The House met at 2:06 p.m.

Prayers.

A. Sanders: I rise today to present my own private member's Bill. He's sitting in the gallery: Dr. Bill Sanders, my husband.

The Speaker: I'm glad we all held back on points of order.

V. Anderson: I rise to introduce 75 grade 11 students from Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School in my constituency. They have with them today their teachers: Mr. Katsionis, Mr. Brian Sweeney -- brother of Neil Sweeney, one of our communications staff -- Ms. Lee and Mr. McLaughlin. I would ask the House to make these wonderful, intelligent and brilliant students welcome to our House.

Hon. D. Miller: As impossible as it might appear to some, I beg the indulgence of the House to announce that my daughter has delivered her second child, and I now have a granddaughter. She has no name at this point, but it just happened earlier today.

G. Plant: Seated in the gallery today are two people who are very important to my ability to discharge my duties as a member of this assembly: my legislative assistant, Daphne Armstrong, and my constituency assistant, Joan Dick. I ask that the House please make them welcome.

P. Reitsma: In concert with the previous speaker, two very important people, as all members can appreciate, are in the gallery today. Ms. Marilyn Hayden, our CA, is in the gallery to the left of Hansard, and Jas Gandhi, our legislative assistant -- people we cannot do without. Would the House please make them welcome.

G. Wilson: In the House with us today are three members of the Victoria-Beacon Hill riding association of the PDA: Mr. Richard Fahl, Jesse Burnett and Paul Holmes. Would the House please make them welcome.

M. Sihota: I am delighted to see that visiting us today is Bev Carey, a woman who has frequented the halls of this Legislature and served many in this administration. Would all members give her a warm welcome.

Also in the gallery is Dixie Pidgeon, someone who is well known to many of us on this side of the House and who once showed up at an airport in India expecting there to be a sort of Motel 8 just outside the door, and discovering that it's not easy get a hotel in the jurisdiction. She also worked closely with Mike Harcourt over the years.

I. Chong: I am pleased to introduce to the House today a student from Cedar Hill Junior Secondary, a school that I attended. Her name is Sarah Burgess. She is on a work experience, and I presume that's to pursue a career in politics. She is going to be joining us over a period of the next few weeks. But today is her first day here, and I'd like the House to please make her welcome.

I would also like to welcome Mr. Kelly Sundberg, who is in the House today as well. He is with the University of Victoria Students Society. I noticed that he was here on other occasions, but I have not been able to introduce him until now. Would the House please make him welcome.

K. Krueger: It's my pleasure today to introduce Diana Cabott to the House. Diana is from Kelowna, is an ICBC board member of fairly long service, and is here to see the Finance minister today. She happened to share a cab with me on the way over. So would the House please make Ms. Cabott welcome.

J. Weisgerber: I see in the gallery today a constituent from Chetwynd. Would the House please make Daniel Rothlisberger welcome.

G. Campbell: I thank members opposite for giving me the opportunity to raise this issue today.

If you look above an obscure doorway in the centre block of the parliament buildings in Ottawa you will see a four-letter word carved in the lintel. The four-letter word is "Vimy." It was carved by a stonemason 80 years ago today. According to the late B.C. author and journalist Bruce Hutchison, the humble stonemason carved that word on the day he knew that his son was fighting with the Canadians on Vimy Ridge. He carved it without instructions or permission, because he had to, and the architect left it there, understanding what it meant. The next day, the stonemason's son was killed at a place called Vimy.

It was Major-General George Pearkes, a future Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia, who said in his maiden speech in the House of Commons: "I became a Canadian at Vimy Ridge." In a very real sense, we all became Canadians at Vimy Ridge.

Mr. Speaker, close to 100,000 Canadians fought at Vimy Ridge on April 9, 1917; 8,000 of those soldiers came from British Columbia. There were also B.C. women who joined as nursing sisters and who were present on all the battlefields of Europe. There was the 7th Battalion and the 16th Battalion of the Canadian Scottish. There was the 47th Battalion and the 29th Battalion, known as Tobin's Tigers, from Vancouver. There was the 54th Battalion from the Kootenays, the 72nd Battalion -- the Seaforth Higlanders -- from Vancouver, and the 102nd Battalion, known as Warden's Warriors, from northern B.C.

The British and the French tried to take Vimy Ridge, but failed. Yet the determination of the Canadian troops at Vimy Ridge ultimately prevailed. Canadians learned that they were as good as, if not better than, their allies on the battlefield. In fact, they were elite troops. Through them, Canada shed its colonial status. We took our place at the table at Versailles and a seat in the League of Nations.

I have a 17-year-old son. I can't imagine him chest-deep in the mud and the stink of the lines at Vimy. I can't imagine receiving notice that he would not return home.

These boys and men were honoured among their generation. They were the glory of their times. They left British Columbia and a Canada with dew still on it. Many are buried under rows of crosses, under the grass and dew of a distant land. Fifty-one of them are still alive today, and on this day I ask members of this House to join me in remembering them all.

[2:15]

Hon. J. Cashore: I would like to thank the Leader of the Opposition for this timely and very thoughtful tribute. All of

[ Page 2390 ]

us can think of members of our extended families who have had experience with war. My own father, who died in 1937 -- probably because of the results of the First World War -- was in the European theatre at that time. All of us have those stories and those experiences. But I think we must ask ourselves what we, in our day, must and can do in order to honour that memory. And I think that that is to do our part to maintain the peace that they so valiantly strived for.

Hon. U. Dosanjh: Hon. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce Bill 10, the Food Donor Encouragement Act. The act is designed to increase food donations to those in need, and it is modelled on legislation in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario.

The government of British Columbia is taking a comprehensive approach to address the economic issues at the root of poverty in our society. However, we realize that resolving these issues will take time and that in the meantime food banks and countless other distributors of donated food support people in need each day. The Vancouver and Victoria food banks alone expect food donations to double if the bill is passed. Food banks and non- profit organizations are struggling to keep their shelves stocked and to meet an ever- increasing demand. At the same time, tons of fresh food from restaurants, hospitals and food suppliers are going to waste.

In the face of this scenario, one is compelled to ask why perfectly good food is wasted when people are hungry, and how to redirect that food to those who need it. Many potential food donors state that the main reason they do not donate is fear of liability. We hope that by limiting the liability of food donors and distributors this legislation will quell those fears and encourage donations of food. Other provinces with similar legislation saw a distinct increase in the donation of food subsequent to legislation being introduced.

Hon. Speaker, I move that the bill be read a first time now.

Bill 10 introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

I. Chong: Hon. Speaker, I would just like to say at this time that I would like to withdraw the notice on the order paper of the bill that I had.

G. Campbell: Hon. Speaker, the people of B.C.'s forest-dependent communities are in a state of siege. The government moves from crisis to crisis: first, Golden in the interior wetbelt, then Terrace and Smithers in the northwest. Last week we heard about the closure of the Canadian Chopstick factory in Fort Nelson, and today we've learned of Avenor's announcement of a layoff of 70 jobs in Gold River. Last year in British Columbia we lost 5,500 forest jobs in the forest sector. My question to the Minister of Forests is: when will the government act to stop the wholesale loss of jobs in B.C.'s forest-dependent communities?

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: It's clear from the record in the newspaper that we are acting now. We have examined the situation. We've recognized some struggles. The industry is suffering from what many are suggesting is structural change in world pulp markets. Industry understands that and admits that. They have come to government to see what government can do. We have said that the way we are going to resolve this is to increase the number of jobs per cubic metre in this province. We intend to do that by negotiating a deal with the partners in the forest sector and increase the number of jobs.

G. Campbell: The minister has got to stop practising ostrich economics and hiding his head in the sand. His government is increasing taxes. His government has increased regulation. His government has increased the costs of forestry in this province by 75 percent, and that means forest families are losing their jobs. The question to the minister is: when is he going to start caring for those families and act to protect forest-dependent communities and the mortgage-supporting jobs that are there for them?

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: Hon. Speaker, I'm not sure that the Leader of the Opposition understands the problem or the solution. There's not one positive suggestion, other than that we listen. What did he say about Golden? There were 600 jobs, with potentially 2,000 affected. What did he say? He wrote a letter saying: "Listen." What did we do? Hon. Speaker, I can tell you what we did.

Interjections.

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: I didn't go to Golden, because I stayed here, and the mayor knew that. The mayor of Golden and the people of Golden knew that we were working day and night down here -- two ministers, virtually full-time. The example of Golden and the example of the northwest with Repap have nothing to do with government policies, but I'll tell you what it has to do with. It has to do with years of neglect by the friends of those over there who were in power before we were.

G. Campbell: I agree that these problems have been caused by neglect -- six years of neglect by this government, which has ignored forest-dependent communities; six years of neglect, where every time a forest-dependent community comes and explains the problems, the government ignores them. The question to the minister is: when will he work 24 hours a day to solve the problems, instead of running from crisis to crisis to crisis?

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: Hon. Speaker, this Leader of the Opposition should read the press. He knows that we are in negotiations with the stakeholders to come up with an accord to fix it -- not just a quick fix.

Interjection.

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: That member over there doesn't even have a quick fix for Golden, except to relax all the regulations that protect our markets or to give huge stumpage breaks which would again have problems in the U.S. from countervail. They have no solutions over there. The record speaks for itself: 10,000 jobs since 1991 have been created in this province. Ten thousand jobs!

[ Page 2391 ]

There's one more point I have to make. In the two years after the Forest Practices Code was brought in -- the spirit and intent -- there was $1 billion in investment. And do I have to list the projects, hon. Speaker? One billion dollars in investment in 1995 and 1996.

T. Nebbeling: The announcement made this morning on the 70 job losses in Gold River is devastating for a small town such as Gold River. Once again, Mr. Speaker, we see a forest-dependent community with its forest workers facing hardship and uncertainty. Can the minister tell us why he and this government continue to ignore the horrors created by the job-killing forest policies of this government?

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: I've made the point that we have not ignored it. We have addressed the issues. We have ordered the background work necessary to make the fixes correctly. And if you speak to responsible owners of forest licences in this province, they will tell you that they are pleased.

An Hon. Member: They're terrified.

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: They are not terrified. They are pleased to be at a table where they can address all their issues comprehensively. And that's our record, hon. Speaker. We have encouraged them to come up with solutions, and we have come forward with some of our own. We don't have any announcement at this point, but it's coming. And I would like to see. . . .

Interjections.

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: But we must see some positive suggestions from that side -- and from that critic, who's got other things to do.

T. Nebbeling: Last Friday, KPMG released a study stating that logging costs have jumped by 75 percent since this NDP government took power. The study blames the NDP's job-killing forest policies as the reason behind the huge increase in costs.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order, members.

T. Nebbeling: The Minister of Forests responded to this statement by KPMG with the words: "That's bull." Could the Forests minister then explain to the 70 Gold River workers and their families exactly which of the NDP forest policies are responsible for them losing their jobs?

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: I'm not sure what misquote from the newspaper he is using now, but I've been absolutely clear that I recognize the report -- in all its limitations. It was a hurried report. Sometimes data isn't collected that is auditable. We got the best information to verify where the problems lie. How much of it has to do. . . .

Interjection.

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: I have to remind the member that there are problems logging pulpwood. He's talking about Gold River. There are problems with the costs of logging pulpwood, but it's from years of neglect during which the easiest and the best logs have been logged. Hon. Speaker, that opposition doesn't understand the complexities of the trade issues, the resource management issues or the economic issues in the forest industry.

A. Sanders: On April 19 the North Vancouver school board will hold a referendum to put computers in the classrooms. In 1990 this Premier stood in the House and said that referendums lead to two-tiered education, for "the quality of our children's education varies according to the income of the homeowners." Could this Minister of Education tell the children in districts that cannot afford to pay higher property taxes how they will get their computers?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Obviously the introduction of new technology into schools is a high priority for this government, as it has been for several years. The budget for public schools this year includes the technology fund, untouched. It's $10 million this year; it was $10 million last year; it was $10 million the year before. It's a long-term commitment, which a great majority of school districts are solving within their budgets in a timely fashion, so that our kids do have access to the resources that they require.

A. Sanders: Despite a policy for computers in every classroom, the district has no money for upgrading technology. Can the minister explain why he has underfunded students so badly that school trustees have to go to referendum to get children the basic modern tools they need?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Well, they blow hot and they blow cold, but they sure do pass a lot of air here.

I've sat in this chamber during budget debate for the last week and heard member after member after member on the opposite side accuse this government of spending too much. Now here we are with the education budget increased for the sixth year in a row, the highest per capita funding per student of any province in Canada, and this member says that we should spend more. Hon. Speaker, they don't know where they stand; the people of the province don't know where they stand. That's why they're over there, and we're over here.

[2:30]

Interjections.

The Speaker: Excuse me, members. I would like to recognize the next questioner, but I need quiet for that. Okanagan-Boundary.

B. Barisoff: Thank you, hon. Speaker. Photo radar is fast becoming the biggest joke in British Columbia. Despite the fact that the program has a 100 percent overrun and has been criticized as inept from every corner, the NDP continues to praise the program. Now we find out that the photo radar pictures development lab has gone belly up. It means that no pictures will be developed until the NDP finds another firm. Can the minister tell the House exactly when she expects these photo radar horror stories to end?

Interjections.

[ Page 2392 ]

The Speaker: Order, members. Order!

Hon. U. Dosanjh: When some businesses fail, those are the vagaries of private business.

I am responsible for the enforcement of photo radar across this province, and I intend to make sure that we find an alternate processor and developer. We have been able to seize the undeveloped used film, and we will be presenting that to the alternate supplier and processor once we find an alternate supplier and processor. If we can't find one, we will obviously have to purchase our own equipment to do that, and we will do that.

Those are the two options. Let me just tell you, however, that I am prepared to follow either of those two options, whichever we can do at the earliest. It's important for us to enforce the law across this province to save lives across this province.

B. Barisoff: One hundred police officers have been hired to run this photo radar disaster. This means that we've got 100 police officers that aren't on the streets protecting our communities and our citizens. They're behind photo radar vans. Can the Minister of Transportation and Highways tell the victims of crime the NDP would rather have 100 officers on photo radar vans, instead of on the street protecting our communities?

Hon. U. Dosanjh: The issue around the 100 police officers has come up before in this House. Let me remind the members of this House that those 100 police officers are paid for by ICBC as part of its traffic safety initiative, and that does not detract from the police agencies that enforce the law across the province in other aspects of their lives.

S. Hawkins: Yesterday the medical staff at Lions Gate Hospital passed a vote of non-confidence in Ms. Inge Schamborzki, the CEO of the North Shore health board. In a memo to members of that health board, Ms. Schamborzki states that she notified the Ministry of Health and goes on to say: "I believe the ministry staff's immediate concern is to ensure that the Minister of Health is well-briefed for question period this afternoon." Why is this minister more concerned about how she does in question period than ensuring that patients in this province get the treatment they so desperately need?

Hon. J. MacPhail: I have no idea what the hon. member is referring to in terms of the memo. Actually, I am very well informed about the health care system. I am very well informed about our commitment to this health care system. I am very well informed about the wonderful work that the North Shore regional health board is doing. I am very well informed as to what the volunteers are doing in that community. I am very well informed as to the ongoing, sustained commitment to our health care system that our government has, unlike the members opposite.

The Speaker: The bell terminates question period.

Hon. C. Evans: I have the honour to present the annual reports of the Ministry of Agriculture for '95-96 and the Agricultural Land Commission for 1995-96.

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: I have the honour to present the annual report of the Forest Appeals Commission.

The Speaker: Members, before calling on the Clerk and going to standing orders, I wish to make a very brief statement.

Pursuant to standing orders 9 and 120, I wish to provide hon. members with guidelines relating to the use of a language other than English when addressing the assembly. Standing order 120 charges the Speaker with supervising the recording and transcribing of debates in the House, but hon. members will appreciate that we do not have simultaneous translation facilities. The House therefore requires some rules to guide those members who wish, quite properly, to acknowledge their own ethnic background and to celebrate the multicultural reality of our province.

