhail: I'm really trying to be patient here, very patient. The community tribunal system, which is being beefed up.... The client will have a representative there who will be trained and supported. At that level, there already has to be a statement of fact put forward. That will form part of the decision of the tribunal, which will be written down and passed on to the appeal board. Our government also supports a wide-ranging advocacy system, of which the member is well aware -- the first time ever that advocates have been supported. The appeal board will not be reviewing the facts; the appeal board will be doing a narrow review based on whether the tribunal decision was outside the law or outside the legislation.

V. Anderson: It is very crucial. Is the minister saying that the clients will still be able to have an advocate whom they choose? Or will they only be able to choose an advocate from a set of persons who have been "trained by the ministry"?

Hon. J. MacPhail: They can choose whatever advocate they want.

V. Anderson: As I heard the minister say that the advocate and the client would have the resources supplied to them, is she saying that the advocate and client will be provided with whatever resources they need to bring together their case -- to make it available and to put the stated case back to appeal if it needs to be done?

Hon. J. MacPhail: No, that's not what I'm saying. I wouldn't spend taxpayers' dollars with that open-ended commitment, by any means. Our government has already committed to funding advocacy groups for the very purpose that the hon. member is talking about, and we are making a further commitment to training and expenses.

V. Anderson: On appeal under section 25.3(5), the panel must review the tribunal's decisions and any records on which it was based. Who is going to be keeping the records and making them available to the tribunal? Is there going to be a scribe at the tribunal who will collect and verify the records and send them on to the appeal board under section 25.3(5)?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Currently that's the chair's responsibility, and that will continue.

V. Anderson: I've been chair of many of these, and you're asking volunteers to take on a great load. I would like to move an amendment to section 25.3(5) as follows: "On an appeal under this section, the panel must (a) review the tribunal's decision and any records on which it was based, and" -- this is the addition -- "(b) if requested, make available to an individual affected by the decision, or to the individual's representative, the tribunal's decision and any records on which it was based."

There is a real concern that the material upon which the appeal board will be making a decision can be biased one way or the other, and will not adequately or fairly represent that which took place in the tribunal unless full records are kept, and it can be verified in some way that these are the records, and those who were there can know that this is the material on which it was based.

On the amendment.

Hon. J. MacPhail: This is the current practice at the tribunal level. I'm surprised, because I do know the hon. member's record on tribunals. That kind of information is exchanged and records are exchanged amongst all parties at the tribunal level, and the decision is made available to tribunal members.

V. Anderson: But the minister said earlier that the records that have been made by the chairs have not been adequate, so there's going to be a new process with more material available in a different kind of form and with more attempt to 

[ Page 15725 ]

have documentation, which now goes on to this other appeal process. It's that statement of fact and those documents which, according to this, now have to be kept in quite a different fashion than they have in the past. I acknowledge that. So this amendment is to ensure.... If the minister is saying that this is totally acceptable, then I trust she will accept the amendment -- if she's saying that's exactly as it is now.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I have no idea what the hon. member is getting at around the community tribunal system. There will be a specific form -- a new kind of form where the decision is recorded in a consistent manner across all tribunal decisions. That's the change. That's the only change around the decisions. Those decisions have to be supported by documentation; that will be passed on.

The Chair: It seems to me that we've canvassed the amendment rather well, but I'll entertain a further comment from Vancouver-Langara.

V. Anderson: If, as the minister said, there are new forms available, and we could see those forms; and if, as the minister said, there are certain regulations that she's assuming and aware of; and if we knew what those regulations were, perhaps we could have some confidence. But without those forms and without those regulations, there is no confidence.

Amendment negatived on division.

R. Neufeld: Section 25.3(1) says: "...in the prescribed manner and within the prescribed time...." Could the minister just tell me what the prescribed time is?

Hon. J. MacPhail: It will be outlined in the regulations.

R. Neufeld: Can the minister give us some idea of the time?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Quick.

R. Neufeld: Quick. Okay. That's obviously the best answer we're going to get.

Section 25.3(7) says: "The chair must inform the parties to the appeal of any decision or order of the board or panel...and send a copy of the decision or order to each party." Should there be a time frame on that, much the same as the time that is given -- the "quick" time -- to the person appealing?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Yes, and that will be prescribed in the regulations. We're currently working with the ombudsman on establishing the quickest procedure possible. All of the time frames will be for quick action.

R. Neufeld: Will the time frames in sections 25.3(1) and 25.3(3) coincide, then? If it's 30 days, will that be consistent?

[8:15]

Hon. J. MacPhail: I'm sorry, I....

R. Neufeld: I apologize. Maybe I was a little too quick -- in the interests of saving time, trying to be what they call "quick."

Anyhow, section 25.3(1) says: "A person, including the minister, affected by a decision...." -- that means the appeal from the tribunal to the board. For instance, let's say that that's 30 days -- a person has 30 days to make that appeal to the board. Then would the decision by the board coincide with the 30 days? Would they have the same time frame to make their decision and get the information back to the appellant?

Hon. J. MacPhail: No, not necessarily, because that may not be the quickest way to reach a decision, depending on what stage you're at. So I can't predict consistency, but I can predict efficiency for reaching conclusions as quickly as possible.

V. Anderson: When a person applies for a tribunal to be held against a decision -- say they had a decision that wanted to take away some of the money that the social services system was paying them -- it's the present practice that those payments continue until the tribunal decision comes down. I presume that will continue. If that continues, does it also continue until the decision of the appeal board has been heard? Does it continue through both sections now, as it has in the past?

Hon. J. MacPhail: The basic food, shelter, health and safety, and protection of children will continue through to the appeal board.

V. Anderson: Sometimes that condition is to provide medical assistance, drugs, medicine or special diet allowances -- those are all items that are considered. There's a variety of things there that are being appealed under a number of these sections, and they have been continued and not been cut off while the appeal goes to the tribunal. They have always been reinstated until the tribunal makes its decision. To clarify, will those items continue as they have in the past through the tribunal, and also through the decision of the appeal board?

Hon. J. MacPhail: I repeat: anything that's related to food, shelter, health and safety, well-being or child protection will all continue.

V. Anderson: Just a clarification. Did you say that it includes child protection? Some of these are for single parents or single individuals, so it's not just for child protection, but also for the well-being of the adult persons. I'm just trying to make sure there isn't a limitation. It's the well-being, food, clothing, shelter and health of any individual person, or the of collective within the family. Is that true?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Yes.

V. Anderson: Under section 25.3(8), it says that the appeal is "...final and conclusive and is not open to appeal or review in a court except on a question of law or excess of jurisdiction." If I understand it correctly, that's the rule that used to apply to a decision from a tribunal. If I understand that correctly, the minister has transferred the appeal to a court -- not from the tribunal, now, but from the appeal board. Is that correct? And either party could appeal from the appeal board, the way either party could have appealed before from the tribunal.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Yes.

[ Page 15726 ]

Section 8, section 25.3 approved on division.

On section 8, section 25.4.

V. Anderson: Can you explain why this clause has been added? This clause is new. Can you explain why section 25.4 has been added in here, and what the reason for it is? I'm delighted to see it included in good faith, because this will come up in another bill we'll be dealing with later on. But could you just explain why this is here?

Hon. J. MacPhail: It's already in the current act under section 25.1. The wording has been plain-languaged, that's all.

Section 8, section 25.4 approved.

Section 8 of Bill 20 approved on the following division:

On section 9.

V. Anderson: This is a section which has regulations that.... The Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council may make regulations in these areas. I would, first of all, like to ask about paragraph (k.5), "respecting the status of decisions made by a tribunal pending an appeal to the board." It would seem straightforward to me that when the tribunal has made a decision, the decision is operative until overthrown. Is the minister saying by this that they may be able to make regulations which say that the decision is not operative until it's reviewed by the board 30 or 60 days later -- whatever it may be? What's the meaning of paragraph (k.5)?

Hon. J. MacPhail: That's what we were just discussing. We went through it in detail before: the decisions affecting the health, safety and well-being of children. Shelter, support, food and basic needs will be continued. We just went through that. I said that that would be described in regulation, and this is the power to make the regulation.

V. Anderson: Again the minister has paraphrased that by saying "the health and safety of children." Does it include the health and safety of individuals and families who do not have children? Does it include all of the people, or is it limited in the minister's mind? That's what I tried to clarify before. Again she has phrased it in such a way that it sounds like it only applies to children.

[8:30]

Hon. J. MacPhail: I said "the protection of children." We only have a mandate for the protection of children. The rest covers all people.

V. Anderson: I'm still not sure. The Guaranteed Available Income for Need Amendment Act, 1995, applies to....

I'm sorry, hon. Chair; we can't hear because of the noise in the assembly.

The Chair: Thanks, member. Give me a moment, and I'll see if I can get some silence for you. Members, could I ask those who are carrying on conversations to keep them very quiet indeed. We're having some difficulty hearing.

V. Anderson: The GAIN Act applies not only to children for which the ministry is responsible but to adults as well. I heard the minister again say that only children were covered in the intervening stage, from the tribunal to the appeal board -- and also to the tribunal stage. Does it include everyone receiving GAIN support, regardless of their age or family condition?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Yes.

V. Anderson: We could go into a lot of detail. The minister has indicated that the regulations are not written, so we have to take it on faith. Perhaps we should go back to the original statement, which talked about acting in good faith. We trust that the minister is going to act in good faith when these regulations are brought foward.

In (k.4) it talks about "respecting the reinstatement of benefits pending an appeal to a tribunal." This was again the question we were asking. It was assumed that the benefits would be reinstated from the time you applied for the tribunal decision, and it was assumed that they would continue. Is the minister, under this statement, suggesting that benefits will no longer automatically be in place until a tribunal comes forward or an appeal comes forward?

Hon. J. MacPhail: I repeat: decisions affecting the health, safety, well-being, shelter, support and basic needs of all people will be continued. In addition, decisions that affect the protection of children will be continued.

V. Anderson: Subsection (k.3) reads: "...specifying qualifications and criteria for the appointment of persons as members of a tribunal." Earlier I asked the minister whether a person could choose anyone they wish to be their representative on the tribunal. Do these people now have to have certain qualifications and be approved under this act, under (k.3)? Do they have to meet certain qualifications and criteria? That would mean that not anyone that a person might choose would be available.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Tribunal chairs and ministry nominees will be selected from a mandatorily trained pool. Non-

[ Page 15727 ]

ministry nominees will be offered training but will not be obligated to take it. The person can choose whomever she wishes.

V. Anderson: So the system is changing. The system was that there was a nominee from the client and a nominee from the ministry, and those two persons chose a person that was mutually acceptable to them. That could be anyone they agreed on. Is the minister saying that a change has taken place, so that those two persons can only choose a person who is in the pool and approved by the minister? They cannot choose a person who is not part of the pool and been "properly trained"?

Hon. J. MacPhail: The pool can be as big as the number of people who will take the training, but the training must occur for them to be on the selection list for chairs.

V. Anderson: Is the minister saying that the training is open to anyone who wants to come and take the program? It's not a pass-or-fail program; as long as you've attended the course, you're acceptable. Is that what the minister is saying?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Yes.

V. Anderson: I think those are all the questions I have at the moment on section 9.

Section 9 approved on division.

On section 10.

V. Anderson: This is a major change. I would like the minister to.... Because it's repealing section 26.1, we've had a great deal of concern raised about this. I'll read it, so we understand what it is. As it reads at the moment:

"Where a person is not eligible to receive income assistance due to income or assets in excess of those permitted, but is temporarily destitute due to the income not having been received, the assets requiring time to liquidate them or for some other reason acceptable to the minister, the minister may make a grant or advance to the person subject to conditions, including conditions respecting repayment of advances and the taking of assignments to secure them, that the minister may specify."

This was there for emergency. If sickness came upon a person and it happened to be a person who normally could care for themselves, but suddenly all of their resources were locked up and they were not able to meet the circumstances before them, a grant could be given to them with requirements, arrangements and assets to repay it. It was a temporary grant or loan, actually, for that period of time. Are you saying that this is no longer available? What is the reason for removing this from the act?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Hardship grants are not being eliminated by the repeal of section 26.1. Repeal of section 26.1 will eliminate the constraints now placed on both hardship grants and the ability to make assignment and repayment agreements. Eligibility criteria for hardship grants will now be contained in the regulation, along with all other income assistance eligibility criteria, in accordance with sections 26(2)(b), (c), (d) and (l) of the GAIN Act. Authority to make hardship grants remains in section 2.1 of the GAIN Act. Legislative authority for assignments and repayment agreements is now contained in section 6 of the GAIN Amendment Act -- the new section 21.1.

V. Anderson: Would the minister please explain why this section, as it is now, limits the.... She's saying it would be able to be broader. Why does it limit it at the present time?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Section 26.1 was very specific in its wording and actually constrained the ministry's ability to provide hardship assistance. By removing this section and consolidating eligibility for hardship under the regulations, we'll be better able to meet the needs of British Columbians in crisis. Eligibility criteria for regular income assistance is already contained in GAIN regulations. We'll be doing the same thing with hardship criteria to bring it into line with that.

V. Anderson: I want to clarify. I think I heard the minister talking about it being contained in section 26(2). Did I hear that right or wrong, when she was making that explanation?

Hon. J. MacPhail: It was section 2.1.

Sections 10 to 13 inclusive approved.

Title approved.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I move that the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; the Speaker in the chair.

Bill 20, Guaranteed Available Income for Need Amendment Act, 1995, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Committee on Bill 41.

CHILD, FAMILY AND COMMUNITY SERVICE AMENDMENT ACT, 1995

The House in committee on Bill 41; D. Lovick the in chair.

On section 1.

V. Anderson: Could the minister just explain why the definition of parents has been changed?

Hon. J. MacPhail: This amends one of the definitions of parents so as to prevent the word being defined in the body of the definition. It's really just a legislative drafting issue.

[8:45]

Section 1 approved.

On section 2.

V. Anderson: I think we just need to speak in affirming this particular section, because it comes out of the Gove report 

[ Page 15728 ]

and is for the safety and well-being of children. It's an emphasis which I think certainly needs to be there, and we, along with the minister, would strongly affirm it.

Sections 2 to 4 inclusive approved.

On section 5.

V. Anderson: Perhaps the minister could explain the extension of this, because it's a fairly broad extension that will have wide implications for the public. Perhaps the minister could make some comments about this particular section and why it was felt that it needed to be brought in in this way.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Actually, I need to move an amendment under this section, so maybe I could do that now and provide copies to the hon. members opposite. The amendment actually adds section 4.1. It is now in the possession of the Clerk, but we'll make copies.

Interjection.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Yes, it adds a section 4.1. Maybe we could pause for a minute and let the amendment be read.

[Section 4.1, by adding the following section:

4.1 Section 11 is amended

(a) in subsection (1) by striking out "section 6 or 7" and substituting "section 5, 6 or 7", and

(b) in subsection (2) by striking out "section 6, 7 or 9" and substituting "section 5, 6, 7 or 9".]

Let me first answer the hon. member's question about the change from "the director" to "a director." Actually, that was a legislative drafting matter because the rest of the act refers to "a director," so this was the section that used "the." We just made it consistent with the rest of the act.

The amendment that I put forward is to deal with the fact that section 11 of the Child, Family and Community Service Act concerns the capacity of parents under 19 to make voluntary care and special needs agreements, and the enforceability of those agreements against those individuals. The amendment to add section 5, "Support services for families," to section 11 is to provide greater protection for parents under 19. This basically allows a director to make and enforce agreements with people under 19 for counselling, respite care, parenting programs and in-home support. Without the amendment that we're tabling now, that would not be available.

Section 4.1 approved.

On section 5.

V. Anderson: Perhaps the minister might indicate why this fairly extensive description was brought forward to broaden it so much. I think I agree with it, but I think some explanation of it would be very helpful to have on record.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Not only did this come from our own perusal and consultation around implementation, but also Judge Gove and his staff noted this as a problem for us and recommended early on that we amend this. This makes explicit the duty to report physical harm, sexual abuse or exploitation inflicted on a child by a person other than the child's parents, rather than just leaving the decision as to whether the parent is willing or able to protect the child up to members of the public, who may not be equipped or trained to make this decision. This is an amendment to the reporting requirements of section 14 that will result in the assessment by the director, who may either take no further action, make a referral to support services or to a community agency, or investigate the child's need for protection. It makes it mandatory for people to report suspicions. The act could have been interpreted that they would actually have to make a determination before they reported. Of course, we would never impose on anyone in the community to make a determination about whether abuse or harm is occurring. The act clarifies that all they have to do is have a reason to believe.

V. Anderson: I agree with the need for people to have more freedom to make these reportings. On that basis, though, it says they must do this. What's the consequence if, on that narrow line of whether there seems to be abuse, they don't report? What's the other side of that question? For instance, take the case in Ontario where the gentleman was spanking his children in the parking lot. That's a call, whether that's abuse or not. What's the line for a person who might not think that's a logical thing to do and doesn't report it?

Hon. J. MacPhail: It's all based on community standards, of course, as we talked about when this act was.... We're not imposing a new community standard here by any means. We are saying that if you have a suspicion or you believe that there should be an assessment made about whether there is neglect, harm or abuse, then you must report it. It's an offence if you don't report it. But that's it; all you have to do is report it. The actual assessment is done in a very professional, intensive way after the report is made. It may result in no further action taken or some further action being taken.

V. Anderson: If it is an offence, what is the nature of the charges, the punishment, the fines or whatever for not doing that, and where is that located?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Actually that's not being amended, but you're just asking for information, I assume. It's an offence under the Offence Act, and the penalty is listed under section 14(6). It's up to $10,000 or imprisonment for up to six months. That remains unchanged.

Sections 5 and 6 approved.

On section 7.

R. Neufeld: Just quickly, could the minister explain the striking out of "essential" and substituting it with "necessary"? What was the reasoning behind that change?

Hon. J. MacPhail: This is actually a recommendation that came from Judge Gove. The reason for it is to make this part of the act consistent with two other parts of the act where the word "necessary" is used. In subsections 29(1) and 29(3) the word is used in relation to the health care of children. These subsections are now the same as others concerning health care, which already used the word "necessary." Those other sections relate to unattended or runaway children and chil-

[ Page 15729 ]

dren in immediate danger. Judge Gove raised the concern that the use of both words would lead to two different interpretations, so he recommended this for consistency.

Section 7 approved.

On section 8.

V. Anderson: This is also a new section. Perhaps the minister could explain the reason for this section.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Again, Judge Gove recommended this, to avoid having to come back to court for a second order and thereby delay the plan for the child. This allows the director to obtain an order to supervise a parent's care of a child when the child is returned to the parent on the expiry of a temporary custody order. It avoids the necessity of returning to court a second time to obtain such an order.

Section 8 approved.

On section 9.

V. Anderson: Again, perhaps the minister might explain section 9, particularly the meaning of "likelihood that the child will suffer harm" -- that is, not that they are suffering harm, but that there is the likelihood that they may suffer harm.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Judge Gove recommended these changes. We're changing "no parent is able or willing to resume custody of the child" to "a parent is unable or unwilling to resume custody of the child...." He indicates that that clarification is needed to ensure that the section is not interpreted to mean that a parent must be able and willing to resume custody -- the double hurdle. That was subsection (b).

Section 41(2)(c) lowers the test for a continuing custody order being made at a protection hearing, so that they can be made when they are appropriate, without having to meet the almost impossible test of when it would never be in a child's best interest to be returned to a parent. Judge Gove said that was just too high a test.

Section 9 approved.

On section 10.

V. Anderson: Who is the person who would make application in section 10? Can that come from a variety of places, or is there a limitation on where that application comes from?

Hon. J. MacPhail: It could be any party.

Sections 10 to 12 inclusive approved.

On section 13.

V. Anderson: Could the minister explain the meaning and purpose of this particular section? As I read it, I just wasn't quite sure I could follow it.

