[ Page 2627 ]

The House met at 10:16 a.m.

Prayers.

G. Plant: Present in the gallery today are Mrs. J. Ditson and 30 grade 5 students from Don Christian Elementary School in Surrey. I ask that members make them welcome.

R. Thorpe: I'm really proud today to welcome 27 grade 10 students from McNicoll Park Junior Secondary School in Penticton. They're here with their teachers Mr. Brownel and Mr. Devito. Also of special interest is Samantha Steele, the great-granddaughter of our former Clerk, Ned DeBeck. Would the House please make them all welcome.

J. Sawicki: I just noticed a constituent from my riding, Mr. Lou Jaccard. He used to be an employee of B.C. Hydro. I understand he's here for the jazz festival, and I want the House to welcome him for taking the time out to come to watch this chamber as well.

The Speaker: Different music.

Hon. A. Petter: In Section A, I call the estimates of the Attorney General ministry, and in the House, private members' statements.

The Speaker: A point of order from Vancouver-Little Mountain.

G. Farrell-Collins: Private members' day is Friday -- today. We have never in this House had Committee A sit while private members are speaking on their private members' statements. I believe that 11 o'clock would be the time to call that, and I have a further statement to make at that time also.

The Speaker: That is indeed the convention. I will ask the Government House Leader if that's agreeable.

Hon. A. Petter: I'm accused of anticipating too much this morning, hon. Speaker. I agree with the point made by the member opposite.

The Speaker: In that case, we will go directly to private members' statements. The first statement this morning is by the member for Vancouver-Langara.

V. Anderson: It was July 9, 1993, that I spoke in this Legislature on the topic "Children First." At that time I was concerned that the reality of children having first place in our lives was being overlooked in our collective thoughts and actions. In the adult-oriented world, with all our business orientation and profit-and-loss concerns, children seem to be an afterthought. Even back then we had some concern for education and health, but mainly from the adult perspective. Children are still thought of, in many cases, as our dependents, and this is not good enough. Children are important not just because of what they become in our future, but for what they are inherently in themselves. Our concern for children in this Legislature must not be an afterthought; it must be a priority.

Three years ago, I said: "It is time that we put children first and ask ourselves in every ministry, in every action of government, what we are doing in this action to put our children first. What are we doing with the children and youth of B.C.?" Back then I asked: "Where is a full Ministry for Children and Youth?" Now I am pleased to say that we have responded to that question, at least in part, by passing the Child, Family and Community Service Act. It is an important beginning, but only a beginning. Indeed, without meaning to, we have probably got off the track, even this early. This is not a political comment; rather, it is a philosophical comment or even a religious comment.

Within the Christian faith, which is my background, children are thought of as being the first in the kingdom of heaven: children are first in priority, first in status, first in example. Indeed, it was said that except as you become one of the least of these, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. In other words, the meaning and power of faith was unavailable to those who did not respect the children. Such reverence of children is also found in most faiths of the world.

The essence of the adult is the child. The purity of life is expressed in the child. The temper of a community is how the child is revered and honoured, for it has been said that as you have done unto one of the least of these, you have done it unto me, the "me" being the supreme Creator of all.

This leads to a question, put rather bluntly: to whom does the child belong? Or rephrasing it: who has primary responsibility for the well-being of a child? My answer is the Creator, who gave us life and makes each of us responsible for ourselves, our family and our community, both locally and globally. It is a packaged deal which cannot be pulled apart without destroying every element of the package. A child does not exist without a community, and a community does not exist without its children. So a child needs to grow up in wisdom and in favour with God and others, knowing his or her own self in ever-widening relationships. It is a balance of growing individual identity and collective responsibility. This balance is fuelled by shared love.

So how do we institutionalize this shared love with regard to children? In other words, where does government come into this human equation? All I can give is my own answer. Government is one way of coordinating our collective caring so that no one is overlooked in a modern society, while each one has equity of caring from all, all available resources to be shared.

This means that children have first call on our resources and on our caring, so that children are the last to be hungry, the last to be deprived, the last to be overlooked. To our shame, this has not been the way it has always been. Yet we are trying to change, and in so doing we must have a complete about-face -- or in religious terms, a conversion. In our thought and action, we do not come first; our children do. Our needs and wants are not first; the children's are. We live for them, not them for us. And whatever wisdom the elders have, it is for the purpose that the children might be wise in turn.

The purpose of the Child, Family and Community Service Act was to share in the process of raising children, from the moment of conception, so that they may have the fullness of creation, which is the birthright of each of them. The pro-

[ Page 2628 ]

cess inherently involves the cooperation of child, family and community, so that whatever government may do, it is on behalf of the child, on behalf of the family and on behalf of the community. The government program is only one part of the supportive, caring, sharing system. The government is a tool to aid a process. If it strives to be other than that, it becomes an instrument of destruction. History has many examples.

Perhaps no other part of our governmental responsibility challenges us more or evaluates us better than how we carry out our ministry with children. If we fail here, all of our other possible successes are irrelevant. Indeed, the very term "ministry of child, family and community services" hinges upon the meaning of the term "ministry."

E. Gillespie: I'm certainly pleased today to respond to the remarks of the hon. member for Vancouver-Langara. It's indeed a notable day when we bring our concerns for our children to the floor of this Legislature. I heartily agree with the hon. member that we must at all times put our concerns for children first in our deliberations in government. I probably never appreciated this as much as I should have until I became a mother myself, when I saw, by the very need of the infant, that one has no choice but to put the interests of the child first.

I want to speak just for a moment on the actions that have been taken by the government to pull together all the programs we have in government, to completely change the way we deliver programs and services to children and their families, including child protection services. We have pulled together the new Ministry for Children and Families, which brings together programs from five ministries: Health, Education, Women's Equality, Attorney General and Social Services. It's by bringing all of those programs together that we can focus on the needs of the children. The Premier himself has taken responsibility for youth. He has taken on that ministry and puts together an annual forum for youth. I think this speaks very well of the government's commitment to children and youth in this province.

But let's be constantly mindful of the words we hear frequently from the Minister for Children and Families: that the responsibility for children lies with all of us, the community at large. The government has an important part to play in this. We can work best by working to strengthen communities and families, where the care for children lies. I'd just like to end with the words of the hon. minister:

"We must accept responsibility for children who put chocolate fingers everywhere, who like to be tickled, who stomp in puddles and ruin their new pants, and who erase holes in math workbooks and can never find their shoes.

"And we accept responsibility for those who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire, who can't bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers, who have never counted potatoes, who were born in places we wouldn't be caught dead in, who never go to the circus and who live in an X-rated world."

I've heard some of these stories in my work with the legislative committee monitoring the Gove implementations, and there are stories that I think most of us would find unbelievable.

"We accept responsibility for children who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions, who sleep with the dog and bury the goldfish, who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money, who cover themselves with band-aids and sing off-key, who slurp their soup.

"We accept responsibility for those who never get dessert, who have no safe blanket to drag behind them, who watch their parents watch them die, who can't find any bread to steal, who can't have any rooms to clean up, whose pictures aren't on anyone's dresser and whose monsters are real.

"We accept responsibility for children who spend their allowance before Tuesday, who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food, who like ghost stories, who shove dirty clothes under the bed and never rinse the tub, who get visits from the tooth fairy, who don't like to be kissed in front of the car pool, who squirm in church and scream in the phone, and whose tears sometimes make us laugh and whose smiles can make us cry.

"We accept responsibility for those whose nightmares come in the daytime, who never read anything, who have never seen a dentist, who aren't spoiled by anybody, who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep, who live and move but have no being.

"We accept responsibility for children who want to be carried and for those who must, for those we never give up on and for those who never get a second chance, for those we smother and for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to offer it."

These words are not my words. These words come from "A Commitment to Children," a commitment which we in government must always hold first in our minds.

V. Anderson: I thank the member for Comox Valley for her very thoughtful and meaningful reply. Bringing together the thoughts of the children themselves, because we must always keep them uppermost in my minds, I encourage the members to get a copy of a new booklet that's just come out by Cherry Kingsley, "Finding Our Way," which is the voices of exploited youth and has a message to challenge us all.

I remind ourselves that the Ministry for Children and Families -- and community services -- hinges, as do all of our ministries, on the term "ministry," which we often overlook, for ministry denotes the service we undertake in managing the resources of the ones being served. In the public understanding, at least at the moment, we are already failing in our intentions in the new ministry. First, we have dropped the word "community" that was in the act and is no longer in the title of the ministry, and that is one aspect that is so easily overlooked. Therefore we have diluted its possibilities, perhaps without meaning to do so.

Second, unlike any other ministry, this is entitled the Ministry for Children and Families rather than the Ministry "of." That's a distinction in itself, and I'm not sure it's one that's moving in the right direction, because the intention of that act was to involve children. If we're doing it for them, it's so easy to move away from that intention. So it puts us out of sync with the rest of the ministries and makes it different in that regard. Depending on how we use it, that may or may not be a good thing.

Because of the history out of which this new ministry grew most recently, the ministry has been seen -- primarily by people in the community at large -- not as a ministry supporting children but as a ministry protecting children. It has come to be seen not as a ministry which supports children's relationship to family and community but as one protecting children from family and from community. This is unfortunate. It's something we need to hear and respond to. It's not that children don't need protection. Sometimes they need it very much, but their lives depend on creative supports far more. Protection -- yes, when needed. It needs to be relevant to the circumstances and must be quick and effective, but the ongoing activity should be support.

We also need to be reminded that the advocates of this ministry, as important as they are, are not a substitute for the work of community and family but only a complement to them.

I commend us as a Legislature that we have recognized the need of children. But having recognized it, it is only a beginning and not an end.

[ Page 2629 ]

M. Sihota: I thought this morning I'd speak a little bit about the role of government in ensuring that there is a prosperous economy in British Columbia, and towards the end of my comments, put it in kind of a political context in terms of some of the values that are often evident in this chamber.

This morning I thought I would use the example of Ballard Technologies of Burnaby, which is a company that has been in the press a lot lately because of the announcement of a new deal they've signed with Mercedes-Benz to take their fuel cell, which does not pollute at all -- it's a zero-emission kind of technology, like an electric vehicle -- and put it into cars, so that we can have non-polluting cars on the road. Everyone understands the problems of air pollution, particularly in the lower mainland. This week, as we all noticed, Mercedes-Benz and Ballard signed a deal in the neighbourhood of $200 million to $300 million to further develop that technology and have it on the road in about eight years.

I think we should ask ourselves in this chamber how it is that Ballard has become such a remarkable success here in British Columbia. How is it that we have been able to generate the kind of climate that creates these high-paying, high-tech jobs in the lower mainland of British Columbia and offer opportunities for youth to be able to secure employment in these types of high-tech industries, which really is the future in the province in terms of employment opportunities? There are two principal reasons why that has happened. The first. . . . Well, actually there are many reasons, but there are two that I want to focus on in the context of this chamber.

The first, of course, is that this government has invested about $21 million seed money in Ballard Technologies. Several years ago we saw the opportunity that Ballard presented. We saw its promise and made a very conscious decision to invest in Ballard. All too often in society, we're quick to say there is no place for taxpayers' dollars to go for business subsidies. In this context, in the Ballard example, it's a classic example of public investment being wisely spent, particularly in light of the fact that government has been able to organize a deal whereby it gets a royalty kickback for all the profits that Ballard will ultimately realize. So it's good public policy and good public investment, with a return to the taxpayer. It's the kind of subsidy, in my view, that we should be providing.