The following guidelines are offered to assist any member addressing the House in a language other than English:

1. No presentation shall be made in a language other than English unless the script, and the English translation thereof, shall have been supplied to the Speaker at least one hour prior to the time it is intended to make the presentation.

2. The member proposing to make the presentation in a language other than English shall be responsible for the accuracy of the translation and the parliamentary propriety of the content of the remarks.

3. The translation will be included in the official Hansard report of the speech in place of the words as spoken, and accompanied by a notation to the effect that the English translation was supplied by the member.

4. The member shall furnish a sufficient number of copies of the remarks, and the English translation, so that each member can be supplied with the copies immediately following its delivery in the House.

5. Members will be expected to be brief in their presentation in the language other than English.

I believe that the above guidelines will permit us to acknowledge the diversity of cultures in the province, while at the same time allowing the Speaker and Hansard staff to carry out their obligations under the standing orders. Copies of the guidelines will be provided to members for their information this afternoon.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I call second reading of Bill 6.

Hon. D. Miller: I rise to move second reading of Bill 6, the Job Protection Amendment Act, 1997, which amends section 20 of the Job Protection Act and consequently amends section 50.2(12) of the Forest Act.

Bill 6 is necessary to extend the Job Protection Act and continue the activities of the Job Protection Commission beyond the currently legislated expiration date of April 12 of this year. The Job Protection Act was enacted on April 11, 1991, creating the office of the job protection commissioner to help reduce potential job losses in British Columbia, especially in resource-based communities. The act helps preserve businesses in our province by allowing firms to restructure rather than close their operations. The commissioner is empowered

[ Page 2393 ]

to provide counselling to businesses in trouble, and to mediate plans for reducing the impact of business downsizing and consequent destabilization of regional or local economies.

Amendments to the Job Protection Act, and consequentially to the section of the Forest Act, are required to extend the sunset date of the Job Protection Commission indefinitely -- at least until April 12, 1999, when the Job Protection Act could be repealed, if deemed necessary, by regulation of the Lieutenant Governor-in-Council.

The consequential amendment to section 50.2(12) of the Forest Act allows the Minister of Forests to continue to waive the 5 percent annual allowable cut reduction usually required for a transfer of timber tenure in cases where the waiver is an approved part of an economic plan established by the Job Protection Commission.

Just to wind up, since the Job Protection Commission began operations in 1991, up until March 31 of this year it has counselled businesses in British Columbia involving over 39,000 jobs, and has directly helped save almost 14,000 jobs.

If I could offer my personal observations, it's been my professional delight to work with Mr. Kerley and his staff in a variety of circumstances since I became a member of the executive council in 1991. I think that their professionalism, their knowledge and their understanding has been felt right across this province. It's a commission that I have the utmost confidence in, and as I indicated in the introduction, I'm sure that members opposite will also want to give speedy passage to the bill to allow the Job Protection Commission to continue its very valuable work -- most notably now with respect to the very serious situation following Repap Pulp and Paper Inc.'s granting of protection under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act.

I should also close by saying that with respect to a number of the recent files it's very clear that the reason why companies find themselves in trouble at times is due to a variety of circumstances. Principally, in my experience -- again as a member of the executive council and as someone who has held the post of Minister of Forests and my current portfolio -- you can see even through downturns in the forest economy those companies that continue to do reasonably well and those companies that go close to the edge, and some that in fact go over the edge.

I guess if I were to offer any advice with respect to drawing conclusions about the business affairs of individual companies, regardless of which sector they're in, you are far better off looking more closely at the individual circumstance of the individual company as opposed to trying to draw broad conclusions about external factors. But that perhaps is leading into another debate, and I don't wish to do that in second reading. So I move second reading of Bill 6.

C. Hansen: It is our intention in the official opposition to support this bill, and in doing so I want to spell out what we are supporting. We are supporting the very good work that has been done over these past few years by Doug Kerley, who is a very competent job protection commissioner, and on this side of the House we believe that that mandate should be extended to allow him to continue the work in which he has so admirably served the province over these past few years.

[2:45]

In the past year, since I have been elected to this House, I have listened to many people talk about the work that Doug Kerley is doing, and I must say that I have yet to hear anyone give substantial criticism to the work that he is doing. I think it's clear that when he goes in to try to negotiate a resolution to very difficult situations he doesn't always come out with all those around the table being his friends, because it's true that he has to make some very hard-nosed decisions, and there is a lot of arm-twisting that goes on. But certainly he does it in a way that is very professional and capable, and I firmly believe that this province is very well served by the service that we are given by Mr. Doug Kerley.

But I think what is important for us to address is the context in which Doug Kerley has to operate as the job protection commissioner, because what we have seen from this government over the last six years is a government that has no economic development strategy. There is no substantial job creation strategy that has any real effect on creating jobs in this province.

Those who know how to create jobs in this province are being driven out. By some of the rhetoric that comes from the government benches, it is obvious that individuals who know how to create jobs are made to feel unwelcome in this province. The sole economic strategy that we can identify coming from the government side is one of watching crisis by crisis, community by community, across this province. And their answer to that is not to address the fundamental causes of those crises but rather to refer them to Doug Kerley and get Doug Kerley and his staff to fly into these various communities to deal with the latest crisis of the week.

Three weeks ago we were in the northwest of the province, on the minister's turf. We were in Terrace shortly after the Repap situation became a crisis. The one thing that was able to give them some hope was the fact that Doug Kerley would be coming in to try to resolve. . .to try to negotiate a solution that would protect some of the interests, protect the workers, protect the jobs and protect the small contractors that are there. At a time when everything else was quite gloomy, the one ray of hope they had was the reputation of Doug Kerley and the authority and power that he had to bring to that situation.

From there, we travelled community by community. We heard the same story at Carnaby, where some of the people are looking at very dire financial straits because of the Repap situation. Again, there was some hope because Doug Kerley might be able to work his magic.

We were in Prince George, where we met with workers from PG Specialty Wood Products. Again the same situation: as a result of policies of this government, companies are laying people off -- substantial job losses -- and the only ray of hope is not that they have a government that's listening; their only ray of hope is that they have Doug Kerley, who is prepared to fly in to see what can be done, what can be negotiated, what kind of deal can be struck.

I'm told that there are three fundamentals to job strategy in British Columbia -- or in any jurisdiction, for that matter. One is job protection, the second is job expansion and the third is job attraction. Thanks to the work of Doug Kerley, I would say that this government at least has the ability to

[ Page 2394 ]

respond partially to one of those measures, and that is job protection. But what we really need to protect jobs in this province is a fundamental change in the economic direction that this party has brought to government.

What we see in case after case is this Premier being the deal-maker when it comes to trying to attract new companies to British Columbia. Instead of changing the fundamental basis of our economy, instead of addressing our tax policies, instead of addressing our regulatory environment, this Premier wants to go in and cut a deal.

Behind door No. 2, we've got job expansion. How do we take existing companies in British Columbia and allow them to create more jobs for British Columbians? Again, we've got the deal-maker. We've got the Premier, who is prepared to have a jobs and timber accord. I'm sure he's got his sleeves rolled up, he's got his gambler's hat on and he's saying: "Okay, if we give you these timber rights, how many jobs are you going to give me in return?" That's not the way to build an economy. It's not the way to create jobs in this province.

The third door. Of course, behind door No. 3 we have job protection, and there is Doug Kerley, a solid, capable individual.

If you look at investment that's coming into Canada to create jobs, investment that's coming into British Columbia to create jobs. . . . We have numbers from Investment Canada, where they monitor major new investment coming into this country, and between 1991 and 1995 there was $68 billion of new investment that investors were prepared to bring to this country to create jobs for Canadians. But how much of that money actually came to British Columbia? It was 6.8 percent. Contrast that to Alberta, which attracted 27 percent of all the new investment coming into Canada.

I ask the minister: how many of the 166,000 unemployed in British Columbia would be employed today if we had even our fair share of that $69 billion that has come in over that five-year period? If we had our fair share of that investment money. . . . How much lighter would Doug Kerley's load be today if we had investors who were prepared to come into this province and support local industry, support jobs that are here? Instead, we have a government that is bringing in policies that are driving jobs out of this province.

I want to go back to the very first annual report that the job protection commissioner put out. There's a very important quote in here, and it says, in Doug Kerley's words: "The commission is designed to help viable businesses solve problems created by recessionary pressures." When this legislation was introduced, it was meant to be temporary legislation. The role of the job protection commissioner was meant to be a temporary one, because we were trying to deal with recessionary pressures of that day. Now, with this bill that is here before us, this government is asking us to make that position permanent.

Why is it necessary to have that permanent position? It's because the policies of this government have made those recessionary pressures in British Columbia permanent pressures. If you go back to the original debate, when the Job Protection Act was passed. . . . I would like to quote from the second member for Vancouver East of that day, who is currently our Premier. He said this about the Job Protection Act: "This is a temporary bill; it has a sunset clause, which I support, and it deals with short-term help for problems which hopefully are short-term. . .we also need medium- and long-term solutions, which we haven't seen from this administration." Those words are very true today.

I'd like to give you a couple of other quotes from members from the opposite side. I'm glad to see that the Minister of Transportation and Highways is here, because these are some of the words that she said on that day: "We who live beyond Hope literally find that hope is not there. . . . We must have decisions made in our regions, not here in Victoria. . . . We all know that our forest industry is in a sad state. . . ." Those words ring very true today.

I'd like to quote from the Minister of Employment and Investment, who was an opposition member at the time: ". . .there was no industrial strategy within the Ministry of Forests. . . . We can see it in the disparity between the timber supply and the capacity, which sometimes reaches 40 percent. We can see communities desperate for timber supplies. . . . I should also point out that there are about 10,000 people in the forest industry who are currently out of work." Words that ring so true today, now that that member has the ability to do something about it.

I would like to quote from the Minister of Forests.

"Should I remind you of the statement of one of your former premiers when he said that the forest industry is a sunset industry? What a cynical comment. I think it is and will remain a sunrise industry when we start with the communities and fully involve all sectors of those communities before the closures take place, not when they're imminent."

Hon. Speaker, I urge the members who are now on government benches to go back and read the words that they said when they were in opposition and, for God's sake, to start to do something about it today, so that we don't have these problems continuing into the next century.

I trust Doug Kerley; as I've said before, this province has been served well by him. But I don't trust this government. If I knew today that Doug Kerley were to stay in this position as job protection commissioner for as long as that position existed, I would certainly feel much better about the blank cheque that is being asked for in this legislation. But quite frankly, I do not trust this government to choose a successor to Doug Kerley, when that time should ever come.

We need to support the work of the job protection commissioner, but we also need a government that will address the fundamental problem of restructuring our economy. Instead, we have a government that's making it worse. I would feel much better if we instead saw action on the part of the government that was working to put the job protection commissioner out of work. If we had policies coming from this government that meant that the role of the job protection commissioner was going to be redundant in years to come, then I would feel much better about supporting this legislation. But what we see instead are government policies that are adding to his workload every single day.

With that, I would like to summarize that we will support the legislation. We certainly have a lot more questions that we'd like to ask during committee stage. With that, I will turn it over to the next speaker.

[ Page 2395 ]

G. Wilson: This bill, Job Protection Amendment Act, 1997 -- I guess, as the previous speaker has just said -- provides for an opportunity to remove the sunset date that was in the previous act in terms of the Job Protection Act and to substitute provision for giving the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council the ability to repeal those provisions by regulation at any time after April 12, 1999.

We could. . . . I don't intend to speak a long time on this particular bill, because I support the work of the job protection commissioner. But I, like the previous speaker -- and, I'm sure, all members in the opposition -- am concerned that we need a job protection commissioner in this province, given the tremendous opportunities that should be available to all of us.

We are headed into some extremely turbulent times -- some very stormy waters indeed. I think that what we have to do as a province -- and as a nation, I would argue, although certainly that's not our purview within this chamber to talk on the national issue -- is to focus in on some of the realities of the new globalization of our economy, of the continentalization of it in North America, and of the impact that that's going to have on our ability to continue to have the tools, provincially, to do what needs to be done.

I would say about Bill 6 that this is a time when all of us -- regardless of our political stripe or of where we may feel that we stand with respect to the kind of job strategies that this government has put forward -- must recognize that there is a reality out here that is going on within the continental and international marketplace that is going to make it increasingly difficult for us to put in place, domestically and provincially, protections that we need for our jobs.

[3:00]

Yesterday I raised the spectre of this new multilateral agreement with respect to investment, the MAI. I characterized it as a part of a trade trilogy: first FTA, then NAFTA, and now the MAI. This MAI -- and I raise it now only because it will have a direct effect on our ability to continue to protect jobs -- is something that I think we need to take very seriously. In fact, I have put forward a motion for this House to thoroughly debate this issue at an appropriate time, because it strikes me that when you have negotiations underway that will provide protection to foreign investors who come into our country, protection that eliminates the opportunity for provincial governments to be able to -- through either its Crown corporations, through the FRBC model, through job protection commissioners and strategies related, as we see in Bill 6. . . . The moment we allow those agreements to remove our ability to protect British Columbia jobs first, for British Columbians first, we're in serious trouble.

I would say also that the reason this Job Protection Amendment Act is timely is because all of us are facing the impact of a very significant change in the manner in which corporations are investing and are starting to access our resource base -- and in the degree to which there is mobility within the international market place in terms of the movement of production from areas of reasonably high labour to areas of reasonably low labour.

I take what the Minister of Forests said earlier today to heart, when he talked about the problem with woodchips and the harvest of timber -- which is low grade, largely -- paying high stumpage that you can't realize back at market, because if you're paying $105 per cubic metre to harvest and you're getting $78 in the market, then clearly you're losing money. The small operators -- wherever they are -- are affected by that, and that means the reality of the international marketplace. . . .

As much as it might be politically expedient to lay it all at the feet of this government, I think that realistically we can't, because there is an international marketplace out there, and we are affected by international prices, and we are having to deal with a very competitive and very quickly changing economic community. We have to have the tools available -- whether it's through this kind of a strategy or through other kinds of initiatives that the government may undertake -- to be able to put into place the protection that we need for workers in this province, for Canadian investors, and for small business entrepreneurs who are trying to become owners of our economy and not simply tenants in our own province.

I will support this bill, because as unsavory as it may be for us to have to have a job protection commissioner, that is the reality of the times in which we live. It is important for all of us -- regardless of where we're coming from politically -- to unite with a single cause: that is, to make sure that British Columbians are protected, and that our investors and those who live within our communities are protected, and to provide an opportunity for British Columbians to continue to be owners in our province and not become tenants in our own land. That is the trend that is taking place now: for large, multinational corporate interests to come into this province and to be able to have within this province protections such as those that are being outlined in this most offensive piece of treaty negotiation called the MAI and to have provided for them a charter of rights, if you want, that will protect their abilities as international investors to be able to take from our resource base without any kind of guarantees that we'll be able to maintain the level of employment that is needed in this province.

Having said that, let me add one further comment in support of this bill. I think that we must all recognize that as we start to look at the job protection commissioner -- and much of the work that is being done is being done in the forest sector -- there is a time, a needed time now, to change the manner in which we assign forest tenures. I put to this government three solutions to our malaise, at least in part. Firstly, forest tenure reform is urgently needed. We must break the vertical integration that exists between the major forest companies and the mill owners and operators to provide greater job opportunities in the small communities. Secondly, we must take those moneys that are currently being raised through the 12 percent on FRBC stumpage and put that money directly on deposit in our local communities, so that those communities have an opportunity to directly benefit from those resources, and those jobs then can be maintained within the community. Thirdly, we must put a greater percentage of the timber that we are harvesting in our province into a competitive open market for British Columbians to be able to access, so that more of it can go into value-added production to create a greater degree of security within that sector by having a greater degree of certainty of supply of timber.

I look forward to the day when we don't need a job protection commissioner. That day is not upon us because of the international concerns I've already spoken of and the international agreements I've already alluded to, and because the government has not yet understood, in my judgment, that what we have to do is implement some fundamental changes in the most basic and most important aspect of our economy -- that is, the forest sector.