Hon. J. MacPhail: It's actually the flip side of the section that we talked about that allows the extension of time limits on temporary custody orders -- you know, not having to go back to court. It's just a clarification to accompany that.

Section 13 approved.

On section 14.

V. Anderson: Again, "If requested...." What is required, and who is able to make that request?

Hon. J. MacPhail: The change is from the sole obligation of the director to make full disclosure on request, to an obligation of all parties. So it's all parties that have to make full disclosure on request of orders sought and evidence to be given in a proceeding. This will assist in court preparation, negotiation and perhaps even alternative methods to dispute resolution.

Section 14 approved.

On section 15.

V. Anderson: At one point I thought I had an amendment for this, but I suggest that my intention has already been taken into account, and I want to confirm that. In first reading, it looked like the director was setting up the procedure to review themselves. Our amendment was going to be that the minister would set up the directions so that the director wouldn't be setting up her own process to review herself. But I understand, if I wanted to check, that it's the regulations from the minister that will.... So it's only the director fulfilling the regulations. The minister might comment to clarify that.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Yes. Indeed, the hon. member's interpretation is correct, and we have an amendment on the order paper to clarify that.

Section 15 approved.

On section 16.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I move the amendment to section 16 standing in my name in Orders of the Day.

[SECTION 16, by deleting the proposed section 16 and substituting the following:

16. Section 103 (2) is amended

(a) in paragraph (e) by striking out "(notice of presentation hearing)",

(b) in paragraph (f) by striking out everything after "Part 3",

(c) in paragraph (n) by striking out "section 77 (5)" and substituting "section 76 (5)", and

(d) by adding the following paragraph:

(p.1) governing reviews under section 93 (3); .]

[9:00]

On the amendment.

[ Page 15730 ]

Hon. J. MacPhail: Section 16(a) of the House amendment does the following: section 103(2)(e), the section being amended, allows regulations to prescribe aboriginal organizations for the purposes of section 34 of the act. Section 34(3) provides that these aboriginal organizations will be informed, if practicable, of the time, date and place of a presentation hearing. The words now in brackets after section 103(2)(e), "notice of presentation hearing," are being deleted because the right to be informed, where practicable, differs from mandatory notice. Therefore the word "notice" isn't appropriately used here.

Amendment approved.

Section 16 as amended approved.

Section 17 approved.

Title approved.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I move that the committee rise and report the bill complete with amendments.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; the Speaker in the chair.

Bill 41, Child, Family and Community Service Amendment Act, 1995, reported complete with amendments.

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

Hon. J. MacPhail: With leave of the House now, hon. Speaker.

An Hon. Member: Nay.

Leave not granted.

Bill 41, Child, Family and Community Service Amendment Act, 1995, reported complete with amendments to be considered at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Committee on Bill 47.

CHILD, YOUTH AND FAMILY ADVOCACY AMENDMENT ACT, 1995

The House in committee on Bill 47; D. Lovick in the chair.

On section 1.

V. Anderson: We basically agree with the section, but we think there's an omission in the GAIN Act, which we were just referring to, and in a number of other acts, hon. minister. So I would make an amendment, and the amendment is here. It inserts the words "in good faith" twice. It says:

"A person must not discharge, suspend, expel, intimidate, coerce, evict or impose any financial or other penalty on, or otherwise discriminate against, another person because the other person complains in good faith to the advocate or gives information in good faith or otherwise assists in an investigation or other proceedings under this Act."

The term "in good faith" is found in section 101 of the Child, Family and Community Service Act. It's also found in a number of other acts within the different branches of the ministry. It's also found in the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. So we'd recommend that this amendment be accepted in good faith.

On the amendment.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I actually had a good discussion with the hon. member on this, and his point is well taken. Let me try to reassure him about the intent of the law here. This section -- and, of course, it's a recommendation from Judge Gove -- is taken straight out of the Ombudsman Act. The Ombudsman Act does not have "in good faith" in it. So there are two reasons not to amend it. One is that if we were to now insert it in an act, which is a replica of a couple of other acts, it means that perhaps the intent would be read into the other acts that you didn't need to be in good faith. But I can give the member assurance that in this particular area of the law, applied in this situation, "in good faith" is a requisite. It's a test that has to be met under the law. His point is well taken, and it will be required under the law. Where it's included -- if I may just inform him -- in other sections of the law is really a protection from immunity, and it has quite a different intent. But his point is well taken, and I can assure him that it will be interpreted as such.

Amendment negatived.

Section 1 approved.

On section 2.

R. Neufeld: Just quickly to the minister. Section 2, section 11(3), says: "The advocate may make a special report...." Could she just expand on it? Is that specifically if the advocate wants to report on a special case? Is that why the section is added?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Yes, indeed. That could be an example, or if there's an issue of a systemic problem that can't await an annual report, she could report out on something like that.

Section 2 approved.

On section 3.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I move the amendment to section 3 standing in my name in Orders of the Day.

[SECTION 3 (b), in the proposed subsection (3) by deleting "subsections (4) to (7)" and substituting "subsections (4) to (6)".] This amendment concerns a transcription error referring to a seventh subsection which does not exist.

Amendment approved.

Section 3 as amended approved.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I move the amendment that's in the possession of the Clerk, adding section 3.1.

[ Page 15731 ]

[SECTION 3.1 The following section is added

Offence

17.1 A person who contravenes section 10.1 commits an offence and is liable to a fine of up to $2,000 or to imprisonment for up to 6 months, or to both.]

We propose adding a specific section making it an offence to contravene the new section 10.1 which protects complainants and participants from retribution. This is preferable to reliance on the general offence provisions in section 5 of the Offence Act. The proposed penalty is the same as that in section 4 of the Offence Act.

Sections 3.1 and 4 approved.

Title approved.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I move the committee rise and report the bill complete with amendments.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; the Speaker in the chair.

Bill 47, Child, Youth and Family Advocacy Amendment Act, 1995, reported complete with amendments.

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

Hon. G. Clark: By leave, now.

Leave granted.

Bill 47, Child, Youth and Family Advocacy Amendment Act, 1995, read a third time and passed.

Hon. G. Clark: I call Committee of Supply for the purpose of debating the estimates of the Ministry of Social Services.

The House in Committee of Supply B; D. Lovick in the chair.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF SOCIAL SERVICES
(continued)

On vote 53: minister's office, $402,165 (continued).

R. Chisholm: In the introduction to the estimates, the minister set the stage by mentioning that 80,000 new people came to British Columbia last year, and 29,000 ended up collecting income assistance for some time. That's more than one in three new arrivals. The question to the minister: does the minister have comparative figures for other provinces? How about comparative figures for U.S. jurisdictions? Is there anything, say, from California that would show annually how many of their new in-migrations require social assistance?

Hon. J. MacPhail: There is no comparison, because this is based on in-migration. The other two provinces that had net in-migration were P.E.I. and New Brunswick, and the total net in-migration there was less than 500, so there is no comparable jurisdiction.

R. Chisholm: I'm trying to get a handle on the size of our problem in British Columbia. Does the minister have data on how many people who were on social assistance in 1993-94 went off social assistance? I appreciate that this might be in public documents elsewhere, but could the minister give us the figures now for this debate?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Yes, there is a public document, but I don't mind outlining it for the fourth time -- I'm just kidding. The average length of time that the majority -- 75 percent -- of people rely on income assistance is six months or less; half rely on it for three months or less.

However, there is also the growing issue of what I call federal off-loading through unemployment insurance cutbacks. As recently as five or six years ago, at least 85 percent of the people who were unemployed were eligible for unemployment insurance. Now that's been reduced to less than half: 49 percent of people who lose their jobs are eligible for unemployment insurance. There is a cyclic effect. We discussed at length some of the ways that we can deal with this issue of federal off-loading, particularly as it affects young people, who are, as the member is well aware, the last hired and the first laid off.

R. Chisholm: Could the minister tell us what the bill was for the 29,000 new arrivals last year? Did these 29,000 people arrive in the 1994-95 calendar year or in the 1993-94 calendar year?

Hon. J. MacPhail: It's an ongoing figure; that's a constant. We can certainly calculate for you what an average cost would be. It would be the number times the average length of a claim, which is about four or five months. It's the single-employable rate.

[9:15]

R. Chisholm: I think it's time for you to recommend to the Premier and your cabinet that this House be asked to move into a select standing committee to look at this question on a non-partisan, all-party basis, with the ability to call some witnesses. We need to rethink whether or not we British Columbians should be paying out of our treasury for new arrivals.

The problems of other provinces and other international jurisdictions are Canada's problems. Canada, as we know, is in the process of downloading to provincial governments. You and your predecessor ministers of this ministry know better than anyone what is happening with the Canada Assistance Plan. We're going broke looking after what is now a rate of 29,000 new arrivals a year that need social assistance, and that is costing the British Columbia treasury greatly. Let's be honest. The time has come to stand up for the British Columbia taxpayer and look at this whole question more seriously and with some urgency through a select standing committee. Would the minister care to comment on that thought.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I absolutely agree with the hon. member that we face a very serious problem here and have to look for some new solutions. In fact, that's exactly why the Premier appointed the Premier's Forum on New Opportunities for Working and Living, which is a very non-partisan forum that represented people from business, labour, the academic community, client groups, consumer groups, women's groups and 

[ Page 15732 ]

aboriginal groups. Yes, we're looking for solutions, not only for the fact that it is against any social democratic vision to commit people to a life of poverty while relying on income assistance but also because there are limited tax dollars available to commit to income assistance.

Of course, the problem will be made even worse this coming fiscal year when the federal government refuses to give British Columbians $450 million in transfer payments, and then the following year -- '97-98 -- when they refuse to give an $800 million transfer to British Columbians for our social programs.

But let me reassure you that this debate will unfold. A select standing committee is.... There are other appropriate forums in which we will engage in a wide debate around these matters. I have a couple of things, though, that I want to comment on in terms of your suggestion. We may have to talk first and foremost in the very near future about being British Columbians for British Columbians, because of the reprehensible action taken by the federal government. But in my heart of hearts, that's not the way we should be going.

Just a decade ago there was a massive in-migration to Ontario from British Columbia, when we were facing a recession in this province out of proportion to other parts of the country. Many of our families were only kept whole by virtue of the fact that one earner went elsewhere -- had to leave the province for Alberta or Ontario -- to support the family. Quite frankly, the Canadian economy is based on labour mobility -- the ability of your kids, husband or wife to go elsewhere to search for work and not be penalized for being mobile to that extent. It would be preferable to have that kind of base. However, the federal government is putting an end to that by virtue of its actions. It's forcing -- and virtually abandoning -- provinces to maintain the social safety net.

But they put one cruel twist of fate on all of this, which is that they abandon all principles of CAP funding -- all principles outlined in that -- except for one, saying that no province can hold out residency as a requirement for giving social assistance. In other words, they've said to British Columbia: "We will give you less to support your social assistance system. We will not give you any support. We will not give any protection to poor people, in terms of being able to appeal your decisions or whatever. But we will say to you, even with less, that you have to take and provide for whoever arrives in your province." I say that's a real giant slap to the face of British Columbians.

An Hon. Member: Is that a Liberal government?

R. Chisholm: I'm going to be talking to other members about this.

I'm appalled by what you have told us about the growth in this account -- the 29,000. British Columbia is paying more than half the full bill of Canada's provinces, and that isn't right. Our citizens and taxpayers here expect us to quit passing the buck on this. It's time for action with Ottawa. Let's let them take this on, as they are downloading to us and we can no longer afford that, obviously. I believe a select standing committee is one way to go, to get that idea out there and get it publicized.

The minister, in her opening remarks, didn't talk about Ottawa much. She said a few things and a few numbers here tonight. She didn't get into the Canada Assistance Plan at all in her opening remarks. Once again, the official opposition Liberals haven't even begun to mention Ottawa or this problem.

The question to the minister, who will appreciate this question, mind you, is: could the minister lay out for us the current picture of the Canada Assistance Plan? What are the figures for the past few years, which you've given us a couple of? What has the total bill for social assistance been? What has Ottawa's contribution been? If the minister could deal with the framework first, then after the committee digests that I want to move on to what changes are anticipated in the fiscal '96-97 year. But first the framework, please.

Hon. J. MacPhail: The CAP off-loading.... The previous Mulroney government put a cap on CAP, which penalized, particularly, a growing economy like British Columbia's, with net in-migration. They started that, and it was perpetuated by the Chretien Liberal government as well, to the extent that now, cumulatively, we are receiving, as of this year, $1.3 billion less in terms of CAP funding, CAP revenue. Overall we anticipate that that will.... With the cap on CAP and then the reduction of federal contributions on top of that, the total off-loading is $1.7 billion as of this fiscal year.

The federal government has acknowledged the unfairness of the off-loading practices but nevertheless is continuing them. They're actually adding further to that by going to a block funding method. As a result of the off-loading, the federal share of contribution to CAP has dropped from 50 percent to 33 percent for this year -- a terrible off-loading.

I just want to talk about what the federal government has planned. You asked a question about what they have planned down the road for CAP. They've killed CAP. They've put in a bill that will kill CAP as of the end of this fiscal year, and they've announced that it's going to be replaced by.... They've killed CAP and the established programs funding -- that was where they cost-shared programs -- and they're going to replace them with a new block fund called the Canada health and social transfer. It will provide fewer funds to the province. Our government has taken the lead in strongly objecting to this off-loading.

By moving away from the cost-shared approach of the Canada Assistance Plan, they're actually putting Canada's social fabric at risk. We plan, though -- and are vigorously taking the lead -- to develop national standards and protect the integrity of Canada's social welfare programs and, at the same time, to fight for fiscal fairness from the federal government toward British Columbians.

R. Chisholm: These figures you're giving me, I gather, are for the '96-97 fiscal year. Or is that just '95-96? Could you tell us what you expect in '96-97 with this ongoing downloading?

Another factor there for the minister to think about is: what kind of cooperation are you getting from the federal government in discussions on where this money is coming from -- this downloading from the federal government to the provincial government? Have there been negotiations where the provincial government and the federal government have discussed how much of this downloading would be accepted by the provinces? After all, we have to be realistic: the federal government has to find someplace to find this money, and obviously some of that is going to be from downloading. 

[ Page 15733 ]

Have there been discussions between ministers on this subject, and has there been agreement on what percentages should be cut?

Hon. J. MacPhail: On top of what I've already reported to you, in the year '96-97 there will be a further reduction of some $430 million to British Columbians from the federal government. As I said, in '97-98 that will expand to an off-loading in that fiscal year of $800 million. We also expect that there are major changes on the horizon to the unemployment insurance program, which will exacerbate income assistance loads and will have the effect of federal off-loading as well.

Our government has taken a concerted approach amongst our cabinet ministers affected by this and has said to the federal government that this is unacceptable. We are also pursuing that kind of agreement and that kind of position to be held amongst our other provincial and territorial colleagues as well.

R. Chisholm: I want to think about this for a few minutes, so I would like to move on to another area that you might be able to straighten out for me. This is the area in the endeavour of PEP, which all ministries were given responsibilities for assisting in time of emergency. The minister and the committee should know that in Committee A I have been asking questions of other ministers about their roles in the provincial emergency program.

My theme has been that with the disappearance of CFB Chilliwack in 1999, if not earlier -- if this does happen -- British Columbia will no longer have the Canadian army on B.C. soil to call upon in times of natural disaster or civil disorder. I think this is a serious matter. We have certain guarantees to federal assistance under both the Canadian constitution and the National Defence Act, and I have tabled excerpts from a number of municipalities and regional districts that share my concerns. The Premier has taken an interest in what I have been saying. In the past few days I have met with the officials of the provincial emergency program to see what our plans will look like without federal assistance in British Columbia -- without the engineers and the army and its immediate help. I have concerns. Therefore could the minister tell me if she is aware that her ministry plays a vital role in times of provincial emergency? Could she relate to the committee her understanding of that role? If at all possible, could she pass that information on in written form at a future date?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Yes, we play a major role in terms of emergency social services to disaster victims. I'd be more than happy to pass that on in written form at the earliest opportunity.

R. Chisholm: Could the minister just give us an overview of exactly what her role would be at times of disaster, just for the sake of the committee? I'll look at the policy in detail later.

Hon. J. MacPhail: We participate in the strategy for disaster response. We're the key ministry for emergency social services: provision of shelter, food, clothing, registration and personal support for families forced from their homes by a major disaster. Our ministry also coordinates the volunteers who participate in the provincial emergency response program.

R. Chisholm: Could the minister consult with her officials and see whether or not they could envision a situation where her ministry might ever need some form of federal assistance from the Canadian Forces in meeting any of its responsibilities under PEP, such as lodging and that type of thing?

Hon. J. MacPhail: We have an excellent support team, but I'll certainly contemplate his question.

R. Chisholm: I have another avenue of questions while I have the floor. I won't belabour this, but it's regarding the outcome of the Gove inquiry into the death of Matthew Vaudreuil. I raise this on behalf of the Big Brothers, Upper Fraser Valley. They sent a letter last May to the Premier. They were very concerned about the need for the type of inquiry that was eventually held. Their bottom-line question was about how regulations would be changed to ensure that the sad situation that happened with Matthew Vaudreuil doesn't happen again. The minister should know that I'm not pursuing this for any partisan or argumentative reason whatsoever; I just thought I would bring us up to date and give the minister an opportunity to tell us about the changes to the regulations that will help with these situations in the future.

[9:30]

I know the minister has said that she is awaiting the final report from Judge Gove this summer. The minister made some comments in her opening remarks on the subject. She is hopeful about the child, youth and family service act and the companion legislation in the Child, Youth and Family Advocacy Act; and there is new funding for new staff to work on prevention, etc. But my question on behalf of my constituency group is: with the new legislation and funding, and with what the ministry has already learned from Judge Gove, can the minister tell us if there is anything else she needs from us, the members of the Legislature, to help deal with future situations?

Hon. J. MacPhail: The question is timely -- actually, it's a little bit post-timely, because we just finished debating two pieces of legislation that arise out of recommendations from Judge Gove, and we've had a good discussion via legislative amendment. But let me tell you.... I appreciate the member's offer of community and political support on future changes. We anticipate that Judge Gove will report out at the end of the summer. I have met with him, and he's kept me apprised of his progress. There is no question that the ministry has confirmed and reaffirmed that its priority is the safety of the child. We've reflected some of that in the amendments we brought forward to legislation earlier today.

But we have not stood still, waiting for Judge Gove. We work closely and cooperatively with him and his staff, and we've also moved forward in areas in which we already knew change was absolutely mandated. We've increased our staff on the front line. By the end of this fiscal year, there will be almost 300 child protection and family service workers on the front line. We've enhanced the quality and training for child protection. We've got new computer technology in place to upgrade the alert system on files. We've got improved ability to share information between programs for children and their families. We're improving the effectiveness of relationships with other child-serving agencies, both inside and outside of government. That's just a partial list of our responses.

[ Page 15734 ]

But the important thing and the key to your offer -- which I will take you up on -- is that the best legislation in the world and a social worker on every corner will not complete the task of protection of our children if the community abandons its responsibility to our children. The community has not abandoned its responsibility, but the world is becoming increasingly complex around protecting our children. What we can do -- this is where you can assist -- is to raise the debate and bring forward issues of concern about our children at risk, and say that the community and government have to work together in order to make the family safe for all children -- and that when the family isn't safe, there will be resources available to protect the children.

R. Chisholm: Let's say specifically in regulations.... Have there been regulations that have changed to ensure that this does not happen again? I realize that we've debated it in a couple of bills in the Legislature. Mind you, we were working in two Houses -- one on Forests -- so I wasn't here for that portion; I was in Forests. Have there been specific regulations that have changed to ensure this doesn't happen?