The second reason Ballard has been so successful is because of the environmental regulations that this government has brought forward. Too often we hear people say that we have too many regulations in society and that we should get rid of them. If we were to take that view, I would make the argument that Ballard would not exist. Ballard exists as a technology and as a cornerstone of our economic future because we have the toughest clean-air laws in North America right here in British Columbia. We have put in standards saying that about 5 percent of the vehicles on the road by the year 2000 must be zero-emission vehicles. That means they must be vehicles that can't pollute at all, be it transit buses or automobiles.

When you bring in tough environmental regulations, industry will always fight them. They'll always tell you that they can't achieve the standards that government is demanding. They will tell you that they don't have the dollars to invest in meeting those environmental challenges. They will lobby, just like the pulp mill industry lobbied the previous government and tried to get them to vacate those tough pulp mill effluent regulations that were designed to save fish. They'll lobby, as they have with regard to beehive burners; they'll lobby, as they have with regard to beverage containers; they'll lobby in opposition to any type of tough environmental regulation, because in their view, it increases the cost of doing business. So industry will complain, as it did in this case.

[10:30]

But government has a role and a responsibility to say no to industry, that these types of tough environmental regulations. . . . I'm pleased to say that here in British Columbia we have the toughest environmental regulations of any jurisdiction in North America, in all of the areas that I've just mentioned. Government has to send a very powerful statement to industry and say: "Now, look, we don't care what you say. Those types of environmental regulations have to be the law. They will be the law. You have to comply, and if you don't comply, then you're going to face consequences." And that applies even in cases such as the Forest Practices Code, which, of course, will be a matter of debate later on in this House.

We as a government delivered that tough environmental message to industry. And what happened? Industry, having gotten that message, said: "Well, we've got no choice. Obviously the government has an environment ethic. It's clearly committed to this value system, and therefore we'd better find a way to comply." What they did was invest in research and technological development that resulted in the type of success we've had with Ballard. Ballard is a classic example that good, tough environmental regulations generate job creation, economic wealth and economic opportunities.

It takes vision on the part of government to bring forward tough environmental regulations, put the challenge out to industry and then have them produce the kind of success that we're now seeing right before our eyes here in British Columbia, at Ballard in Burnaby. I hope that all members opposite would congratulate Ballard on their success, and this government for the vision that it's shown in having these tough environmental regulations in place, so that we can have the kind of prosperity that we're enjoying in B.C.

L. Reid: I thank the hon. member opposite for his comments, because this is an opportunity to talk about science, technology and research in British Columbia. There is a wondrous quote that the Physiotherapy Association of B.C. has come forward with: "Research is today's practice and tomorrow's hope." It makes perfect sense for this discussion this morning. I too would congratulate Ballard Power on their initiatives. This is an important discussion, because it encapsulates how difficult it is to do research in British Columbia. In fact, Ballard Power has been attempting to get this concept on the road for the past 18 years. It's a longtime commitment and a longtime investment, there's no question about that.

Many research questions remain to be answered. For those unfamiliar with what the fuel cell is all about, it is a remarkable device. It looks like a battery but produces rather than stores power. First used in American space programs and progressively developed by world-leading Ballard to the point of down-to-earth practicality, it uses widely available hydrogen and air to produce quiet, smooth power. And its exhaust is only a little harmless water vapour -- pollution, zero. The market is ecstatic. Ballard shares have more than quintupled in less than two years. That's the scenario today.

What remains are some unanswered research questions about that. Issues around the storage of hydrogen are a consideration, because the volume of stored hydrogen determines the distance the car you are travelling in can cover in any 

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given time without stopping to refuel. There are some issues around the fuel cell energy -- whether or not it is absorbed in driving the compressor that forces the air through the cell, sharply reducing efficiency. So there are opportunities for ongoing research around this question.

In addition, it says the cell's catalyst can be poisoned by contaminants in the air, so the ongoing discussion around air quality will haunt this project and haunt British Columbians until we have a stronger sense of how important it is to ensure that everyone has clean air to breathe.

I am now at the stage where I'm reading the April-May issue of Automotive Retailer. It talks about a concept I introduced in debate the other day, about having a larger company incubate smaller companies. All of these companies I'm going to mention are doing great work around the Ballard power fuel cell.

"Nissan orders boost Ballard fuel cell demand. Nissan Motor Co. is the latest among a long list of the world's automakers to acquire fuel cell technology from Ballard Power Systems of Burnaby, B.C. Ballard's proton-exchange-membrane fuel cells convert natural gas, methanol or hydrogen fuel into electricity without combustion. It is also being tested by General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Volkswagen and Volvo as part of proposed zero-emission vehicles. The Nissan order is worth $2.2 million in fuel cells and related equipment."

It is a wondrous event for British Columbia that all of these companies are circling around the Ballard Power fuel cell, so they can continue to enhance the level of research that's going on but also to benefit tremendously -- enormously, as we will as British Columbians -- if that fuel cell technology was to hit the road in the majority of cars travelling in British Columbia.

So there's some very good comment on how important the latest initiative is from Daimler-Benz. I would support the fact that Ballard Power has the initiative to take that forward. Again, I would sincerely congratulate the company for sticking to a very tough, complex undertaking over the past 18 years. Certainly this is a long-term project. It has taken 18 years to get us to the point where this past minister believes that he can stand up and make a comment on the success of that company. It was a long time coming; it was 18 years in the making. It's a very good project. Certainly members on the opposition benches wish them well. This is free enterprise at its finest.

M. Sihota: I was waiting for the hon. member to congratulate the government for what we've done with regard to Ballard. But they're so bad over there, if I was Steve Weatherbe, I'd ask for my $10,000 back. I said that. . . .

The Speaker: Excuse me, hon. member -- I just want to give a caution that the rules governing private members' statements, as you know, are to refrain from making comments which are designed to provoke highly charged partisan debate. So I would ask the member to please take that caution.

M. Sihota: I won't try to make it highly charged, but I think there are some comments I want to make.

As I said at the outset, tough regulations made this happen. I noticed that one of the member's opposite, in his capacity as Transportation critic, on December 1 criticized our government's environmental regulations on clean air by saying that the Liberals, if elected, would "soften" them. He said: "I don't think we have to be the first in everything."

Hon. Speaker, there is a reason why Ontario or Alberta have been unable to produce a Ballard. It's because they think a little bit like the opposition here in British Columbia does. They think that environmental regulations get in the way of job creation. They think that industry knows best. They believe that we ought to reduce these regulations -- soften them is what the hon. member had to say before. They don't see the link between a good environmental regulation and the growth of environmental technologies like Ballard here in British Columbia. I think that is a discernible difference between the different types of value systems that are at play in this chamber.

We on this side of the House not only believe that there should be good, tough environmental regulations, but we recognize that when there are returns in terms of royalties back to the public sector, it is appropriate to provide business subsidies. You know, the opposition. . . . I noticed the other day that the critic for Employment and Investment opposite was criticizing this government with regards to its comments about business subsidies. You know, it's easy to pander to slogans that say we should simply get rid of them. It's far more difficult to make thoughtful public policy determinations that recognize there are times and places when those types of investments should occur and will benefit the public treasury.

There are some who will argue in this House and outside this House that government is something that gets in the way of progress and economic prosperity, and there are others who would argue in this House, as I will, that public investment is something that paves the way for economic prosperity, and Ballard is a classic example of that.

B. Penner: Mr. Speaker, I believe it's time to put technology to work so that we can put criminals behind bars. We've all read the headlines, watched the TV news and talked with our friends about another heartbreaking account of a young child or a female office worker or a loving husband found murdered by an unknown person. Every time an innocent life is taken, you can practically feel the public's sense of frustration, particularly when the persons responsible for the crime are unknown or cannot be positively identified as the culprits. Obviously and sadly, there is nothing we can do to bring back a life which has been taken from us much too soon. However, the public legitimately finds itself asking if there isn't something we can do to prevent such crimes from occurring again, or at least to apprehend those who are guilty of these crimes, the most horrific acts imaginable.

The Fraser Valley has seen more than its fair share of murders involving children and young people who are sexually assaulted at the hands of real-life monsters. I won't recite all the incidents or give the cowardly attackers more publicity by recalling their names, but I will harken back to what has been referred to as the Abbotsford Killer case. Less than two years ago the body of a teenager from Abbotsford -- Tanya Smith -- was found lying along the banks of the Vedder River near Chilliwack. The next day a police officer involved in the case told me that there was already enough evidence to convict the person responsible, but the police didn't know who had done it. When I asked how this could be, I was told that the attacker had left the equivalent of his genetic fingerprint at the crime scene -- that is, samples of hair, skin and/or bodily fluid containing his DNA -- which could be conclusively matched to the right suspect. The only problem was that at that point the police had no other DNA samples to compare to these samples which they had recovered at the crime scene. No match, no conviction.

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In 1995 the federal parliament amended the Criminal Code to enable police to obtain a search warrant requiring a suspect to provide a sample of his or her DNA, if there were reasonable grounds to believe that the suspect in question was the person who had committed the particular crime. In the Abbotsford Killer case, however, there was no suspect to begin with and thus no DNA samples to compare with those found along the Vedder River. The police officer said that somehow a nationwide system of stored DNA samples should be established, similar to the current fingerprinting system known as CPIC, the Canadian Police Information Centre.

I thought about this idea, and I wondered whether it would work, considering the restrictions that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms might impose. After reading the Supreme Court of Canada decisions in cases known as Regina v. Beare and Regina v. Higgins, cases where the current requirement to provide fingerprints prior to conviction was challenged and upheld, I became convinced that a law requiring all persons convicted of serious violent or sexual offences to provide samples of bodily substances containing their DNA would be constitutionally feasible.

Since 1995, Mr. Speaker, I have written to the federal Justice minister several times about this idea. And last summer I put a motion on the order paper calling on the B.C. Legislature to endorse the concept of a nationwide DNA data bank to help catch violent criminals. Not surprisingly, then, I was very pleased last week when the federal government tabled a bill in the House of Commons entitled the DNA Identification Act. If passed, this law will create a national data bank of DNA profiles from persons convicted of certain crimes, and it will help police identify and convict repeat violent and sexual offenders. Obviously this will be a powerful investigative tool to help protect Canadians from the worst type of predators.

Unlike the current legislation, requiring persons to provide fingerprints prior to being convicted and thus while they are still presumed to be innocent, the DNA Identification Act only requires those who have already been convicted of certain serious violent and sexual offences to provide samples of their DNA for testing. Most often, this can be done by way of a buccal swab -- that is, by swabbing the inside of the mouth -- and/or a blood sample. Now, of course, we in Chilliwack probably have a less formal way of doing that, given that cases are often heard in the men's room of our courthouse. So I'm sure there are plenty of samples of DNA available there.

DNA results help to speed up investigations not just because they point to who is responsible but also because they can actually exclude innocent suspects from consideration. This saves the police and the public valuable time and energy and precludes unwarranted prosecutions. We only need to think of the Guy Paul Morin case in Quebec to find an example of where DNA evidence proved the innocence of a person who had been falsely accused.

The federal government estimates that it will cost approximately $3 million per year to operate a DNA data bank. Provincial cooperation will be required to make sure that all local police forces are participants in the new system. While this new law cannot bring back people's loved ones, it may help to locate, identify and convict those whom society needs to be protected from. It is even possible that the DNA Identification Act will have a deterrent effect as would-be molesters realize that they face a greater certainty of apprehension after having provided DNA samples if they were previously convicted.