I look forward to the day we don't need a commissioner, because that will be the day British Columbians will find that their jobs are well protected through sound economic opportunity and not through government intervention. That's the

[ Page 2396 ]

day we must all work for. But until that time comes, we have no choice but to make sure that the work of this commissioner is unimpeded and that the government continues to have the tools necessary to protect British Columbians in their jobs.

I'm a bit concerned that we personalize the position to too great a degree. Mr. Kerley does an outstanding job, and I'm the first to acknowledge that. The important role, though, is that of the job protection commissioner. It is the tools and the authority that the job brings from government that ensure the successes. We have to make sure that we not only have provision for a job protection commissioner but that the commissioner has the necessary tools, the necessary authority and the necessary clout to go out and seek solutions to the problems.

I'm not going to be tempted either to fall into the partisan kind of debate that took place in 1991 or to fall into the second temptation, which is to read the quotes back -- something I very much enjoy doing, but it has already been done. These things that go around, come around. What I want to recognize, first of all, is that we need to have the amendment, which we have in front of us, to give some permanency to the job protection commissioner as part of our process, but I do agree that we also need to address economic issues.

My sense is that over the last six and a half years, most of the challenges faced by the job protection commissioner have been in resource industries. I wouldn't go so far as to say that every task they've undertaken was, but for the most part. It has been a mill closure, a mine closure or a crisis in a resource-based industry. We need to find some better mechanisms to deal with those as well. It has been noted in debate that two of the most recent challenges for Mr. Kerley have been the Repap situation in the northwest and the chopstick plant closure in the northeast.

It underlines, for me at least, the need to look at the way our forest industry interacts with our resource-dependent communities, the way communities such as Tumbler Ridge are able to focus on the challenges that face the coalmining industry today and the issues that face metallurgical mines in the various communities around the province. I look at the throne speech, and I see there a commitment to a northern job strategy. I think that's a proper and prudent step toward less reliance on the work that the job protection commissioner will have to do, and it's a longer-term approach to some of the solutions.

I recognize, particularly in the northern parts of this province and in the resource-dependent areas, the need to develop a longer-term strategy. Without quoting the minister's words in 1991, in fact, there was no job strategy, no investment strategy, in 1991. Unfortunately, there still isn't today.

There wasn't one in 1981. In 1981 I was working as an economic development commissioner, and I wanted to develop an economic strategy for the northeast region. I thought that the best way to do that would be to look at the province's economic and job strategy and pull from it those things that would best serve us in the northeast. As someone new to that business, I was surprised and disappointed to find that there was no provincial job strategy. Then I thought I would look at the national economic and job strategy, and I found there that our country had no strategy -- at least no published strategy. I looked then to the United States and found that the United States didn't either. In fact, what I found in 1981 was that the only two countries at the time that had a comprehensive economic and job strategy were Germany and Japan. They were doing very well at the time, and that continues today. I think it underlines the need for us to develop these kinds of strategies and to put some thought, time and effort into them. I look forward to the government moving on the northern economic and job protection strategy as a start down that road.

Having said that, Mr. Speaker, I don't think there's any doubt that as long as British Columbia continues to depend on resource industries -- and that will occur as far into the future as I can see -- there's going to be a need for someone to come in and deal with crisis situations that arise. Quite candidly, I don't think it matters who sits on what side of the House. There are going to be industries that get into trouble and individual businesses and corporations that get into trouble. That's going to cause crises, particularly for small communities, and the job protection commissioner is an appropriate role to move in to deal with those. So I support the notion of a more permanent position.

Again, I hope Mr. Kerley is able to serve in that position for a considerable period of time. But I am a bit concerned that it becomes the Doug Kerley commission, because that is not what any of these positions should be. It should be the position itself, the authority and the leverage that this position brings to a particular challenge. I wish Mr. Kerley all the best in the work he's currently undertaking.

[3:15]

On the situation in Fort Nelson, it's tragic that my colleague the member for Peace River North is actually in Fort Nelson trying to work with the community and with Mr. Kerley and other related industries to deal with that issue, because I know he would want to speak to the impact of the loss of 175 jobs in a community of 5,000 people. If you take that and apply it to a metropolitan area, it would be like losing 40,000 good-paying jobs in Vancouver in one day. Imagine the implications. Imagine the repercussions for our province and for a metropolitan area too, if 5 percent of its population were losing their jobs on a given date.

That's what happened in Fort Nelson on April 1 -- April Fools' Day -- and it was no April Fools' joke. It was a very serious event in that community. The repercussions will be felt for a long period of time down the road, and the best chance of that having a good resolution is the fact that Mr. Kerley is there. He was able to be there within a matter of two or three days. He is able to sit down and look at issues such as manpower costs, timber supply, hydro costs, rail costs, all the things that together allow a business either to succeed or force them to close their doors.

I don't think anybody could go to the chopstick plant in Fort Nelson or to a mill closure in the northwest or in Golden or anywhere else and point to a single issue that caused that business to fail where others succeeded. It is normally a series of circumstances and economic events that occur to cause a business to fail.

The ability to go and address each of those, to get some concession from each of the players. . . . One looks at govern-

[ Page 2397 ]

ment agencies such as Hydro and B.C. Rail, at stumpage, at timber supply, at all of those areas, and there is opportunity for some movement. Is B.C. Rail, for example, better to take a marginally smaller freight rate or to have no freight at all? It's a very real issue, one that perhaps they are unwilling to address on their own. I don't even know whether that's an issue that's been put forward, but I suggest and suspect that when we are looking at it, at the cost of hydroelectricity, the remote location of Fort Nelson and the transportation costs associated with it will all prove to be contributing factors to the closure. Again, it comes back to a mechanism that I've seen work as well under the Job Protection Commission as any other vehicle I've seen to date. So I'm pleased to close, again indicating my support for the amendment to the Job Protection Commission.

It's fascinating, because there isn't any discussion about that. This government legislates things. They legislate issues around the health accord and around the fair-wage policy. They create threatening noises about the relationship between timber cutting rights and jobs. This government continually points its fingers across this Legislature and says: "What are your ideas?" I don't blame them, because they are bereft of them. We've talked about them before, and before I finish today I will make some concrete suggestions that I hope the government will take up.

I personally would have preferred to have seen Bill 6 extend the mandate of the job protection commissioner for two more years rather than allowing it to run on, subsequently to be cancelled by order-in-council. That's not because I am optimistic that if this government is still in office in two years' time -- heaven forbid! -- the job won't be necessary and still a requirement, but I think it is important to give both sides of the House the opportunity to speak to this critically important issue on a periodic basis. The sunsetting of the mandate of the job protection commissioner gives us that opportunity, and I would have preferred if that had been the case.

Today is a normal day in this House. What have we talked about? Well, earlier on, the Attorney General of the province tabled a bill called the Food Donor Encouragement Act and stated that the demand is ever-increasing. The demand on our food banks by people who are poor and living on the streets of this province is greater now than it ever has been. That is the result of this government's policies. There were 5,500 jobs lost in the forest industry last year. What are we going to do about it? We're going to threaten the forest companies. We're going to threaten the forest companies that we'll take away their cutting rights unless they do something about it. What can they do about it? Well, they can make their mills more inefficient, or less efficient, by requiring more man-hours to do a particular job. Or we can encourage value-added. That's the role of Forest Renewal.

Mr. Speaker, after all that is said and all the words are bandied around, we support reinvesting funds that can be spared from stumpage rates in the forests of British Columbia. That, to us, is good common sense. There may be other alternatives, other ways of doing that, other ways of encouraging that, and I did speak to that issue briefly during the budget debate.

What else has happened today? Well, we heard an advisory that photo radar is going through another of its problems, because the company that was doing the work has gone into receivership. It seems to me that we hear more and more about receiverships, more and more about bankruptcies, more and more about issues for Repap or Evans Forest Products. And now Gold River.

I had the privilege of attending the opening of the Gold River Inn many years ago, after the mill had been built, and spending some time in that community -- a community with a bright future, it seemed then. It was upbeat. People liked to live there. It was going to be a community in which they could see, and hope, they would be able to raise their children, living in an environment in the forests that is a sportsman's paradise. All that would seem to be dissolving before their eyes now.

Interjection.

F. Gingell: The minister just now suggested that the member for Vancouver-. . .

C. Hansen: Quilchena.

F. Gingell: . . .Quilchena -- I knew I'd remember the name of that golf course -- must have had a breakfast of platitudes. But that's all that businesses and people in trouble ever get from this government: platitudes. No real action; nothing but platitudes.

I've spoken before in this House about what you do about job creation, how you get the economy going, and it's all to do with climate. It's all to do with what is in people's minds. You have to create a climate that encourages investment and entrepreneurial spirit in this province. We have lots of things going for us: a wonderful environment, safe streets, an education system that -- poor as it is at the moment from this government -- stands up well against its competitors. We in British Columbia believe that we have sufficient natural attributes to encourage businesses to settle here on the Pacific Rim, with the opportunities in this market, rather than in Washington State or in Oregon or California or Alberta.

So why doesn't that happen? I would just like to focus on three of the issues. The first is taxes. Mr. Speaker, I don't know how to keep saying this so many times. Mr. Harcourt, when he was Premier of this province, recognized that expanding the corporation capital tax from financial institutions to other businesses sent a negative message that would do far greater damage to potential investors than the amount of money that would be raised. When he realized what they had done wrong and the uproar that happened, he made the commitment that the corporation capital tax would be cancelled. Then it got changed to: "Well, we'll cancel it as soon as the budget has been balanced."

Mr. Speaker, we won't get into issues about whether or not the budget has been balanced -- that's a subject you and I don't seem to see eye to eye on -- but we don't even get an indication that this government recognizes the damage that the corporation capital tax does. If only this government would make a new commitment and say, "We're not going to do it this year, but we'll drop it by one-third in three successive years," we would be able to live with that. It will cost them about $130 million a year, and it will bring far, far more revenues to the government through personal income taxes

[ Page 2398 ]

that will be paid by people at work, by reduced welfare rolls, by people who are off welfare and into good jobs. It will reduce our health care costs. It will have all kinds of benefits.

[G. Brewin in the chair.]

There's also the issue of a sales tax on manufacturing inputs, manufacturing equipment. I appreciate that at this moment in time, with the way this government has looked after the finances of this province, they are not in any position to -- and probably won't -- reduce those taxes, which raise, I believe, somewhere in the region of $600 million. But there isn't any message from this government that says: "We know what we're doing wrong. We know what we don't want, and we're going to start to put things right. We know that the burden of regulation that we lay on small business is too great. We are going to try and change it, over a reasonably short period of time, to be descriptive rather than proscriptive."

[3:30]

"And we also recognize," this government should be saying, "that another issue is security of tenure." Businesses, the mining industry particularly, do not feel comfortable that security of tenure in this province is a guarantee that this government is strong about making. There is a series of things that this government can do to improve the economic climate, to encourage investment and to create the right solution for job creation. Have a real job creation strategy -- one that will work and is not a hammer hanging over someone's head but a carrot.

In the meantime, of course, we need to continue the mandate of the job protection commissioner. It's a shame. It's a shame that he's got so much work. The work in his office never seems to end. His annual reports make interesting reading, and they make worrisome reading, because behind every single business failure are broken lives and families that no longer have jobs. And that has all kinds of consequences -- consequences that are basic to the quality of life of British Columbians.

So I will end with that: supportive of this bill, but pleading with this government to start doing tangible things to come up with a real job creation strategy and give British Columbians and our children and our grandchildren hope that in the future things will get better rather than, as it seems at the moment, get worse.

W. Hurd: I'm pleased to rise today to speak to the job protection commissioner's act.

I want to take the opportunity to explore an area that I don't believe I've heard dealt with so far in this debate, and that's to pay tribute to Mr. Doug Kerley, who, by virtue of his personality, I think, has been able to take this office and turn it into perhaps the most influential and instrumental policy vehicle in the province today to save jobs and the economy. Certainly Mr. Kerley's role in bringing the parties together in Trail to preserve the jobs of some 3,000 British Columbians at the Trail smelter was well remembered in that community.

He has that remarkable ability to cut through the red tape, bring the warring parties together, get them reading off the same song sheet and get the jobs saved. That's a remarkable role that he's been able to play and one that, with the support of this bill, I'm delighted to say he will continue to play.

But you know, there's no doubt that Mr. Kerley will be a busy man in the years ahead. You have to appreciate, hon. Speaker, the nature of the economy of British Columbia. I think there's a misconception out there about what has happened in the provincial economy and where we're headed. In 1996 B.C. Stats released statistics comparing provincial economies across Canada, and it was noted that British Columbia is still the most dependent of all Canadian provinces on the export of energy, forest and mineral products. Fully 71 percent of B.C.'s exports are accounted for in those three categories, which was by far the highest total in Canada. Clearly, although there have been a lot of press reports and information about the diversification of the B.C. economy, the fact is that we're still largely dependent on those three natural resources for our economic livelihood and for our prosperity.

It's also a fact of life that many of those enterprises, those activities, take place in single-industry communities in British Columbia. So when there is a failure out there, it's far more catastrophic than it would be on the lower mainland -- where you do literally have the entire future of communities tied up in the activity that is being threatened.

Just last week, the Minister of Forests released a study about the increase in costs for delivering a raw log to a sawmill in British Columbia during the tenure of the current government. As we heard today during question period, Peat Marwick Thorne has found that the log costs to a sawmill have gone up in the province by 75 percent in the course of five years.

There isn't an industry in North America, I would argue, that can sustain that kind of increase in its raw material costs and remain competitive. I'll say it again: there's not an industry in North America -- a car-maker, anyone -- that could sustain that kind of increase in its raw material costs and possibly protect jobs. It just can't be done.

We're now treated to the spectacle of the current government discussing the future of this industry with a group of chief executive officers in the industry and others. As the Minister of Forests well knows, there's great fear in this province about the future of that industry, which employs so many British Columbians.

I can recall very well, during debate in this House with the previous Minister of Forests, that he displayed almost an unwillingness to concede that there was any need to talk to the industry at that time -- that somehow these charges and regulations could be levied on the industry at will without any repercussions in terms of their ability to not only create employment but secure the employment that's already here.

I think Mr. Kerley will have his work cut out for him in the years ahead. There's no question that as the costs of production rise astronomically, mills that are on the bubble, so to speak, that already are experiencing high fibre costs and

[ Page 2399 ]

perhaps difficult geographic locations -- located in areas where they have high costs of shipment to the coast. . . . There's no doubt that those mills are going to be forced to make some difficult choices about their future. And it's also a sad fact of life that many of them are located in communities where they are literally the biggest single employer and often the only employer.

I guess if I have one other lament, it's that Mr. Kerley's involvement in a business failure often comes as a last resort. And it often comes after those businesses and enterprises have come to Victoria to make representations to the Minister of Forests, to the Minister of Employment and Investment, and have tried to tell these ministers the reality that they are facing. It's only after a catastrophe like the situation in Golden, or like the minister's former employer, Repap, up in his neck of the woods. . . . I know that he worked for the plant up there for many years and is as concerned as anyone about the situation it's facing today.

I just lament the fact that it is Mr. Kerley who is the architect of last resort and not the government, because clearly a government that decides that an industry can sustain a 75 percent increase in its raw material costs has lost the ability to listen -- to seriously listen -- to an industry and to one-industry towns.

When I was the critic for Forests, I often had occasion to travel throughout forest-dependent communities in our province, attending rallies and talking to people on the mill floor. The one lament that I heard out there was that they felt strongly that government didn't understand anymore where the forest industry jobs were located in British Columbia. I think the first Minister of Forests -- and we've had many since -- seemed to understand that. He actually seemed to know that the industry was changing, that even though the advent of high technology reduced employment on the sawmill floor, there were a lot of peripheral businesses that took shape in communities that were equally dependent on that major employer. They didn't show up in the job statistics as being forest-dependent jobs, yet they were real; they were out there. Of course, Mr. Kerley never really has the opportunity to deal with some of those peripheral failures that occur as a result of the collapse of the major employer.