Hon. J. MacPhail: There's a whole new act. The Child, Family and Community Service Act is an entire new act that was debated in the Legislature last year, much after Matthew's tragic death in '92. We've continued to debate that legislation, with amendments to it before its actual proclamation later this year. In addition, we have the Child, Youth and Family Advocacy Act, which, for the very first time, establishes an independent advocate of the government on behalf of children, youth and families.

The Chair: Recognizing that legislation is not a proper subject for estimates debate and recognizing the minister's rather detailed answer to that question, I would suggest we move on to something else.

R. Chisholm: I'd like to talk a little bit now, in this segment, about poverty; it's on the rise. I'm sure the minister read an article in the Vancouver Sun on April 18. It was titled: "Poverty on Rise, Welfare Council Claims." I'd like to read a couple of things into the record:

"It shows that in B.C., children were among those hit hardest by falling incomes, rising costs and a 9 percent unemployment rate.

"The number of B.C. children living in poverty hit a 14-year high of 20.5 percent in 1993 -- compared to 10.4 percent in 1980 -- a total of 164,000 children. Hardy said that's a disturbing trend, because kids in poverty are less likely to finish high school, more likely to suffer illness and find it difficult to improve their economic standing when they reach adulthood."

It goes on to state:

"In fact, 34.4 percent of unattached British Columbians between ages 19 and 65 are below the poverty line, says the report.

"It also shows that the number of people in low-paying jobs, or collecting unemployment insurance benefits or welfare, is at its highest rate in seven years. In B.C., the number of...residents living in poverty was at 17.3 percent -- just a hair's breadth away from the national average of 17.4 -- or 584,000 people.

"Kids with single moms had a 64.4 percent chance of finding themselves in poverty, compared to 11.4 percent of the children in two-parent families."

The minister has probably commented on this during the estimates at one time or another, and I may have missed it due to the two Houses. Given that Jean Swanson is now saying that we have had to create jobs to solve the serious problem of youth and poverty, should this not be the minister's major weapon against poverty? What are her solutions for job creation?

Hon. J. MacPhail: We have a plan. You've probably seen the advertisements. We're investing in people, natural resources and infrastructure. That plan is a detailed proposal and already has success stories around working in partnership with the business community to create jobs -- permanent, stable, well-paying jobs where people can permanently attach themselves to the workforce and support their families. We are investing in people by providing them with the skills and training necessary so that they can take up the jobs of the twenty-first century. We are ensuring that the infrastructure is in place so that the economy can grow and private enterprise can flourish. There is no question that job creation is the answer. Our economy in British Columbia has an excellent record on job creation, but it is not enough; we need to do more. And that is what our plan for investing in the future is all about.

R. Chisholm: Has the minister given any thought to trying to encourage some who are living on the poverty line in the lower mainland, where costs are high, to move to other areas of the province where costs are lower, to increase real income and reduce the gap in availability, income and living costs? Can the minister tell us, with this particular problem and students graduating, if they have had an increase in people on the welfare rolls? I'm talking specifically about high school and university students who have graduated. Have we seen an increase in graduates in the last couple of years?

Hon. J. MacPhail: A person has a right to live where they live. The government would not in any way be mandated to determine where people should live. However, we do greatly encourage people to go where the jobs are, and we provide support for them when they do that. Secondly, we encourage people to manage their limited resources effectively, and if that requires moving into less expensive accommodation, we encourage them proactively to do that.

R. Chisholm: That is what I asked: is your ministry doing anything to encourage them, to give them incentives to move to other areas where it is less costly for them to survive on the amount that they get out of Social Services? The second part of that question was: have we seen an increase in graduates from high school and university on the welfare rolls in the last couple of years?

Hon. J. MacPhail: I though I had answered the first question: that we advise people on how to manage their money effectively and will provide them with an allowance to move if indeed they choose to move to cheaper accommodation, but we don't bus people into different areas. If the hon. member is asking whether people are increasingly coming onto the welfare rolls with higher levels of education, I think we can get that information for you, but I would predict that the answer to that is yes.

V. Anderson: I'd like to follow up. As we were leaving the last time, we were talking about the basic temporary assistance. I'm wondering if you can give us the number of 

[ Page 15735 ]

FTEs that are working in that area and what the cost is of that. Again, we're working from the basic list that we've been following. We dealt with temporary assistance last time. We might deal with the basic temporary assistance: the FTEs that are involved in that program, the amount of money and approximately how many people are on that at this point.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Staff are not assigned according to a specific kind of assistance, so I'll give you the overall stats of the income assistance caseload. Each FAW has a mixed caseload, of course, of which I'm sure the hon. member is aware. There are 1,828 people working in the field -- regional operations -- in this division, and there are 30 at headquarters.

V. Anderson: What amount of money would be spent within that area?

Hon. J. MacPhail: I'm sorry, hon. member. Are you asking for the amount of benefits paid out in that area? Is that the question?

V. Anderson: For basic temporary assistance, and then we'll go on afterwards to the assistance for transients.

Hon. J. MacPhail: It is $1.4 billion.

V. Anderson: What are the number of FTEs and what is the amount of temporary assistance for transients? How many transients, approximately, are there in that area?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Again, the FTEs are assigned a mixed caseload. The hon. member understands that. We provided $13.47 million last year, and it's going up to $14.08 million this year, for hostel and emergency shelters for transients.

V. Anderson: And the temporary hardship assistance category?

Hon. J. MacPhail: It is $178 million.

V. Anderson: What is the amount for children in the homes of relatives?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Approximately $15 million.

V. Anderson: How does the payment for children in the homes of relatives compare to the payment for children in foster care in homes of people that they are not related to? What's the comparable rate for children in those two different categories of homes?

[9:45]

Hon. J. MacPhail: I know this is a debate that goes on about the disadvantage placed on parents whose children are not in foster homes. So I want to reassure the hon. members opposite that the basis on which a child is taken into a foster home is not income; it's based on abuse or neglect or harm, on the child being at risk. Certainly it would be foolish of us to assume that.... We know children are at risk across socioeconomic lines. Let me just tell you that in terms of a child in the home of a relative, the basic maintenance rate is $252 monthly for a child five years old and under. That increases in stages up to $394.80 per month when the child is 17 years old.

V. Anderson: What is the amount of money spent on the emergency social services program we've been talking about?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Last year it was $689,000.

V. Anderson: The other day I was talking to a person who was working on the emergency social services with the ham radio programming. He was very excited about this, but he was concerned that they're not getting the support they need to really develop that program in the way they should, with the kind of equipment they need and the changeover that's required. So he wanted me to put in a plug -- they would appreciate some more support in the ham radio network. That will be so fundamental, because it may be the only system that's available to us. I wanted to comment on that one.

I'm aware that the employment and training have now been transferred over to the Ministry of Skills.

I'd like to move on to the family maintenance program. Could the minister talk to us about the amount of resources going into the program and the number of FTEs from the ministry that are involved in supporting it?

Hon. J. MacPhail: The program costs are $1.25 million this year, and there are 76 family maintenance workers serving about 5,000 clients.

V. Anderson: As well as the 76 ministry persons, part of the family maintenance program is done through contracted services, is it not?

Hon. J. MacPhail: No. We do contract for lawyers when it goes to court or whatever.

V. Anderson: Maybe it has changed, but my experience was that when we were working with persons in trying to get maintenance from persons outside the province and those kinds of concerns, it was through private agencies and private legal firms. It wasn't directly with the ministry that we were working; it was with the private agencies. Has that changed now?

Hon. J. MacPhail: I think the member may be referring to the family maintenance enforcement program. We actually get the order for the client, and then the family maintenance enforcement program, which is a contracted agency, enforces it. It would be under the circumstances that you describe that the FMEP would be involved.

V. Anderson: Is that still a voluntary program? Can persons choose to be in that program or not? What percentage now have chosen to be in the program, and has that increased?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Yes, it is a voluntary program, but we have been.... It's actually of particular importance to me. As a single parent myself, I know the value of ensuring that a person gets the non-custodial parental support. Quite frankly, 

[ Page 15736 ]

while a parent has to rely on income assistance and can get this service for free, it's very appropriate to establish that court order for times when she will be off income assistance.

It's all voluntary. Our FMWs are very proactive, though, in communicating the benefits of participating in this program, and I'm pleased to say that last year there was a 26 percent increase in the number of maintenance orders over the previous year. The average monthly amount increased. The average monthly amount of an award was $270 last year, and it was $264 the previous year, so it's incrementally increasing.

R. Neufeld: Could the minister tell me what percentage of single mothers on social assistance are enrolled in the family maintenance program?

Hon. J. MacPhail: There are 22 percent of single moms who have orders.

R. Neufeld: I know it's a voluntary program. At one time, if I remember correctly, it was not; it was mandatory. Could the minister explain why that change was made?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Yes, that was called subrogation. We removed subrogation because there were situations where a person on income assistance, in being forced to have contact with a previous partner, ended up in situations of violence. Actually, their families -- their children and perhaps even her -- were put at risk. So we ended the subrogation. In fact, I think there was also a legal challenge that would not have withstood the test of time. Continuing subrogationt would actually not have withstood a court challenge.

Instead, what we've done is a really good marketing program, quite frankly. Instead of coercion, we're using an excellent marketing program, an outreach program, to convince single moms -- generally about 95 percent of single parents are moms -- to participate. It's a wonderful transition method into the workforce from welfare. They can now choose a course of action that best meets their individual circumstances. For instance, there's the ministry family maintenance program that we were just talking about, the services of a family court counsellor, and legal aid or a private lawyer.

R. Neufeld: I'm not going to belabour this. We went through some of these family maintenance program issues the other day. But 22 percent of recipients.... I guess I don't quite understand how.... Maybe there is some way where there's contact between spouses in the family maintenance program. To my understanding, there is none; that's done by an intermediary. But possibly, I guess, there must be some way it happens which I'm not aware of.

I would go along with what the minister said the other day in a speech that she made, where she was quite vocal about the amount of dollars that it's costing British Columbians, taxpayers as a whole, for those fathers -- and they are fathers, 95 percent of them -- who have relinquished their responsibilities of caring for their children. I just think that it would be important for the ministry to somehow encourage more than 22 percent of single moms who are on social assistance to get onto the program, so that those parents can start collecting and those children can start receiving some of the moneys that rightfully should be coming to them through the father, basically, and not through the system.

Hon. J. MacPhail: Yes, I agree wholeheartedly with the member for Peace River North, and any suggestions in addition to what we are already doing would be welcomed. I might just reiterate for his edification that we are also pursuing the federal government to quickly implement their proposed changes to family maintenance payments. They have a schedule of payments to use through the income tax system, etc. We're vigorously pursuing them to implement that.

V. Anderson: How many staff and FTEs are there in the ministry's investigator program? How many investigators are there? How many support staff are there with the investigators? What is the cost of that program at the moment?

Hon. J. MacPhail: We did explore this a bit, but I'll go over it again. It's now called the prevention, compliance and enforcement division. There are 95 FTEs. The cost of the program for 1995-96 would be $4.2 million. At the division headquarters operation, there are nine, two of which are clerical support; in the regional resources, there are 86, of which 16 are clerical support.

V. Anderson: So there are 86 investigators. Did I understand that there are 70 investigators working in the field? Is that what I am to understand?

Hon. J. MacPhail: The prevention, compliance and enforcement division in the field is 86 strong, and 16 of those are clerical support. But there are different kinds of enforcement. We have nine regional supervisors. We have nine eligibility officers that try to stem the abuse of people applying for income assistance who are not eligible, and then there are 18 assistant ministry investigators. Those are actually growth positions; they assist the ministry investigators. They are often very experienced FAWs. Then there are 34 ministry investigators.

V. Anderson: How many FTEs or persons do we have working in the bus pass program, and what is the cost of that program at the moment?

Hon. J. MacPhail: There are no FTEs attached to this program. The net cost in 1995-96 to taxpayers will be $11.54 million, and there are 37,000 users.

V. Anderson: I've been asked by one of my constituents in this regard, which not only concerns getting support but is also related to the bus pass program. He is quite concerned that persons who are getting CPP disability cheques are also getting GAIN cheques. Some seem to be able to get both. He has AIDS and is not able to; yet other people with AIDS are getting both, as he understands it. He wants some clarity on this. He is concerned that people who tell the truth, like himself, are punished; whereas other people are getting expenses and benefits under both of these programs.

Hon. J. MacPhail: That's an accurate case to highlight exactly why we need the provincial appeal board. Community tribunal decisions are upholding illegal double-dipping. CPP and IA benefits have to be blended; you are not allowed to collect both without declaring both. In some cases, IA may top up CPP benefits, but that's the rare occasion. It is required under the law that you declare your CPP and not double-dip with both -- hence, another reason why we need a provincial appeal board.

[ Page 15737 ]

[10:00]

Let me assure you that people with catastrophic illnesses do require support. Our Ministry of Health is doing extraordinary work in terms of supporting people with catastrophic illnesses. Recently, I'm pleased to say, I announced changes to the dietary allowance for people with handicap benefits, so people with AIDS for the very first time ever will be eligible for the diet allowance. I'm hopeful that will go a way to relieving the circumstances in which they find themselves.

V. Anderson: I just want to clarify: are you now saying that people who have AIDS and are unemployable for that reason can now be considered as handicapped, which they were not before, and so might be able to qualify for bus passes under the new regulations, once they are available?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Yes, there are many thousands of people with AIDS who are eligible for and do collect the handicap benefit. We have just changed it so that if you are eligible and do collect the handicap benefit, you are now for the first time eligible for the diet allowance as well.

[H. Giesbrecht in the chair.]

V. Anderson: Are you also eligible under that for a bus pass?

Hon. J. MacPhail: If you qualify for the GAIN for Handicapped benefit, you are eligible for a bus pass.

V. Anderson: Picking up on a few items, first of all I'd like to thank the minister. I raised a couple of constituents' issues the other night and appreciated her staff phoning the next day to follow up on those. I appreciate the fact that they are working on them, and no doubt I'll hear from them in due course.

I also appreciate the minister's letter following our discussion in estimates about cooperation between the Minister of Health and the Ministry of Social Services with regard to persons with mental handicaps, particularly with regard to resources for people who would be helped as they moved from Riverview. I was very interested, as I read the minister's letter, that it was very careful to state that the resources were available for people moving out of Riverview but made no mention of cooperation between the two ministries for people while they're in Riverview.

So that's still a concern I would bring to the minister, particularly since I have copies of letters which I want to comment on briefly that have to do with situations of people not only in Riverview but in other homes of an institutional nature. These concerns came from the B.C. Mental Health Society, affirming that the support system, which we call the "comfort allowance," is not adequate in Riverview and that it should be reviewed. I also have a letter from the Greater Victoria Mental Health Services Society saying that it is not adequate; a letter from Pricare, the B.C. Association of Private Care Facilities, saying that the comfort allowance while people are in the institutions is not adequate; a letter from the nursing executive council, which deals with these people on a regular basis and says that it is not adequate; and from the Provincial Mental Health Advisory Council. They are all very reputable bodies that are recommending....

I would encourage the minister.... As well as the letters that I received, which indicated that they were reviewing the processes for persons with mental handicaps moving from Riverview, would she commit herself to working with the Ministry of Health in trying to improve the situation of those persons with mental handicaps while they are in Riverview, with the same kind of commitment that she has given for persons when they are moving out of Riverview?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Just to clarify language, people in Riverview have mental illnesses, they're not mentally handicapped.

I would hazard to say that we could get thousands of letters written to say that all levels of income assistance are inadequate, and that the one in five children in this province who have to live in poverty would claim that their level of support is inadequate. I would also hazard a guess that in families where a single mom has two or three kids, no one in that family unit would have $82 of disposable income at any period in time. It's an issue of dealing with limited resources and putting those resources in a place that meets, at least in a manner that's fair and effective, the basic needs of people who have to rely on income assistance.

I have reviewed over and over again the budgetary pressures to see what can be accommodated in terms of providing for those who are most in need. There is no room in this year's budget to contemplate increases in the comfort allowance; however, my ministry remains committed to working with the Ministry of Health as the Ministry of Health looks at their responsibilities for people who live within Riverview Hospital.

V. Anderson: My final issue, picked up partly by the member for Chilliwack, is that underlying all of these issues.... I'm now looking at the Ministry of Social Services strategic plan for the coming year, which summarizes what they have done quite glowingly, and summarizes what they're going to do quite glowingly. One of the concerns I have is that it does recognize that one of the facts of life for children and many adults in the province is poverty, but none of the programs, per se, deal with the causes and the eradication of poverty. They deal with issues trying to alleviate it to some extent, but there's nothing that indicates here that the government as a whole, along with the ministry, is dealing with this in a holistic way. Each of the ministries has a program, but the basic catastrophe of some 20 percent of our population continuing to live in poverty is a major concern. I know the minister is concerned about that, but I don't see it as a major highlight in the programs and plans of the ministry. So I'd like to highlight that, because unless we get at the source of people's difficulties, we're only going to continue our need for band-aiding along the way.

As a final concern, I'd like to stress that there needs to be between this ministry.... This ministry is probably the one to take the lead in government to do a war, a campaign -- whatever we want to call it -- to eradicate poverty, not just to accept that it's there and try to deal with it after it occurs.

Hon. J. MacPhail: There is no government that is more concerned with people who have to live in poverty than our New Democrat government. Against all odds, we've protected the social safety net and ensured its renewal rather than 

[ Page 15738 ]

its destruction. That's against some pretty severe odds. Certainly, we face other provincial jurisdictions that see no need to protect social programs.

There are a couple of things. The best solution for child poverty is to give their mom and dad a permanent, decent job on which they can survive throughout. As I spoke of earlier, our plan for investing in the future deals exactly with that. But we've taken many small but very important steps in terms of doing as much as we can to strengthen family income. We raised the minimum wage so that people who have to rely on minimum wage can perhaps better provide for their family. We've greatly increased child care accessibility and affordability so that moms and dads don't have to worry about their children when they go out into the workforce. Just the virtue of protecting our children from risk and harm is a great move forward in terms of their safety and well-being.

Is there more to be done? Yes, absolutely. In fact, it never ceases to amaze me how much of our tax dollars goes to investing in the health care of people who are senior and how little of the money goes into investing in our children. That's not to say that I begrudge the well-being or health care for seniors, by any means. But I do want to say that perhaps all of us, who could advocate as strongly on behalf of our children, would eventually have our expenditures by government cut down as our children grow up in a healthy and poverty-free environment. Absolutely, we're committed to it.

I hope we don't see the day, like what happened in Ontario, where an election is fought on the backs of poor children. I'd rue the day that that occurred in British Columbia.

V. Anderson: I would like to affirm that comment with the hon. minister. I don't think any election should be fought on the backs of children or of people who are in difficult circumstances, whether that's because of job lack, economy, health, or whatever it is. We need to do our elections on positive issues, not on the difficulties that people have. I affirm that and thank the minister for her patience and perseverance in the estimates.

Vote 53 approved.

Vote 54: ministry operations, $2,781,112,835 -- approved.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I move that the committee rise, report resolutions and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; the Speaker in the chair.

Committee of Supply B, having reported resolutions, was granted leave to sit again.

Committee of Supply A, having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

Hon. G. Clark: First of all, I would like to advise all members that the House will be sitting on Wednesday of this week. With that, I move this House do now adjourn.

Hon. G. Clark moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 10:13 p.m.

PROCEEDINGS IN THE DOUGLAS FIR ROOM

The House in Committee of Supply A; G. Brewin in the chair.

The committee met at 6:41 p.m.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF FORESTS
(continued)

On vote 35: minister's office, $432,868 (continued).