[10:45]

In closing, I urge all members of the federal Parliament to give this proposed law, Bill C-94, urgent attention. It is my sincere hope that it can be passed into law prior to the next federal election. I would also like to call on the B.C. government and our Attorney General to publicly support the creation of a national DNA data bank. After all, Mr. Speaker, it is time to put technology to work to help put criminals behind bars.

G. Bowbrick: I want to thank the member opposite for his comments on this issue. It is an important issue. Initially, I'd just like to say that the last thing the member raised was support from the provincial government for this bill. I'm pleased to say that I've certainly spoken with the Attorney General, and the Attorney General has said publicly that he supports this.

As a matter of fact, the provincial government has played a critical role in the past year or so in setting up a DNA testing lab in British Columbia, which is located at the RCMP E division in Vancouver. This is very important support for the structure which the federal government wishes to set up. After all, there is little point in having a DNA registry if we don't have proper DNA testing facilities in the provinces, which, of course, are responsible for law enforcement. In fact the provincial government, as recently as February in a news release, was urging the federal government to take these steps towards this federal legislation, and I'm certainly very pleased to see that it has come forward now.

I have a few comments to offer about the federal legislation itself, which is creating this DNA data bank. It will allow for an index of DNA samples to be taken from persons who are convicted of more serious offences and then for what would be deemed less serious offences. The Crown can still apply to have samples taken and become a part of this registry.

There has been some controversy since the bill was introduced -- and I'm sure prior to that as well, but it's become more public now -- because there are those who, of course, say that this bill is good in its current form; then there are those who say that it goes too far and those who say that it doesn't go far enough.

Now, those who say it goes too far are, I think fairly predictably, criminal defence lawyers, as well as many civil libertarians across the country. Those who don't believe it goes far enough have included the federal Reform Party and the Justice critic, as well the Canadian Police Association. I believe that their position is that everyone who is charged with any of these offences should have their DNA become part of this registry.

I happen to disagree with those who criticize from either side. From what I've seen, I believe that this legislation does achieve an appropriate balance. As an aside, I guess I'd like to refer a little bit to the civil libertarian approach, because there is, I think, a certain type of civil libertarian who just has an inherent suspicion of any overconcentration of state power. I believe that is something we have to be on the watch for. We also have to be on the watch for any overconcentration of power in any form -- whether it be in private hands or corporate hands -- and for overconcentration of wealth, or what have you.

I should say, hon. Speaker, that I don't have as inherent a suspicion of the state as some civil libertarians do. I believe the state does have an important role to play, particularly in this 

[ Page 2632 ]

situation, where it's a matter of balancing the right of the community and individuals in our communities to be safe from crime, and from people who perpetrate crime on a serial basis in particular, versus the right of individuals in our society to have privacy. I think most members of this House would object, for example, if all of them were required to be fingerprinted and become part of that data bank or required to give DNA samples from themselves.

So I think this legislation achieves the right balance, and I'm pleased to give the federal government credit for this in a spirit of non-partisanship. I note in earlier debate this morning that sometimes it's difficult to get people to give credit where credit is due. I've been a critic of the federal government on many other things in this House, but in this case they deserve credit and they deserve our support.

B. Penner: I'd like to thank the hon. member opposite for his remarks. I agree that this bill does strike the appropriate balance, but I would just correct maybe my friend's statement about all defence lawyers necessarily being opposed to it. Certainly in my previous life, prior to being elected, I did both prosecution work in a criminal setting as well as criminal defence work. Other members of the criminal defence bar, whom I have spoken to, are about evenly divided on whether or not they believe that they like this concept of a DNA database. Some defence lawyers do recognize in fact that the public interest deserves to be protected and that the public does have a right to be protected, especially from serious violent or sexual offenders. If this bill can do anything towards helping protect the public, then I'm sure many lawyers across the province would applaud this initiative.

I think one other thing needs to be mentioned -- that is, the effect that it has on morale of police forces. The police whom I've spoken to in the last few days see this as a breath of fresh air. They see so many legal developments as simply posing another roadblock in their efforts to bring justice or to find those who are responsible and convict them. They see this bill, for once, as kind of stemming the tide or turning the tables on the suspects that they're chasing in their efforts to protect the community. They see this as giving them a powerful crime-fighting tool at a time when their job is getting tougher in most other circumstances. So I really do feel it's important that the federal government not get too caught up in its election agenda and get the public's work done by passing this bill prior to the next federal election.

Finally, I'd like to say that again I've had an opportunity in the past to speak to police who are working at the provincial homicide unit in Vancouver, which has recently been created by this government. They're doing fine work there, and they, too, are looking forward to the day when they can have access to this DNA database, because they have many unsolved cases around the province that they feel could be solved if this type of a DNA database is set up.

The Speaker: For the last statement this morning, I recognize the member for Vancouver-Mount Pleasant.

J. Kwan: I rise today to speak on a very important issue in Vancouver-Mount Pleasant and Vancouver-Burrard, and that is the issue of safe, affordable and secure housing. Many low-income residents in the city of Vancouver reside in what is called single-room occupancy, or SRO, housing units in the downtown east side and the downtown south area. A typical SRO unit consists of one room, about ten feet by ten feet, with no private bathroom, and if you're lucky, you will have a hot plate in the room for your cooking facilities. With few exceptions, SRO residents have low to very low incomes and cannot afford more or better accommodations. As such, the rent tends to be set by the shelter component of social assistance, which is $325 per month, which makes the units some of the most expensive rental units on a per-square-foot basis. At $325 a month, SRO tenants typically pay 60 percent or more of their income for their rooms.

There are approximately 7,500 SRO units in the downtown core of Vancouver. Over the last five years, the SRO stock has declined by approximately 400 units. The loss of these units is generally due to demolition for redevelopment, conversions to tourist use, fires and closures.

While this form of housing is substandard housing, it is, unfortunately, a means to address the issue of homelessness. Many of the residents of SRO units are longtime residents in the community. Many of them are seniors on a fixed income. Over the years the Downtown Eastside Residents Housing Society has worked hard to enhance the quality of life for its residents, for they believe in housing as a priority in honing their potential. They, along with others, work to create better housing conditions. They fought for years for the development of non-profit housing units in the community. To date, there are approximately 4,700 non-market housing units in the downtown east side, Chinatown, Gastown and Strathcona areas.

Our provincial government believes in, and has invested in, the development of non-market housing in British Columbia. Despite the federal government's withdrawal from funding the development of social housing in B.C., our government has continued to fund housing initiatives since 1994. B.C. is the only other province, next to Quebec, that is still funding housing. Our government believes that it is a right, not a privilege, to have safe, secure and affordable housing. Our government also believes in public-private partnerships in the development of mixed healthy communities.

In pursuit of the belief that joint partnerships with the private sector can build a society that is equally fair to the rich and the poor, that providing affordable housing should be central to social and civic planning and that there can be social and architectural innovation in the development of housing, the NDP government initiated a partnership with Mr. Kassem Aghtai, president of Fama Holdings Ltd., on the development of Woodward's.

I will take a minute to review the background regarding the redevelopment of Woodward's. In 1995, Mr. Aghtai of Fama Holdings bought the Woodward's site. An application was made on behalf of Fama to the city of Vancouver to redevelop the building from commercial use to a mixed use of residential and commercial. In July of 1995, Vancouver city council, in a 10-to-1 vote, approved Mr. Aghtai's application and gave away a significant benefit in the form of a density bonus to Mr. Aghtai without requiring him to give a return back to the city of Vancouver.

To the community, Mr. Aghtai has been given significant special treatment that other developers are not afforded. According to city policy, density bonuses are given to developers only if a return equal in value is given back to the people of Vancouver. Equally important, from a civic planning point of view, a large upscale condo project at Woodward's has the potential to drive up property values of nearby SRO units and to accelerate the loss of SRO units through

[ Page 2633 ]

conversions and demolitions, thereby displacing existing longtime residents in the downtown east side. To the residents of the downtown east side, Woodward's is the anchor for housing stability for low-income residents.

Recognizing the importance of Woodward's to the health of the community, the NDP government, under the leadership of the former Premier, offered to join in partnership with Mr. Aghtai to develop 200 units of non-market housing within the 400-unit project. On February 15, 1996, a memorandum of understanding to develop approximately 200 units of co-op housing at Woodward's was signed. As of April 1, 1997, all significant issues were resolved, excepting the developer's ability to provide a 50 percent performance bond and a 50 percent labour and material bond to the province. Instead of requiring the developer to provide this normal form of bonding, the province had agreed on some other form of security for the project. The province was waiting for Mr. Aghtai to submit a letter from his accountants, assuring BCHMC and the co-op that they had the financial ability to complete the project. Instead of receiving that, on April 4, 1997, Mr. Aghtai held a press conference and abruptly withdrew from his previous agreements with the province.

Some members opposite have said that it is the fault of the government that Mr. Aghtai abruptly withdrew from the partnership. Well, hon. Speaker, if members actually took the time to learn the facts of the case, those members will find that it is the developer who was not able to perform. The hon. members would have found that, in fact, government staff have bent over backwards to accommodate the demands of this development, and still this developer was not able to deliver. It appears that Mr. Aghtai has failed in his performance and failed the people of the community.

While it would appear that the deal is now dead, the spirit, the belief, of the people in the downtown east side is not. They continue to work towards the goal of saving their community. Residents of the community are coming together in solidarity to fight for what they believe in. I'm very proud of the people, and I will continue to work towards the dream of a mixed-housing project on the Woodward's site.

R. Coleman: In my response this morning, I am not going to address the Woodward's project, out of deference to a professional relationship as critic for Housing and out of a promise I made to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, the mayor of Vancouver and the developer that we wouldn't turn this particular project into a political issue so that there may be an opportunity to save the project in negotiation. I am very familiar with the depth of the project and all the details relative to it, and at the appropriate time, hopefully, we can all get together and make this project work for the benefit for the people of downtown east side.

[11:00]

I think it's important when we talk about housing. . . . If you ask my colleagues, they'll tell you that I could probably go on for two or three hours and still not come up for air on this particular issue, because of my background in housing. I've already been involved in private-public partnerships and in social housing; I've developed projects in Vancouver, as well as in other areas on behalf of clients.

The one thing that becomes very clear in housing is that any type of housing cannot live in isolation -- whether it be SROs, single units for couples, family projects, special needs projects or disabled housing. The marketplace can't allow social housing to live in isolation, because certain things happen when people go into social housing.

The best way to show that is through a parable. In 1992 I housed a woman with five children in a social housing project. In 1991 that woman had no alternatives with regards to housing, just like a lot of people in the downtown east side. The opportunity to take the burden of housing off her shoulders allowed her to retrain and get a job. It allowed her to get off social assistance and provide a new life for her family. The first major step of any component of housing -- whether it be SRO or social housing in any format -- is to give people the opportunity for a respectful, decent lifestyle to take themselves to the next level of their lives.

The important thing to remember, though, is that once they've reached that level, at some point in time they may want to move on from social housing. And they may want to move into the rental market, because the cost of social housing is geared to income. Therefore they may want to move on at some point to another opportunity, and we have to make sure we're aware of the entire marketplace of housing.