I know that the current Minister of Employment and Investment, in his constituency office, is probably dealing with this issue on a daily basis. The number of suppliers and small firms that have been left vulnerable as a result of the collapse of Repap is the part of the story that we don't hear about, even when it comes to Mr. Kerley's office, because he usually goes in and deals with the major employer -- the Comincos, in the case of Trail -- and, you know, some of the major forest products restructuring. I know he was active with Avenor up in Gold River, with the plant there.

But it's in the small and intermediate-sized firms that depend on these sawmills that the real tragedy occurs. I often was struck by the fact that people in small communities felt strongly that the government didn't know they were a forest-dependent employee. It wasn't aware of the fact that the small enterprise of 15 people who were perhaps millwrights, and perhaps the local tire company that sold tires for skidders or other logging equipment operators, were just as dependent on the resource and on that sawmill as the people who worked on the plant floor -- and yet they didn't show up in the government's assessment of statistics.

I really am concerned about the future of the province. As I said when I started my remarks, British Columbia is the most dependent province in the country on those major commodities: energy, forests and mineral resources. There's no question that this act is timely, that it extends the mandate of the job protection commissioner. I take great satisfaction in congratulating Mr. Kerley on the job he's done for the people of the province to date, and I certainly look forward to receiving his reports in the future about his activities around British Columbia.

G. Abbott: I'm very pleased to rise today, Madam Speaker, to give my support to this bill. I had kind of a unique experience as a rookie member in actually getting some firsthand experience with the job protection commissioner as a result of the crisis at Evans Forest Products in the community of Malakwa -- which of course is in my riding of Shuswap -- and, secondarily, in the community of Golden, which is in Columbia River-Revelstoke.

I certainly hope that I don't have to have too many more experiences with the job protection commissioner, although I was very much impressed with everything I saw about the job protection commissioner. For those reasons, I very much support what's being proposed here today. Obviously it was a very difficult and unhappy time for the communities of Malakwa and Golden particularly, but also for the whole region. Sicamous and Revelstoke were very much affected by this crisis.

So I do hope that I don't have to experience that again. Unfortunately, it may perhaps be inevitable that we will face something like this again. I think there are some problems that have been occasioned by some of the policies of this government, and unfortunately, we may have to deal with it. I hope I don't have to, but it's important that we have a job protection commissioner in place to deal with these issues when they emerge.

[3:45]

The Evans Forest Products closure was the result of some very severe financial problems which emerged in that company and came to a peak, I guess, in early October of last year.

I first visited the community of Golden in mid-October, after the plant there had been closed down for about a week, and the Malakwa plant at that point had been closed down for a little bit less than that. I met at that time with the council of the town of Golden, met with community leaders from the Golden area, met with IWA officials and met with Evans Forest Products management.

The government response at that time -- and this was mid-October -- was that Evans Forest Products was entirely the author of its own misfortunes and its own economic difficulties and that the government had done all it could or should do in trying to preserve the 700 or so jobs associated with Evans Forest Products.

After the discussions I had in Golden and Malakwa at that time, there were several things which very much struck me about the crisis that those communities were experiencing.

[ Page 2400 ]

For example, at one meeting in Golden the absolute, fundamental importance of that company in that single-resource town came home to roost when a lady told me: "I have a ladies' clothing store. Since Evans Forest Products closed a week ago, I've done less than $50 worth of business in my store."

The second thing that struck me very, very forcefully during my visits to Malakwa and Golden at that time was that the government was prepared to offer them transitional training allowances; they were prepared to offer them relocation allowances; they were prepared to offer them unemployment insurance; and they were prepared to offer them social assistance. There was no end of lines which people could get into to access transitional assistance as a result of this crisis.

One of the most striking things -- I'm sure it will impress me forever -- was the response that people had to those offers. They said: "We don't want transitional training allowances; we don't want relocation allowances; we don't want unemployment insurance; and we don't want social assistance. We want to work at jobs we like, and we want to work in the community that we've chosen to spend the rest of our lives in."

It was a very, very emotional time for the people there -- and certainly for me, as well. People felt that their whole lives had been turned upside down, and they clearly expected and had every reason to expect that government should do something about the most unfortunate situation that they were in.

The third thing that very much struck me, particularly after meeting the management of Evans Forest Products, was that there had been no real attempt by government -- and this is ten days into the closure -- to try to save the 700 jobs at Evans Forest Products in Golden and Malakwa. Certainly there had been an exchange of correspondence, which I was offered the opportunity to have a look at, but there had been no face-to-face discussions between the government, the job protection commissioner and the company or the union. None of that had happened. It seemed absolutely remarkable to me that 700 jobs and, really, two communities could be, I guess, relegated to this unfortunate position without any serious face-to-face discussion or negotiation between the critical parties here -- government, job protection commissioner, company, union.

After my visits to Golden and Malakwa, among the phone calls I made subsequent to that was one to the job protection commissioner to try to understand where the situation was going from his perspective. I must say that the job protection commissioner was very honest, very candid, very straightforward, very non-partisan in the way in which he dealt with the issue with me. I also talked to the owner of Evans Forest Products about his concerns with respect to his company's viability, given the economic and regulatory environment which he faced in British Columbia. The conclusion I formed after discussing the situation with those gentlemen and a number of other people was that the only way in which we were going to get movement on Evans Forest Products would be to bring a lot more public attention to this very critical issue in those communities and to bring about further political pressure, which might bring about some movement from the government and, I suppose, the company and the union's perspective.

One of the things which I asked my leader to do was to come and visit the communities of Malakwa and Golden as quickly as he could. I know I was delighted, and I know the communities were delighted, that the Leader of the Official Opposition was able to come and visit the communities of Malakwa and Golden on very short notice -- just after a couple of days, on less than 24 hours notice. Again, what I'm trying to do here is underline the very critical importance of this company and these jobs to the communities. Without any kind of advertisements in the newspaper or anything else -- it was all by word of mouth -- less than 24 hours after I let one of the people in the community know that my leader was coming, almost 200 people came out to see us at a meeting in Malakwa. Malakwa is not a large community, and I think it really underlined how critical these jobs were to this community.

In Golden we met with lots of residents, people very much concerned with what was happening to their community, and again with business people who felt entirely desperate about their situation. When a company closes down which is as important to a community as Evans is to Golden, people don't buy anything. Retailers very quickly get into problems, so obviously they were very, very concerned. We met with union representatives, workers, management and community leaders. All of these meetings reinforced the urgency of working towards a solution which would get these people back to work. One of the things which we urged the Golden council and community leaders in Golden to do was get on a plane as soon as possible and meet with the Minister of Forests and the Minister of Employment and Investment in Victoria. We felt that it was critical that they press their case as quickly as possible.

We were very much delighted when, after a few days, it appeared that their visit to Victoria was going to bear fruit. What happened at that time -- and I guess now we're about three weeks into the crisis; it's around October 20 or 21 -- was that the government finally acknowledged that there was a crisis at Golden and Malakwa that had to be addressed. Further, the government acknowledged that they were prepared to use their resources, including the job protection commissioner and Forest Renewal B.C., to try to find solutions to the very fundamental problems which underlie this crisis.

The agreement which ultimately resulted from this initiative took several weeks, and it certainly took a lot of hard work by a lot of people, including the job protection commissioner. But ultimately a restructure agreement was reached, which allowed those jobs and that industry, Evans Forest Products, to continue. I know, as very much an interested participant in those weeks, that the job protection commissioner did an excellent job of putting the restructure agreement together. It's a complex agreement. There are over a hundred sections, as I recall, in the restructure agreement. I'm sure that each of those sections involved a lot of hard work on his part and on the part of government ministers, as well. I commend them for doing that.

I think one of the reasons the job protection commissioner was successful in this initiative is that he commands enormous respect because of his knowledge, experience and integrity. Again, I was very much struck, even early in the crisis when the job protection commissioner was not yet involved, that he seemed to me pretty much the unanimous -- not pretty much. . . . He did have the unanimous respect of the

[ Page 2401 ]

industry, of the union, of all the officials involved, of local government. Everyone respected Doug Kerley. I think that for that reason he was able to do the very good work that he was able to do. That respect, I think, was necessary, because there were some enormous problems that had to be overcome in order to see the Evans agreement come to fruition.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

One of the consequences in the case of Evans Forest Products, which had to deal with roughly 80 percent high-lead or helicopter logging, was that the Forest Practices Code had a particularly devastating effect on their economic position. Roadbuilding costs are much higher there -- a consequence, in part, of the terrain. But, again, the application of the code made it much more difficult for the company as well. The impact of the Mica Dam pondage is certainly a big issue as well. That company faces some very unique problems that other forest companies in the interior, or indeed anywhere else in British Columbia, don't have to face. In combination with low pulp prices and, in my view, an insensitive revenue-driven stumpage system, the consequences for this company's bottom line -- I guess, at the time, it would be difficult to use the term "profitability" because that doesn't quite do it -- and the consequences of all that on the company's economic position were horrendous.

[4:00]

As well, there were other regulatory and taxation issues that came into play with respect to Evans Forest Products. Our Finance critic has mentioned the impact of the corporate capital tax, and certainly that is a background issue here, as it is with every other enterprise in this province. Super-stumpage is an issue as well. All of these things contributed in some measure to the very difficult position which Evans Forest Products found itself in.

There was mention earlier on today about the recent report on the high logging costs in British Columbia -- an increase of 75 percent in log extraction costs in this province in the past few years. Again, I hope the Minister of Forests will follow through on his commitment to try to deal with this very significant problem.

Logging and forestry are going to be, for a long, long time -- and perhaps forever, I don't know -- the backbone of the provincial economy, in my view. It's absolutely critical that we ensure that the industry continues to invest, continues to grow and not suffer declines as a consequence of a loss in faith in this province as a place to invest.

Mr. Speaker, I was delighted, and I know that all members on this side of the House were delighted, with the efforts of the job protection commissioner and others -- and I'll generously include the Minister of Forests here -- in bringing this restructure agreement to fruition. It was a wonderful day in my hometown of Sicamous and, I know, in Malakwa and Golden and everywhere, when the people went back to work there. So I think we want to support this bill. I think the experience with Evans Forest Products is a good example of why we need it.

A. Sanders: I rise in second reading of Bill 6, Job Protection Amendment Act. I, too, wish to congratulate Mr. Doug Kerley for his knowledge, experience and the integrity he has brought to the job of the official job protection commissioner for British Columbia.

I think that what we are looking at in British Columbia right now is a circumstance, from an employment point of view, where there is concern over the climate for job creation. Sometimes I wonder, when looking at the position of job protection commissioner, whether we are in a situation where our government does have a vision for job creation.

I think we need to be looking at those criteria that would provide for stabilization in the job market and for stability in the jobs that have been created in British Columbia. I'm hoping that we will not be relying on Mr. Kerley to come to community after community to put out fires that have been necessitated by things that are job-killing in terms of government regulations and rules.

It's really important for all of us to remember, Mr. Speaker, that it is not government that creates jobs. In fact, it is government that creates the climate in which jobs can occur. We've been with a job protection commissioner, starting this with a sunset clause in '93, then prolonged to '95, then to '97. . . . Now, again, we're on the brink of requiring new legislation in order for this position to be re-created with potentially no sunset clause.

What we need to look at in that big picture are the issues that are considerably needed in terms of British Columbia, and these are the issues of job attraction and job expansion as well as job protection. In many ways, when we are looking at the work we ask Mr. Kerley to do, sometimes we're asking at the death throes of jobs for large numbers of people. Really, if we were looking at the attraction and expansion areas, we would have a much more stable job creation and maintenance environment.

I have heard in the past about the issue of Golden and Malakwa, where the potential was for 700 jobs to be lost. I congratulate the member for Shuswap, as well as the member for Vancouver-Point Grey, who did go up with the job protection commissioner and work with him and the union and the company in the riding of Shuswap to give stabilization to a community that at that time would really have been decimated.

One of the things that many people in the lower mainland and on the Island may not be as aware of as those of us who come from the interior parts of the province is that when jobs, especially in forestry, are lost -- we are looking, for example, at 70 jobs in Gold River -- this decimates the entire community. It decimates families. It puts the resources of the community into a situation of lacking tenability. And it creates circumstances where people are unable to work and have no vision for the future in terms of their families.

We are living in a province with a government that has told us that we will be creating 21,000 jobs in the forestry industry over the next while. I'm having some problem having a vision of how that is going to occur, when we're looking at 70 jobs in Gold River that we heard of today being potentially lost, the potential of 700 jobs in Malakwa and Golden and the 400 jobs in Fort Nelson, a chopstick factory -- again, all of these positions affecting the forest industry.

[ Page 2402 ]

When we are looking at the increase in log extraction costs of 75 percent, this is really the factor that is of critical importance. There is a concern about the correlation of the increased log extraction costs and the absolute need for a job protection commissioner. I think what we need to be doing is putting those two facts together and seeing how they relate to each other, and whether or not this is a tenable circumstance for us to look at as elected members of this House.

There are other areas that the job commissioner may have to deal with in the near future, hon. Speaker. I'm very concerned about the potential for education in British Columbia and whether this will again be an area where the job protection commissioner will have to do extraordinary work, as we hear about potential layoffs and cutbacks within our school districts. I'm hoping that forestry won't be followed by education, in terms of jobs that once existed in British Columbia and now must be subject to the job protection commissioner's strategies of putting out fires in communities on a community-by-community basis.

In committee stage, I would like to speak specifically to the education issues. At this point, I would very much like to speak in support of Mr. Kerley and his continual service in this job and to thank the member for Shuswap for sharing with us the details of the incident at Golden. I'm very proud of his ability to help that community.

C. Clark: I rise with my colleagues to also support the bill, the Job Protection Amendment Act. I do that because, of all the things that government does, creating and protecting jobs and ensuring that there is work for British Columbians to go to is the most important thing. If people don't have jobs, they don't pay taxes. They don't give government any revenue, which means government can't provide schools and hospitals and social services. Essentially, without jobs there is nothing else, because every cent of government revenue comes from taxes, and every cent of tax comes from people who are employed somewhere in this province. So I can rise quite enthusiastically and say yes, I strongly support the job protection commissioner.

I think what the job protection commissioner has accomplished over the last many months has been really quite extraordinary. He has saved, I think, hundreds of jobs in this province.

He has really brought together some very diverse and sometimes fractious interests and helped people see where they can commonly find some cause. It's probably a debate for another day, but I will note here that it is something we should all be looking toward. I think that's probably the way we should be encouraging industry and business and unions and working people and communities across this province to operate -- to bring people together in that manner rather than to be constantly working at odds with each other.

So the principle on which this bill is premised is a worthy one. I guess we have to congratulate the government that first came up with the idea -- and I imagine that would be the previous government or the previous, previous government -- and that first introduced the idea of a job protection commissioner, and congratulate this government for carrying on in that tradition. It's certainly something that's needed.

My quibble with the bill, however, is the fact that it removes the sunset clause from the legislation. I think that in doing this, there's an admission -- if we're making this a permanent position rather than a temporary position -- that the government expects to be stumbling from crisis to crisis in jobs across the province. What we need to be working for instead of that is a situation where we don't require someone to go and be constantly solving crisis after crisis after crisis. What we need to address are those fundamental problems in the economy and in government policy, and the negative impacts that they have had on the economy, so we can cut back on the number of crises that occur out there.

Clearly there will always be some problems in our economic situation in British Columbia. There will always be a business or two that perhaps require some assistance from government. But I suggest that the number of businesses whose existence has been threatened, and the number of jobs, and the number of individuals whose livelihoods have been threatened over the last few years have gone up dramatically, as we see job loss in British Columbia, and as we see business after business affected and thousands of jobs affected by the policies that this government is pursuing.

Really, as legislators we need to remember why government exists in the first place. It's not our job as legislators to create jobs, because that's a tough thing to do. It's our job as legislators to provide people with as many opportunities as we can, to provide British Columbians with all the opportunities that they need in order to fulfil their potential, to some extent to create the environment that business needs in order to grow, and to step out of the way and let individuals fulfil their potential in that environment. I'd suggest that this government's policies have, in many respects, done the exact opposite on both counts.