W. Hurd: Just for the record, over the dinner hour I was contacted again by my contact at the Kennedy Lake division, who advised me that there are five further cutting permits still in the approval stages, in addition to the two the minister alluded to earlier. The fact that the first nations responsible have not signed off on the permits yet is the reason they have not been approved. One assumes that the necessary forestry work has been done for the approvals to be granted, but the requirement is for a sign-off by the band chief. That has not occurred. On behalf of the loggers at Kennedy Lake, I would ask the minister what steps the ministry can take if that approval by the first nations is not forthcoming. Is there a requirement that that permission be granted before the permits can proceed, or is there a way that the ministry can break the logjam?

Hon. A. Petter: Just to clarify, these permits are before the first nations, not before the joint management board for consultation. We anticipate that three of them will be signed off, hopefully today. We will continue to work, as we have in the past, to ensure that the others are, as well. I might just say, to give the member some encouragement, that tomorrow my deputy minister is planning to go up to the area to talk to some of the first nations about a range of issues, including these. Were we to conclude estimates this evening, that would mean that he could be up there tomorrow doing the work that I'm sure the member and I would want the deputy to do in facilitating these and other matters in the sound. I add that as an added inducement to this evening's deliberations getting done with dispatch and efficiency.

W. Hurd: I appreciate that answer, and I'm sure that the loggers, who have expressed their concerns to me, will be encouraged as well by the news that in fact their permits will soon be in place to enable them to continue working in the province.

When we adjourned for the dinner hour, I think we were talking about the small business enterprise program and stumpage in general. I wonder if the minister could take a while to explain to the committee the formulation the ministry uses to write off stumpage losses or uncollected stumpage in the province. What type of evaluation is done here? Is it an 

[ Page 15739 ]

uncollected stumpage bill for a 12-month period? Does it go into an extended period of time? I've seen amounts of uncollected stumpage from previous years that ran into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and I wonder if the minister could just take a brief period of time to explain the formula the ministry uses to decide that stumpage is in fact uncollectible. That would be my first question.

[6:45]

Is any effort made to identify individuals or companies that have basically shortchanged the Crown? Are any penalties levied with respect to those individuals bidding again on renewed licences, particularly under the small business forest enterprise program? The concern has been expressed to the opposition that individuals who are in default to the Crown for stumpage seem to be able to reconstitute their companies and their organizations and get back into the bidding process again. My first question would relate to the formula the ministry uses to declare stumpage as being uncollectible. Having made that determination, what restrictions or checks and balances are in place to ensure that the individuals who owe the Crown money are prevented from doing this again?

Hon. A. Petter: Certainly every effort is made by the ministry to collect stumpage that is due. In doing so, assessments are made on the ability to repay. The ministry has the ability to seek special repayment programs or liens. Payments can be required before cutting permits are issued. As the member suggested, in respect to the small business program, registration will be lost if stumpage or payment is not forthcoming. The ministry considers writing off the loss only if all those avenues and opportunities are exhausted and it becomes clear that it is impossible to collect stumpage. I believe that the degree to which there are write-offs is amazingly small, in light of the amount of money that is administered by the ministry. That is certainly my recollection from times past. Even then, Treasury Board approval would have to be sought for any major write-off.

There is a problem, as the member has alluded, that new companies can be created to compete in the small business program in which some of the principals may have been involved with other companies that in fact lost registration under the program. I know that's a problem the ministry is concerned about and is reviewing, but it does pose a problem for enforcement. Given that the responsibility lies with the company, it is possible for people to constitute new companies and avoid the penalties that would have been suffered by the previous company. That is a matter of concern that the ministry continues to review.

W. Hurd: Can the minister tell us what the stumpage write-off was during the last fiscal year? Exactly how much was determined to be uncollectible? Is that figure available or published anywhere? It would seem, in light of the mandate to extract every dollar of revenue from a Crown resource, that those figures would be available and that the ministry would make a zealous effort to reduce the amount of uncollected stumpage as we proceed through each fiscal year. Perhaps I could ask him whether the amounts are available and whether the trend is down or up. Where are we headed in the province?

Hon. A. Petter: The ministry has been very successful, particularly in recent years, in ensuring payment. I don't have the exact number, but we can certainly provide it to the member if he desires it. I can tell you that as a percentage it is running at about 0.3 percent; that is, $3 out of every $1,000 goes uncollected. I think the member would agree that that is a remarkably successful rate of collection. I'm informed that in recent years that number is probably fairly constant.

W. Hurd: With respect to the small business program as an isolated activity, given the fact that the revenue collected is, I assume, a revenue source dedicated to general revenues and that the ministry incurs a long-term liability for stumpage, can the minister tell us what the default rate would be for the small business program? Perhaps he could give us the dollar figures, whether the trend with the program is up or down and whether the minister agrees that there might be a bit higher problem with that particular program. It might invite the need to revisit some of the checks and balances that are in place with respect to bids. The concern expressed to me is that some individuals and companies, by virtue of reconstituting themselves, are able to go through the bidding process two or three times, and each time there's a default. So I wonder if there's a trend upward with this program and if the ministry is making an effort to isolate each stumpage failure or each case to determine whether there is any systematic abuse of this particular program.

Hon. A. Petter: The number I referred to earlier didn't refer just to stumpage debts but to all bad debts within the ministry, so it would cover the small business program. I don't have the numbers available to compare the ratio in the small business program to the ratio outside the small business program. I'd be happy to get those numbers and will ask staff to do so for the member's benefit. I'm not clear whether the numbers are higher or lower for the small business program. We'll have to check on that.

The one problem that the member alludes to in the small business program is the problem of new companies being created that may involve some principals of companies that previously did not satisfy their debts. I am led to understand that that's not a huge problem, but it's obviously an area of concern that the ministry continues to review.

W. Hurd: It's my understanding that there's a liability listed under the small business program for forestry work that is required to be done by the ministry. I'm trying to remember which set of estimates it was, but I think it had reached $110 million or thereabouts for silvicultural obligations under this policy. When there is an incidence of default of stumpage with respect to a specific small business licence, how does the ministry recalculate that liability to acknowledge the fact that the revenue stream that supposedly flowed from that licence and would have gone to reforesting that site is now no longer there? Is there any breakdown done on the basis of the actual small business licence that's awarded? What calculation is made with respect to the overall silvicultural liability? How is it dealt with? One would assume that somewhere in the accounting procedures of the ministry the revenue generated from each small business licence would have to be then dedicated to the site from which the licence -- the harvest -- was calculated. Could the minister clarify what happens when there is a default on a specific licence? How does the ministry compensate for the silvicultural obligations that it still must meet with respect to the individual licences?

Hon. A. Petter: The short answer is that the ministry's obligation to its silvicultural commitments remains, regardless 

[ Page 15740 ]

of whether the particular area in question was one in which there was or was not a default. The issue of default is separate. The money that is paid toward silvicultural obligations comes out of the fund, and there is no direct correspondence between a default and a failure to pay and the commitment to undertake silviculture or the way in which that commitment is satisfied through the fund.

W. Hurd: Can the minister -- perhaps it's in the estimates book and I haven't found it -- advise the committee about what the ongoing obligation is that the ministry has under the small program for incremental silviculture? Perhaps he can advise the committee of the time frame that is used. Is it 15 years from the date of the harvest or is it much shorter than that, in terms of how long obligation for the ministry carries forward with respect to the individual licences once they're harvested?

Hon. A. Petter: I think I'll call upon my deputy to answer this, if that's acceptable, hon. Chair, given that it gets into some technical areas that the deputy is more familiar with than I am.

G. Armstrong: The ongoing silvicultural liability is in the neighbourhood of $100 million to $115 million. That's calculated on the basis of the cost to get to free-to-grow, which can be in the neighbourhood of 15 years.

W. Hurd: I'm curious about the 15-year time frame. Am I not correct in assuming that that would be a longer time frame than a normal licensee would face with respect to their silvicultural obligations? Is a free-to-grow state not considered to be considerably shorter than 15 years? That invites a question as to whether the obligations the ministry faces are similar to those faced by the licensees: are they higher? Lower? What type of standard or benchmark does the ministry use with respect to silvicultural obligations under the small business program? Is it the same as what would be performed by a licensee? Is that the methodology that's used?

Hon. A. Petter: The termination of free-to-grow does not vary from small business program to other forms of licence. The differences would only be there insofar as there's a function of different forest conditions and forest land types, but not as a function of the fact that we're dealing with a small business as opposed to some other licence.

W. Hurd: Finally, with respect to the $100-115 million liability, is there a requirement that a certain percentage of this liability be met in each fiscal year for the purpose of auditing the performance of the program? Is it just a 15-year window that might invite less revenue being expended in one year, or less resources in one year and more in the other? Is there any requirement or obligation that the ministry has to meet certain targets with respect to silvicultural investments in the small business program on an annualized basis?

Hon. A. Petter: There are no budgeting constraints or guidelines as such. There are constraints that are established by the preharvesting silvicultural prescription that applies to the site. The prescription will establish the standards that are expected to be achieved. That in turn will govern the level of investment that's required in a given year.

W. Hurd: Maybe I can briefly shift the discussion to the auditing process that one assumes will have to be done on a more rigorous basis under the Forest Practices Code. The minister, of course, will be familiar with the Tripp audit on Vancouver Island -- the compliance with fish, forestry and stream guidelines -- and how useful that audit was with respect to identifying the compliance of not only licensees, but the Ministry of Forests. While I recognize that the ministry will not be subject to the administrative and criminal penalties that are called for under the code, clearly as a major holder of cutting rights in British Columbia there's a need to measure compliance with the code on the part of the ministry as well.

I wonder if the minister could take a moment to describe for the committee the nature of the audits that will be done on ministry operations with respect to compliance with the code and silvicultural plans on file. The minister will recall that under the Tripp audit, there was a level of non-compliance identified between the plans on file in the ministry office and what was actually happening on some of the small business enterprise sites. I wonder if he could describe for the committee what kinds of audits will be done on ministry operations. Will they be as stringent as those that are clearly going to be required in the private sector for the licensees?

Hon. A. Petter: I thought we covered some of this territory the other evening. In any event, to recapitulate if I'm right or to the give the member the information if I'm wrong, the major responsibility for auditing under the code will be carried out by the Forest Practices Board. The board has the mandate to do audits across the province, and it is my expectation that it will undertake independent audits on a spot basis and without regard to whether the audits fall within the small business program or within other licence holders, but only with regard to whether or not they are necessary in order to measure performance. I expect the ministry will be subject to the same rigorous auditing procedure as are other licensees. The ministry may also do some of its own internal audits for the purpose of checking performance and ensuring compliance. I think the audits of the kind the member is talking about, the Tripp audits, are going to be analogous to the auditing procedure that is undertaken by the board.

W. Hurd: My query was more aligned toward internal audits that the ministry might do with respect to its compliance. Clearly one of the safeguards that licensees will have to undertake is that they will have to measure their compliance with the code in order to avoid prosecution. Clearly there is a requirement on the part of licensees to step up their own monitoring enforcement or at least the auditing of their activities. I wonder what the ministry has budgeted in this fiscal year to do the same on licences that it lets under the small business program. Has the responsibility for the range of activities, including roadbuilding, preharvest silvicultural prescriptions and approving harvesting plans that the licensee faces...? What kinds of additional resources or addition commitments has the ministry made to ensure that if the Forest Practices Board does do an audit, they fare better than they did in the Tripp audit?

Hon. A. Petter: Again, the member's question has left me a little perplexed as to what he is talking about, whether he's talking about audits.... I've dealt with audits as such. I think maybe he is talking about inspections and enforcement. If that's the case, the inspection and enforcement processes will not be targeted away from or toward the small business program. They will be undertaken across the land base.

[ Page 15741 ]

[7:00]

On the other hand, if the member is talking about what the ministry has done to ensure that the small business program is in compliance with the code, the answer to that is that there have been considerable efforts and resources put into training and other aspects of the small business program to ensure that the small business program does meet the requirements of the code. We hope that program will measure up well in comparison to other forms of licence.

W. Hurd: Can the minister tell us, in terms of dollars, how many additional resources will be budgeted to this purpose? Earlier in the debate the minister talked about the creation of an enforcement unit. One assumes that they would not just confine their activities to forest licences but might also venture onto all logging operations. Maybe I can ask whether or not the enforcement branch will have any role with respect to ministry operations. Or does it exist strictly to monitor the activities of licensees in the province?

My first question is: will the enforcement branch have any opportunity to scrutinize ministry operations? If not, what additional resources of the ministry will be available to ensure that the equivalent of the enforcement branch is there to scrutinize ministry operations?

Hon. A. Petter: The additional resources of the small business program to deal with code compliance this year, I understand, is envisaged at about 6 percent in the small business budget for that purpose. As I explained last day, the monitoring side of the enforcement will be done by field staff in the various ministry offices around the province, particularly the district offices. In that regard, those resources will be directed as much toward the small business end of things, or perhaps even slightly more, than they would be toward other forms of licence activity.

W. Hurd: I just have a few additional questions with respect to the small business enterprise program. I want to find out what formula the ministry uses with respect to the roadbuilding required under the small business program. When a road to be constructed in order to access timber is prohibitive in terms of cost, is there a benchmark or a standard? Are those types of checks and balances done? Again, I'm just responding to concerns that have been expressed to us about the cost of roads being built under the small business enterprise program and the fact that some of them seem to be prohibitive, and yet the same rules don't apply. I wonder if there was a standard or a benchmark that the ministry had with respect to construction of logging roads to access small business licences. Is there a point where the economics don't make sense, or do they try and determine at all times when the preharvest costs are running beyond the ability of the Crown to recover the revenue that it needs? Are there those types of checks and balances in place before the licences are awarded?

Hon. A. Petter: As part of the ministry's business-planning process carried out in the district offices and at district levels, there is certainly attention paid to the costs of infrastructure like roads and roadbuilding. In the past, for example, the ministry has sought on a districtwide basis to ensure at least a 10 percent return and will look very much at costs that would deny that kind of return, and that is reviewed on an ongoing basis as part of the business plan. District offices do ensure that developments that are necessary for harvesting are not excessive in cost in order to ensure that there is a return to the Crown, to the public.

W. Hurd: That's an interesting piece of information. The ministry does a business plan for each licence that's put out for bid. Am I to assume that its best estimates of road costs, silviculture obligations and administrative costs within the ministry are all part of a business plan before the licence is put out for bid? It's interesting that the ministry could be assured of getting a 10 percent return without necessarily understanding what the final bid would be.

I wonder if the minister could describe what's required to be in the business plan that the ministry files and whether that information would ever be available to other licensees and interested individuals. There have been some concerns expressed that the ministry may in fact be subsidizing some of the licences that are put out to bid, and I'm encouraged to hear the minister say that as a litmus test there's a requirement of a 10 percent return. Can the minister tell us exactly what is in the business plan that is forwarded to the ministry and whether that information is available to the public, other than through the freedom-of-information and privacy provisions?

Hon. A. Petter: The business plan is done annually on a district-by-district basis. It's a five-year plan, and as the member would expect, like any budgeting exercise, it attempts to project the development costs and the income and develops a plan based on past experience and future projections to ensure that the return to the program exceeds the costs of development. As I said, in the past the target that's been sort of looked to is a minimum 10 percent return on a districtwide basis. It's a matter of projecting all the intended costs of road development, maintenance, etc., and the revenue stream that will result from providing the harvesting opportunities under the plan.

W. Hurd: Can the minister tell us what the cost of compliance with the code would do to those business plans, and whether or not they're now required to be updated? Is there a yardstick the minister uses to deduce what impact adherence to the code will have on the 10 percent return he has alluded to?

Hon. A. Petter: The ministry has in the past year or so been working with the spirit and intent of the code, as have other licence holders, and has made adjustments. As I've said to the member, we have allowed for a 6 percent increase in this year's budget to take account of code costs. The ministry will continue to manage the plan in a way that maximizes the return to the public from the program, but certainly for the small business program and other licensees the code will entail some increases in costs. That's in the nature of moving toward a new and improved regime of forest management.

W. Hurd: In terms of the licences that are let, when a licensee or small business contractor comes forward to bid on 100,000 cubic metres, are the code impacts built into that bidding process? Is the contractor guaranteed access to 100,000 cubic metres, or would there be a reduction subject to the implementation of the code? I just wonder, since the bidding process involves a fixed volume of timber, whether or not the ministry then has to rush back and determine what the 

[ Page 15742 ]

impacts would be. For example, is the licensee guaranteed 100,000 cubic metres, and the cumulative impacts of meeting the code requirements would then have to be borne by the ministry?

It seems there is a cost item here with respect to the program. It could end up costing the ministry many, many millions of dollars. There would also be a risk on the part of bidders that in some way they might not get the full allotment of timber for which they have bid. I wonder where the liability or the risk lies, and whether the ministry would find itself with considerable administration costs on its hands in order to meet the licence that they put out for bid.

Hon. A. Petter: When the bids are put up for sale, it's based on the best understanding of what can be obtained by way of harvest under the prevailing plans and requirements. In the last year, for example, as bids have been put up, they've anticipated volumes based upon the management constraints of the code. Initially they were based on the spirit and intent of greenbook guidelines, and now, it's with more particularity.

W. Hurd: I just have one other issue to raise before yielding to the member for Chilliwack, who I understand has a line of questioning.

I've received some submissions from a small entrepreneur who is trying to market a substitute boomstick in British Columbia. I'm sure the minister has received submissions from this individual. He is advocating the use of tires as a means of controlling logbooms.

I think he raises a genuine issue. It's my understanding that stumpage is not collected on logs that are used for booms. Given the price of fibre today, that should motivate us to look at a substitute to be used for logbooms that would allow the ministry to get maximum value for each tree that's harvested in the province.

I wonder if the ministry has invested any resources in identifying how many boomsticks go through the system without being appraised. I guess they're a part of the overall quota, but as I understand it, they're not subject to stumpage. Is that an accurate assessment of the situation? Would the ministry, in the interests of extracting every dollar of revenue from the resource, be interested in looking into this further, not necessarily with regard to this individual alone, but with regard to anyone who might be able to find a substitute material for boomsticks in the province.

Hon. A. Petter: I don't know the answer to the member's question, quite honestly, but I am quite prepared to follow up and look into the matter, both the rules with respect to stumpage and boomsticks and to opportunities for alternative materials for boomsticks.

R. Chisholm: I'd like to talk a little bit about the Pinecone-Burke. There seems to be some confusion, and I'd like to have the minister clarify it for me if he can. This first series of questions will have approximately four questions involved in it, and I'd like to hear the minister's observations and what he thinks of the percentages that are being quoted.

[7:15]

The government has made several new park announcements and has introduced what is supposed to be a solution to the spotted owl issue; the Forest Practices Code also became law on June 15, 1995. Government has suggested that the impact of these initiatives on the AAC and the Fraser TSA will be minimal. This group is stating that this is not the case -- the impacts will be substantial.

"The information that we have at the present time indicates that the new parks and wilderness areas currently protected and proposed will reduce the current AAC by 8 percent. The government initiative to protect the spotted owl will further reduce the AAC by 10 percent. The impact of the Forest Practices Code will be about an additional 6 percent, according to government's own figures. This amounts to a reduction of 24 percent on top of the 12 percent reduction already imposed. This is a 36 percent reduction, which is very significant."

The question is: is it not true that the new parks and wilderness areas such as Pinecone-Burke, Indian Arm, Sumas Mountain and others proposed under the protected-areas strategy will reduce the AAC in the Fraser TSA by about 8 percent?

Hon. A. Petter: Certainly it's been acknowledged by the government that there are impacts in the various initiatives the member has referred to. The timber supply review is the major driver of potential reductions in timber supply within the Fraser timber supply area. That is a reflection, as I said at the outset of these estimates, of past practices -- of the failure to make investments in second-growth stands and of overharvesting in the past, which has created a huge gap between what is currently harvested and what the resource, over time, can maintain unless there are substantial investments.