We have to have good residential tenancy regulations that work for both sides of the marketplace so we can see a production of additional rental housing in our marketplace which we aren't seeing in our market right now. We have to go on to new forms of home ownership, as were identified by a number of groups, including the Provincial Commission on Housing Options in 1993. Those opportunities in housing are critical, because the next step has to be some sort of a form of affordable ownership as well, and because people cannot just be isolated into one little stick, like in the housing marketplace. Then there's the opportunity to move on from options in home ownership into the marketplace itself.

Social housing is critical. At this point, we're doing about 600 units per year. We can do better, with better relationships and private-public partnerships. I've offered that expertise to the minister many times, and I will continue to do so on behalf of all people of British Columbia.

J. Kwan: In not wanting to talk about the issues in terms of the Woodward's issue, it appears that members opposite only want to engage in discussions when they want to criticize the government. Actually, on April 8, 1997, in the member's reply to the budget, the Woodward's issue was in fact raised. And all that was raised was misinformation with regards to the performance of the. . . .

The Speaker: Excuse me, Mount Pleasant. I want to caution the member that private members' statements are always contentious and always potentially difficult. Partisan issues are allowed. Controversial issues are allowed. Indeed I would refer members to, I believe, page 46 of MacMinn's third edition, under standing order 25(a) commentary, and you will discover an excellent and articulate statement on what the rules are governing private members' statements, provided by the Speaker of 1992, the current member for Burnaby-Willingdon. It's an excellent statement. I would caution all members who make private members' statements that they ought to read it, understand it and follow it. And I think the member for Vancouver-Mount Pleasant is crossing the line ever so slightly, and I would therefore ask her to be somewhat more cautious and tempered in her remarks. Continue, please.

J. Kwan: Thank you, hon. Speaker, I certainly will.

Let me just go back to the Woodward's issue. The Woodward's issue is central to the health of the community in the downtown east side. It is an anchor to the community in saving the SRO units from redevelopment pressures, from 

[ Page 2634 ]

conversion pressures and from displacement and gentrification. The fact of the matter is that the developer was not able to perform on the Woodward's project. The province has worked very hard, along with the community, to negotiate the deal on the Woodward's project. The province has made an offer of $25 million to secure the project, and that is what we're talking about today.

The developer abruptly withdrew from those negotiations, and left the community in a devastating situation. Despite that -- and I want to touch on this -- the community of Vancouver-Mount Pleasant and the people of Vancouver continue to fight for what they believe in, and continue to want to work towards saving Woodward's and therefore the community of the downtown east side. In fact, tonight there will be a vigil at the site. Tomorrow there will be a rally at Abbott and Hastings from 11 o'clock to 3 o'clock. I would ask all members to come to that rally and to the vigil to support the people of the downtown east side and the people of Vancouver-Burrard and the people of the city of Vancouver in saving this project. I would say that if Mr. Aghtai fails the people of Vancouver in their dream of Woodward's, I and the member for Vancouver-Burrard will continue to advocate for the 200 units to be developed in the downtown east side to alleviate the housing crisis exacerbated by Mr. Aghtai's failure to perform. Woodward's is fundamental to the health of the community. Equally important. . . . It was like the Carnegie library to the community. And it is the community that we're trying to save. I ask all members to work with us to save the project.

Hon. A. Petter: In Committee A, I call estimates of the Attorney General's ministry, and in the main House, with leave, I call debate on Bill 2.

G. Farrell-Collins: I want to take this opportunity to speak to that motion very briefly. It is the rule of this House -- and I spoke to the Government House Leader on this matter earlier -- that we don't generally talk about the negotiations that go on elsewhere. This is private members' day. The only item that supersedes the address and the dealing with private members' issues -- i.e., private members' bills or motions that are on the order paper -- is money matters, generally the estimates, and any urgent government business that is required. That's what has gone on in this House.

What's happened from time to time. . . . Certainly the practice has been. . . . Rather than go into private members' bills or other private members' business, this chamber has generally done debate on the estimates. There has been one occasion where in fact we did do private members' bills that I recall in recent memory.

Because of the scheduling of one of our members, the government was anxious to call the estimates of Women's Equality in this House this morning. As a matter of compromise to try to accommodate the government's business and to not waste today's business, we are willing to accede leave to allow debate of government legislation in the chamber today.

But I want to register our position on this as the long-held position of the opposition: today should be for private members' legislation; it should be a private members' day. With that, we will be allowing leave on this motion.

The Speaker: I thank the member for his intervention. Let me clarify, if I might, that arrangements made between the respective Whips and House Leaders are not part of my mandate. As the member acknowledged, though, the important other point is that our sessional orders are effectively silent on this matter. We do have precedent for carrying on as we are, but I recognize the member's intervention.

I will review the matter, by the way, and if indeed there is need for clarification, I shall provide that. But I will review the matter, and I thank the member for the intervention.

Leave granted.

T. Nebbeling: Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak further on Bill 2. I've had the opportunity already to explain to members opposite the difference between the powers that the provincial government has in order to create the needed funds for their programs. . . . These powers are far-reaching and almost limitless -- except the voice, of course, of the taxpayers: whenever too many taxes are being imposed on the people, the taxpayers speak up and, through elections, express their opinions on how the government is doing as far as taxation is concerned.

Obviously for that reason, as part of their campaign to get re-elected, the provincial government decided to make a promise to the province and its people that no new taxes or increased taxes would be part of this provincial government's agenda for this session of the House. So in a sense the government has limited itself and its opportunities to find the needed funds for what the government believes to be its program needs. When we talk about taxation, that's one side of the equation.

The other side of the equation is the municipal taxation. Municipalities have only one opportunity to create the funds to administrate a municipality -- to create the funds to take care of the public safety within a municipality, city or regional district -- and have only one opportunity to create the funds for public works, road maintenance and capital expenditures. That is called property tax. There is nothing else the municipality can do as far as imposing taxes on their population but use the property tax.

That has been sacred in this province. Nobody has ever dared, as a provincial government in the past, to start looking at how we can tap into that provincial tax in order to cover our financial mismanagement and, at the same time, not having to do what an honourable government would and say: "Okay, we made a commitment to this province, and that is we will not raise the taxes. But, because of the circumstances, we have to come back on that commitment. . . ."

The one thing we would have achieved if that had happened with this government is that for the first time this government would have really, truly been honest in the way it governs and how it deals with its financial management. However, what they decided to do -- and Bill 2 will be the tool the government uses -- is raid that sacred municipal property tax through the back door -- not openly but through the back door -- by removing a substantial amount of the traditional grant money that has come to communities ever since I have lived in this province, and that is since 1977.

This grant money was not to pay for sewer treatment plants; it was not to pay for bridges. This grant money was based on population, in part, and was to give the communities a bit of a kicker so they could participate in projects and programs that were truly for the benefit of the community. 

[ Page 2635 ]

Taking this money away is going to lead to a number of things, and I think we have to be very much aware of what the consequences will be. I'm going to go into detail on that subject as well. But we can put it in one small statement: every dollar this government refuses to continue to pay in grant money to communities is a dollar less towards the quality of life in communities and, in particular, for the people who need that little extra in general. I'm going to talk about these people.

[G. Brewin in the chair.]

But before I do that, I want to refer to two members who spoke yesterday in this House: first the member for New Westminster and then the member for Esquimalt-Metchosin. I have to give the member for New Westminster credit for speaking about his community and how his community is dealing with this reduction in grants. And although I do not agree with the philosophy that drives the member to feel content with what I consider his through-the-backdoor money raid, his philosophy truly being based on a socialist ideology of the sixties. . . . I do not believe that in the nineties there is any room for that type of socialism. I grew up in Holland. Holland, Germany, France, Italy and Sweden: these countries were definitely driven by that form of socialism. All these countries went under, as far as their financial strategy and quality of life was concerned, in the early eighties, because people had to live with the consequences of that ideology-driven socialism. The member from New Westminster, I regret to say, is still on that same type of motivation when it comes to how this province should deal with the well-being of the people and how they should reward people's hard work.

[11:15]

So that member spoke on his community, where the member for Esquimalt-Metchosin chose not to speak on his community. That created some suspicion in my mind, because normally we like to emphasize the good things that happen in our own ridings. What the member did, first of all, was speak about the city of Victoria and how well Victoria had dealt with this grant reduction because they did not increase property taxes. They had found ways of absorbing this reduction in funding that was coming to the city of Victoria. That is something other communities have been able to do as well. Unfortunately, he didn't talk about his own community, Esquimalt-Metchosin, so I talked to some staff members there this morning. I got some very interesting figures.

First of all, Esquimalt-Metchosin is the one community, percentage-wise, hit hardest. It is on top of the list with a reduction of funding of 6.8 percent. This is in a community where there is already a huge debate going on about grants-in-lieu for government properties that are not paying their fair share. Then I talked to some staff members at the municipal hall there this morning. Guess what. In Esquimalt the community will be forced. . . . They will lose $400,000 in grant money; they will lose a significant amount of money in the police equalization grant. Because of this, Esquimalt will have to increase. . . . It is here: "A property tax increase of a minimum of 5 percent will be required to maintain the status quo."

So now we know why the member didn't want to talk about his own community. What he thinks is great and what can happen in other communities is physically or financially not possible in his own community, the community he is supposed to be standing up for. Now we know why he's ignoring it. That community will be having to suffer some of the consequences that I believe will be part of this money grab. One of them is that councils, even if they are able -- and I will stop soon, Madam Speaker -- to put forth a budget that does not include property tax increases, will have to delete and reduce many of the grant and aid programs today helping community clubs and organizations. And that is just one very sad consequence.

I hope one of my colleagues can continue on this reduction, as my time is up.

D. Jarvis: I too rise to speak on Bill 2, which is the Budget Measures Implementation Act, 1997 -- one of those omnibus bills, or what I would refer to as a stalking-horse bill. There's always something hidden inside these bills. It sometimes gives one time to consider that what this government is really trying to put forward in the sense that they bring forward bills like this. . . . If you look into it carefully, there is always something in it that's detrimental to the citizens of British Columbia who are the taxpayers.

This bill has been discussed by my colleagues quite a bit in the last couple of days. Most of the main points have been accentuated and clarified very clearly to people on the aspect of the off-loading part of the bill -- the off-loading of grants to the municipalities throughout British Columbia. In my mind, and to everyone else in this province, it appears that it's very offensive. It's an offensive tack by this government, not because of the downloading aspect -- I don't agree with the downloading even down from the federal government -- but because of the way they implemented it. As this bill here indicates, it's an act that they're going to put forward to suggest to the people of British Columbia or to the municipalities that they are being downloaded enormous amounts of money by this government.

When the federal government implemented their downloading system, they went anywhere from two to five years and told the provinces: "This is what we're going to do two years from now, three years from now, four years from now." This government had the audacity to go to Penticton during the last UBCM convention up there. I was there, and I heard that with all this. . . . They brought forward a protocol agreement, and with great aplomb they said that they were going to do great things for the municipalities. And in that agreement it was stated that they would bring stability to the municipalities in order for them to budget properly in the future, so there wouldn't be any surprises for them.

But in less than a year, they turn around and give the big surprise to the municipalities: one month's notice that they were going to cut all of their grants.

In my own riding, in North Vancouver. . . . Actually, I have two municipalities in my riding. I have the district of North Vancouver -- a small section of my riding is the district -- and the city of North Vancouver. In North Vancouver the grants have dropped 56.32 percent -- 56 percent. In North Vancouver city they've dropped over 60 percent. If you really think about it, that is quite a dramatic drop in grants.