This should be a short-term, temporary position, which I think is what the current Premier previously suggested in the House, and I know he has been quoted extensively by my colleagues in the debate over the last several hours. It should not be a long-term, permanent position.

When I was travelling around the north, we talked to people in communities from Terrace and Kitimat -- all the way across into Alberta, even. What they told us was that they see that the problems in our economy are not short-term anymore. They've become chronic. They've become chronic to the extent that once those jobs go, we can't necessarily expect to get them back. Once the high-cost forest policies drive those jobs out of our province, it's going to be tough to get them back; once the high-cost mining policies drive those jobs out of British Columbia, it is going to take years to get those jobs back; once the enormous regulatory burden drives small business out of this province, shuts down all the mom-and-pop operations in the small towns in British Columbia, it's going to be hard to get those back.

[4:15]

The taxation policies in this province, the corporate capital tax -- which I know has been referred to a number of times -- are stifling investment. And you have to start with investment before you can get jobs. Investment, of course, has an incubation period. You look over that incubation period from the day of the investment to the day the job is created, and that's a period of time. So when we talk about government changing its policies and trying to address some of these fundamental problems that they've created in the economy, we're not talking about something the government can do and just snap its fingers. We're not talking about somebody from government being able to just hop on a plane every time and go and fix the job problem somewhere in British Columbia, because eventually the task is going to become too large. It's going to be too tough, and it's going to take too long to get those people back to work.

I think one of the things that this government is recognizing as it scrambles to find new revenue is the fact that if

[ Page 2403 ]

people aren't working -- and there are more people in the province to support -- they can't provide the same number of services that they used to. So unemployment, like debt, eats away at our ability to pay for essential social programs, which I know are so important to my colleagues on this side of the House.

Some of the things that the commission addresses in that report are a lack of planning on the part of the federal government -- which is true. They talk about a lack of notice that's given to the industry on the part of the federal government, which is true. He talks about how the industry needs to be managed better; otherwise, it is going to continue to decline. In fact, the job protection commissioner talked about how our saltwater fishery in British Columbia is in dire straits. It is in desperate condition. That's because of poor management and poor policies on the part of the government.

Now, when it comes to the saltwater fishery, I know the province is very fond of pointing to the federal government and saying: "They're doing everything wrong." But, you know, the things that the commission referred to in the "Fishing for Answers" report are exactly the kinds of problems that will be occurring in the freshwater fishery in a few years' time if the government doesn't do something about it now. There is no better example, no more current example, and there is no better time for the government to try and address this problem before it gets any worse. We do not want the freshwater fishery in British Columbia to go the same way that the saltwater fishery has.

By not managing the industry properly -- by overtaxing it, by overregulating it, by regulating it poorly and putting in regulations that can't be managed, by cutting back on those areas of government that are so essential to preserving that resource, so that we can continue to support those jobs that depend on that resource. . . . By failing to do that, government is failing in its most essential and fundamental responsibility, which is to protect and create and expand the number of jobs in our province.

I want to quote the report, where he said: "Many business interests commented to us that DFO does not appear to have a long-term vision for the industry, and this omission is an impediment to business planning. DFO should provide this vision to industry." Well, that's certainly something that the government should think about with the freshwater industry, as well. "To restore confidence among the angling public and to restore the economic base of the business community, DFO needs to make a timely announcement of the sport fishing regulations. . . ." That certainly is something that could apply to the freshwater industry as well.

My point is that while we certainly do need a job protection commissioner in British Columbia, it is regrettable that we need one. It is regrettable that we need a perennial, unending time line for the position. It's regrettable, too, of course, that this individual would have been so busy as a result of the government's policies. What I would like to suggest at this point to the government is that they look at some of those very necessary changes that they need to make to their policies in order to ensure that, one of these days, we can come back and change the legislation to get rid of the job protection commissioner, because hopefully one day our economy will be in such a state that we don't require it. You know, I'd suggest, as well, that British Columbia has all the elements necessary to have a healthy economy, a really growing economy based on sound principles. We have those elements there. But government policy appears to be doing as much to inhibit that potential as it can.

I'll end by saying that we do support the job protection commissioner's position. But we would like to see this government, as part of their commitment to protecting jobs, change some of those policies they have implemented, which have so clearly undermined our ability to compete in the long term in British Columbia.

M. de Jong: Before I launch into this sterling debate, might I seek leave to make an introduction?

The Speaker: I think you jeopardized the opportunity with that comment. Nevertheless, shall leave be granted?

Leave granted.

M. de Jong: I'm happy to see in the gallery this afternoon representatives of the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board and the British Columbia Real Estate Association -- and one of them from the area I call home, Larry Luchak. If members could make him feel welcome today. . . .

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for that opportunity. I am going to begin by promising to keep my remarks brief and then spend the rest of my time disproving that offer. But I will try to keep my remarks brief.

There are a couple of things that I do want to say about the bill. They relate to trends that I have seen develop in the very short time I have been involved in the provincial political scene. It's probably not surprising, and it's probably trite to say, but all politicians love to take credit for things. Government members love to take credit for cutting ribbons on buildings and for spending in certain areas. Opposition MLAs love to take credit when it can be demonstrated that they've changed -- or at least appear to have changed -- the mind of government. It's not something that happens often, but opposition MLAs are quick to jump in and take the credit when that appears to have taken place.

I can't help but come to the conclusion that a lot of it is unwarranted, because politicians, for all their desire to take the credit when something is presented as being positive and good for society, are quick to run for cover when something bad has happened or when the indicators aren't nearly as positive.

The government, for example, will talk -- as the Education minister did today -- about the money that is being spent on education. He will do so, Mr. Speaker, pointing to the numbers. I think $10 million was the number he repeated several times today. But government does so without addressing its mind. . . . The numbers are fine. It's an easy figure; it rolls off the tongue: $10 million. It sounds, in isolation, to be quite impressive. But it begs the real question: what is the impact? What's the actual result? What is happening? We heard earlier today in question period what $10 million doesn't do for students in British Columbia. So I think that's significant: the result, the impact of the money that's being spent.

[ Page 2404 ]

Government likes, in the same vein, to talk about creating jobs. The figures, now, that we hear from this government vary anywhere from 2,000 to 40,000, and they're repeated sort of on a yearly basis. It's difficult to take them seriously -- partly, of course, because even by the government's own measurement, they aren't objectives; they aren't numbers that are met.

But I also can't help but offer the observation that they are artificial. The numbers, when they are offered, are artificial. And the results, on those rare occasions when they are presented, are equally artificial. I think that if the minister were being. . . . I was going to say, "If the minister were being honest," but I don't mean that in the pejorative way it might sound. If the minister was sincere in looking at what some of these numbers mean when we talk about retraining. . . . I have heard about some of the "retraining schemes" that are offered by government -- a four-week course to learn how to write a r�sum� that extends to an eight-week course on how to write a r�sum�. These are presented as job retraining schemes, and of course they aren't. But again the numbers make for compelling copy; they are rolled out by the government, on and on ad nauseam. But they are artificial.

I don't know how many times over the course of the past couple of years I have sat in this place and read the newspaper and listened to government tout its job creation figures as if the government itself were responsible for the creation of jobs. It is something, I have to tell you, that people in my riding -- and I think ridings right across the province -- are becoming tired of hearing. You hear the government talk about its job creation record; forget for the moment that it is not a record to be proud of. But when a new job is created, the government takes credit. When hundreds or even thousands of jobs are lost, it is the result of market conditions that are beyond government's control. You can't have it both ways, Mr. Speaker.

I suggest and submit to you that the honest answer lies in acknowledging and recognizing the fact that at best this Legislature and this government can create conditions in which the private sector, as the engine that drives the economy, can flourish. Refusing to acknowledge that fact does amount to ostrich economics. It does represent an unwillingness on the part of government, this government in particular, to recognize its own limitations. Those are real limitations. It does no one any good to delude ourselves into thinking that government has the power to create long-lasting, permanent, family-supporting jobs. It just ain't so.

For the people listening in this gallery, for the people watching at home. . . . And if they're home. . . . In many cases, many of those people are home because they don't have a job. Many of them have had what the government might term a job of note, but they have been short-term, they have disappeared and they have not been the kind of jobs that allow for those individuals to properly support their families on a long-term and ongoing basis.

So as we address our mind to the bill that is before the House and to the continuing requirement for this position and for this individual whom others have endorsed as an individual doing a very difficult job, I think we need to acknowledge that his presence, his existence, is symptomatic of a problem. This is not something to be celebrating today. We haven't heard from a lot of government speakers. I suppose, on the positive side of the ledger, that represents an acknowledgment on the part of government members that this is not something we should be celebrating.

I hope the minister, in wrapping up debate, will address a point that the member for Vancouver-Quilchena raised, when he drew that phrase, that passage from the original annual report, that said: "We are responding to recessionary conditions." That's why the position was created. It is a position designed to respond to recessionary pressures.

Now, is the minister telling us today, by virtue of the need to introduce this bill, that we are in the midst of ongoing recessionary conditions? Is that what he's saying? If it is -- if that was the original intent, the original impetus for the creation of the position -- and if that's changed, then let him say that. It has to be one or the other. We either remain in the midst of recessionary conditions, or something else has changed. I think the minister needs to confront that and address it.

[4:30]

Hon. D. Miller: I'll respond to that.

M. de Jong: He assures me that he will, and I've never known this minister to back down from an invitation to address a specific point. So I look forward to hearing from him on that issue.

There are two other points that I wish to make about the legislation itself, which. . . . Look, the legislation is going to pass. The opposition is. . . .

Hon. D. Miller: It's taking a long time to do it.

M. de Jong: The minister appears troubled by the fact that there are speakers on this side of the House that wish to draw attention to some of the conditions that have created the need for this ongoing position. I say to that that it's early in the session, and there is still a certain enthusiasm for engaging in debate that may not exist four or five months from now.

Interjections.

M. de Jong: I know that makes the Minister of Education happy.

But here's the observation: government, and this government in particular, doesn't like deadlines. It doesn't like legislative deadlines that require the state to do certain things by a certain date. It's curious, because all the people watching these debates will know that when it is government imposing deadlines on the people, there's no hesitation. There are all sorts of them, from income tax to the payment of fines, to the filing of applications. You can look at it on a personal basis or on a corporate basis, but government loves to impose deadlines on others. But when it comes to abiding by deadlines itself, there's a real reluctance.

An Hon. Member: Government can do anything.

M. de Jong: One of my colleagues reminds us of that now oft-quoted phrase from the Minister of Forests that government can do anything. That is the impression that is left, by this government in particular, by a trend that we see developing over and over again.

For the life of me, I can't understand why the government would approach this on the basis of reversing the onus -- to go from having a fixed term to having an indefinite term, unless the government decides by order-in-council to do something different. I don't understand. The minister, I presume, will address that point.

Now, I suppose the government is uncomfortable having to come before the House on a regular basis to seek the

[ Page 2405 ]

permission of the House for the job protection commissioner to continue, because when you do that you invite comment and scrutiny. Members are compelled to ask themselves: well, why do we need this person in the first place? The answer, of course, is because the economy has stagnated, because -- for all its talk -- the job creation that this government continuously promises simply isn't materializing. But that's no excuse. I think it is a function of this Legislature to have that power of endorsement. I'm curious to know on what basis the government wishes to dispense with the need to review on an annual or biannual basis -- on some basis. It is troubling, Mr. Speaker.

Interjection.

M. de Jong: You know, the Education minister calls it a tedious debate. I hardly think. . . .

Interjections.

An Hon. Member: He's the expert on tedium. He'd know tedium.

M. de Jong: You know, Mr. Speaker, when I was quite young my mother said to me that God placed certain limits on intelligence, but He placed no similar limitation on lack of intelligence. Until this very moment I didn't know what she meant. Fortunately, that matter has been clarified.

The Education minister has diverted my attention from an issue that I do think is serious. I've tried to address the topic in the serious vein that I think it deserves. God and the Education minister willing, I'll return to the serious vein that I think this subject warrants.

Mr. Speaker, I think it's important that this government not lose sight of the fact that deadlines and statutory requirements are there for a purpose and are not simply a mechanism or a tool to be imposed on others. Government shouldn't have the hesitation that apparently this NDP government has about abiding by those legislative restrictions. So as we move through this and. . . .

I. Waddell: Your time's up, though.

M. de Jong: The member for Vancouver-Fraserview, I know, would be here all day if he knew that I could speak that long.

Some Hon. Members: More, more!

M. de Jong: But sadly, Mr. Speaker, I have said and tried to impart to the minister and this government those thoughts and those submissions that I have on this subject.

I would like to know from the minister what the purpose is in eliminating the fixed term. I think it's a very relevant question, because that's the essence of the bill. The minister knows the bill is going to pass. But will he address in his comments the reasoning behind eliminating the fixed term, which I think sends entirely the wrong message to the people of British Columbia?

J. van Dongen: Hon. Speaker, I would like to address some comments to this second reading of Bill 6, the Job Protection Amendment Act. Those comments will be in two areas, the first being the agricultural food-processing sector; I want to make some comments about that industry. Then I also want to make some comments in terms of the recommendations that the job protection commissioner had made in some recent reports and how those recommendations had been followed or used by the government.

The food-processing sector, I think, is a strategic industry in British Columbia, and I'm concerned that possibly the job protection commissioner has not been brought into play in terms of the rationalization that has taken place in that industry, particularly in the last five years or so. There has been major job loss. Good union jobs, good-paying jobs that support families, have left this province, gone to Alberta, to Washington. It's certainly something that I've been raising in the last year or so. I'm concerned the job protection commissioner has not been brought in by the government to look at that overall sector. Possibly the role of the commissioner needs to be defined to include that industry. I would say there's something like 2,000 or 3,000 jobs in the last five years that have left this province.

I just want to highlight some of the plant closures that have taken place that would have been well served with the involvement of the job protection commissioner. In September of 1993 we had a fruit and vegetable processing plant, involving 360 workers -- union jobs -- shut down in Chilliwack. In July '94 we had a bread-making plant, with 89 workers, and that plant was shut down. That product is now coming from outside the province. In December of 1995, another fruit and vegetable processing plant in the Fraser Valley, 500 employees there, also shut down -- no replacement within B.C. We've seen a couple of milk plants shut down, one in May of '96 and one more recently. We've seen an egg-grading station shut down in August of '96 -- actually, there were two egg-grading stations in the last year and a half; a jam and jelly plant, 80 employees, September of '96; October of '96, an ice cream plant employing 17 people; and one month later, the largest ice cream plant in British Columbia shut down, with 64 people out of work. Those ice cream plants both went to the Prairies, one to Edmonton and one to Winnipeg. We've also seen a meat-packing plant shut down in the last six months, involving about 300 employees, and just very recently, as I mentioned, a milk-processing plant. In my experience in the agricultural industry, this has been a massive downsizing in a critical industry.

I'm pleased to support the bill for an extension of the job protection commissioner's mandate. But I think it would be very appropriate that the government and the minister consider getting him involved in the food-processing sector -- as I said, 2,000 to 3,000 jobs in the last five years.

Now I also want to address some comments to the issue raised by my colleague from Port Moody -- that is, to cite the example of the job protection commissioner's report that was done, mainly focusing on the performance of the federal government in dealing with issues revolving around the sport fishing sector and the commercial fishing sector on the salt water. But we've seen an example just recently by the provincial government, by this government, that flies in the face of

[ Page 2406 ]

recommendations that the job protection commissioner made in this recent report, of which the provincial government was very well aware. I'm referring to the increases in sport fishing licence fees.

There was no economic analysis done by the government before these very substantial increases were put in place. That was a criticism our provincial government had of the federal government in the past year, in terms of the impacts in the fishing sector of federal policy changes. So these increases were put in with no analysis of their impacts. It's the timing and the size of the increase that have had a very severe impact.

[4:45]

I might just mention that the Ministry of Environment did a study in 1989 of the whole sport fishing sector, which states that the freshwater fishery brings $500 million a year into our economy and employs 4,000 to 5,000 people. Now, I'm concerned that responsible organizations like the B.C. Wildlife Federation and the Sport Fishing Advisory Board, who should have been consulted in the first place, are now trying to play catch-up and trying to get the government to take a second look at this issue.