It's true, under the timber supply review, for example, that there has been a 12 percent -- I believe it is -- reduction in timber supply under a recent annual allowable cut determination by the chief forester. It's also true that further reductions are projected into the future unless there can be changes in management practices, and clearly we're moving to make those changes through the forest renewal plan, etc.

With respect to the other initiatives, yes, the Forest Practices Code will have an impact provincewide. That impact is estimated at around 6 percent. It will vary from timber supply area to timber supply area, depending on the site conditions, etc. I don't have a specific number for the Fraser, to know whether it falls at the norm or above or below it, but that's the number I think the member is referring to. Protected areas also will reduce, to some extent, the land base that's available.

Having said that, I think the member would also recognize that within the lower mainland area at the present time, while there may not be as much parkland as will be created through the protected-areas strategy, we have announced recently a goal of 12.5 percent from the current 10.5 percent, following the Pinecone-Burke announcement, for major protected areas. While it is true that the number of parks will increase and that will remove timber from the operating land base, the member, I think, will also acknowledge that a lot more timber is currently removed from the operating land base because of the fact that so much of the land has been tied up in study areas, in spotted owl conservation areas and in other constraints. Unless we move forward and start to come to terms with this land use situation in the lower mainland, unless we start to set some definite goalposts, as we have done, of 12.5 percent for major protected areas and bring closure, we are going to be much more constrained than if we don't move to that goal.

When we announced the Pinecone Lake and Burke Mountain protected areas recently, we were also able to 

[ Page 15743 ]

announce that about 320,000 hectares of land, which previously was tied up, was going to be freed for timber harvesting, as well as an additional 80,000, in my recollection, once we've completed the protected-areas process. So at one level the member is right: there will be timber supply impacts. But I would suggest to him that the impacts of not proceeding -- of not having a land use plan that enjoys broad-base public support -- would be far more constraining. By moving to that plan, we are in fact going to be freeing up substantial areas -- something like 400,000 hectares of land -- for timber harvesting within the lower mainland area. Therefore one has to look at the relative benefits and costs and conclude that coming to a conclusion on land use planning, which will entail some expansion of the park system, is far preferable to allowing these issues and this uncertainty to continue and further constrain the land base.

R. Chisholm: I realize that some land has been released that was tied up due to ongoing studies and regulations, but I think there is some confusion out there. I can understand why, especially when you take a look at the next question I will pose: is it not true that the planning team dealing with the spotted owl was directed to come up with a plan to reduce the AAC of the Fraser TSA by no more than 10 percent? I shall quote from the land use coordination office directive of June 18, 1995:

"Habitat conservation and forest harvesting guidelines will be proposed to encourage a return to suitable habitat conditions and to maintain owl populations, so long as their impact is no more than an approximately 10 percent reduction in long-term timber supply over and above the levels set in the current timber supply review."

I will now quote from the park announcement on June 8: "Any areas to be protected for spotted owls will be part of the protected area strategy." I think there is some confusion there. Are the protected-areas strategy and the spotted owl protected area going to be one and the same? Or is it the way it is said in the directive from the land use coordination office -- that it will be up to and no more than 10 percent?

Hon. A. Petter: Put simply, the announcement that was made was that any areas that are to be protected for spotted owls will have to be included within the 12.5 percent figure, plus another 0.5 percent for small protected areas. Outside of that, there are some areas in which there may be spotted owl habitat that will be managed sensitively. As for the number that the member is referring to, whoever has provided him with the question has misconstrued the 10 percent figure. The 10 percent figure is a goal for the particular area. That is, the particular area being managed should be managed in a way that results in no greater reduction within that area than 10 percent, not a 10 percent reduction throughout the timber supply area.

The idea is to make it clear that areas protected for spotted owls must be protected as part of the protected-areas strategy and within the goal of 12.5 percent. Areas that are not protected, but which may nevertheless be subject to special management because of spotted owls concerns, will be managed in a way that will seek to limit the reduction within that particular area of no more than 10 percent of the harvest levels.

R. Chisholm: This information comes from the land use coordination office, and like I said, it was June 8, 1995. That was prior to the announcement.

The last question that was put forth was: is it not true that these initiatives, combined with the 12 percent reduction that already took place six months ago, will add up to a reduction of approximately 36 percent for that particular TSA?

Hon. A. Petter: I'm confused, even on the member's own numbers, as to how he gets to 36 percent. I certainly can't confirm that number; I don't know where the 36 percent is coming from. He talked about 12 percent, and he talked about 6 percent for the Forest Practices Code, but even there we don't know how that will be distributed within the TSA and over what period of time. Then he has talked about an 8 percent figure, so I'm not sure how the member gets to 36 percent.

R. Chisholm: The 8 percent will be the protected-areas strategy, approximately, of the AAC. The 10 percent is the spotted owl, which is in two or three documents from June 5 of this year to June 18 of this year, depending on which document.... These are ministry documents that we are talking about. The 6 percent is the Forest Practices Code that you have already talked about, and the 12 percent is the reduction of the TSA that we had about six months ago. That comes to a grand total of 36 percent. I just wonder what the percentage will exactly be, because that's the question they're asking. They've come up with 36 percent so far.

Hon. A. Petter: I can now see where the member is getting the numbers, but as I've already indicated, that 10 percent figure for spotted owl is misconstrued. It's not 10 percent of the timber supply area; it's 10 percent of the activity or management areas that are being managed for spotted owl. That 10 percent is not 10 percent of timber within the timber supply area; it's 10 percent of timber within a much smaller area that will be designated, as one would under the Forest Practices Code, for deer mule or some other species habitat. Management will have to be sensitive to the spotted owl, but it should entail no greater reduction within that area than 10 percent.

I think you know about the 12 percent number within the Fraser. We will have to see what the Forest Practices Code numbers translate to within the Fraser. Certainly I'll undertake to get those figures for the member over time, as the analysis is done.

As for the question about the protected-areas numbers, that depends a lot on what areas are decided upon by the current process that has been put in place. Whether they're areas of high timber value or low timber value and where they are will determine that number. I expect, as we have seen elsewhere where land use decisions have been made, that those numbers will be provided publicly at the time that recommendations are made to government so that government can benefit from those recommendations and secure public input before making a final decision.

R. Chisholm: Well, I guess we'll have to settle for that for the time being. Hopefully that will clarify thoughts on the process, where they're going and what the final cuts will end up being for those individuals.

I'd like to go to the area of J.S. Jones. I'd like to hear exactly how we're going to accommodate J.S. Jones in the announcement of the new park and how this is going to affect other licensees within that TSA.

[ Page 15744 ]

Hon. A. Petter: I'm very happy to share with the member the discussions I've had with J.S. Jones over the past month or so, most recently with J.S. Jones's employees, in which I have made it clear to the company and to the employees that the impact of the Pinecone-Burke decision is not to fall just upon J.S. Jones. It's an impact that will be shared among all licence holders within the Fraser timber supply area. That's because the licences held by J.S. Jones and others are volume-based tenures. That means the actual reduction of timber supply to J.S. Jones is relatively small. In my recollection, about 16,000 cubic metres of wood is likely to be taken away from J.S. Jones as part of its prorated share of the timber being withdrawn from the timber supply area.

In terms of where a substitute cut can be found for J.S. Jones, that's a question the district office is now working on in cooperation with the company. I would simply say that there are a number of possibilities, including moving the various licence holders around, in particular taking advantage of some of the new opportunities that have arisen or will arise because of the study areas and SOCA areas that are now to be freed up for harvesting. I said to the company and the employees that we will endeavour to ensure that the areas to be found for J.S. Jones are approximate to their current operation so that employees who are currently employed in the Pitt River area can continue to be employed. While there is some time to do this, in the sense that J. S. Jones was not planning to move into the Boysse in any substantial way for a number of years, I think it would be useful to get this issue resolved as quickly as possible. I have indicated to the company that I hope we can get new chart areas established for them and identified within a period of six months.

R. Chisholm: I think you just answered my last question with the six-month answer.

[7:30]

Regarding the other small licensees, you were saying that moving the boundaries of their licence areas.... I mean, this is going to be a cost to the companies. Is there any cost to be borne by the government because of more transportation and that type of thing, especially with the smaller licence holders and what it's going to cost them? Will there be any compensation to these organizations? Or will an arbitrary decision be made, and that will be the end of it?

Hon. A. Petter: I think we will certainly try to minimize any costs; I don't think there needs to be any substantial costs. The reason is, as I said, that J. S. Jones's operations are not going to move into the Boysse area for a number of years. It is therefore a matter of planning out two or three or four or five years ahead, not in the immediate short term. This means that if, for example, the small business program were to be shifted slightly from areas that anticipated being logged five years from now, I don't anticipate that that will incur a major cost either to government or to licensees. We do have some time here, thankfully, to get the development work done and to get the expectations of licensees adjusted to correspond with whatever changes are necessary.

R. Chisholm: I would like the minister to verify a piece of information I've got, and I must admit I'm not too sure whether it is factual or not. I would like to ask the question, just the same. It goes back to Forest Renewal. Of the 69 people appointed to the five advisory committees operating under Forest Renewal B.C., not one member came from the Fraser Valley area. Why has this oversight been allowed? Surely the Fraser Valley logging area needs to have a voice on at least one of the five committees.

Hon. A. Petter: I'm not aware if that's accurate or inaccurate. I'd be happy to follow up on this. I would say that there is substantial representation on Forest Renewal committees and on the board of people who work and live in the lower mainland region. If the member is talking about a more defined region within the Fraser Valley, I would be happy to check on that. How definitive one gets in looking at whether subregions or areas are or are not represented is a matter I'm prepared to look at, but generally what we've tried to do for Forest Renewal is provide, in general regional terms, good representation from around the province. I would be happy to pursue the Fraser Valley matter, and maybe the member can share with me how he would like to see the Fraser Valley defined for the purpose of responding to that question.

R. Chisholm: Thank you for the effort that you are going to make to come back to me to find out whether this is factual or not. I would like to see it defined as the TSAs that have an actual effect on the Fraser Valley -- for instance, the community that supports those TSAs, where the workforce comes from and that type of thing. There should be someone on those organizations from that area.

My next question is somewhat similar. It's about another possible oversight with regard to the board of directors of Forest Renewal B.C. Can the minister explain why, in a Crown corporation that is devoted to renewing the forest, there is not even one registered professional forester on the board of directors? I would just like to hear his opinion on that one.

Hon. A. Petter: The purpose of the Forest Renewal board is to act as a partnership agency for all the major stakeholders. I'm not aware if some of the representatives from the forest industry, for example, are registered foresters or not. Certainly the expertise of professional foresters is relied upon on an ongoing basis by the Forest Renewal board, as it was by the Forest Sector Strategy Advisory Committee. That expertise will be utilized in advising the board, and through the committees, as to which investments are most desirable. That expertise is readily available to the board, so I'm not quite sure why it would be necessary to have professional foresters represented on the board.

On the other hand, another agency I can think of, which is the Forest Practices Board, has much representation from professional foresters for obvious reasons. But the Forest Renewal board is really about trying to bring together a partnership of those who have a direct stake in the forest industry, and certainly the expertise of professional foresters is drawn in as needed in making those determinations. Once again, it's a balance of trying to get a broadly representative board that is of manageable size. Not every group or interest will be represented, perhaps, in the way that it would like, but we have tried to ensure that the composition of this board is broad and representative.

R. Chisholm: I would have thought that the board would have one professional forester who has the background to make these decisions....

An Hon. Member: We do.

[ Page 15745 ]

R. Chisholm: You do? That is great to hear. Maybe the minister can clarify that after the next question.

Hon. A. Petter: I was just reminded by my staff that Gary Merkel sits on the board; he was a professional forester.

R. Chisholm: Thanks for the quick reply on that question.

I want to commend the minister on ordering the speedy permits to cut lumber. The logging industry has been close to paralysis due to the proliferation of environmental and forestry regulations that have been implemented over the past three years. You have tried to get these licences out more quickly. This province cannot afford to let that type of thing hang on for too long. I'm just wondering what the minister is endeavouring to do to ensure that the red tape and overregulations that have hung over this industry will be rectified. He is going in the right direction in this scenario, but how is he going to go further? Is he going to look at regulations and try to combine or deregulate some of this to make it a little more simplified for industry in general?

Hon. A. Petter: Certainly one of the goals of the Forest Practices Code is not only to consolidate and bring together the various rules and create a level playing field, but also, by doing so, to set the stage for more expeditious and timely approvals. Obviously the transition from the previous system to this system has been a difficult one and has resulted in delays, as any change of that kind would. Having said that, we have worked very hard over the past year to deal with those transitional problems. We are now building on that experience to further improve the system.

I will give an example to the member that I hope is indicative of what we are doing across the province. In the southern interior we are working very closely with ILMA, through a joint process, to establish a way to make the approval system more efficient. We want to see how we can collapse processes in a way that will still ensure a high level of scrutiny and good forest management, but not in ways that will simply result in a proliferation of paper and delays. I think we are making some headway already. I suspect that as the code comes into force and people become more familiar with it, a more streamlined and cooperative process can be accelerated. I think we are through the most difficult patch. There are still some challenges ahead, but I'm confident that the code will act as an instrument for administrative efficiency and, in the long run, will help us overcome some of the barriers that the member correctly refers to.

R. Chisholm: We have a primary industry in the forest industry itself, and I'm talking about secondary industries. To their credit, the government and the logging industries have cleaned up their acts. If the east coast has its fisheries problem, we have our logging problem. We cannot afford to continually lay off loggers. My problem is: how are we going to develop a bigger secondary industry? Is the minister doing anything to put incentives out there to bring secondary industries into this province to help employ a lot of these people who have been laid off because of AAC cuts?

Like I said, the industry itself and government are starting to clean up the act, and that is good. But what is the government doing to create the environment for secondary industry to come in and take over so these jobs that have been lost in the forest industry can be taken up and taken into that industry? Like I said before, the east coast has a fisheries problem, and we have a logging one. We do not have to go the way of the east coast with what we saw there. We can create the environment for industry to come in, and I hope the ministry is looking into this and actively trying to put incentives out there to bring secondary industry in. Maybe the minister can enlighten us on that.

Hon. A. Petter: As we move toward a more sustainable form of management of the resource, this government has made it a number one priority to ensure that we do so in a way that does not undermine but rather supports employment and community stability. I'm happy to tell the member that over the past three years, we have increased the number of employees in the forest sector. The number who are now directly employed in the forest sector is up 15 percent, or about 14,000 jobs, from what it was in 1991, and we will continue to press to increase the employment within the forest sector.

What are we doing to that end? We are doing a number of things. The Forest Practices Code itself, by requiring more careful management, is having a positive employment impact. What industry often refers to as costs are in fact jobs for many in the industry, and a recent study that was released by a major accounting firm substantiated that there are positive job impacts as a result of the Forest Practices Code.

Beyond that, in terms of secondary, tertiary and value-added manufacturing, which I've talked a bit about earlier on, the forest renewal plan is a major generator of employment. Through incremental silviculture investment, the forest renewal plan will add to the value of our forest land base by increasing employment in the short term, and the return from that land base in the long term will further help to add to our employment stability.

The forest renewal plan is also going a long way to encourage value-added manufacturing. We recently announced a major value-added centre of wood excellence at UBC, which will deliver programs throughout the province through community colleges and with industry, to increase the entrepreneurial skills, the engineering skills and other skills, toward the end of increasing value-added opportunities. That is certainly a major initiative.

We talked earlier in the debate about the chair of industrial wood design that has been created in the Kootenays to increase opportunities for value-added processing. We talked earlier about a credit system this ministry is pursuing that will ensure that a greater volume of primary breakdown wood is made available for value-added manufacturing by both value-added manufacturers and within larger companies.

I believe very strongly that the future in this province is in adding value at each and every stage of the way in which we manage our forest resources through to the way in which we harvest and process those resources. That's why it's important not to lose the momentum we've gained in the last three years through the forest renewal plan and the Forest Practices Code. They are the key to our future economic stability and the jobs the member is referring to.

L. Fox: I've been listening with great interest to the minister talking about forest renewal costs, all the different initiatives that this government has brought forward and how 

[ Page 15746 ]

those costs have created jobs. I'll give him that, hon. Chair. I agree that any time you put regulation and specifics in front of industry, they have to address those through employees.

My real concern is in the rural parts of British Columbia. Right now, a number of sawmills haven't made any money for six months. If it hadn't been for the fact that our pulp prices have gone from $380 to about $980 over the course of the last year, would have real problems in the sawmill industry in northern British Columbia. Over the weekend I heard on our local newscasts that several sawmills suggest that they may have to shut down for the month of July, and that is going to be a real hardship. If we're looking at some kind of stability to be provided to those resource-based communities, obviously a layoff of a month or longer is going to be of great concern.

[7:45]

I recall the discussion fairly accurately around some of the initiatives taken by this government when we discussed legislation, and I know that I and other opposition members suggested that while lumber prices are up, the industry can afford it. But what happens when the price of lumber goes down? The impact on the industry of all these initiatives that have been taken over the last two years has taken away from the ability of industry to put aside dollars, knowing full well that the history of the industry is that it's very cyclical. In fact, it goes up and down, and lumber prices go up and down.

My real concern now is: what do I tell my constituents when the sawmills in that region have been losing money since January? If it hadn't been for the price of chips, many of those sawmills would have been hurt very dramatically. That's causing concern, because we still haven't seen the major impact of the Forest Practices Code. That's before us, in terms of what the industry is telling me about costs of acquiring logs, smaller cutblocks, more roads to build and higher prices of achieving those logs. All this adds to the cost side, and as the minister is well aware, we see a lumber price which dropped from something like $480 (U.S.) per 1,000 board feet down into the low $200s. In fact, it may even be a little below that now.

Those are some of the real concerns facing my constituents, who are very heavily dependent on forest sector jobs. In talking around my home community over the weekend, I know there is a lot of concern, and I think it's very genuine. Perhaps the minister would give us some overviews.

Hon. A. Petter: I very much appreciate the member's comments. Clearly we do operate in a province in which we have come to expect, and rightly so, that the wood-products industry will go through cycles. It's not uncommon that the log prices go up and down.

Thankfully, pulp prices tend to climb at a later stage in the cycle, and there has been an offset, which is not just coincidental but has been helpful in terms of stabilizing the interior sawmilling industry to a large extent. There is an understanding of that cyclical pattern and of the need to factor it into our decision-making. I may say, with respect to Forest Renewal, that we were very clear to make the formula one that did not require an increment in stumpage to be paid, should the price come below a certain level, which I think at the time was $250. I'm not sure how it's been adjusted with exchange rates and stuff -- no increment paid to Forest Renewal.

I can't resist saying to the member that it's one of the reasons why you may not want to be too strict on the regional equity argument. Yes, we want to be regionally equitable, but we also want to ensure that when the interior is down in the cycle and the coast is up, which is the case right now in prices, the investment program of Forest Renewal continues to provide jobs within the interior, even though the interior may not be contributing to the program at that particular time.

One of the of benefits of Forest Renewal is that it can help, both in time and in geography, in smoothing out the ups and downs in the cycle. The forest renewal program has accumulated a fair amount of revenue in the first year of the program, and it will continue to accumulate some in the second year, because it's going to take time to establish the full program. That was done intentionally, knowing that we would be in a cyclical industry, and it was useful to have that reserve of revenue to iron out the ups and downs in the cycle.

At the same time, Forest Renewal revenue will tend, at some periods in the cycle, to come in more from the coast and less from the interior, and at times more from the interior and less from the coast. Right now we're in a part of the cycle where the interior is in a difficult price situation, with very little revenue being paid into forest renewal, but Forest Renewal revenue is there, thankfully, to be paid out right across the province to provide stability and jobs in the interior that would not have been available even a year ago, because the program didn't exist. So Forest Renewal is an important part of a strategy to deal with what would otherwise be a very cyclical industry.