So in less than two years they turn around and destroy the relationships that they had with the municipalities after signing this protocol agreement. It was a very deceptive way they did it. They lined them all up at the Penticton meeting and told them about the wonderful things that they were going to do. Then they turned around and slid it into them, the old cutting knife. It was like a tax on them, although this government doesn't believe in taxes -- or any new taxes, that is. It is basically the way they did it that is held with such disdain throughout this province. This is what you certainly could call a hypocritical government when it does that.

I was looking over some of these changes, and I noticed how some of the members in the House here. . . . For exam-

[ Page 2636 ]

ple, in the joint riding adjoining me across the river in the Burnaby area, Burnaby has had a drop of 62.46 percent in grants. I haven't heard a member from the Burnaby side of the House -- the members that belong to the different Burnaby ridings -- get up and defend or criticize the government for reducing their grants.

C. Clark: They won't be here next time.

D. Jarvis: One of the members, the member for Port Moody-Burnaby Mountain said that they won't be here next time. That's probably a very good statement. At least it's a positive statement.

As I said, it's the way this government has gone about it. Oh, I see the gentleman from Mission has gone. In the Mission area they've dropped it 33 percent. That's probably why he hasn't got up to speak about it or criticized the government for reducing the grants to his own municipality by 33 percent. It isn't quite as bad as it is for most of us on this side of the House who are in other areas which have had them up in the 50 percent and 60 percent range. It's quite an unconscionable way that they have done this, as I said, and no one knows what is going to happen in the future. There's no cutoff date or time in this bill, so most of the municipalities are really concerned about what is going to happen in the future.

My own municipality, specifically the district of North Vancouver -- which is the largest area that I represent -- was able to sort of soften the results and reduce the impacts to the taxpayers. Our taxes are going to go up. Of course, taxes always go up a certain degree. But this was quite a significant drop: we received $1,570,727 less than we did last year. So how are they going to make that up? They made it up by increasing the efficiency of the water utilities, the sewer utilities that require. . . . As we know, that's an infrastructure that's always going to be one of our largest problems down the road. They increased fines; they had to increase fines in the area. They have to make this up rather than hit the taxpayer in one big lump. What they are dropping down is approximately 1 percent of the budget in North Vancouver.

And we see expenditure decreases. They are cancelling so many things in regards to this, even environmental protection. Environmental protection is something that we desperately need, as you are aware, and this government keeps saying that they are the saviours of the environment. We know that that's not true. We see different things that they've cut back on -- janitorial services. We know what's happened because of the cutbacks to the education system: the janitorial services in all our schools is atrocious.

I noticed something here that they've had to come back on. They've had to cancel their contingency provisions. Isn't that just like something that this government has never done, have contingency provisions? It's only smart business practice that they do it and provide for it. That's what we would call prudent management -- not the way this government has a prudent budget with no contingency provisions in it. In fact this government, if they had handled their finances properly, probably wouldn't be in this position whatsoever. It's very questionable as to why we should even be in this position.

As for this government, as I've said before, it really has no concept of how to create wealth in this province. They have no idea whatsoever, have made no provisions. There are no targets, no plans, no debt management plan. We're running at $31 billion debt, and we have no possible way of paying that off without some provision for that in the future. So this government doesn't know how. If the true Minister of Finance was in the House -- he's the member for Delta South -- he would tell you exactly what has happened.

I'm really concerned as to how our municipality in North Vancouver is going to project this loss this year. As I said, they've been able to soften the blow somewhat to the taxpayers. But there's no guarantee that this breach of the protocol agreement will not be extended even further next year. This government: they're in trouble. There's no question. They can't control their debts. They can't control their deficits. They misrepresent, I'm afraid. The true Minister of Finance in this House, the member for Delta South, has said our deficit this year is in the $800 million range -- $886 million, I think he said -- not $185 million, as the Minister of Finance who's presently sitting in the House is trying to say.

So as I said, there's a breach in the protocol agreement that's going to affect every taxpayer in the district of North Vancouver and the city of North Vancouver. We're wondering what's going to happen. If they had handled the problems with the debt-financing properly, we probably would not be in this position. So there's no question that there's a great lack of business acumen on the side of the government, and there's a lack of competent plans or people to invoke competent plans. . . . As I said, they do not know what to do. They're just frustrated.

[11:30]

"No new taxes," the Premier keeps saying. Yet every time I turn around and pick up a piece of a paper, I see there's something that is costing the taxpayers in this province more -- for example, the fee hikes in '96-97. Everywhere you look there are consumer service fee hikes: a 133 percent increase in probate fees; increased surcharges on provincial fines; supply and survey plans; angling licences for freshwater fishing. Ambulance service fees, as everyone knows, have gone up. Patient fees for visits to chiropractors, physiotherapists, massage therapists and naturopaths -- services that citizens use all the time -- are going up. But still this government says: "No new tax increases."

Accommodation fees for long term care patients have gone up.

C. Clark: They can't afford it.

D. Jarvis: Well, they can't. There's no question that the seniors in this province can't afford it. They are being taxed to death, taxed to the max by this government that doesn't believe in creating new taxes.

But this province is being placed in jeopardy. It's not the game -- well, it's like the game of "Jeopardy" that you see on TV, except we all know the answer to the question before we go into it, and that is: "What is debt?" Well, what is debt? It's a socialist government -- the NDP government -- running this province.

As I said, the main concern of the municipality -- the mayors and the finance people in my riding, and other ridings, probably -- is the fact. . . . What about next year? Will they be looking at a zero increase or larger cuts than what we're having now?

This government breached their own protocol agreement, an agreement to provide stability to the municipalities, to give them assurances, to help them so they wouldn't have questions about their budget and their funding in the future. Will 

[ Page 2637 ]

we see these problems in the future? It's hard to say. It's obviously an agreement full of deception. One month's notice about the cutbacks -- that is not what you'd call even just being fair. The deception is parallel to the Hitler-Chamberlain situation. You know, poor Chamberlain came back, he thought he had an agreement with Herr Hitler, and then he found out a little while later he didn't.

When you relate the protocol agreement that they signed guaranteeing the municipalities security in the future. . . . Yet they turn around, with one month's notice. . . . We know we have our own little dictator here, anyway. Another trust broken and another taking away of a right to the people of this province.

There is one other thing in this stalking-horse bill that they have put forward here, and that is the rising propane costs which are going through. The Premier said there would be no new taxes -- yet a new price on propane. It's another tax increase, and it's again another hypocritical act by the government.

The Premier said, "No more new taxes," yet here we have under section 18. . . . Anyway, there is a section in here that certainly pertains to applying a new tax on propane, which is a tax on a product that is an environmentally friendly fuel for vehicles, a tax on a fuel that operates in homes and businesses -- and a lot of homes up in the north country. You've heard it very eloquently said by the Reform member from the Peace River how everyone up there uses it, and they don't have an alternative such as we do down here to maybe change their fuel.

The government asked people to do it. We've got taxi fleets that have cut over to propane because governments have told them that this is the moral thing they should do because of the environment. And they're taxing them again -- another tax when we say no new taxes. In any event, this government has been hypocritical to the maximum.

Before I go, I want to make one more comment about the minister for municipalities, who, when the latest survey went around to the municipalities as to whether they approved of this situation or approved of the way the minister was handling the ministry, showed that 100 percent. . . . In the history of human endeavour, I don't think we ever found a survey of 100 percent disapproval of this government and of the minister. These surveys were astonishing findings, but we just don't have. . . .

The astonishing aspect of it was that it was 100 percent, yet the minister. . . . I want to quote what he said. The minister said he had nothing but disdain for these findings. Well, what was the disdain about? Was it the 100 percent? If it had been 50 percent, would there still be disdain? I mean, no matter what the findings were, if only 10 percent of the municipalities were upset with him -- found they were disapproving of the way this government was handling municipal finances -- you'd think he'd be worried about it. But he found disdain with all of them. . .with the fact that 100 percent did not agree with him.

It's obvious that the people in this province feel they cannot trust this government. Every time we turn around there is a new tax, a broken agreement, a broken promise and an increase in fees to the point where this province is probably. . . . There's an old expression about going south in a handbasket.

An Hon. Member: That's a gross misrepresentation of our policy.

D. Jarvis: There are a few comments in the House, and I find it hard to keep a straight face with some of them.

I am very disappointed with this. As I said, they call this a stalking-horse bill that they've put forward -- Bill 2. It is not a good bill. There are some obvious flaws to it, and as we go down through the next few months -- we can only hope that we'll be here probably three months. . . . And we average about 60 to 80 bills every time we have a session with this government. How many of them will be hypocritical bills that will cause hardships to the taxpayers of this province? Probably a great many of them.

On that premise, I want to tell you. . . . I don't know if you've noticed it yet, but I'm not in favour of this bill. Working on that premise, I have to say that I've registered the fact that I am not going to vote for it.

K. Krueger: When the Finance minister introduced this bill, he spoke of goals of fairness and efficiency, and I believe he means it. There are aspects of this bill, unfortunately, that don't demonstrate fairness at all, and I have to speak to those.

I find myself in an ongoing conundrum in this House. I look across the way at the government MLAs from the NDP, and as I get to know them, one by one I find that I like them more and more as individuals, yet I don't like the things they're doing. I don't like the results that are flowing from a lot of the things that they're doing. Certainly the people that are my constituents don't like them at all, and I'm hearing that loud and clear.

This act seems to take the classic NDP approach of taking several very nasty poison pills and wrapping them up in a lot of other administrative matters and sliding them on by. We notice that when the government is proud of something it's doing, it will introduce a separate bill just to highlight that. When I say that about this act, I'm thinking specifically of the changes in taxation of propane for automobile fuel. I'm thinking of the cuts to local government, and I'm also a little concerned about the prospect of ICBC underwriting more of the safety expenses for the Ministry of Transportation and Highways. I'm going to touch on all of those things.

I'll come back to the Local Government Grants Act. As everyone knows, it's a subject of tremendous consternation amongst the municipalities and the municipal taxpayers all around this province -- who are, of course, the very same taxpayers who pay so heavily in provincial taxes, who scratch their heads in disbelief and cynicism about their governments when they see the sort of chicanery and shenanigans that go on in these cuts between governments. I think it's a tremendous wrong for the provincial government to argue that federal transfer payment changes are any justification at all for the type of thing that has gone on in the province's relationship with municipalities.

I have a lot of things to say on behalf of the constituents of Kamloops as well as of the Kamloops-North Thompson constituency -- in that the member from Kamloops is from the government side and seems constrained or afraid to get up and defend our constituents in this House, because there's the matter of tremendous solidarity in the NDP caucus and of people apparently not being allowed to vote or even speak on behalf of their constituents. So I'm speaking for the constituents of Kamloops as well as the Kamloops-North Thompson constituency and, indeed, constituents all around this province, because it affects all of us.

The effect on auto-fuel propane taxation is a tremendous one about which I have received volumes and volumes of 

[ Page 2638 ]

letters. I have directed them to the Minister of Employment and Investment and the Minister of Environment. We do what we can to try to bring these constituents' heartfelt concerns to the attention of this government, with very little obvious result.

When this exemption was first applied to propane, there were goals in mind. People in government felt that it would be wise, and I agree with them, to encourage people to use a more environmentally friendly fuel, to use something that is produced domestically in Canada, certainly in British Columbia, and to become less reliant on the higher-polluting gasoline and diesel fuels.