I just want to cite a letter from one lodge operator who is very seriously impacted by these changes. He makes reference to three concerns about how this was done. That is, there was no notification of this proposal in any sort of timely manner. The increases will more than double their licence costs, from $27,000 to $57,000 in a year. The third problem is that they have marketed their packages; these are presold. They've even received deposits on fishing trips in good faith. These have all been. . . . Decisions have been made and now are subject to review and to cancellation.

Again, just one final comment, in terms of the evidence, comes from an owner of the largest fly-fishing travel agency in the United States. He says that with the sudden fee hikes, the B.C. government has really blown it with that decision. He says he's absolutely amazed that Vancouver and British Columbia claim to be tourist-oriented and then, at the same time, they take actions like this which are diametrically opposed to that position.

Now, I don't want to belabour the point, but it's of great concern to me when we have competent work done by the job protection commissioner and it's ignored by the government, particularly by a government that has been very critical of decisions made by the federal government which did not always have a very positive impact on the sport fishing sector. I think it's important that if we as a government hire competent people, we take their advice and heed it in subsequent actions. It's certainly clear that the government hasn't done that in terms of the licence fee increases.

With that, I'm pleased to support this bill and ask the government and the minister to address the two issues that I've raised: the trends in the food-processing sector, and doing a more proactive, consultative, timely approach to issues in the sport fishing sector.

The Speaker: I thank the member for his comments and recognize now the Minister of Employment and Investment, whose remarks will close second reading debate.

Hon. D. Miller: I've listened with fascination to the statements from members opposite. I figure -- in light of my circumstances today, becoming a grandparent for the second time -- with the advancement of age and these kinds of things, that people become more contemplative, more sanguine. I must say that after listening to some of the speeches opposite, I have to respond briefly as I wrap up debate in second reading on this bill.

First of all, I want to start by congratulating the member for Peace River South, who, of all of the speakers today, I think got it right. He understands the origins of the job protection commissioner, why we have him. He understands why it's important to maintain that office and clearly understood why the thrust of this bill today is to maintain the office -- not in an absolute sense because of this bill, but to maintain the office. I want to address that particular point.

To listen to members opposite, people in British Columbia who were watching. . . . And I hope they weren't, because they would have gone away with nasty headaches and a feeling that the world is falling apart here in British Columbia -- indeed, hon. Speaker, that to some degree we represent a Third World status with respect to issues like employment and the buoyancy of our economy.

I want to recite a few brief statistics, but not in an argumentative way. These are facts. I know that all members in the House are interested in facts, even if those facts contradict arguments they've just made. So I know that they will listen in hushed silence as I illustrate, for example, the sector-by-sector employment changes in British Columbia from 1991 to 1995, and talk about the 10,000 additional jobs in forestry, the 9,000 additional jobs in manufacturing, 16,000 in construction, 2,000 in transportation and communications, 31,000 in trade, 17,000 in finance, 94,000 in service, and 10,000 in public administration -- 177,000 new jobs here in British Columbia. As I say, listening to members opposite, it's a wonder they can live with themselves, they're so filled with doom and gloom. I've never heard such a bunch of naysayers in all my days.

I know that British Columbians will want to know what the pattern has been with respect to the unemployment rate in British Columbia, lo these past few years. I know that they would want to know that in 1992 it was 10.5 percent, and it has declined every single year that my party has been in power, until it's now down to 8.2 or 8.4 percent.

Business incorporations. In 1991 there were 18,000 business incorporations, and in 1995, 23,000. I don't have accumulated totals. There was $76.3 billion in new investment over the last five years, and the naysayers would have British Columbians believe that all is doom and gloom.

On our export trade. We're an exporting province. We can be competitive with anybody in the world, and the statistics show that indeed we are. In 1991 the value of exports was $15.2 billion; it was up to $16.4 billion the next year; up to $19 billion the next year; up to $22.8 billion the next year -- up to almost $27 billion in five short years, from $15 billion. A doubling -- from $15 to almost $30 billion -- in the value of exports shipped out of the province of British Columbia. And these people are trying to tell British Columbians that something's wrong?

[ Page 2407 ]

New jobs created: 34,000 in '91-92; 47,000 in '92-93; 67,000 in '93-94; 29,000 in '94-95; 44,000 in '95-96.

Retail sales: $23.5 billion in '91; $31.2 billion in 1996. All of that at a time when our population continued to expand by a significant amount, and we're accommodating that within the kinds of policies that we have in this province and in this government to promote growth.

It is somewhat dismaying. I listened to the member for Port Moody-Burnaby Mountain talk about fisheries. Talk about crocodile tears over the state of the fisheries! I almost forgot that she worked as an executive assistant to a federal Liberal cabinet minister who has overseen the most massive reduction in federal transfer payments that this province has ever experienced. And she stands in this House and sheds those crocodile tears. She was part of that administration that foisted these policies onto the province, and indeed we have lost jobs as a result of federal cutbacks. It is a bit disconcerting to have a member in this House -- who not that long ago worked for a federal cabinet minister who was in charge of taking all this wealth out of British Columbia -- stand up and say it's our fault. If people want to be consistent, I think their memories ought to go back a little bit further than last week or maybe even six months.

Now we come to the really, really significant issue. Essentially, as I listen to the. . . . I try to glean advice wherever it's offered, and I try to pay attention and give it some respect. But the advice that British Columbians received from the Liberal caucus today was: "Let's institute the trickle-down theory of economics. Government, get out of the way. Let the private sector do their business, and the world will unfold as it should." That is essentially their economic message. That is their philosophy; it's their policy. That is what they would do to create jobs in this province: "Get out of way, government. Let the private sector go to work, and somehow all will be right with the world."

Let's examine some of the companies that they used to illustrate that point today in debate. Here is the fundamental question: did these companies suffer a decline in their fortunes? Did they go bankrupt? Did they fall on hard times. . .

Interjections.

Hon. D. Miller: Wait. This is a fundamental point with respect to this debate.

. . .because of government policy? Or did they suffer this fate because of the marketplace? This is an important question, because it does go to what appears to be the fundamental difference between that side and this side. They are advancing the theory of the marketplace: let the marketplace prevail; private capital will go to work. They'll harness all that needs to be harnessed. They'll create jobs, and we will never need a job protection commissioner in British Columbia anymore.

Well, let's talk about Cominco. There are people from the Kootenays in the House here. The private sector went out and invested $250 million or $300 million in a smelter that couldn't produce anything. They had bought the wrong technology. Private capital made a huge, huge mistake. Having made that mistake, having put $200 million to $300 million into a smelter that didn't work, where did they come? They came knocking on the door of government and said: "Please, government, help us out; we're going broke. Put the job protection commissioner in place. Give us some tax breaks. Give us all these things so that we can stay alive and protect these jobs." Hon. Speaker, they made the decision. It was a mistake of private capital. Not one member on the opposite side has ever acknowledged that private capital also has a responsibility in our system.

Let's talk about Evans. Now there's a story. I know it very well. I was the Minister of Forests. Let's talk about a loan that was given by a previous Social Credit administration to a forest company to expand their output at a time when they knew the volume of wood available in that forest region was going down. Now, there's an economic policy for you: let's use the taxpayers' money to support a private company to expand their capacity at a time when the forest resource that would be available to feed that plant was declining because of the annual allowable cut calculations, instead of insisting that the money go into new, value-added technology to create more jobs from that smaller timber base. I am quite familiar, because I was the Minister of Forests who took the old Westar tree farm licence in the Kootenays -- or up in that region. Rather than allow that company to simply sell it to one entity, this government responded to community concerns, and that member for Shuswap should understand that.

An Hon. Member: Absolutely.

Hon. D. Miller: Absolutely. He never spoke about that. He stood up and essentially said that it was the government's fault. Not once did he stand up and say that for the second time in the history of this province, we created a tree farm licence that is now owned by the municipality of Revelstoke; that through what we did, we stabilized the mill in Malakwa so that it's now a going concern. He didn't talk about that. According to the members opposite, every problem is the government's fault.

[5:00]

Let's talk about Repap. I know that one very, very well -- extremely well. Here's a question I would like to hear one of these members opposite respond to sometime -- and I'm not going to hold my breath: tell me what the responsibility of private capital is. Tell me why, in the face of the kind of reckless adventurism, somebody could take a company with a debt in excess of $2 billion, which couldn't ride out any cycle in the forest products industry, and was forced by the markets to sell. . . . And this crowd over here says it's our fault. It's ridiculous. It is ridiculous to listen to this kind of claptrap, this fundamental failure to understand basic economics. They profess their faith in the marketplace, but when the marketplace fails because of poor decisions on the part of capital, it's government's fault.

You know where they'd be at home, hon. Speaker? In Alberta, because they've got a magic formula in Alberta, and you know what it is? Read Robert Sheppard in the Globe and Mail today. Do you know how they've built some of these industries in Alberta? The other day they wrote off $244 million. This business should send a big card to all the taxpayers in Alberta and say: "Thank you for the $244 million." In fact, there's a right-wing principle at work. They have written off over $3 billion of the taxpayers' money that they gave away to industry. That's what these guys over here are all about, and the proof is here in this verbatim transcript that I obtained from CBC Radio -- not secretly.

Now, we've had a lot of debate in this House about various mechanisms that government has to try to assist communities and businesses when they are in trouble. We've got some mechanisms that we can bring to bear: the job protection

[ Page 2408 ]

commissioner. I've talked about their outstanding record in working with the private sector to try to support communities. But sometimes you get some tough issues, and sometimes you have to stand up in front of people. I think that is actually one of the attributes that politicians should think about. Sometimes you have to stand up in front of people who are angry, and you have to give them bad news. Those members may find out or they may not, but that's the responsibility of governing. That's the responsibility that each one of my colleagues has over here.

What happened in front of that group of angry creditors? The Leader of the Opposition caved. He folded like the worst house of cards I have ever seen in my life. He said on CBC Radio the following day. . . . I want everybody to listen to this, because there has been lots of discussion from that side of the House about forest renewal, lots of accusations thrown against our side. What did the Leader of the Opposition propose as a solution to a company that had gone in the tank because of their own inability to manage that operation? This is the Leader of the Opposition on CBC Radio; the transcript is here, and I think some members of the gallery have it: ". . .Forest Renewal can lend a hand. They should basically give the money to Repap so that Repap can pay the small creditors. . . ." The Leader of the Opposition stood in front of an angry crowd and clearly didn't have the jam to say that wasn't the right policy. He is proposing that we take money that was generated from the forests of this province and give it to the Toronto Dominion Bank and the Royal Bank. Now, there is an economic policy. I think the Leader of the Opposition is in the wrong province. He should be over in Alberta helping Ralph Klein give away the taxpayers' money to private business.

I started by saying that I actually told myself that I was going to be more of a statesman this term.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order, members, please.

Hon. D. Miller: As the years advance and I become more philosophical on some of these questions, I think that perhaps I do have a different role to play, and I would sincerely like to do that. But in the face of the most disparate, uncoordinated, unfathomable economic advice offered by the members opposite, I simply had to try to deal with some of these issues.

Surely the members opposite -- as the member for Peace River South did, in what I thought was a very succinct and quite informed speech on this bill -- recognize that there are a variety of circumstances that lead to any enterprise encountering difficulty. Surely the members opposite realize that we're not immune from the transition that's taking place in the western industrialized countries. Surely the transition that has taken place and will continue to take place in the forest sector has not escaped their notice. So my view is that there is a role for the state to play in intervening in the marketplace. In this case, we are talking about intervening in the marketplace to assist companies and communities and working people to see if we can sustain jobs in this province.

It is an intervention in the marketplace. Let's not kid ourselves. The real trick is to do that in such a way that you don't artificially prop up companies that ought not to run. And that's the harsh lesson of the marketplace. As I said, it's a bit of a disappointment to have the marketplace theorists across the way end up wanting to blame government for everything.

I think there is an enduring role for the office of the Job Protection Commission. I appreciate the tribute that has been paid to Mr. Kerley. I share in that, and I look forward to what I hope will be speedy passage in committee stage.

Interjections.

Hon. D. Miller: Well, they've had about ten speeches. I've had one, and now they're a little. . . .

So I would move second reading.

The Speaker: I would advise all members who joined us late that the passionate debate notwithstanding, every member who spoke to this debate said they'd be supporting the bill.

Motion approved.

Bill 6, Job Protection Amendment Act, 1997, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration forthwith.

The House in committee on Bill 6; G. Brewin in the chair.

On section 1.

C. Hansen: Section 1 of this bill is really the essence of it. As I mentioned in leading off second reading debate, the fundamental principle of this bill is that we extend the work of the job protection commissioner, and we supported that in second reading. It's also because we recognize the importance of this extension that we agreed to unanimous consent of the House so that we could go to committee in one day.

But while I'm addressing this particular section, which is obviously fundamental, I've got to say that I found it unfortunate that during second reading, the minister obviously wasn't listening to a lot of the input from this side of the House. A lot of the points that were made by my colleague the member for Shuswap, for example, obviously weren't listened to. It probably would have been more appropriate for us to have deferred consideration of this particular section until another day so that the minister could have had some time to read through the Blues to refresh his memory of some of the things that were said on this side of the House.

That aside, section 1 is not only about extending the mandate of the job protection commissioner, it's also extending that mandate indefinitely, and we have a great deal of concern about that. From our point of view, it's not good enough to allow this government to sidestep its fundamental responsibility of putting policies in place that will make the job protection commissioner redundant. We do not see that

[ Page 2409 ]

this government is responding to some of the policy changes that are needed; therefore we feel it would be regrettable to give them carte blanche to sidestep that responsibility indefinitely.

Hon. Chair, if I can speak to this. . . . As I mentioned earlier, the fundamental intent of this bill is to extend the mandate of Mr. Kerley. The extent to which that mandate is extended is very much relevant to this very specific section. Therefore I move that amendment and ask the House to support it.

On the amendment.

Hon. D. Miller: First of all, with respect to second reading debate, surely all members recognize that there can be spirited debate. Our members didn't speak to the bill. There were eight or ten speakers on the other side. I think they all made their points. I simply responded to some of the issues, and I certainly don't think the member should feel offended because I did respond, or that that would have any impact on our ability to pass a piece of legislation that everyone has said they agree with. I learned long ago that it is give-and-take in here, and you've got to be able to dish it out and to take it. So I don't want to offend anybody, but in my view the amendment is out of order. It's fundamentally contradictory to the thrust of the bill, and it fundamentally alters the bill. Therefore I would argue that it's not in order.

[5:15]

M. de Jong: The essence of this bill is to provide for the extension of the job protection commissioner and that that extension should be for a fixed term, as presently contemplated by the legislation. In no way do I see that as being contradictory to the essence of the bill, which is to provide for the continuation of that position.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I rise as Government House Leader. While I appreciate the points made by the opposition members, who may not be familiar with the history of this bill, every two years we have been required to come into this Legislature and debate the merits of the job protection commissioner. Every single time we debate it there is resounding support, and it's always unanimously passed.

Over the years, the job protection commissioner himself has often been found to be in a situation where his own mandate is at risk because this Legislature may not meet the time limits of continuing his mandate. Fundamentally, this bill is to protect the work of the job protection commissioner on a continuous basis. With the greatest of respect, the amendment from the hon. member takes away the entire intent of the bill, which is to make the work of the job protection commissioner continuous; and when his work is no longer required, there is an ability for the bill to be repealed. So I'm sure it wasn't the intent of the hon. member to do away with the security that the job protection commissioner requires.

C. Hansen: I'd like to speak to the essence of the amendment in that it comes down to. . . . The philosophy is one of the roles that the commissioner takes, and, as we've said, we have enormous trust in the incumbent in this position today. But this is a question of accountability, and if we want to make sure that there is accountability back to this chamber -- not to the cabinet, not to the NDP convention -- then it is essential that this bill be amended so that the role of the job protection commissioner, whether it is Mr. Kerley or his successor, comes back to this chamber for debate. We need the ability to assess the role that either Mr. Kerley or his successor is doing, and the way we achieve that is by voting in favour of this amendment.