I agree with the member that we have to be very sensitive to costs. The Forest Practices Code, as I've said, does entail some additional costs. I disagree with the member that most of those are yet to come. My impression, in talking with at least some in industry, is that they feel that many, if not most, of those costs have already been absorbed. We've been operating for a year now with spirit and intent. Many in the industry tell me they'd made changes even before then that are in the direction of the code.

There may be some incremental costs, but I suspect that the increment that's left under the code is not the greatest share. Furthermore, within the interior and dry-belt regions generally, the timber supply impacts of the code will tend to be somewhat less than they are in wet-belt and coastal areas. So I want to give some comfort in that regard. This government is well aware that the interior sawmill industry is not doing well right now in terms of the price it can command for lumber and for logs, but fortunately it is doing well based on the chip prices. That's not unexpected -- we've been there before -- but we do have some additional instruments to help us, like Forest Renewal, which can help to provide employment and provide companies and employees with opportunities that wouldn't otherwise exist, because that program has been created to take account of these kinds of cycles and differentials.

Overall, in terms of the revenue picture for Forest Renewal, while it may be down somewhat as a result of the interior situation, happily, because revenues are up on the coast, the overall difference in projected revenues to Forest Renewal B.C., as a result of market shifts, is probably in the range of $40 million -- not huge in the general scheme of the overall program of $400 million. And that, I think, is good news as well.

L. Fox: I just want to follow up on a couple of points the minister made. First, when the lumber prices go up, industry 

[ Page 15747 ]

has historically been able to have more dollars available to them for technological change, for upgrading of their facilities and for storing aside for the rainy day or the lower downturn in the lumber prices. My concern here is that your Forest Renewal is on a quarterly basis, and given that presently they're losing money, as soon as they start to make any, Forest Renewal kicks back in, and it isn't going to give them that level of comfort. That's one issue.

The other is with respect to the jobs that are being created. It's all well and good to create value-added jobs -- in fact, I've always supported those. But we should realize that the value-added jobs are about $12-an-hour jobs. What we're losing out of the forest industry is jobs that pay upwards to double and oftentimes closer to triple that kind of money. The minister talked earlier about 14,000 more jobs today than there were, and I think that's great. But if you took a close examination of that, you'd see that those jobs pay a lot less than what we've historically known in the industry. They certainly do in my community and in the northern parts of the province that I'm familiar with, because technological change is one instrument that is phasing out a lot of the higher-paying jobs. So there has to be a relation....

Just one further point, though, before I make this statement. In terms of the yet-to-be-felt but ongoing impact of the code, while the minister is correct that many within the industry have been moving toward the intent of the code for over a year. In many cases the cutblocks are still not down, because the planning is still being done -- in fact, being redone -- in order to comply with the code with respect to the smaller cutblocks. What I'm being told by forest consultants and the industry is that this is going to add another increment to the cost of acquiring wood for the mill because of higher roadbuilding costs and smaller blocks. Much of that is yet to come. We're still able to operate on the roads that were built initially. The intent is to phase in and down to the required size under the code. So we haven't yet achieved full cost of the code in the northern part of the province, yet we're seeing sawmills....

One of my real concerns about this initiative is that it costs the sawmills a lot more to cut wood in the summer than it does in the winter. If you put financial pressure on them, because they saw cleaner wood in the winter, you're going to see them.... If they're going to shut down at all, they're going to shut down in the higher-cost season, which appears to be summer. I'm very concerned about the impact on the industry. I hope that it works out, but my fear is that we've extracted too much from the raw resource and put too much of the costs of that resource on the industry. At the end of the day, we're not going to be able to make a profit. If you can't make a profit, you won't have the investment; if you don't have the investment, you won't have the jobs.

Hon. A. Petter: I hear the member. I would point out that while we are in a downturn in interior prices right now, the profit picture being painted by industry, based on the previous year's experience, shows record profits by companies, even under incrementally higher stumpage rates and with some of the costs of the code already reflected. We've seen a high level of takeover activity in the industry, as the member is well aware, which suggests that people are not regarding timber-harvesting opportunities as a liability, but as an asset.

The key here is to make sure that we have a long-term plan that makes sense. When the forest renewal plan came about, we understood that the price would cycle as low as the low 200s and as high as the 400s. We seem to be in the lower end of that cycle. We built within that the understanding that there would be increased costs for the Forest Practices Code. I would say we are basically on track. We knew there would be countercyclical forces due to chip prices, etc.

Overall, the forest renewal plan will be a stabilizing force within the interior. The Forest Practices Code carries certain costs, but the costs of not proceeding with the code were in many ways greater. We have tried to minimize the costs of the code. We will have to continue to work with licence holders. Some of the costs are costs of making changes in approach to operations. Once those changes are integrated and incorporated within the regular planning processes of licence holders, then they'll cease to become costs of change, which people are experiencing. But I hear the member's concern; I share it. I don't think the evidence suggests that our projections are off. The interior price is down for lumber, up for chips, and there are concerns around that. Of course, a year ago people were crying because we couldn't get enough cutting permits out the door; there was so much demand. There weren't enough chips, and people were fighting for every last stick of wood. Wood was coming in from Alberta. We have the problem of overcapacity in milling in certain communities in the interior as well.

There will always be challenges, but overall I think we are in a better, more stable position today, notwithstanding the lower prices in the interior, than we were three years ago or even last year. It's going to be a matter of working with industry to ensure and monitor in order to make sure we're right in our projections.

The member made one reference, and I'm not sure if he intended to do this, but it is an important point. He talked about the previous quarter and the quarterly way in which stumpage is set, and I think that is a concern. The way stumpage is set is that it's based on the last quarter's prices. For that reason, it means that when you see a marked drop in price, notwithstanding that the price of lumber may have gone down, for the next quarter the companies are still paying stumpage on the higher price.

[8:00]

The companies never complain when it's going the other way, of course, but it does cause a bit of a challenge. I know that some -- Slocan Forest Products, for example -- have indicated that it's a problem for them. This is an issue I have asked the valuation branch and the ministry to look into to see whether there's some way to smooth this out, so you don't end up in a situation where people are paying stumpage based on a price that no longer pertains. I just want the member to be aware that I'm aware of that problem and that I have asked the ministry to look into it.

L. Fox: I was going to follow up on that point, actually, but seeing as the minister has done it.... My experience is that the industry doesn't like the upswing either, but they just won't complain about it because they're on the winning side. They really don't like that because it's difficult to plan. It also creates situations at times when they rush to get their logs in before the end of the quota to increase their inventories, and they have all kinds of management problems to take advantage of it.

The minister made reference to corporations making money in the last year and to the fact that other corporations 

[ Page 15748 ]

are trying to buy them out. I don't question that the integrated sawmills did very well, and they expect to do very well this year. Where we're seeing the problem is in the smaller independents that survive primarily on dimension wood, studs and their chip sales. I want to make reference to the attempted takeover and buyout by one corporation of another. The minister is fully aware that what drove that was the fear of fibre shortage more than a willingness to grow to make more money. While there were arguments given that corporations would indeed be in a better position to compete on a global market if they were larger and had a more consistent supply of fibre, I really believe that the securing of the fibre was the number one driver.

That being said, I want to talk for a few minutes about the Prince George TSA, and the minister can comment on that observation if he wants to. As the minister is well aware, we had an AAC review that showed that the Prince George TSA could in fact accommodate a 6 percent increase, notwithstanding the impact of the code or the LRMP process, which had not been considered. Beyond that, the very significant factor it mentioned and the key one for me -- and I've done a little research on it -- was the fact that the Prince George TSA was 30 percent overcapacity; its capacity to cut was 30 percent more than the AAC.

There are some factors here that are driving that, and they are going to be very difficult for the ministry to get a handle on in terms of long-term stability for jobs. One is that because of technological change, we are growing in the Prince George TSA at a rate of 1 percent a year in terms of our increased capacity. If you take an overall cut of nine million cubic metres, that means the capacity to cut in the Prince George TSA is growing by 90,000 cubic metres a year. Every five years, therefore, that is sufficient capacity to operate another sawmill, and therein lies the problem. As we see capacity grow, we see more and more pressure in terms of which sawmills are going to go. It's almost a foregone conclusion now, given the 30 percent overcapacity already, that some sawmills within the Prince George TSA are going to have to go.

The discussion that takes place in the area that I'm familiar with is around where that should be. The smaller resource communities like Fort St. James, Vanderhoof and Fraser Lake are extremely concerned, as are the mills at Isle Pierre. There was another mill that I had the pleasure of visiting and looking at the finger-joining, but I've forgotten the name now. They are rural sawmills.

How does the minister see us overcoming these concerns and providing some security to the workforce? I had two calls last week. The rumour mill has already started as to which sawmills were going down.

Hon. A. Petter: I very much appreciate the member's question. It gets right to the nub of one of the problems that we have to grapple with as a province and as a government: how we deal with the expectation that we can just continue to increase our primary breakdown capacity, when clearly the wood supply is not able to keep up in some areas of the province.

I might say to the member that it's my understanding that in the central interior, the relationship between the wood supply and the capacity of primary breakdown mills is generally healthier than it is in many other parts of the province. In the corridor from the Cariboo up to Fort Nelson, as I understand it, there have been some studies done which suggest that the balance is relatively good. That's not to say there aren't concerns -- I'm sure there are -- but it's relatively good. How do we deal with the problem? I think we need to work on a cooperative basis with industry and other players in the forest sector to set out targets, not just for timber supply, but for employment.

Earlier the member for Surrey-White Rock indicated serious concerns on behalf of the Liberal Party in these estimates about setting employment targets. I was horrified that he said he had concerns about establishing employment targets, because I believe we've got to work to that end. We've got to work with industry and say: "If, collectively, we are going to make investments through Forest Renewal, etc., to increase the fibre supply, that cannot come about simply through ever bigger, more efficient mills that create ever fewer and less stable communities. There's got to be a strategy that industry buys into in partnership with government and communities to ensure that the investments that government is prepared to make and bring to the table are matched with commitments from industry on the employment side."

How do we do that? I'd be very happy to share with the member the speech, "A 2020 Vision for the Forest Sector" which was referred to earlier in debate. In general terms, I say that I think we have to work with industry as we establish timber and employment targets. The strategy to do that means we have to get industry to buy into a process of replacing excess capacity of primary breakdown with new capacity and secondary and tertiary manufacturing.

I will just quote from the speech, because it was my attempt in the speech, "A 2020 Vision for the Forest Sector," to deal with precisely this issue:

"We will need to pursue replacement of some primary breakdown capacity with value-added manufacturing. Even if we are able to stabilize harvest levels, we all know there is excess capacity at the primary breakdown level in this province. Appropriate incentives for doing more with each unit of fibre. Investments in training and marketing, and a JobLink strategy to help workers move to new job opportunities created within the sector."

I might say to the member that this is not a strategy that I came to on my own. This is a strategy that I came to after considerable discussions over three years -- well, my case in a one and a half year period, and in the ministry's case under this government a three-year period -- with industry, particularly in the Prince George region, on precisely these issues. We talked on a number of occasions. Industry kept saying: "Why won't the government set a target level for harvest levels?" I said: "We are prepared to do that; we're prepared to entertain that. We need to know the land base, the rules and the strategies. We need to have an investment program." We have all that now. But I said that if we do that industry must be prepared to set a target level for employment, because I don't think communities and workers will accept the fact that we're going to put this huge investment into our land base if it doesn't come back to communities in the form of some guarantee of jobs. Those I spoke to in industry said: "Yes, if we can get some security around future timber harvest levels, then we're prepared to come to the table and talk about how we increase job opportunities and stabilize jobs through secondary and tertiary manufacturing."

That's what this speech was all about; that's what we've got to do. What happened? Go back to Hansard and the first 

[ Page 15749 ]

evening that we entered into this debate. You'll find the Liberal critic stands up in his place and says that he bemoans the fact that the government will be seeking to establish employment targets, which is absolutely essential if we are to deal with the very problem the member suggests. That's what we have to do. We have to work cooperatively to replace the excess capacity that currently exists in primary breakdown with an equivalent or greater capacity in secondary and tertiary processing. As we move forward, we have to direct future investments and seek the cooperation of industry in directing future investments to do more with the primary breakdown material and not expand capacity endlessly so that we continue to put more and more pressure on the primary breakdown mills and threaten the employees that the member is concerned about.

L. Fox: The minister's almost political answer was interesting, to say the least. Let me first say that in my limited experience in this business and with no experience of any consequence in management within the forest sector, it seems that in many cases what has driven the technological change is the need for that change. What drives the need for that change is the need to be able to produce a product at a lower cost. The more that we place on the cost side of the ledger, the more technological change we're going to see, in order to keep the costs down so that they have a chance to stay in the black, on the other side of the ledger. That's one problem.

The other problem within the industry, as I perceive it, is if a plant is innovative and finds a way to achieve more value out of a resource or out of a fibre, then the stumpage system as it is finds a way to collect more stumpage. That board now has more value because they're getting more end production out of it, and that triggers an increase in stumpage. The system is almost designed to penalize innovativeness and more value. If we're going to have employment targets -- and I'm not in the position at this time to say that idea is good or bad -- somehow we've got to have other incentives to provide the opportunity for industry to be innovative and create a profit. Initially I think the suspicion is this: we supply you with 500,000 cubic board feet of quota wood a year. For that, you've got to produce X jobs, and there's no more entrepreneurial spirit in it.

I don't question that industry has a responsibility to communities; in fact, I suggest very strongly that they have a responsibility to communities. They are utilizing people's resources, and they have an opportunity through that to provide good, stable jobs and a positive economic climate for communities, specifically in single-resource communities in rural British Columbia, where the forest sector can be up to 80 percent of that basic economy. How we provide incentives around that so that businesses could make a profit would be the important factor.

Hon. A. Petter: I don't disagree at all with the member's suggestion, as I understand it, that if we are to get increased jobs, there has to be built within that equation opportunities for increased profitability and a return for investment. Certainly we are not talking about employment targets in the sense of setting some kind of crude arithmetic figure that every firm is going to have to live up to; that's not the plan at all. The plan is to try to work out a macrostrategy with industry as to how we create, out of what we hope will be a more stable situation around the land base and around timber supply, the accompanying incentives for industry and make it clear that employment-generation and community stability are part of the goal that we are seeking cooperatively.

I'm afraid that what's happened too often in the past with our tenure system and the way in which companies have been evaluated is that the incentives have run the other way. The way incentives have run is that if you cut off workers and the workforce, you do better. We have to work cooperatively with industry to find better incentives that reward industry, create efficient jobs and move into areas that have not been as well developed as they should have been in this province in the past in terms of secondary and tertiary manufacturing.

[8:15]

I don't think it is any secret that in the history of the industry in this province, no doubt understandably, when things started it was very much directed at giving incentives to industry to invest in primary breakdown mills. If you got a tenure, in exchange for the tenure you were expected to process that wood to a primary breakdown stage within the province, then after that there were no questions asked. As I say, based on the assumption of the day, which was one of unlimited timber and endless valleys to cut, that made sense. But we are no longer in that environment. We are now in an environment where I think people are increasingly aware of the limits of the resource and, thankfully, of the fact that the resource is renewable but not limitless.

We have to look at the incentives and think: how do we now readjust the incentives cooperatively with industry so that we reward industry for moving up the value chain? We give them the incentives they need, so the incentives that were previously there -- to, say, go to primary breakdown, and then we won't ask any more questions -- are replaced with a new set of incentives in which industry is encouraged to go beyond primary breakdown to secondary and tertiary manufacturing, which can well be profitable, as other jurisdictions have shown, and create employment, but which government hasn't done a good job of in the past in terms of encouraging leadership. That is the challenge; it's not at the expense of profitability or at the expense of investment -- quite the contrary.

Let me again quote. I want to share a copy of this speech with the member; I think he will find it as exciting as I do. But one of the primary points I made in this speech....

An Hon. Member: Who wrote it?

Hon. A. Petter: I wrote it -- with some help from some staff, I want to add. But it does generally reflect my personal thinking on this matter.

"We need to recognize that despite the fact that profits, investment and employment are currently at healthy levels, we can't take it for granted that those levels will be sustained."

It then goes on to recognize the need to encourage profits and investment as part of this strategy. I'll send the member the speech; I won't bore him with the rest of it now.

I don't disagree with him that profitability and incentives must be part of this equation; indeed, they must.

L. Fox: We will leave that topic; I'm sure we have canvassed it well enough.

In terms of utilization of fibre, another concern has been identified to me by a number of constituents. Actually, they 

[ Page 15750 ]

have made presentations to the Fort St. James district office and to the Prince George regional and district office. The Forest Act really does limit the opportunities for this individual. It is around -- and I always have great fun with this terminology -- dead-and-down timber. If you drive up almost any road in our district or in the overall region, you will find that in many cases where clearcuts had been logged, trees at the edge have blown over because they were used to being part of a forest rather than on the edge. You will see many pull-outs in other areas where there are dead trees laying down which would be of value -- maybe not in today's market, given the price of lumber. They may indeed not be conducive to high-cost logging. The individual who just spoke to me recently has become frustrated, because trees are being blown over and left there. One of the problems is that if they were taken out, they would be considered as part of the overall AAC within that respective region, not extra to the AAC. Consequently, industry is very concerned that they would also see their cuts shrink, because this wood would be part of the AAC. It's not a substantial amount, but this individual tells me that up to 200 people could be employed salvaging dead-and-down timber in the Prince George area. He translates that into hundreds of people if the same policies are followed across the province. My first question is: why wouldn't we consider this dead stuff as salvage instead of part of the AAC?

Hon. A. Petter: I want to distinguish two issues here, and they are whether it's considered part of the AAC and then whether there are incentives provided to harvest that volume. There is an allowance for salvageable and non-salvageable losses within the AAC calculation. It takes account of the fact that there are certain salvage opportunities within a timber supply area. I think the more direct question is: are there sufficient incentives and opportunities for those who want to take advantage of them to create the jobs? I've come to the conclusion that there are not.

When we announced the forest renewal plan, one of the commitments that accompanied the release was a commitment to review our salvage policy. If the member hasn't already had an opportunity to do so, I'd be happy to share with him a report that was done pursuant to that commitment by my ministry. The report is now circulating, and its aim is to increase the incentives and opportunities to industry and individuals to take advantage of some of those salvage volumes within these timber supply areas. I won't go into the details of the report, but in general terms it recommends a broad range of options that would be available to districts and district managers to provide incentives to individual operators, current licensees and others to maximize salvage opportunities in a way that perhaps they haven't been maximized in the past. I'd be happy to share that with him.

The Chair: Hon. members, there's a division in the other House, so we will recess until the vote is over.

The committee recessed from 8:24 p.m. to 8:32 p.m.

[G. Brewin in the chair.]

W. Hurd: I have no desire to take us backward in this set of estimates, but I really do have to address the issues the minister raised with respect to job targets. His summary of setting targets invites a question as to what the minister defines as a forest-dependent job. That can imply just about anyone involved in any line of work. The people who may be called upon to build power plants for cogeneration facilities burning hog fuel, for example, could be construed as having forest-dependent jobs, as could the people who do maintenance on pulp mills. I'm aware of examples of where pulp mill shutdowns have incurred costs of $1 million a day for high-priced help in the way of pipefitters and electricians.

It really does invite a question for the minister, since he's the one who raised the issue of job targets. When he talks about targets, are we talking about a traditional sawmill job or are we addressing across the spectrum those jobs that might involve something as diverse as a sophisticated electrician on controls in the pulp mill, an instrument mechanic or some other type of occupation? Or are we strictly dealing with occupations here that might be limited to harvesting, silviculture and, of course, manufacturing?

[D. Streifel in the chair.]