People feel as though they were tricked into going to the massive expense of these conversions on their vehicles -- up to $3,000, and probably more on some vehicles -- only to find that now the government is going to pull the rug out from under them and begin to tax them in this way. They feel it is very unfair, and they have some very harsh things to say about government. People say that they have a lying, sleazy, irresponsible government that is continually tricking them and sticking its hands deeper and deeper into their pockets. It was a major expense for them to go into the propane conversion, and now they find that, from their point of view, they're doing it for very little gain.

What about the industry? The industry feels sabotaged, because they have put in their infrastructure, they have incurred the expenses -- the overhead of developing their businesses -- and suddenly they find that their product is much less appealing to the consumer and they are in danger of this having a dramatically negative effect on their businesses.

[11:45]

What of their employees -- the thousands of employees who work in auto-fuel propane outlets? Their jobs are going to be affected. People will switch back to using gasoline because it's a lot easier. It's much easier to fill your vehicle up with gasoline than it is with propane. It takes time. If you have propane as your fuel, you often don't receive the same level of attention from the people who man the gas stations as you do from the higher-profit gasoline. There is going to be a very negative effect on the industry, and people are very angry about that. It's not fair to treat the taxpayer this way. It's not fair to betray their trust or to affect their family budgets in the way that changes like this affect them.

So I urge the Finance minister to reconsider that, and to continue to allow the exemption on auto fuel, because the taxpayer finds this another betrayal, another ripoff, another hammer blow to the credibility of the NDP government.

I'll just touch very briefly on the social services tax changes. Clearly it's efficient to increase the minimum refund payable from $1 to $10, and it's nice to see a government learn lessons from its mistakes. Certainly tremendous mistakes were made by the Premier leading into the last election in the ICBC premium freeze manoeuvre. That premium freeze and rollback caused ICBC to issue thousands of cheques, some of them for tiny amounts. It was a ridiculous waste of money and no way to treat a business of any kind. A number of those cheques had to be issued twice because of the lack of clarity and the suddenness of the Premier's intervention in what had been a relatively well-run aspect of that giant Crown corporation.

So it is good to see this type of administrative change brought into being. We certainly oppose government flying by the seat of its pants, or making moves such as the one made with ICBC premiums, with the attendant waste.

I'm concerned about the ICBC involvement in more traffic safety initiatives as far as development of highway intersections and so on. ICBC has a very viable road improvement program which currently intervenes in situations where particular traffic locations are generating significant numbers of crashes and where a demonstrable saving can be achieved.

It only makes sense for them not to allow injuries and property damage to occur at certain locations. For substantially less expense, let alone avoiding all the pain and heartache of the injuries that occur, they could fix up a location and avoid that happening in future. But if this gets to the point where ICBC is paying for all safety engineering and changes on provincial highways, this will become another sideways shift in provincial budgeting. We're very concerned on this side of the House that this government has found ways to slide off 30 percent of what used to be on the province's books and essentially hide those expenditures in Crown corporations -- making it appear that they have achieved savings which really aren't there because they are being paid for out of the same taxpayer's pocket in Crown corporations.

People have referred to the Minister of Transportation and Highways as having a "maintenance" ministry rather than a genuine highways ministry these days, and we're concerned that this type of erosion of the public accountability of that ministry will be furthered by this move in Bill 2. We caution the government not to do that. Certainly we'll be watching for that. It's something of a travesty that the shell game goes on in provincial accounting, in its books, and we don't intend to let it pass unnoticed.

I'll turn now briefly to the changes to local government grants and the serious effect it's having on municipalities -- certainly on the city of Kamloops. I was shocked when the member for Vancouver-Fraserview made the remark yesterday -- I wrote it down -- that there is a lot of fat out there in the municipalities. He said: "There is a lot of fat." Well, that's a terribly offensive statement to the municipalities, who have been required for years, of course, to balance their books and do their best, apply themselves zealously and negotiate with their unions and employ good people and do everything they can to look after the taxpayers' funds. And then to have a government MLA stand up and tell them, "There's fat out there in the municipalities; they deserve this treatment," is a very offensive thing.

I'm just going to go to a letter from the city of Kamloops, which I asked them to provide to let me know how they are coping with the massive disappointment of the cuts to unconditional grants. These cuts affected Kamloops to the tune of $2,011,200. Having been promised that they would not suffer a decrease in the grant of more than 2 percent in any given year, they suddenly find themselves facing a cut of more than 50 percent. That's really unfair. That's no way to do business; that's no way to treat your stakeholder partners; it's no way to show respect for other levels of government or for the taxpayers that elect them.

These are the things that Kamloops has had to do to try to cope with these changes: $600,000 million in capital projects deferred; $170,000 in computer system development deferred. These are administrative changes that are going to potentially cost the taxpayers a lot more in the long run, because they won't have the efficiencies that were planned for or the infrastructure that was planned for. A $130,000 cut in arena, 

[ Page 2639 ]

pool, museum, compost-site hours. All of these things are good programs and good services, things that the people of Kamloops have paid for, and now they're losing them. If they compost less as a result of the city having to cut back its budget, is that something that this provincial government wants to see? Does it want to see more museums shut down, as well as pools and arenas?

A $200,000 utility discount for seniors eliminated. This cut to the city of Kamloops has struck seniors in the pocketbook. Surely this provincial government doesn't want to be hurting seniors the way it has with this surprising and reprehensible cut in the grant that the city of Kamloops was counting on.

There's a $160,000 cut in the budget for employees -- a delay in filling positions as they become vacant. Their jobs are obviously being affected. Union jobs are being affected. Then there are hundreds of thousands of dollars more in areas that the city is still scratching its collective head over: what in the world are we going to do to deal with the treachery we've been dealt here? Potentially it's going to be cuts in grants to the arts, to culture, to sports. Every which way the city of Kamloops looks, it's facing a demoralizing change in the way that it had planned to do business.

The city doesn't want the province to blame these cuts on the feds. People don't think that's fair at all. The federal government has done its deficit reduction in a very orderly way: long-term planning -- laying out what's going to happen a long time in advance -- so that the provinces have a chance to adjust to it; planned, orderly and responsible, with lots of advice. It's not anything like what happened in British Columbia, with the sudden changes, with no proper warning to municipalities -- and indeed a violation of the protocol that had been signed just before these announcements were made. That's wrong. And the federal transfer payment changes are no excuse whatsoever.

The federal government felt compelled to roll its transfer payments for health, education and social services into one because of the way NDP provincial governments in this country have squandered those funds in spending 50-cent dollars. That is why those kinds of changes came about. The tremendous waste in a number of those areas and the very loose financial accountability on the part of NDP provincial governments were, I believe, foundational to those changes occurring.

But given all of the justifications that the federal government had, they certainly went about their process in a whole lot more businesslike way than this province has.

To sum up, there are points that my constituents want made here. My constituents want this NDP government to stop jerking people around -- to stop jerking their municipal governments around. My constituents want this NDP government to live up to its commitments, to keep its promises. "Stop breaking promises," is the message to the government. My constituents want to see more competence, more businesslike behaviour on the part of the provincial government, more accurate forecasting, balanced budgets, balanced books. . .

Interjection.

K. Krueger: . . .and, as my colleague says, "calculators that work."

My constituents do not want to see disruption of the careful planning processes of their municipalities. My constituents are tired of the classic NDP mismanagement, incompetence and bungling in financial matters.

My constituents tell me that they feel as though they are seeing children at the levers of power, swinging the equipment wildly this way and that, abruptly making changes that knock people over and ruin programs and changing things that ought not to be changed on much too short notice.

My constituents are offended by things such as what happened with the announcement of the gambling expansion recently, by things such as the provincial government suing the city of Vancouver over its Club Keno bylaw, of all things. In the public eye, the foolishness of governments suing one another over issues of who is going to have the power in a certain situation. . . . Certainly the constituents -- the taxpayers -- look to us to be able to work those things out between governments without having to resort to the courts. People are very offended by that whole manoeuvre -- sending the B.C. Lottery Corporation out against the city of Vancouver -- and this whole boondoggle of bringing on gambling expansion without due consideration of the problems that would arise between municipalities, the problems between aboriginal people and their communities and neighbouring municipalities, the problems for youth, the problems for women, the tremendous costs in health care -- all of these things. The taxpayer doesn't understand why its government would act in such an abrupt and irresponsible fashion.

It's not insignificant, I think, that the minister who signed the protocol in Penticton with the UBCM, such a short time before this betrayal was unveiled through the media to those same municipalities, is none other than the gambling minister -- the same man who has been making these abrupt moves on gambling expansion, throwing out concerns for social costs and the well-being of British Columbians on the basis of his wanting to have some quick cash.

Well, the people are sick and tired of the gambling minister dealing from the bottom of the deck. The people are sick and tired of the gambling minister controlling the cash in the way that he does and, when it comes to municipalities wanting to cash in their chips on the deals he has made with them, finding out that they're only worth half what they were supposed to be. That's a dangerous practice for gamblers of any kind: to change the rules of the game, to say that the chips aren't worth what they were supposed to be, to pull the rug out from under the other people at the table. Those are very dangerous moves for a gambling minister to be making. Gamblers get into serious trouble when they behave in this way -- when they don't play an honest game. You've got to show honour to stay in the game, and I think it's clear to the public that this NDP government is not going to be staying in the game. But it would be nice if they tried. It would be nice if they tried to play by the rules and do the right thing and genuinely to be fair and efficient and not bring on some of the measures that we've had to discuss here today.

The gambling minister needs to pay attention to the old admonition that he has to know when to hold 'em and he has to know when to fold 'em. This would be a good time for the gambling minister to either walk away or, better yet, to run, because he's made mistakes -- mistakes in the way he's dealt with gambling expansion and, certainly, mistakes in the way he's dealt with municipalities. The public won't stand for it, and we won't stand for it, either, as I think is becoming clear in 

[ Page 2640 ]

this debate as one B.C. Liberal opposition member after another stands up and pleads with this government to start doing the right thing by the taxpayers -- the people who elected all of us.

I'd like to conclude my remarks with a genuine plea to the cabinet, to the Finance minister, that they reconsider these things, that they treat municipalities right, that they provide a further exemption on propane auto fuel and not subject consumers to this betrayal, and that they begin to restore the trust of the people of British Columbia in the integrity of this government and work with us to do that.

V. Anderson: I rise to speak on Bill 2, the Budget Measures Implementation Act. We're caught in the same bind that we have been in with so many pieces of legislation in this House: that whatever good they may have, there is entwined within them a whole host of hidden issues, and that unless we look at the fine print, we soon discover that we've overlooked the problems the government is putting before us. There are a number of issues in this act that I would like to highlight, just going through it briefly.

[12:00]

There is a change for the Assessment Authority, and I might add that each of these changes adds more burden directly onto the citizens of the community -- that is, the taxpayers. Often when the general public hears of discussion between governments, they think of them almost as a nonentity that doesn't affect their everyday life. In the long run, they need to realize that every action here finally comes down to what they pay, to what happens to them in their community, to the kind of freedom they have or to the kind of life they may not have or be able to enjoy. What the Assessment Authority does. . . . Instead of paying the administrative costs out of general taxes, which everyone pays, it comes back on the property owners, who are only a few. . .although renters pay it indirectly as well. But what it does mean is that this takes it off the government books and continues the charade that the government is balancing its books, when it certainly is not. What it means is that the daily cost to the taxpayer increases on a regular basis.