Hon. D. Miller: Very briefly, there is no attempt to restrict any ability of the opposition to debate. There is an annual report and estimates of the ministry. That argument is not sound with respect to the amendment, and the amendment fundamentally alters the thrust of the bill, which is to maintain the Job Protection Act to give the ability to the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council to make a determination. I think we're splitting hairs here. I think the members support the act.

One final argument is that if circumstances arise that are unforeseen -- for example, in the Repap circumstance -- why would members not want to have an office that's able to deal with that situation in a timely way? So I would urge that we just move on, and I think the amendment is out of order.

The Chair: I recognize the hon. member for Shuswap, and then I would like to make a ruling. That means that people have to stop wanting to talk.

G. Abbott: I see this amendment as entirely consistent with the intent of the bill. I think it's entirely appropriate that this House have some control jurisdiction over the length of time involved here. I see nothing discordant about the amendment which has been put forward by the member for Vancouver-Quilchena, and I believe it's entirely appropriate for us to proceed with it.

The Chair: Hon. members, I would like at this point to make a ruling. I will rule that we've had enough debate on it, and I rule that the amendment is indeed out of order. We will now proceed to the debate on the main motion, which is section 1.

C. Hansen: I've got some questions for the minister about some specific aspects of the job protection commissioner's role, and I'd like to refer to the 1995 annual report. There is a company called Innovative Waste Technologies -- and I'm certainly not going to go through and ask detailed questions about every file that the job protection commissioner has ever been involved with, but this is directly relevant to this particular section. In the case of Innovative Waste Technologies, there is a sentence in the annual report that says: "This particular file was resolved when he" -- being the company -- "finally decided to start the facility in Alberta." Could the minister tell me why this particular company decided to move to Alberta? Page 39. . . .

The Chair: Hon. members, I would like to remind everyone that rules of debate in committee are that they must be strictly relevant, and to proceed through all the judgments in case decisions that have been made by the commissioner is not appropriate at this time. It's strictly on the topic of the date and that issue.

[ Page 2410 ]

C. Hansen: Thank you, hon. Chair. I had no intention of proceeding through matters which should be discussed in estimates. I respect that, and I understand that. This is one in particular that I would like to raise, because it is directly relevant to the extension of the mandate of the job protection commissioner.

Hon. D. Miller: Hon. Chair, I could oblige the member, but I don't have the information. And respectful of your ruling, perhaps we could canvass that during the estimates debate.

C. Hansen: Hon. Chair, the reason that I ask this question is because I think it is germane to what this clause is all about. It's extending a mandate for the job protection commissioner indefinitely. And the point that we have been trying to make on this side of the House is that when situations arise in files by the job protection commissioner, the government doesn't learn from examples that come forward. I am, frankly, surprised and shocked that there is a company that has been reviewed by the job protection commissioner -- he felt it necessary to report the disposition of that file in his annual report -- and that the minister has not taken the time to find out why. Why did this company go to Alberta? It is one of dozens and hundreds and thousands of companies that are moving to Alberta, and I think this is exactly why we think there should be an ongoing review and why we have concerns about the long-term, indefinite extension of this mandate.

I will move on to a couple of other questions that I have, and actually I would like to address the area of strategic industries. I know that the hon. member for Abbotsford raised this issue earlier. Why has the food-processing industry not been designated as a strategic industry?

The Chair: Hon. member, I believe this is a topic that fits better with estimates, and would so suggest to you.

M. de Jong: I see the minister referring to some notes; I don't know if he was going to respond to the question in spite of your ruling. It appears not.

Let me ask this question. I heard reasons from the Government House Leader when we had the debate relative to the duration of the appointment. Can the minister. . .? He didn't address this, although they were questions I put to him generally in the second reading debate. We're curious why the government believes it's essential for this to be an ongoing appointment. Now, what I heard the Government House Leader say is that in the past there have been occasions where the mandate has run out. If that's the reasoning, then my immediate response is: well, whose fault is that? Surely the government controls the legislative calendar. When the minister asks the question, "Would you have us be left without the offices and the services of the job protection commissioner?" that's not something that this opposition is advocating. If that happens during the course of a fixed-term appointment, that's the government's fault. That's the government's fault.

I don't doubt for a moment that the government doesn't like coming back before the House every year, every two years or every three years to be reminded of why we need a job protection commissioner, but the minister hasn't -- and I think he's done this purposely. . . . He's avoided the essence of the question, which is: why does this have to be? Why has the onus been reversed here? Why is a fixed-term appointment inappropriate?

Hon. D. Miller: Again, respecting the rules, it's very clear that this is now the third renewal of the JPC act since the inception in the eighties of the critical industries commissioner. That appears to me to suggest that there is an ongoing need to maintain the office of the JPC to assist communities, working people and companies to try to maintain employment. I know all members support that. The bill is very straightforward in that respect, and I think that we should simply get on and pass it.

M. de Jong: Is it the minister's view, then, that it's inappropriate or unhelpful for the Legislature to have this one opportunity every couple of years to review the purpose, to review what has taken place and what, in this case, is the good work of an individual who occupies that office? With the greatest respect, it doesn't answer the question. It just doesn't answer the question.

Hon. D. Miller: Again, with the greatest respect for the rules, I think I had previously indicated that all members have an opportunity to debate these questions during ministerial estimates. . . .

Interjections.

Hon. D. Miller: Members are free to canvass issues under the jurisdiction of the JPC in my ministerial estimates; no doubt they will do that this year. There is ample opportunity, and again, I think we've dealt with. . . . There has not been a substantive question relative to this section of the act, and we should move on.

M. de Jong: We've got a two-section bill -- well, it's four sections -- that does nothing but deal with the time frame around which an appointment applies. Is the minister saying that he doesn't want to answer questions about the time frame of the appointment? Is that what he's saying? Is he saying that's inappropriate?

Hon. D. Miller: Now, hon. Chair, I'm being accused by the member of the bar opposite of. . . . I can't quite figure some of these things out. Maybe I come from a simple part of the province; but I don't know, it seems to me that. . . .

Interjections.

The Chair: Order, hon. members.

Hon. D. Miller: Here we have the JPC act. Everybody says we need it; everybody says it does useful work. We've now spent from about 2:30 to the present time. . . . With the greatest of respect, as I said to one of the members opposite, I used to do that -- and I thought quite well -- when I was a member of the opposition. But really, I mean, it's pretty straightforward. What more can I say?

An Hon. Member: Answer the question.

Hon. D. Miller: I did answer the question. Clearly, history has shown that this now is, if you count the Critical Industries Commission, the fourth renewal. So let's just get on

[ Page 2411 ]

with it. There's important work to do, and I'm sure the members really do support this. They shouldn't feel put upon because we had a lively debate here earlier. Time is pretty short, hon. Chair, and maybe that's a reflection of age -- I don't know.

[5:30]

G. Farrell-Collins: I had intended to leave this alone, let the minister deal with it and have the questions answered. But I must say that, like the member for Richmond-Steveston beside me, I was somewhat taken aback by the explanation the minister gave.

This job protection commissioner came in -- as we've all canvassed and talked about already -- in 1991. For the last five years almost -- I guess it's pretty much six years now -- the government has seen it necessary -- unfortunately, and as disastrous as that is -- to continue to have this last resort, this job protection commissioner, through one of the largest boom cycles in the forest sector that this province has seen in a long, long time. Because the minister and his government have been so incompetent and so disastrous in managing the forest sector over their six-year term in office, somehow that's going to extend forever. Somehow we should have this job protection commissioner with his little Superman suit and his telephone booth. . . . No disrespect to the gentleman who does the job. He does a fantastic job of it. But I think it certainly indicates this government's economic policy and this government's economic plan and the reason why this section requires such an extensive mandate for the individual.

Why is it that this government feels -- as the member for Matsqui said -- that because it's been so inept for the last six years in managing, in particular, the resource sector of this province, somehow that ineptness is going to continue forever? Now, I suspect it may continue as long as this government is in power, but it may not continue after that. So the question is simply put to the minister: does he not think that there is some appropriateness in bringing this issue to the attention of the House on a regular basis? We should be striving to eliminate the need for a job protection commissioner in the province of British Columbia.

Isn't this something that every government, whether it's this government or the government to follow, should have to do: come to the House and explain the ongoing need for a job protection commissioner in this province? Isn't there some requirement for the government to explain to the people whose jobs are being lost that there is some impact that the government's policies are having on those communities? Isn't it something that the government should do as far as being accountable -- to have to come to the Legislature and defend the need, on an ongoing basis, for a job protection commissioner?

All sorts of legislation that we pass in this House should have sunset provisions. I've heard -- I don't know if it was this Attorney General or the previous one -- the Attorney General talk about the philosophy behind having sunset provisions in legislation. It's so that we don't have this stuff sitting there forever, so that it expires. Hopefully, the government is striving to eliminate the need for a job protection commissioner.

I don't think it's frivolous at all for the member for Matsqui, or for other members, to stand and ask the minister to justify the need for this job protection commissioner in perpetuity. I don't think it's an unwarranted question for the members to stand and demand that the government come here every year or every second year -- whatever it's going to be with a sunset provision -- and defend the need to have a job protection commissioner. Why should we do it in perpetuity? Why should we allow the government -- any government. . .? I know that this minister, if he was sitting on this side, would probably be saying the same thing: why should we allow any government to get off scot-free, saying that we need a job protection commissioner in this province on a perpetual basis? This was designed as a position for somebody to do the job in a time of downturn, a time of crisis, and then we get rid of it. We don't need it anymore.

So I don't think it's an unwarranted question to ask the minister to justify that, and for the opposition to do its job and make the point clearly to the minister that he shouldn't be trying to get off scot-free. He shouldn't be getting carte blanche to continue with their terrible economic policy into the future without having to come back to this House and defend time after time, if necessary, the need for a job protection commissioner on an ongoing basis.

Hon. D. Miller: With all due respect, I thought the posturing should have finished with second reading. It's very clear that there are some fundamental differences between our two sides with respect to some basic economic issues. I also appreciate that in terms of the dynamics of debate, the opposition do feel that they'd like to get the last lick in; they'd like to always accuse the government of having the worst policies. Again, with all due respect, that debate is one that is enduring. There will never be a final winner; there will never be a single knockout punch in terms of debate in the House. I think members should try to understand that in terms of the dynamic. I know the member feels good when he can talk and pose a question with respect to the clause and then go on to make some speech about the government's policies, etc., etc.

Just let me try to make what I think are very simple and obvious points. If the members want to continue to posture, then I suppose it's a waste of time. The Job Protection Act is not a benefit to government. It's not as though -- as the member uses the term -- somehow the government gets off scot-free and that somehow this is some benefit. This is an act that really oversees a commission that moves with dispatch to assist industries, businesses, people and communities around this province, and has an outstanding record that all members have attested to.

[ Page 2412 ]

And this isn't second reading. I thought we had some understanding that at any given point in time the activities of private capital, even in a boom economy, could precipitate a crisis like the one that's now affecting the northwest part of the province. I thought the members opposite understood that.

Interjections.

Hon. D. Miller: I thought the members opposite understood that at any given time we could have a federal government that pulled the rug -- pulled the rug! -- out from underneath the fishing industry, and we had to add the fishing industry into the areas of the JPC. That has nothing to do with the economic cycle. Those are events that cannot always be predicted. We're simply saying that the job protection should be there. We should have the ability to respond to those kinds of situations. Are the members suggesting that we don't? In the face of federal cutbacks and the traumatic impact of federal fisheries policies on the coast of this province, are the members suggesting that that has anything to do with a boom economy or an economy that is not flourishing? That has to do with the policies of a senior level of government.

So if the object of committee stage is for the members to continue to make second reading statements about the poor economic performance of this government, then I suspect, hon. Chair, that it's a little off target.

The bill is very simple -- very, very simple. It's a renewal of the Job Protection Act, and the removal of the sunset clause and the allocation of that to the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council. It's very straightforward, hon. Chair, and I do think that we should get on with it.

The Chair: I recognize the hon. Opposition House Leader -- and on section 1.

G. Farrell-Collins: Thank you, hon. Chair, for your guidance of which section we're on. I can count that far -- and I've got it ticked here.

I would perhaps like to make a comment to the minister that there are rules and procedures in this House. If he wishes to raise a point of order, he can do so, and I can respond. Then the Chair can take our comments under advisement and make a ruling. But to include it in his debate, in his answers back and forth, I think sets aside the job we're trying to do and, rather, shows his attempt to influence the Chair through some other means. I think it's inappropriate. He's been here long enough to know that, hon. Chair.

The minister misses the point; he misses the whole point of the question. The point isn't whether or not the job protection commissioner does a good job; it's not whether or not there are things that happen from time to time in the economic climate of the province that need to be addressed in some way or another; and it's certainly not whether the minister is running for the national NDP campaign and trying to do it in this House by beating up on the federal government. That's certainly not what the questions is about. The question is. . . .

Interjection.

G. Farrell-Collins: Hon. Chair, I will be glad to address the issue of the question. I believe I have 15 minutes to speak between interjections. I also believe -- if I'm familiar with the rules at all -- that I'm allowed to make my case in that time. So far I have been extremely relevant to section 1, and I intend to continue to be so.

The question for the minister with regard to section 1, which deals with allowing the government to appoint the job protection commissioner and having that position continue in perpetuity. . . . It's what makes this. . . . What changes the Job Protection Act, the section we're dealing with right here, is whether or not the government should be allowed to continue to have this person in this position in perpetuity -- not whether the job they do is right, not whether there's a need for it from time to time, but whether or not the government should be allowed to have that position go on forever.

This is a question of accountability; this is a question of ensuring that the minister -- this minister, the next minister, a minister in a subsequent government -- always has to come back to this House and explain why we need a job protection commissioner in the province at that particular time. I think that was the intent, certainly, of the bill when it was first introduced in 1991. It was certainly the intent when it was renewed the other times. I recall the debates in this House where members stood up and said that they couldn't wait till the day when we didn't need a job protection commissioner anymore. Shouldn't that be our goal? And shouldn't there be an explanation required from a minister and a government, to come back in here and say that we still need this job? Or has the minister just given up on the economy? Has he given up on British Columbia and said: "We're so messed up on the government side that we have to have somebody there all the time to come in and clean up our mess"? That's what the issue is about; that's what the question is about.

Now the minister obviously thinks that's the case -- that there will always be a need for a job protection commissioner. He said that; he said it just a few minutes ago. His philosophy is: "We will always have a need for a job protection commissioner, and, quite frankly, I don't want to have to defend it anymore. I don't want to have to come to the House and defend the fact that we need a job protection commissioner. I think it should be part of the program in British Columbia, and therefore I'm introducing this section to make the position permanent."

That's fine -- I disagree with him. But I can tell you that, if I was the minister responsible for economic development, I wouldn't concede defeat that easily. I wouldn't get up in the House and say: "Things are bad out there, and they're always going to be bad, and ya know, we're always going to need somebody to come in and rescue us at the last minute." There are lots of things the ministry can do, lots of things the minister can do, to monitor what's going on out there, the climate. I mean, did this government just discover there were fish on the west coast? Or that there aren't any anymore? Did the government just all of a sudden realize: "Oh, my goodness, something's happening to the fishing industry"? No.

You can't blame it all on the federal government. Yes, they bear responsibility for managing the fishery, and heaven knows there are some problems on the east coast that they've had to deal with and haven't handled very well. That's true. But to say that somehow the provincial government just discovered that a lack of salmon is going to cause a problem in the B.C. fishery when this government has been responsible for forest policy -- when this minister is responsible for B.C. Hydro, which has one of the worst environmental records with regard to fisheries that we've seen in a long, long time. . . .

[5:45]

[ Page 2413 ]

For the minister to say that somehow all of this stuff is a surprise to him, that the only time the government knows that we require a job protection commissioner is when a company goes belly up, says to me that the minister and the people in his office aren't monitoring very closely what's going on in the province. It would seem to me that rather than having to have a job protection commissioner in perpetuity, as is indicated in this section of the act, the government would be monitoring some of the things that are going on out there and would be aware a little more in advance of what is happening.