Hon. A. Petter: We're looking at jobs that are related to the processing of wood products and wood fibre in a way that will increase the economic return and benefits for employees in communities. I don't think it matters whether that's done through cogeneration, medium-density fibreboard plants -- as we're now seeing coming forward to an increasing degree -- or secondary and tertiary manufacturing. What we need to do, though, is move up the value chain. We need to create more jobs per cubic metre of wood that's cut. The relationship between the number of cubic metres cut and the number of jobs created is the key relationship.

Other jurisdictions have shown that through remanufacturing and reprocessing of all different kinds of wood products, it is possible to create more jobs. We in B.C. haven't historically done as good at creating those kinds of jobs. Under this government, we're determined to ensure that we do that, and employment targets and working with industry to achieve those targets is one important cooperative way we propose to do so.

W. Hurd: Further to that issue, one matter that the Select Standing Committee on Forests certainly uncovered was the low wage rates for people who are involved in the remanufacturing industry. In many cases, they were in the $10- to $12-and-hour range. I'm aware that after some resistance, the International Woodworkers of America finally agreed to study the possibility of setting a job classification for people in the reman sector, who have traditionally enjoyed wage rates of anywhere from $8 an hour or more lower than the master rate under the IWA.

Does the minister not agree that there is legitimate concern out there when the suggestion is being made that someone should relocate from a primary manufacturing job that's covered by an IWA collective agreement and is being encouraged to move into the value-added area, where it's often a non-union sector without the fringe benefit security that's enjoyed traditionally by members of the IWA? In the zeal to create jobs in the manufacturing area, I wonder whether we're forgetting that people who lose a job in the primary end of the business and are expected to relocate are suffering a material financial loss -- at least, given the state of the remanufacturing industry in British Columbia. And given the fact that the value-added sector is such a labour-intensive side of the 

[ Page 15751 ]

industry, what hope over the short term is there for those wage rates to increase to the point where a man or a woman can raise a family on the salary they earn from a remanufacturing plant?

Hon. A. Petter: Look, the goal of this government is to create as many jobs and as great a return through the creation of those jobs as can be achieved. I'm happy to say that there are companies that are moving aggressively to create value-added jobs within their existing structures. Clearly some companies have engaged in some pretty extensive publicity over the last year or so, talking about their commitment to moving up the value-added chain. At the same time, yes, there are opportunities in the value-added sector of smaller remanufacturers.

I don't think it's a question of either or; it's a question of ensuring that we maximize all the opportunities that exist within the wood-products industry for creating new and better jobs. The member asks if I am concerned that those jobs be well paying and that they are union jobs; absolutely I'm concerned about that. I'm pleased to say that under the new labour code that was passed by this government, the opportunity to organize workers within the value-added sector and other sectors of the economy that have not been as well represented now exists in a way it did not before.

It seems to me that the member is once again suggesting in his question a sort of dog-in-a-manger attitude: that we shouldn't be creating jobs because we might create the wrong kinds of jobs. We're determined to create the right kinds of jobs here in British Columbia, and that's what we're determined to do, whether the member likes it or not.

W. Hurd: I guess the point that I'm trying to make -- and it's one that the committee certainly found during its travels throughout the province -- is that the opportunities have to be driven by market demand. Clearly the problem with wage rates in the remanufacturing sector is that the intents and nature of the employment -- the need for more hands-on involvement -- are such that the industry at this point can't sustain wage rates that are any higher, whether or not they're organized to bargain collectively as union members.

The point that I'm making is that the notion of target levels of employment divorced from the market is just fanciful, particularly with the value-added sector. I'd prefer to hear the minister suggest that the ministry is taking, in some way, a proactive role in working with that sector to identify foreign markets for value-added products. Clearly the sector is suffering a lack of capital investment; it's underfinanced and it has trouble accessing the capital that it needs to expand. It has been saved to some extent by the fact that under the small business program they can trade logs for the lumber they need, and they've been able in some cases, to make more money from that than from the actual business enterprise.

I would just throw out to the minister that the value-added sector in British Columbia continues to struggle, and I think the need is more in business acumen and marketing expertise than it is the notion of a credit system or some other type of initiative by government. I would just add the caution before we move on: with respect to the target levels of employment, surely the prevailing markets should dictate what happens in the industry, not the idea that you should create a job for the sake of creating a job in order to have continued access to the timber that you've enjoyed in the past.

Hon. A. Petter: I think we're now hearing the crucial difference between this government and the opposition parties, particularly the Liberal Party, who basically say that as far as they're concerned, government can leave employees to the vagaries of the market. We're not prepared to do that, nor have previous governments in this province been prepared to do that.

The whole tenure system, which was established in a different time, was established to try to encourage companies to invest and create jobs. As times have changed, as the resource has changed and as management has changed, that requires changes in approach. Happily this government has undertaken those changes through the forest renewal plan, which does indeed look at providing support for marketing of value-added opportunities and providing support in skills and training for value-added opportunities and other inducements to value-added manufacturing. It also requires attention to the way in which fibre and timber are made available to the manufacturing sector. Those I've talked to in the value-added sector make it very clear that for them, as important as marketing may be, even more important is secure access to timber or lumber, as the case may be. That's why, in addition to the small business program, we are proceeding with a remanufacturing supply initiative.

The member simply says: "It's all a matter of the market. Let the market dictate." That's exactly what happened in this province in the 1980s, when we saw huge downsizing taking place within the industry as workers were laid off and communities were threatened. The government said nothing, turned its back on the people of this province and said it was up to markets. That's exactly what we hear now from the Liberal opposition. The names have been changed to protect reputations, but the Liberal opposition's position on this is exactly the same as that of the Bennett government in the 1980s, where they basically said to the industry: "Go ahead, downsize in the name of efficiency. Lay off workers in the name of efficiency. We as government have no interest in this matter. It's a matter purely for markets."

That is not what this government stands for, nor will we stand for it. We are determined to ensure that this public resource is utilized to benefit the people of British Columbia -- that means the employees, communities and businesses of British Columbia. If the Liberal Party wants to write off employees and communities and say it's all up to industry and their buddies on Howe Street, so be it. The people of British Columbia will make that choice. But this government will not allow the employees and communities of this province to be sacrificed on the altar of right-wing economic thinking.

W. Hurd: I hope the minister delivers that message in the union halls of the province, particularly the IWA, who will be forced to bear the brunt of this grand experiment the minister is talking about. The sad reality is that they are being asked to leave substantial jobs that pay $20 an hour with benefits and move into a sector of the economy -- the lumber remanufacturing sector and potentially the silviculture sector -- where the wage rates are far lower. Certainly they know that, are well aware of it and are concerned about it. Why wouldn't they be concerned about it?

[8:45]

The minister doesn't seem to have indicated any strategy or overall plan to address the fundamental discrepancy in 

[ Page 15752 ]

wage rates. I know that the IWA is looking at the possibility of creating a category that would allow for those kinds of wage rates to be paid, but clearly the minister must acknowledge that there is a lot of concern out there on the part of union members. They are being asked to move into a sector of the economy that is much more insecure at this point.

The interesting point the minister makes about the employment profile is that I don't think the ministry has made any effort to track what has happened in the forest industry over the last 15 years in the province. Clearly the nature of employment has changed. In the sawmills, for example, there's no doubt that there's been a reduction on the plant floor of jobs that used to require a certain amount of labour. But sawmills have evolved to the point where there is a demand for sophistication and demand for trained experts to come in and service the kind of sophisticated equipment that exists in those plants today.

I don't believe that the minister or this government recognizes the fact that the whole profile of a forest-dependent job has changed. This is the kind of issue that's certainly come forward to the opposition time and time again. You go into a community and talk to somebody who has a company that does 50 percent of their work with the forest industry. Their message to me and that minister is that they're just as forest dependent as the guy on the plant floor. A business which is a contract business depends on access to the industry; it depends on doing work for the company in town. Those people, for some reason, don't seem to show up in this government's equation.

That's why I'm asking the minister what exactly a forest-dependent job is. Does it recognize that companies that may be captive of the industry, which do 60 percent or 70 percent of their business with the forest industry, wouldn't survive without it, yet don't show up in the ministry's calculations? I wonder if the minister appreciates the fact that it's not a simple question of a sawmill employing 500 people ten years ago and 100 people today. Somehow that represents a squandering of the resource, a destabilization of communities. The fact is that the forest employment profile has changed. There are more contracting-out provisions now, where small firms provide services that weren't there ten or 15 years ago. I urge the minister, with respect to this whole notion of employment targets, to recognize that the industry has evolved over the last 20 years -- not in the socially destructive ways that he stood up and enunciated, but in ways that have been dictated by what is happening to international markets, access to financing and the whole range of business realities that the industry has to face.

Certainly medium-density fibreboard is a product that has come on line. Having an opportunity to tour research and development plants, I'm aware of a whole range of products -- such as roofing materials -- that are coming out of the forest sector now. These constituted wood products and laminated products didn't exist 15 years ago, because we didn't have the lamination materials to build them.

I just caution the minister to temper the rhetoric and, when he stands up in front of a forest sector group like the Price Waterhouse conference, to do his homework and at least demonstrate an understanding of what's happened to this industry in the last 20 years and of the fact that everything that's happened hasn't been socially destructive.

Hon. A. Petter: Hon. Chair, I just cannot stand here and accept the incoherence and double-talk from the member opposite on this issue. On the one hand the member suggests that we should leave it up to the market to determine the outcome and that we should allow downsizing and allow rationalization, and then the member turns around and criticizes the government for trying to create more value-added jobs. According to the member, those jobs won't pay as much as the jobs that he would happily see lost in the current industry.

That kind of double-talk may work within the Liberal caucus, but it doesn't work with the people of British Columbia. The people of British Columbia know that this is a public resource and that we as government have a responsibility to manage it to ensure that there are continued well-paying jobs in the industry, and we intend to do that.

Of course there's an appreciation for spinoff jobs. Maybe the member doesn't understand that when you have a plant that hires 100 people, the number of spinoff jobs in services and other sectors is that much greater than if that plant downsizes to 20 people. Maybe the member finds comfort in thinking that if you downsize to 20 people and pick up five people in tourism, or whatever it is he thinks is going to be offsetting, that somehow assists. But at the end of the day, having people employed within the forest sector, dealing with the resource, is absolutely crucial to the long-term survival of forest-based communities. Comforting ourselves, as the member seems to, with the fact that offsetting jobs may be created in Vancouver or somewhere else -- engineering jobs or whatever -- just misses the point.

The point is that forest-based communities know that government must play a role in managing the resource and in the way that resource is allocated responsibly if we are to ensure the long-term continuance and stability of forest-based communities and not see the unbridled rationalization at the behest of market forces, which would just as soon ship the profits out of this province and reinvest elsewhere, rather than ensure that those profits are put back into creating stability and jobs here in British Columbia. The member can double-talk all he likes, from here until Tuesday, but the fact is that this government has made it very clear that we view this as a public trust and a public resource not be squandered, not to be given to one group, but to be managed and protected to continue to maintain jobs for all in British Columbia.

I and this government will not allow the kinds of arguments the member makes in order to try to rationalize the rationalization or explain away why industry has to downsize and throw people out in the street to get in the way of a cooperative partnership strategy to increase jobs and maintain stability.

If the member had taken a moment to read some of the literature on what other advanced countries are doing, like Japan and Germany, where partnerships are being created between government and industry and where the old ideological Houdinis that he creates about market forces are put into a perspective and governments start to work in cooperation, he would understand that we need not be in the race for the bottom that he's so anxious to get involved in. We don't have to compete with countries whose main preoccupation is to cut wages and cut jobs; we can compete with countries whose major preoccupation is to increase jobs and increase wages.

I would advise him to get on board with a strategy that's going to create more stability and more jobs for workers here 

[ Page 15753 ]

in British Columbia and to stop apologizing for those who constantly want to create less for those who live here in British Columbia.

An Hon. Member: He voted against forest renewal. What do you expect?

Hon. A. Petter: Well, there you go.

W. Hurd: I know the comparisons that those in British Columbia often like to make are with countries in Scandinavia, which manage to harvest far more timber off a smaller component of land than we do in British Columbia. That gets us back to the issue we raised during the initial stages of this debate: that in fact we are underperforming in British Columbia in terms of growth and yields. I could be corrected, but I'm not aware of any strategy in the forest industry in Scandinavia that would identify job targets. I think the industry in the Scandinavian countries is allowed to flourish based on access to markets and the ability to have secure access to fibre. So the grand experiment that he talks about seems to be a British Columbian anomaly and not prevalent anywhere else in the world.

I want to ask a series of questions about the Forest Land Reserve Act, which we talked about briefly during the initial set of estimates. I'm aware that Crown land is still not part of the Forest Land Reserve Act, and I wonder if the minister could advise the committee when that transition might take place with respect to Crown land, because without it, we don't have the security, stability and security of timber access that he alluded to in his earlier remarks.

[G. Brewin in the chair.]

Hon. A. Petter: When the Forest Land Reserve Act was introduced, I indicated that the designation of Crown land would be made following land use planning processes. Those processes have reached conclusion in a number of areas of the province: Vancouver Island, the Kootenays and the Cariboo. There was recently a report on the Kamloops area as well. Within those areas, the member can anticipate that in the very near future cabinet will designate the component of the land base that is established within those plans for commercial resource extraction as being within the forest land reserve. For example, 81 percent of Vancouver Island, some of which is already included within the reserve because it's privately managed forest land, will be completed with the Crown land complement in the very near future as part of the completion of that land use planning process.

W. Hurd: Can the minister tell us what impact the act has had on the amount of land in the managed forest land category? Has the number of hectares gone up? Is it roughly the same as it was? I suspect it has gone down, as some landowners have opted to clearcut their land or harvest and then opt out of the whole notion of managed forest land because of the impending bureaucratic controls and initiatives that the government has indicated will apply to private landowners in the province. Can you advise us whether there has been a reduction or an increase or are we about the same with respect to lands within the managed forest land category?

Hon. A. Petter: My understanding -- and I can check the precise numbers -- is that the area of private managed forest land that is within the forest land reserve is about the same -- it has not altered. But I am disturbed that the member doesn't seem to understand the import of this legislation. As a result of the legislation, it is now no longer possible for those who hold private managed forest land to remove that land from the land reserve to convert it to other uses. Indeed, the whole purpose of the legislation was to ensure that this component of the land base, which private landowners indicated through their choice of assessment that they intended to manage for long-term forestry, was in fact managed for long-term forestry and that their intentions were respected. By suggesting that those in the forest land reserve could somehow flip their land out of the reserve by simply clearcutting or otherwise altering the land, the member misunderstands the import and impact of the legislation.

W. Hurd: I'm aware of instances where private landholders have decided to get out of the forestry business. Certainly up in the Kootenays certain issues have come to my attention whereby the landholder decides to clearcut the land and convert it to other purposes. Perhaps the minister could tell us what checks and balances exist in the legislation to prevent someone from doing that, even if it is managed forest land category. Is there a requirement to submit harvesting plans now? What are the checks and balances that would ensure that somebody who is enjoying the status of managed forest land simply doesn't harvest it and convert it to other purposes under the auspices of the forest land reserve?

Hon. A. Petter: I did not intend to revisit the debate around the Forest Land Reserve Act. If the member doesn't recall what the act does or how it works, he can certainly refer back to Hansard. In general terms, currently a person who wishes to remove their land from the forest land reserve would have to seek permission of the Forest Land Commission to do so. Harvesting plans would have to be consistent with the requirements of the B.C. Assessment Authority to ensure that they are consistent with the commitment to sustainable harvesting.

As the member is probably aware, a provision is coming into the Forest Practices Code shortly which will, I anticipate, give the government the ability, under the Forest Practices Code, to ensure that there is sound forest management within the private managed forest land category. The member is probably additionally aware that in one circumstance, where it became apparent that a particular landowner was not harvesting and managing the land in a way that was deemed to be acceptable, the government took action even in advance of that provision being brought into Forests to persuade that landowner to cease harvesting in an unsustainable way.

W. Hurd: The minister has indicated that he regards this legislation as being a means to a more secure land base for forestry in the province and that it represents in some way a good deal for landowners to be able to defer taxes under the Assessment Act. That would assume that he's anticipating a major rush forward on the part of the owners of private lands to place their lands within the managed forest land category.

[9:00]

Can he tell us whether in this fiscal year he expects the amount of land within the reserve to increase, or are we in fact seeing reluctance on the part of some landowners to even consider putting their unmanaged forest land into a managed 

[ Page 15754 ]

forest land category to be subject to the full regulations of Bill 56? Is he at all concerned that some landowners may be less inclined now to participate than they were previously?

Hon. A. Petter: The forest land reserve will be expanding dramatically as a result of the inclusion of Crown land. With respect to the private managed forest land, the intention was not to create a system that would lead, at least immediately, to a great increase in the private managed forest land category; rather it was the opposite. It was to ensure that the land which landowners had already designated, and had indicated through their choice with the Assessment Authority was to be managed for long-term forestry to ensure that that choice was in fact carried out and that the land was not lost.

As the member is probably aware, in certain parts of the province there has been a temptation on the part of such landowners to convert land that was committed for long-term forestry use to other uses. The purpose of the land reserve in respect to that forest land was to guard against the further depletion of private managed forest land into other categories for development, etc. I think the reserve has already been successful in that regard. For that reason, I can say with some confidence that the amount of land in the private managed forest land category, and hence within the reserve, has not decreased but has remained stable.

The other issue the member refers to concerns incentives for others to bring private land into the forest land reserve. There are some incentives provided in the legislation; in particular the ability of landowners, with the approval of the commission, to designate land. In the past that could only be done if the Assessment Authority agreed that the highest and best use of the land was forest land. That's no longer required; it can be done now through the commission. In terms of additional incentives that might exist, I have asked the Forest Land Commission to review the situation and make recommendations to me as to what possible instruments might be used to give greater incentives to other landowners to bring their land into forestry use. I expect that I'll be hearing from the commission, if I have not already done so, within the next short while on that issue.

I think there are things we can do. But understand, hon. member, that the purpose of the forest land reserve in respect to private managed forest land was to prevent the further depletion of that land base. While I agree that increasing the land base would be nice, that is a secondary objective and one we're now working on through cooperation with the commission.

W. Hurd: The minister must be aware of concerns being expressed, though, that in time, and perhaps sooner rather than later, the forest land reserve may become a counterpart of the agricultural land reserve, and we know that applications to remove land from the ALR are virtually impossible in the province. I would caution the minister that he needs to improve the communications in this area, because if the perception were to persist that it may prove to be impossible to get one's land out of a managed forest land category, it would cause a stampede of people rushing forward with applications to remove it. So I'm seeking assurances from the minister that the rules will remain at the point where if someone wants to get their land out, they will be able to get it out simply by paying the incremental tax benefit they've received, which they're supposed to return to the Crown. Maybe I can ask first whether the minister is at all concerned about the building sense of concern by landowners that in time the forest land reserve may be a companion piece to the agricultural land reserve and that their land may be effectively frozen.

Hon. A. Petter: I really encourage the member to go back and read the legislation, which is very clear. The purpose of the legislation is to protect private managed forest land whose owner is committed to long-term forest use from being converted to other uses. The role of the commission is to protect that purpose, and it therefore should not and is not going to be easy for private managed forest land holders who have made that commitment to renege on the commitment.

Having said that, if land is necessary for another purpose in accordance with local community plans, and if the commission is satisfied that that land is desired for that purpose by the community, there are provisions under which exceptions can be made. The whole function of this act, in respect of and its application to private managed forest land, is to guard and protect the forest land base. That will be the same in respect of the Crown forest land base.

As the member sometimes says when he's not raising these kinds of concerns, there is a serious concern in this province about the extent of the forest land base and ensuring that land base remains stable. That is exactly what this legislation is intended to do, and it does so with respect to private managed forest land, as it does with respect to Crown land.