Another major concern that this government has not faced up to which directly affects the people in every municipality across the province, but particularly in the municipality of Vancouver where it has a more drastic effect -- worse than most. . . . It's interesting that the municipality it has the greatest impact upon happens to be that of my colleague who sits next to me here, and that's Whistler. Whistler and Vancouver are hit more drastically than any of the other municipalities in the province.

I find it interesting that in this Legislature there are ten members who come from the city of Vancouver: four of them happen to be Liberal members and six are members of the NDP government. At least three of those six are in the cabinet. But we have not heard from any of them on this particular cut to the Vancouver municipality and therefore the increase in cost to the local Vancouver residents. I think Vancouver residents have heard about this, because there has been a series of consultations undertaken by the mayor and the council across the city, to which Vancouver residents have come on a regular basis. They have discussed the issue and they have looked at the priorities.

I think we need to remind the Vancouver people that the cuts in grants from the province to the city of Vancouver have been in the nature of 74 percent of the grants that come to the municipality; 74 percent of the grants that the municipality was receiving have disappeared -- from $22.232 million down to $6.019 million. Some $17 million has been taken away from the city of Vancouver in this one undertaking, and that does not count all of the other side grants that have also been taken and the other increases that have been put upon the municipality.

I think the people of Vancouver need to be particularly aware that 74 percent of the grants that would normally come to them, and which was expected until two months before this budget was to go into place, have been taken away from them without the opportunity to do planning, without the opportunity to readjust, without the opportunity to respond to or consult with the government. That in itself would lead, if it was to follow through directly, to a 5.2 percent increase in the property tax, because that is where the majority of this has to be found.

So the action of this government, which said it would not increase taxes upon the private citizen, has placed upon property owners and renters in British Columbia -- in Vancouver -- an increase of 5.2 percent. They tried to tell us that they are maintaining the freeze on taxes. They tried to tell us that they're reducing the cost to the average citizen, and that is certainly not the case.

I had the opportunity to sit in on one of the consultations the Vancouver city council had with the citizens of Vancouver. It was interesting that they said to the council quite clearly: "We have been cut to the bone. We cannot have any more of our services reduced. What the provincial government has done is not acceptable within our community." In spite of that, they gave a series of priorities and suggested to the council the things that might be reduced, if they had to be.

So the council, instead of doing a cutback of 5.1 percent, was able to adjust, reduce and cut services, even though that was not a good idea. They were able to cut their property tax increase to 4.5 percent, and that was entirely because of the downloading of this government -- because of the cutting back of the grants to the municipality. It's hard to respect the credibility of the government when these kinds of things happen.

I was at the UBCM meeting when they were discussing an accord between the provincial government and the municipalities. The accord had been in process for some time, because the municipalities said -- as the businesses across this province have said -- that if we plan and adjust the necessities of life together, then we can all handle the process. But if one government, particularly the provincial government, acts unilaterally, without discussion and without warning, then that becomes a grave issue to all of us.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

This is not the first time that this has happened. The unconditional grants available to the municipalities in 1993 were cut back from $135 million to $120 million. That caused an upheaval at the time. But as a result of that and the discussions that took place, the municipalities, including the city of Vancouver, said: "What we need is stability. We need to be able to count on the future; we need to be able to plan and prepare for it." As a result, they had a promise, if you like, from the Finance minister at that time. . . . This is what was said about the legislation in '94:

"This legislation is designed to deal with stability and predictability, and it does that." -- this is '94 -- "It provides stability in grants. The one thing I got out of my budget consultation with the executive of the Union of B.C. Municipalities, 

[ Page 2641 ]

as well as with the many mayors and councillors I met around the province, was that they wanted to see some stability, and furthermore, they wanted to know where things were going to go from year to year. They didn't ask for great increases in the grants. They recognized the realities of trying to deal with the deficit and the growing demands of the province. They said: `Give us stability and predictability.'"

That was the then Finance minister rationalizing the cuts which were made with a limited amount of consultation -- at least a limited amount -- with the provinces in '93, and justifying the cuts at that time by saying that there would be stability and predictability from that time on and implying that she spoke on behalf of the NDP government, and that when she said this, we could count on it for the future, and that whoever followed her would respect the promises that had been made.

Then we came to 1996, and it was a different story. In 1996 there was the work for a protocol of recognition. Realizing that there needed to be some document -- some signed protection -- for both the province and the municipalities, they would have a protocol of recognition. The protocol of recognition would establish a means of consultation that everyone could count on. I was there at that meeting, and I saw the current Deputy Premier -- the then-Minister of Municipal Affairs -- sign that document. I heard the comments that this enabled us to look to the future with some hope that consultation would take place.

Now, in fairness to the Deputy Premier, the then Minister of Municipal Affairs, he did say that there would be cuts coming and that signing the protocol of recognition did not mean that these cuts would not take place. But even if he intended to go through with the cuts, it implied that before that happened, he would still sit down and talk with the municipalities about what was taking place, and that he would give them ample time to prepare themselves -- to adjust their budgets, to do their planning, to consult with the people of their community -- and then they would be able to go ahead in a planned fashion.

As everyone knows, I think, the municipalities are not only required to but do balance their budgets. To balance their budgets, in particular with the questionable actions of the provincial government, is not an easy thing. So the protocol of recognition was signed, and with the signing of it, everyone present had at least the tacit belief that it would be fulfilled. But within the year, that same minister announced the grants -- they were far more rigid than anybody expected -- which he had implied would be coming, giving the municipalities only two months to deal with the results in order to present their budgets for the coming year, and not giving them the kind of opportunity or consultation that was to have taken place.

[12:15]

It's ironic, because one of the facets of the new bill is that there shall be consultation with local governments. It says: "At least annually, the minister must consult with representatives of the Union of British Columbia Municipalities regarding the administration of grants under this act." He must consult at least annually. We take that to mean -- according to the actions of this minister -- that after he has made his decisions, after he has announced them at a press conference, after the die has been cast, then he will go to the municipality and discuss it. A logical person would assume that consultation takes place before you make the decision and before you announce it in a press conference, so that the people in the municipality don't discover it simply by reading the newspaper, without any forewarning or any discussion of it.

It's that kind of inadequate government, that kind of non-consulting government, that has led the people in our province to be extremely discouraged. It's a very fundamental part of democratic government that people should be able to speak and discuss and consult with their government members. And it's a very democratic part of government that the representatives from the municipalities affected should speak out on behalf of their constituents. It amazes me that when there is a 74 percent cut without warning, the members from Vancouver have not spoken out publicly on behalf of their constituents. So it makes us wonder if they are even speaking out at the cabinet table or within their own party. I trust that before this debate is concluded, each one of those MLAs from the New Democratic side of the House will stand up and explain to their constituents why they are voting in favour -- as I presume they will -- of a 74 percent cut to their municipality on two months' notice to the municipality.

Interjections.

V. Anderson: Some of the members on the other side of the House said they spoke up, but they were not from Vancouver and have not spoken up on this so far for the city of Vancouver.

An Hon. Member: I spoke. Read my speech.

V. Anderson: I ask the member from Fraserview, who said he spoke, whether he will give us and the citizens the opportunity to see if he spoke for the 74 percent cut or against it. That's the question. The question is: when he spoke, did the member from Fraserview vote for the 74 percent cut or against it? I'll invite his constituents to ask him that question very clearly. It's a question of consulting and dealing with the issue.

Another issue that. . . . I've received a great many letters from those persons who were, once again, sold a raw deal by this government. They were given a sales pitch, if you like, which sounded supportive of their needs, which sounded environmentally sound and economically feasible and which would be good for them in their private businesses. The government would assist them if they would convert their vehicles to propane, and it indicated to them that because of this they would have lower operating costs. So they did this in all good faith, believing, unfortunately, what they had been told by this government.

What do we find now? That exemption to maintain the lower price on propane is being cancelled by this act. And again, it's the constituents of these people that need to hear from them why they have supported an increase in their costs and a going back on the support of the propane reduction. It's about time the members on the government side became responsible to their constituents and explained to them clearly and publicly, so they can see on television, why it is they are taking the actions that they do.

It's not enough to just vote with their government and to rationalize it and say: "Well, it's caucus solidarity." Increasingly, we need to question that, especially when we have the kind of legislation that is coming forward which is demeaning the people of this province continually and recklessly. Consulting with governments on a municipal level means also consulting with the constituents and explaining to them directly.

[ Page 2642 ]

We've heard about the sideways shifts of this government between one budget account and another, and between corporations and the other budgets, and about hiding the things that they do so that they don't appear naturally on the books.

There's one more in this bill that's here before us. It says that the Insurance Corporation should pay to the Ministry of Transportation and Highways costs for promoting and improving highway safety incurred by the ministry. So what we have, as we read this, is the Ministry of Transportation and Highways developing a plan, executing it and carrying it out. It may be a good plan -- we hope it is -- but after they have expended the money, they simply say to ICBC: "Write us a cheque for a $1 million. Write us a cheque for $500,000." Where does that come from? That's added to our cost of getting insurance, and then we say that insurance in this province is high and expensive because of our poor driving record. Well, that may be true in part, but that's only a part of the story. We discover now that the cost of insurance in this province is high because the government has spent money that they don't have and then they bill it to ICBC and it comes out of our insurance policy.

If they do this in one ministry and in Forest Renewal, how many other ministries is this taking place in that we're not aware of yet? We need a study, a commission independent of the government at this point, to discover how much government money is being shifted sideways from one account to another and in and out of the government books. If any business was doing this kind of thing, there would be an accountant's audit very quickly to discover why it is that their shareholders are not being advised of the real situation that is taking place. It's important that we hold this government to account for these actions that they are undertaking.

Finally, I come back to suggest that we need to hold this government accountable in many ways. One of them is to have truth in budgeting, as we have said. In this government, they have prided themselves on writing plain-language documents. Now, the budget they present is anything but plain-language documents, and the throne speech is an anything but plain-language document. Because in the budget and in the throne speech, we're finding again and again that what they really intend to do is not in either of those budgets.

This government does not tell the public what they intend to do. They are not honest and are not forthright with them. We have to say to the people of this province and to the citizens of Vancouver: go to your local NDP MLAs in your ridings and ask them why they have voted for, why they have agreed to and why they have accepted a 74 percent decrease, on two months' notice, from the provincial government to the ongoing credibility of municipal finances, which comes out of their tax pocket and will be on their next tax bill.

Seeing the time of day, I move adjournment of the debate.

V. Anderson moved adjournment of the debate.

Motion approved.

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

Hon. A. Petter: With the weekend ahead of us and good wishes to all, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Hon. A. Petter moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 12:27 p.m.

The House in Committee of Supply A; W. Hartley in the chair.

The committee met at 11:15 a.m.

On vote 16: minister's office, $429,000 (continued).

G. Plant: I want to begin today by asking some questions that concern the legal services branch. The first series of questions really asks to have stated here some things I learned during the course of a helpful briefing about what I understand are some changes in terms of cost-recovery arrangements for the provision of legal services by the Ministry of Attorney General to other ministries of government.

I may have that wrong, but when I looked at the estimates for ministry operations and saw that the estimates for the legal services branch, net of recoveries, were going down by almost $4 million, I was obviously concerned about whether there was going to be a cost in terms of service delivery by that branch. I understand that what has happened is that there have been arrangements entered into, or some understandings, between the Ministry of Attorney General and other ministries in which the other ministries -- the client ministries -- have agreed, I suppose, to pay for the service that is provided to them by lawyers in the legal services branch. Is that understanding correct?