For example, I think the KPMG report on the forest sector and the fact that the government has increased by 75 percent the cost of doing business in the forest sector should be setting off alarm bells throughout his ministry, and the government, rather than waiting for the job protection commissioner to come in and deal with it, should be dealing with it right now. And they probably are, but they're going about it the wrong way.

The point is that the government should have to come to this House from time to time and account for the need for an ongoing job protection commissioner, rather than have carte blanche to deal with it as this section provides. And I know the minister doesn't agree with that. That's fine. We know where he stands now, and we'll just make sure that everybody else knows where he stands.

Hon. D. Miller: If that's what it's about, hon. Chair, no wonder he's taking so long to pass the bill.

The member posed a couple of rhetorical questions. I don't want to get into that, but would say that I think he asked me. . . . I know that if I was Leader of the Opposition, I wouldn't advocate giving the taxpayers' money to the banks, but so be it. I just wanted to catch one thing the member said.

Interjection.

Hon. D. Miller: One thing the member said, hon Chair. It is again disconcerting, particularly for this debate, which is about economic issues. . . . I think I understand a little bit about the fishing sector. On the coast, I represent a riding where a great number of people make their living fishing, and the member just simply said that the only problem with the industry on the coast is that there are too few salmon. That is pretty sad to me, because it really displays a profound lack of understanding of the impact of the Mifflin plan -- the devastating impact on communities up and down this coast. And to dismiss the economic trauma caused by the federal government's activities as simply, "Oh well, there's just too few salmon," is really somewhat disturbing -- for a member with that member's experience not to know better. I guess if we're in the business of broadcasting. . . . Well, perhaps people in my constituency might be interested in that kind of observation about the fishery.

G. Farrell-Collins: First of all, if I can just clarify what the minister said and what I said, I certainly at no time made any effort to say that the only problem in the fisheries is a lack of fish. What I did say -- minister, listen carefully -- was that I was surprised that this government only realized once the issue blew up, once the Mifflin plan came in, that there's a problem in the fishery -- and that not only in the fishery but in the forestry sector and the mining sector, the minister and the ministry should be paying attention to what's going on so that we don't get to the point where we have a job protection commissioner required in perpetuity, as demanded by this section. That is what the minister is asking us to pass here: to allow him to have a job protection commissioner in perpetuity, and never have to come back to this House and explain.

Just to understand the pertinence of having a sunset clause and making this amendment as provided in section 1 of the act, I have a quote from Hansard of March 12, 1991 -- from the gentleman who now occupies the Premier's chair, the chair that's right next to the minister who is speaking.

"This is a temporary bill; it has a sunset clause, which I support, and it deals with short-term help for problems which hopefully are short-term, or should be short-term -- otherwise they wouldn't get the help. These companies have to be viable in the long run. But we also need medium- and long-term solutions, which we haven't seen from this administration."

Hon. Chair, perhaps the minister should go and speak to the Premier, ask the Premier about the sudden change on the road to Damascus. The Premier believes that under his administration -- not under the Social Credit administration, but under his administration -- now that he's Premier, we require a job protection commissioner in perpetuity. What is it that this government's doing worse than the Social Credit since 1991? What changed? I mean, I know. But maybe the minister should go ask the Premier what it is that's changed and why it is that he requires this amendment to this act.

I have a quote from the member from Esquimalt who thinks he's still the Minister of Environment and the Minister of Education and who also thinks he's "the MLA for everyone, everywhere" -- to quote the member for Malahat-Juan de Fuca. I sympathize with the member. I know I've moved ridings, but I'm sure thankful I haven't moved that far -- that close to the member from Esquimalt.

Hon Chair, there's a quote in here from January 1994, a little over two years ago. It says: "Assigning B.C.'s job protection commissioner to work with a struggling company is an extreme step." It is an extreme step. . . .

Interjection.

G. Farrell-Collins: I'm glad the minister agrees.

But I think it's significant to understand what this section is about. This gives the government carte blanche to continue on and have a job protection commissioner in perpetuity. I think the minister should understand that that's what this is about. It's not about the job he does. It's not about the good work that has been done. It's about this section. It's about the government's requirement to have this in perpetuity, and they've given up that. And the minister saying that the only people who would benefit from Repap's situation being solved are the banks -- the Toronto Dominion and the Bank of Montreal or the Royal Bank or whichever one he said -- is ridiculous.

Certainly there are members. . . . If he hasn't spoken to them, then perhaps he should go talk to the member for Skeena about the other creditors up there, who may lose their trucks, their supply companies and everything they've got. And if you want to talk about callous statements, it's when this minister stands up and pulls out his election rhetoric about big banks, when he knows full well that the creditors that are really going to be hurt are the people who are going to be put out of business and lose their homes and their families because of it. [Applause.]

The Chair: Let's just take it easy, everybody.

[ Page 2414 ]

M. de Jong: Hon. Chair, I'll do it simply -- no rhetoric. How is the effectiveness of the work undertaken by the job protection commissioner compromised by having to have that appointment reviewed every two years by this Legislature?

Hon. D. Miller: A question has been posed with respect to the maintenance of the JPC. I've answered those questions. We are simply rehashing them over and over again.

G. Plant: I'm delighted to have this opportunity to participate in a debate that actually gave me very little to think about until I found myself excited, as I so frequently am, by the way the minister responds to what I think is actually both a technical and a fairly important question. It's really the question that my colleague the member for Matsqui put a moment ago. What's wrong with a little continued accountability? As I understand it, the answer is that we've renewed this position on three occasions now, I suppose, each time for a two-year period, and it doesn't seem to be necessary to have to go into that process anymore. So why don't we just make it kind of permanent?

The interesting thing about that -- and this is why I think it's quite appropriate to raise this kind of question in committee debate -- is that's not what this section does. It's interesting to hear a question asked, which is appropriate, and then an answer which doesn't speak to what the section does. In fact, under this act, the job protection commissioner has this much job security: two years and one day. Any time after the expiry of the two-year period, the cabinet, all by itself -- meeting nicely and privately and confidentially and out of that harsh, unremitting glare of public scrutiny -- can decide to destroy the act in five minutes with the stroke of a pen. So I thought the answer the minister gave was interesting, because the answer the minister gave to the question from the member for Matsqui was: "We don't need to engage in this review period anymore. We'll just make the job more or less permanent."

Well, that would be interesting if that's what the section did. But what the section really does is take the issue of accountability that does exist in this forum, that did exist and that had a very specific time table -- every two years -- and now put it in a place that is private, not public, and into a very uncertain time frame -- that is, it could happen any day after April 12, 1999. So the question is: how does exposing the job protection commissioner to the vagaries of a decision of cabinet after April 12, 1999, improve his ability to do his job? I'd be grateful, hon. Chair, if the minister would answer.

Hon. D. Miller: Well, if that's the best the member can come up with, then he has not been gainfully employed. It's interesting, having argued for some time that in a perfect world we don't need a job protection commissioner and questioned why we want the bill constructed this way, we now have a member on the other side saying that cabinet could do away with it. What's the inference there? That if cabinet did do away with it, this gang over here would complain? They want it both ways. We have answered the questions on section 1. I don't know what more I can say.

Interjection.

Hon. D. Miller: As the member has just confessed that they're sitting there trying to dream up questions on a bill they support and want passed, then surely the message to British Columbians is that they are quite content to waste the taxpayers' time and money, because somehow their noses are out of joint over something. I don't know what it is. Maybe it was the Leader of the Opposition's statement. I don't know. They made ten speeches; I made one. They're mad. They're angry. They're upset. Ah! And do you know what they do when they're mad and angry and upset? They say: "Oh, we're going to stay here for a long time." Hon. Chair, be careful that they don't trip over the sand under their feet in their sandbox.

Interjections.

The Chair: Order, hon. members, order. I recognize Richmond-Steveston.

Interjections.

The Chair: I think one of your members would like to speak, and he can do so when there is a certain amount of silence. Okay?

G. Plant: Actually, hon. Chair, it's good to have an opportunity to sort of absorb the helpful answer I've just received from the minister. What I want to suggest is that we've just spent three minutes listening to the most tedious, disgraceful exposition of nonsense from the minister when I had asked a very specific question. I intend to be as courteous and helpful in this process as I possibly can. To that end, I am delighted to give the minister an opportunity to -- directly, succinctly and in the least possible time that it requires him to do that -- think about the question and give it an answer, if he wants to try it again.

C. Hansen: I get the impression that if we got even one succinct answer we might be able to move on, so I would like to ask a very succinct question of the minister. After April 12, 1999, if an action is taken by the job protection commissioner that the minister disagrees with, does the minister technically have the power, through order-in-council, to abolish the entire position? It's a direct question. A simple answer would be appreciated.

Hon. D. Miller: The commission makes recommendations to government. We work very closely together. I think that has been true of all ministers, even the ones that preceded me in different administrations. The question clearly doesn't contemplate an understanding of how the process works.

C. Hansen: I'm looking for answers to assist me on what the ramifications of this section are. I'm not talking about convention; I'm talking about what's in law. I'm talking about what the minister is asking this chamber to approve, not about what's protocol or what's customary practice. Does the cabinet, through order-in-council, after April 12, 1999, have the power to eliminate the position of the job protection commissioner, if they disagree with a decision or an action that that person has taken?

[6:00]

Hon. D. Miller: The power would be to eliminate the act.

Sections 1 and 2 approved.

On section 3.

[ Page 2415 ]

G. Plant: I have a question. I am looking at the explanatory note to sections 3 and 4, and it occurs to me that the revised statutes of British Columbia, 1996, have not yet come into force and therefore do not exist. My question for the minister is: how is it possible to repeal a section of an act which does not yet exist?

Hon. D. Miller: It's a fairly technical legal question. I don't know the answer.

G. Plant: It occurs to me that until such time as the revised statutes of British Columbia, 1996, do in fact come into force, which may happen as early as April 21, 1997, section 3 of the Job Protection Amendment Act, 1997 is out of order.

Hon. D. Miller: I am advised by the legislative drafters -- I think they all have law degrees -- that the act is. . . . In other words, there is no difficulty, as the member's question contemplates.

G. Plant: Point of order, hon. Chair. I think that these two sections are in fact out of order, in the sense that I am unaware, speaking only for myself, of how they could possibly be in order. I haven't heard an explanation, other than a reference to some other people who I assume -- with the greatest of respect for them -- are the same people who were responsible for failing to give us an electoral boundaries commission as and when they ought to have, in accordance with the time table required in that act. So I personally must say that it seems to me that both sections 3 and 4 are out of order.

G. Farrell-Collins: Further to the comments by the member for Richmond-Steveston, I think I am aware that the government has passed an order-in-council to approve the revised statutes. However, the statutes do not come into force until April 21, 1997; therefore both section 3 and section 4 refer to legislation that doesn't exist. Given that, they would be out of order. My understanding of how the government would be required to deal with that under this act is that sections 1 and 2 could be passed here today, and the minister would be required to stand down sections 3 and 4 and reintroduce them for debate and approval on or after April 21 of this year.

The Chair: Hon. members, I have been advised that the Chair does not rule on whether sections are in or out of order. That requires a legal opinion. That's not my task here. I rule on points of order. I can rule on amendments, whether they are in order or not, but not on sections of a bill.

G. Farrell-Collins: Without ceding the logic of that point, I would ask the Chair for guidance on whether or not coming back to the House after the committee has risen -- whether it's third reading or the report stage or whatever we wish to do -- is the appropriate place to rule the entire bill out of order, which I don't think is the goal of what we're trying to do. We're merely trying to make sure that the bill itself complies with law. I'd hate to see the Lieutenant-Governor come in here later today and give his assent to a piece of legislation that is out of order. Therefore I seek the guidance of the Chair, whether or not. . . . Perhaps the minister should confer for a minute on whether or not he wishes to stand down those two sections or amend them by deleting them, thereby making the bill in order. And we can pass it, get on with it and reintroduce sections 3 and 4 at a later date, when they can be passed legally, and the Lieutenant-Governor doesn't need to find himself in that very difficult position.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I appreciate the points made by the Opposition House Leader. We have had considered legal opinion, as this bill is impacted by the Revised Statutes Correction Act as well. And we have received advice from legislative counsel that this is in order and within the bounds of what it is expected to be.

I understand -- and the hon. member can vote against the sections if he so wishes -- that we are proceeding with this bill. If, for some reason. . . . And I don't expect him to be in any way withholding support for this bill on a legal-technical basis. We have had advice that we are able to proceed on this very point. If indeed that legislative counsel advice is wrong, I would suggest to him, with the greatest of respect, that we can deal with that at a future date.

M. de Jong: Hon. Chair, maybe I can put it in these terms. When a piece of legislation is tabled by this government, such as this document we have in front of us, and purports to amend existing legislation, the process is not a complicated one. All hon. members in this chamber would look at the bill and then go to the existing legislation to ascertain what the impact of the amendment is. There is a flaw here. You can't go to the existing legislation; it doesn't exist. And I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that the privilege of all members is compromised when they can't examine the legislation that is purporting to be amended, because that legislation doesn't exist. It's not a complicated scenario.

The Chair: I repeat that it is not for the Chair to rule on sections and the legalities of them, and the minister has described part of that position.

G. Farrell-Collins: I just want to respond to the comments by the Government House Leader on the point of order. If the Government House Leader has some legal assurance from legislative counsel that it's okay for the government to amend legislation that is not in force, I find that highly unusual. I'd like to see that advice in some form. And if she can give a commitment to give us a copy of that decision -- or if it was given orally, then perhaps it could be done in written form so we could see it -- we'd be glad to move on.

However, certainly the objective here is not to obstruct the bill. We think we can do the job by passing 1 and 2, and have the job protection commissioner in force on the 12th, this Saturday. My only concern was not to put the Lieutenant-Governor in a position where he was acceding to legislation that was not in order, that was basically against the law.

If she's comfortable with that, as Government House Leader it's her prerogative, I suppose. I still don't believe it's in order. But if she can give me the assurance that we can get that advice from legislative counsel in written form, we're willing to let the bill pass subsequent to, obviously, the issue being raised at another time.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I actually had the briefing orally, and I'll certainly arrange for the Opposition House Leader to have the same briefing.

G. Farrell-Collins: Normally, we'd do this outside the House, but given the quickness of this stuff moving along, I think it's important to do it here. What I asked for was some written. . . .

Interjection.

[ Page 2416 ]

G. Farrell-Collins: The minister wants to give me an oral briefing by one person; I need something more than that. If she can give me that oral briefing in written form by the legislative counsel, I'm glad to have it. That's all I'm asking. I think it's just as easy to do.

Sections 3 and 4 approved on division.

Title approved.

Hon. D. Miller: I move the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; the Speaker in the chair.

Bill 6, Job Protection Amendment Act, 1997, reported complete without amendment.

The Speaker: On the point of order, then. Let me deal with that. Go ahead, Opposition House Leader.

G. Farrell-Collins: Just before I start, I'm well aware of the limitations on raising matters that happen in committee, but I do want to bring the Speaker's attention to the fact that it is the view of the opposition that Bill 6, in part at least, is out of order, given the issues which the Speaker can certainly canvass from Hansard.

I sought from the Government House Leader written assurances from the legislative counsel of the opinion which she received orally. I didn't receive that, and I'd just like to register my feeling and my point of order that this bill is, in fact, out of order. I would ask the Speaker's ruling on that issue.

The Speaker: Members, I think we have no choice in the matter but to accept the veracity of the Government House Leader, who says that legislative counsel has indeed given government that advice. Having said that, however, I will certainly take the matter under advisement and undertake to provide a more detailed explanation to members.

G. Farrell-Collins: Then, if I may, I would offer a suggestion. With all due respect for the government, I don't know whether the intent was to have this receive royal assent today or not, but I would suggest that we wait and find out before we ask the Lieutenant-Governor to approve this bill.

The Speaker: Agreed. The question, then, is third reading.

Bill 6, Job Protection Amendment Act, 1997, read a third time and passed.

Hon. J. MacPhail moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 6:14 p.m.

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