W. Hurd: I have to say that that answer will not be reassuring to the people who have contacted me with respect to the impacts of Bill 56. The inference from the minister seems to be that in time it may prove to be impossible for a person with private land in a managed forest land category to remove it.

I would suggest to the minister that this may have the opposite effect of what he has intended. It may induce people to take their land out of that category simply because it allows them to retain more options for the future. I'm certainly aware of many people, and I know the minister is as well, who are concerned about the impacts of this legislation. They are very concerned about it, and I know the minister has received many representations from people who are concerned about it.

I'm suggesting to him that if he doesn't do a better job of communicating the intent, the spirit and the ramifications of this legislation, there may be a flood of applications to remove land from the reserve with the idea that if they don't do it now, they might not be able to do it in future. The effect might be the opposite of what has been intended here.

I refer specifically to the small land owners, to people who may have a farm and a small woodlot in conjunction with the farm. We're certainly not speaking about the large corporate landholders who have their private lands incorporated into a larger management unit, usually encompassing Crown land. I'm speaking specifically of the small, individual landowners in the province, many of whom, I'd suggest, still may not be aware that their land is governed by the terms and conditions of Bill 56. I hope some effort will be made on the part of the ministry to assure people that their land is not locked up along the lines of the agricultural land reserve. Despite what the minister suggests is the knowledge of all British Columbians, I'd suggest to him that there's a lack of understanding in this area and a lot of concern.

[ Page 15755 ]

Hon. A. Petter: I guess we have reached a point of departure between this government and the views of the Liberal Party on this issue. I don't know whether the member missed the debate on the bill, but the purpose of the bill was to secure the forest land base of this province to provide security to forest workers and forest communities, and that meant ensuring that that land could not be easily converted to other uses.

He cries crocodile tears on behalf of the landowners, but he knows full well that 75 percent or more of this land is owned by four large corporations, and I assume those are the representations he wishes to pass on to me and to the rest of us. In total, there are something like 120 landowners of this land, and every one of those landowners indicated that in exchange for preferential treatment under the Assessment Authority, they would commit to long-term forest management.

What we have done, and all that we have done, under this legislation is to say that they will now have to live up to that commitment. Now I know the member voted against this bill. I know he doesn't believe in securing the long-term future of this part of the forest land base. I just wish that he would come and debate with me in the Vancouver Island communities. Up until this bill was passed, they were feeling threatened by the potential that this land will be flipped to other purposes. I wish he would come and debate with me the future of the private managed forest land category on Vancouver Island, in the Kootenays, and elsewhere, and tell forest workers in those communities that he's prepared to let those companies come and flip their land for urban sprawl, residential development and recreation development and to heck with the communities and to heck with the workers. He should state publicly, as he has in this Legislature, his opposition to this bill.

I think they need to hear that directly from him. They don't believe me. When I tell them that the Liberal Party and this member are opposed to maintaining our forest land base and maintaining the private managed forest land category and that, if elected, they would allow these landowners to take this land which they committed to long-term forestry and flip it to some other use, be it a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, they don't believe me. They don't believe a party could be that regressive and backward thinking, so please, member, don't share your comments only in this chamber; come with me on the road. Let's go to Duncan and Nanaimo and Courtenay and tell the folks what you have been telling me --namely, that this land base is up for grabs if the Liberal Party ever gets elected.

W. Hurd: What utter nonsense, really. I mean, it is just staggering. The corporate landowners had land in conjunction with a larger management unit. So why in the world...? The fact of the matter is that some of those land withdrawals he was talking about were driven by the Assessment Authority and for no other purpose. Why would a corporate landholder reduce the component of their public land, which enjoys a far higher rate of forest management and which forms one management unit, in order to seek other purposes for the land? It makes not a whit of sense.

The classic comment comes from a forester who points out that the ludicrous provision of Bill 56 is that the province's most inept forest manager, the Ministry of Forests, is telling the best forest managers in B.C. how to look after their land. That's the purpose of Bill 56. We're not talking about the corporate landowners; we're talking about people specifically in the interior who have a small component of wood on land they manage, around 700 acres. They are a critical component of the industry in that portion of the province: the Kootenays, the Cariboo and elsewhere. What possible incentive would there be for them to continue to participate under the full provisions of Bill 56? They'd be crazy to continue to do it; they've got a small component of land anyway.

The minister is telling us now in this committee that if you've got 100 acres in a managed forest land category somewhere in the interior, you may not be able to get it out. I can assure the minister that there are many landholders....

Interjection.

W. Hurd: The member for Columbia River-Revelstoke should go back to his riding and talk to some of the private land holders who may be affected by this legislation, because I can give him a guarantee that they are not aware of the provisions of Bill 56.

J. Doyle: You are not aware of them.

W. Hurd: Well, he says that I may not be aware of them, but I can assure the minister that there are landholders who are not aware of the fact that they are governed by the provisions of this legislation. If they are aware, they are concerned about the impact.

I decline to believe that if anybody had 100 acres or less in this managed forest land category, there would be any inducement for them to continue when they may not be able to ever take their land out of that category based on the wishes of a commission. I realize why the legislation was brought forward: it's the minister's philosophy about major corporate landholders on Vancouver Island. I understand where he's coming from and where his government is coming from. Unfortunately, they've captured small land owners in the same net, and they are not nearly as convinced as this minister and this government that what is being proposed for them is in their best interests. I guess what I'm suggesting to the minister is that he might want to go forth to deal with the small land owners, particularly those in the interior who have a small amount of their overall land in this category, and reassure them that they should not go ahead and apply or rush forward to have it removed, because the legislation will not be punitive to them in any way and will in fact offer them some incentives to continue to participate in the program.

Hon. A. Petter: For the last time, there are about 120 owners, provincewide, of private managed forest land. I think the member has some misunderstanding that somehow this is a broadly held land category; it is not. How do those 120 or so owners get to be owners of private managed forest land? I'm not sure the member understands that either. They became owners of private managed forest land because they told the Assessment Authority that they wanted preferential tax treatment in exchange for a commitment, which they made, to manage the land for long-term forest purposes. That wasn't something that was required of them; it was something that they committed to give in exchange for preferential tax treatment.

[9:15]

[ Page 15756 ]

Of the land that is in this category, my recollection is that around 75 percent is held by four large companies. That's not land that's held in conjunction with other management units. Private land that is in TFLs is already covered by the Forest Practices Code. This is private managed forest land. The fact is that if people say to the people of British Columbia, as these 120 landowners did -- and in terms of the landholdings, as I say, about 75 percent are held by a few large companies -- "we will commit to long-term forest management in exchange for you, the people of British Columbia, giving us a break on our taxes," what on earth is wrong with saying that we will bring in land reserve legislation to ensure that you live up to your commitment? It was their commitment, not ours. To say that they should not be able to profit simply by taking that commitment and throwing it out the window and flipping the land into some other purpose.... The incentive was the tax break. Because of that incentive, the landowners made the commitment, and this legislation ensures that they live up to that commitment. If the member wants to stand up and defend the notion that these landowners should be able to go back on the commitment they made in exchange for that preferential tax treatment and say that there ought to be no such guarantees to the people of British Columbia to maintain this land into perpetual forest use, then that's fine. Let him say that. But I say that the people of British Columbia expect landowners who have chosen this designation based on long-term commitments to live up to those commitments, particularly when the vast majority of this land is held by a few large corporations that have it within their capacity to manage this land for long-term forest use. Through doing so they are maintaining employment and community stability. That's certainly true on Vancouver Island and in the Kootenays, which are the two major areas in which this land is held and an important part of the overall forest land base that people want to see maintained. And it will be maintained, insofar as that party over there never comes to power.

W. Hurd: I note that of the percentage of the annual allowable harvest -- or at least the AAC in the province -- about 20 percent comes off private lands. So about 70 million cubic metres comes off public lands, and another 20 million cubic metres comes off private land. Clearly this is a critical component of the overall success of the industry in British Columbia. Of the 20 percent of the harvest that comes off private lands in the province, can the minister tell us how much is protected by the forest land reserve?

Hon. A. Petter: No, based on the numbers he's given me, I can't tell the member. I'd need to know what the number he's given me is based upon and whether he's included private land within tree-farm licences, etc., so that I can give him that number.

But I would use the opportunity to say to the member that.... He made a reference earlier, and he may be getting at this again, about forest management practices on private managed forest land. He incorrectly attributed forest management practices that are to be expected on private managed forest land to Bill 56. That is not the case. It is under the Forest Practices Code, not under Bill 56, that regulations will be passed that will extend to private managed forest land. What Bill 56 does is simply ensure that that land is maintained in long-term forest production. It does not provide for any management regime. The management regime will be a function of the Forest Practices Code and the consultation process that Dr. Baskerville has conducted with the private managed forest landowners, all of whom are aware of their status because they have all been notified by the ministry, by the commission and through the Assessment Authority of the status of their land.

W. Hurd: Let me see if I have this straight: the industry in British Columbia depends on 20 percent of the cut off private lands. The minister has advised the committee that he has absolutely no idea what percentage of that 20 percent is protected under the forest land reserve. He's indicated to the committee that the trend is the same -- that the amount of hectares held within the forest land reserve is unchanged. That suggests to me that a significant portion of private forest land continues to exist outside this so-called umbrella of protection that the minister alluded to earlier.

What incentives would there possibly be for that other percentage outside the forest land reserve to ever enter this umbrella if it hasn't done so already? Clearly, what I'm hearing from private land holders who are not members of this new forest land reserve is that they're simply going to get out of the business of forest management. It's not worth the trouble for them to own a small plot of land, certainly not worth their trouble to put it into the forest land reserve and not worth their trouble to continue managing forest land in the province.

I'm sure the minister would agree, since we are talking about a large percentage of the annual allowable cut in the province.... Of the 90 million cubic metres that we harvest, we're talking about at least 20 percent coming off private lands. I would hope that he would try to get a grip on whether or not the forest land reserve has any hope of recapturing the rest of that private forest land, otherwise there's a large component of the annual allowable cut that's not protected from alienation in any way.

Hon. A. Petter: I can get the numbers for the member, but very little of the annual allowable cut is not accounted for in private land that is either within the private managed forest land category or within existing tree farm licences and licences which embody both Crown and private land. I'd be happy to get the numbers for the member. The purpose of the forest land reserve with respect to private managed forest land was to ensure that the land base, which has been under threat in recent years, is not diminished.

I said earlier, and I don't think it bears much repeating, that yes, there are reasons we might want to encourage those who hold unmanaged private land to bring it into the managed category. There are clear tax incentives -- the previous tax incentives continue -- but there is not a large proportion of the volume of cut on private lands that occurs outside of the private land that is contained within either the private managed forest land category or tree farm licences that include private land.

W. Hurd: I'll certainly await those figures with interest. The flow of fibre from private lands, particularly in the interior, and in particular from ranches, is considerable. I'm hearing the message that people with forest lands outside the new forest land reserve are simply deciding it isn't worth the trouble to continue to manage it because of the regulations that might be in place.

Hon. A. Petter: That's a complete non sequitur.

[ Page 15757 ]

W. Hurd: Well, the minister should be aware that these concerns are being raised, and I'm sure he is. I know it's a concern that's being expressed to me, and one that, quite frankly, deserves better answers than the minister has offered this committee.

I want to ask a question with respect to the whole notion of community forest tenures. This is an area that I know the minister has received a considerable amount of representation on from communities. I know that the Charlottes have approached the ministry with a proposal to manage forest land in the Charlottes on a direct basis. The city of Revelstoke, of course, now has its own tree farm licence. Others....

Interjection.

W. Hurd: I'm being heckled, hon. Chair, by the member from Revelstoke. Certainly I've no trouble with the community TFL, if that's what he's alluding to. I think it's a responsible effort. I've approached the minister with respect to the Dragon Mountain forestry proposal in Quesnel, as he well knows.

Could the minister advise the committee whether he expects to see an increase in the number of community forest licences in British Columbia, and what the targets or goals might be for the coming year?

Hon. A. Petter: I don't know if the member is running out of questions, but we seem to be repeating questions that were raised during the first evening of estimates on community forest licences. At that time I indicated that in addition to the Revelstoke community forest licence, which was created under the tenure of my predecessor, Dan Miller, then Minister of Forests, a number of other community tenure opportunities have been pursued. There is one in the Cowichan area and one in the Port Alberni area, a couple up in the Nootka Sound area and one recently announced in the Prince George area. These are being viewed as pilot-type projects and are being pursued where there is a demand or desire within the local community for some kind of community license opportunity. There is an available volume of timber, and it seems like an opportunity which has broad-based public support.

I think it's important to have some such pilot projects that can be evaluated. Clearly there is a wider desire for community type tenures, and we need some experience with them in the province. As the member is probably aware, prior to this government there was only one such tenure, in the Mission area.

W. Hurd: I wonder if the minister can elaborate with respect to the pilot projects that are envisaged. Exactly what type of tenure is being offered in terms of years and security? In the case of the Dragon Mountain proposal -- and this is an area we haven't touched on in estimates yet -- I know there was some concern about the maximum length of licence that's available under the Forest Act. In the deliberations of the review of these pilot projects, I wonder whether any consideration is being given to looking at the Forest Act and the limitations it imposes on the whole notion of community forest tenures. I also wonder whether there's a need to issue a longer-term security, given the fact that in many cases we are dealing with local governments, regional districts or other bodies that are not necessarily profit-making companies but are community-based organizations that have expressed to me a desire to manage the land on a longer-term basis, beyond the terms of even a 25-year forest tree farm licence. I wonder if the minister could elaborate on what vision he sees for the types of tenures that might work for a community forest initiative.

Hon. A. Petter: The community tenures I've referred to -- the pilots -- are being done through the existing provisions of the Forest Act. I don't know that it has been finally determined what form the tenures may take, but I can say it's most likely that they will be non-replaceable forest licences of a duration probably in the range of ten years.

In terms of looking down the road as to what would be the most suitable form of forest tenure for a community licence, that's obviously one of the issues that needs to be considered in the context of tenure reform. Changes to the act may well be contemplated in future if it's determined that community licences are a desirable form of tenure and that there ought to be a separate provision under the act to recognize that form of tenure.

W. Hurd: Can the minister then tell the committee how many licences will be up and running by the end of the year? He has talked about Port Alberni and Prince George. Are those initiatives that are in the planning stages, or are we actually going to see community tenures allocated before the end of the year? How many does he expect will be up and running by the end of the current fiscal year?

Hon. A. Petter: These are in the planning stages. I would hope that at least the Lake Cowichan proposal would have actually reached the stage of the licence having been awarded by the end of the year. The others are in various stages of development, and it may take longer than that. They are in the planning stages, and there is work going on with the communities to try to establish a community forum for management, for example, to determine which groups in the community may wish to come together for this purpose to ensure that whoever it is has broad-based community support and that the licences that are offered will be suitable and will meet the overall goals of the communities.

W. Hurd: I have just a few other questions with respect to the community tenures. I wonder if the ministry is establishing any terms of reference for some of those tenures. I'm aware that some proposals involve only an amount of harvest that would be necessary to maintain the recreation values of the community forest, whereas others, obviously in the case of the Revelstoke proposal, are oriented much more toward manufacturing.

[9:30]

I just wonder whether there are any guidelines. Are we likely to see community forest proposals that are oriented toward recreation with a logging component being used to enhance the recreation values as one of the priorities? Or are we looking at a community tenure more oriented toward achieving some sort of stability for employment and some sort of mill being built or maintained in a specific community?

Hon. A. Petter: The community tenures that I've referred to are not demonstration or recreation-type community tenures. These are community tenures that are commercially 

[ Page 15758 ]

focused and designed to provide timber-harvesting opportunities in order to provide stability within communities of the commercial kind.

W. Hurd: With respect to those types of community tenures, is there any recognition of the opportunities that might exist for these communities to apply to the forest renewal plan for specific immediate areas of funding? Will there be any sort of consideration or preferential treatment given to them, or are they expected to simply submit their proposals and line up? It would seem that if there are some opportunities that can be pursued, if it's at all possible the holders of these community tenures should have the opportunity to go to the head of the list in terms of accessing funds that might be available for their projects. I just wondered whether the board of Forest Renewal B.C. will be capable of weighting those proposals, or how it might work, specifically with reference to the community tenures.

Hon. A. Petter: Under circumstances where there is a volume available that has been designated by the ministry as suitable for community tenures, and where there is a concerned group within the community that clearly has broad-based support -- that is, one group that enjoys the broad-based support of the community -- the Forest Renewal board has agreed, under those circumstances, to provide some funding to the community organization to conduct planning and undertake some of the developmental work to undertake the opportunity to engage in a proposal for a community tenure. Those are the basic circumstances under which Forest Renewal has provided some funding. Beyond that, when community tenures are created, of course, the opportunity will exist for additional forest renewal funding for incremental silviculture and other forest renewal activities.

W. Hurd: Does the ministry plan any special administrative provisions for these types of licences, or would they be administered in the same way as any other type of forest licence in the province? I ask the question because it seems that this type of tenure would invite a different level of cooperation or support -- the requirement of support -- from the regional manager or district office. Given the fact that they are going to be out hiring personnel, one would assume, and retaining expertise, they would probably need some additional assistance from the ministry. I wonder if the minister could identify any resources or administrative plan to deal with this type of tenure and offer them the support they might need in the initial stages.

Hon. A. Petter: Well, the support in the initial stages is the kind of support that the Forest Renewal board has agreed to provide through that developmental funding. The assumption is that once that support has been provided, these community tenures should be self-supporting. There may in some cases be arrangements between the community tenure holder and other local licensees, local log yards or whatever it may be to ensure that there are efficient management arrangements and arrangements to sell the wood that is harvested, etc. But the intention is that they will be managed, from the ministry's point of view, as would any forest licence. I suppose the one variation in that is that the chart areas would have to be ones that were consistent with the community concerned and respect the location of the community. In general, they are to function like any other forest licence. The expectation is that once the community has been given some assistance at the front end to develop the necessary expertise or to form the necessary relationships, these tenures will and can be managed as would any forest licence tenure.

W. Hurd: I'm also understand that a couple of school districts in the province have small business licences or forest licences, non-replaceable licences, to pursue career preparation programs. I believe that School District 22 in Vernon at least had a licence and there was an additional proposal for Fort St. James or Prince George.

I just wonder whether the ministry has any plans to expand this program into school districts. Having had the opportunity to tour the program in the Vernon School District, it was an amazing success story which was entirely self-sustaining in terms of the harvest level sustaining the costs of the program and actually allowing the board to generate a small profit, as I recall, from the program. I wonder if the minister could tell us how many districts might be participating at this point and whether there is any plan to try and encourage career preparation in forestry by considering the awarding of more small non-replaceable licences to school districts in British Columbia.

Hon. A. Petter: I have to get back to the member with respect to any numbers. I can tell the member that I'm aware of a number of areas of the province in which, for example, community colleges hold woodlot licences. I'm aware of schools that have in the past had opportunities to participate in forest management -- in some cases through small licences, but more recently and more often through cooperative arrangements, either with, say, community colleges and their woodlots, or with private licence holders who have agreed to make a portion of their licence area available.

Certainly where I have been informed by communities or schools of their desire to pursue this kind of activity, I have done what I can to encourage the ministry to work with those school districts and to try to find such opportunities. As I've indicated, very often those opportunities can be identified not by providing a separate tenure but by working in cooperation, say, with a local company who has a tenure and who is more than happy to work with a local school in providing an opportunity for a class or for students to get some experience and exposure to forest management.

W. Hurd: I have a few additional questions to offer, but it's my understanding that the third party is interested in addressing some questions in estimates -- in particular, the Leader of the Third Party. I recognize the fact that the normal pattern is to adjourn here half an hour before adjournment in the House. Given the desire on the part of the third party to participate in these estimates tomorrow, it would be appropriate to move that committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 9:39 p.m.

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