Hon. U. Dosanjh: That's correct. Over and above a base level of service, any extra service would be charged for.

G. Plant: Does that mean that between the legal services branch of the Ministry of Attorney General and other ministries, there is a base level of access by client ministries for each client ministry within the government? Is that the starting point?

Hon. U. Dosanjh: Yes.

G. Plant: So over and above that base level, is it the case that all ministries will now pay for the overage or the excess call on legal services from the legal services branch?

Hon. U. Dosanjh: Yes.

G. Plant: Again, I'm in part trying to determine whether there is really a sort of net loss in terms of legal services within 

[ Page 2643 ]

government. That's the context of these questions. How was the floor or the base level established in relation to, say, the demand of previous years?

Hon. U. Dosanjh: It was based on demand of previous years -- historical usage.

G. Plant: Perhaps I could then just ask -- and maybe I misunderstood what I was told earlier -- why it is that the budget for legal services can then essentially drop almost $4 million?

Hon. U. Dosanjh: There was a reduction. The base was reduced and, obviously, they will buy back some of those services over the year.

G. Plant: So the base is actually a number lower than the anticipated demand for legal services. Is that correct?

Hon. U. Dosanjh: Yes.

G. Plant: One of the challenges -- at least, I think it's a challenge -- in dealing with a ministry that covers the kinds of things that this ministry covers is developing models for determining the success or lack of success of particular programs -- that is, identifying criteria for success and asking yourself the question on a regular basis: "Is this program achieving what it sets out to achieve?"

It has always seemed to me that the legal services branch is more amenable to that kind of analysis than other branches of this ministry. The sort of theoretical construct is that there are lawyers and legal services providing legal service to other government ministries that look a bit like clients, and you can ask the clients whether they're happy with the service provided. To the extent that the legal services branch is now essentially able to require of its client ministries that they be directly accountable for the cost of certain levels of services that are provided to them, I think that's a step in the right direction.

What kind of process is set up to determine whether the client ministries are acting like responsible clients? What arrangement was made to kind of keep tabs on how this will work? Is there a process, a protocol or a memorandum of understanding? What is it?

Hon. U. Dosanjh: There is an MOU in place with each ministry, and there is also a client services coordinator who deals with these issues on an ongoing basis.

G. Plant: The client services coordinator being someone in the legal services branch?

Hon. U. Dosanjh: Yes, a senior solicitor within the branch.

G. Plant: Just in terms of understanding the implications of the notional reduction in the budget for legal services, what the government has done here is to move a portion of anticipated costs out of the Ministry of Attorney General's budget into the various other ministries, which could be called client ministries. So the ministry, for example, is not expecting that there will be an overall decline in demand for legal services within the government.

Hon. U. Dosanjh: That's correct. It would lead to better utilization, because if the ministries have to pay, they would think twice.

G. Plant: Has there been consideration given to building on this model to the extent that the base is reduced, or that the amount paid by client ministries would increase? Or is there some reason why that would not be a workable model? Does the question make sense?

Hon. U. Dosanjh: No.

G. Plant: Well, I guess it looks to me like we establish a base model and allow for. . . . What you are saying is that if you spend any more than X, then you'll have to pay for it yourselves. The question is: where do you set X? There could be a theory that would be advanced that would say you should set X at zero -- that is, a scheme of perfect accountability would require all the client ministries that make demands for legal services to pay for them directly. I would be interested in knowing what the ministry's approach is to that.

Hon. U. Dosanjh: I understand that the ministry has looked at that model. I don't know what conclusions they have arrived at. But just thinking about it for a moment would lead me to believe that if you set it at zero, you would essentially have to demolish the legal services branch and then rebuild it as the demand comes in. I don't think that for an entire-government solicitor -- or the Attorney General, who is the lawyer for the government -- that would be a very healthy model to have.

You have to have a certain base on which you operate, a certain level of demand that you expect others to have and that they must have. Then beyond that, if they come in and seek services, they pay. Over the years, we may reduce the base further, but I don't think there would ever be a day that the Attorney General's ministry wouldn't have a contingent of legal services lawyers and other machinery in place to provide ongoing services.

G. Plant: I'm obviously not suggesting that that day would ever arise. In the private sector, of course, everyone is in exactly that situation. In many cases, large firms have invested in a large infrastructure with all kinds of technology and office facilities and all kinds of people waiting around for clients to come.

The fact that you don't actually have a guaranteed demand for your services doesn't mean that you can't budget on the expectation that there will be a certain level of demand. I think it's a matter of balance, and it's interesting to hear what the minister has to say about it. Again, the context of this is really more around the issue of accountability and measuring whether the legal services that are being provided are at the right level.

In that regard, one of the documents I received from the ministry after last year's estimates -- as a result, I guess, of a discussion about this -- was a client survey that had been done for the legal services branch by a market research company back in 1984. That is a while ago now, but I didn't get the document until after estimates. The report says, generally speaking, that the respondents -- being the client ministries, I think -- were pleased with the service they received from the legal services branch, but there were a few suggestions for making improvements. One was to decrease the time it takes for clients to receive various legal services branch services, such as by increasing staffing level or altering schedules or shifts to better reflect changing levels of demand or improving efficiency in some way. The other one that struck me as being interesting was increasing the level of communication with clients. Have these recommendations been implemented and, if so, how?

[ Page 2644 ]

Hon. U. Dosanjh: I understand that those recommendations have been looked at and dealt with. Obviously, sometimes we are now in the hands of the ministries. If they want to pay for a quick turnaround time, they may have to pay more, because there are only limited resources available at the legal services branch.

G. Plant: Well, I'm sure I would like to ask questions on all the important civil litigation issues currently underway in the Ministry of Attorney General. Some of them are more particularly of interest to me than others. As it happens, at least at this point, those are all the questions I have relating to the legal services branch, so I was going to move on to the criminal justice branch.

Hon. U. Dosanjh: Let me just give you some corrections from yesterday and some additional information. Yesterday we were talking about the increase in probate fees and the cost-recovery level in terms of the fees. Before the increase in probate fees, the cost recovery in the civil part of the services was 65 percent. After, if you add the increment of about $11 million from probate fees, the recovery is about 83 percent. On the criminal side, with the current fines, the recovery is about 15 percent.

There was one more piece of information you had sought. Of all the 14 courthouses that were initially on the list to close, seven are owned by BCBC and seven are not. Richmond and West Vancouver are leased from the municipalities. Victoria family court is leased from the capital regional district, and Chase, Langley, Ashcroft and Parksville are leased from private companies.

[11:30]

G. Plant: I thank the minister for that information. On the figure of 15 percent in the context of the criminal justice system -- or I guess it's the criminal side of the court system -- I'm not sure if I heard the minister right. Is that with the current level of fines -- that is, before the surcharge? Is that what the minister meant? Or is that after the imposition of the surcharge?

Hon. U. Dosanjh: Before the surcharge.

G. Plant: So with the addition of the forecast increase in probate fees, the civil side of the court system comes up to an 83 percent cost recovery level, which is to say that the users of the system are essentially paying for the province's costs in operating it. I'm not sure what the. . . . It would be like five-sixths of the total cost being paid for on a user-fee basis.

Hon. U. Dosanjh: Yes.

G. Plant: Well, I'll give some thought to the implications of that over the weekend in terms of demands that the system places on both the provincial and municipal resources and the ordinary resources of ordinary folks.

I want to turn to the criminal justice branch. I guess I want to begin by understanding what's happening to it in terms of the work of Crown counsel and the number of Crown counsel working for the ministry. I suppose the simple way of asking the question I want to get to is: are there going to be any more Crown counsel next year than last year? I understand that there is a transfer out of a bit of funding -- around $1.7 million for victim support services -- that was formerly in the criminal justice branch.

There has also been a transfer of responsibility for bylaw prosecutions to municipalities. I'm not sure whether the net result of all the transfers out, transfers in and all that means that, at the end of the day in the year we've now begun, there are going to be any more Crown counsel serving the criminal justice system.

Hon. U. Dosanjh: Almost the same. There might be minor change, but I can't give you a figure.

G. Plant: Just an unrelated question: where in the ministry right now is the responsibility for matters like firearms certificate registration or those sorts of things?

Hon. U. Dosanjh: That's with the public safety and regulatory branch.

G. Plant: So essentially, the number of Crown counsel is going to remain the same this year as last. I understand that people retire, and sometimes there is hiring to replace them, but we're not going to have any more Crown counsel out there in the field dealing with what I would suggest is an increased demand for their services. It looks to me like the existing pool of Crown counsel is going to have to cope with an increased workload over the course of the next year. If that's not correct, then I invite the minister to correct me.

Hon. U. Dosanjh: That might be the case, although one could sort of begin to look at it and argue the other side as well, assuming that there is an increase in the workload. There is a committee in place, a workload committee chaired by Bill Smart, and it is reviewing the workload utilization and allocation of Crown counsel in the criminal justice branch and examining various aspects of that.

G. Plant: I'm not sure what the other side of it would be in terms of the workload, and we can deal with the implications of the workload in terms of stress on Crown counsel and all of that. I guess I mean workload in a more arithmetic sense. If there's a prediction that the adult inmate count is rising and going to continue to rise, it seems to me that the prediction is made because people realize there are going to be more people going through the criminal justice system.

Obviously this ministry thinks there is an increasing demand on court services, with projections of the need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build new courthouses, if the diversion and other alternatives don't work over the long term. It just seems to me that there is kind of a basic mathematical equation here that the level of crime is rising in absolute if not in relative or per capita terms. The demand on the criminal justice system is rising, but there really isn't going to be any more Crown counsel to service that demand. Is that generally an accurate statement?

Hon. U. Dosanjh: Theoretically, fewer cases going to court could also end up in larger numbers of inmates. If you toughen up on violent offenders, if you have tougher prosecutions and you are doing diversion on non-violent offenders -- and with the population increase -- fewer well-chosen prosecutions could theoretically end up in a larger adult inmate population, because not everybody who goes through the criminal courts necessarily ends up in those institutions. I'm not arguing that point, but the arguments don't necessarily lead to that conclusion.

Yes, at this time -- unless we do diversion, unless we deal with other kinds of issues -- there is the question of workload. 

[ Page 2645 ]

That's why there is a committee in place. They will be making their recommendations to me, hopefully shortly, and I'll be reviewing them and seeing what we can do. I am actually very aware of the tough conditions many prosecutors work under. That's why, whenever I'm invited to their meetings, I go and speak to them, to at least appreciate the work they do under the most difficult circumstances.

G. Plant: The question of workload has a couple of dimensions, I guess. One is this issue of difficult conditions under which Crown counsel have to work. But at the end of the day, the larger issue is whether there are enough Crown counsel, just as the question is whether there are enough police to ensure that we as a society are detecting all the crimes and charging all the people who commit crimes and, where appropriate, proceeding to court with people who are charged with offences and convicting them.

At some point, the question that may start out as an issue of psychological stress in the Crown counsel workforce actually starts to end up translating into increased acquittals. Notwithstanding the best intentions of all the highly skilled people who work as Crown counsel, they are in one of the many positions -- one of the many stress points in the criminal justice system -- that I think, if we don't pay enough attention to them, create the risk of harming public safety in the long run -- because we just aren't making the right investment in the right resources to deal with the demands placed on the system.

Hon. U. Dosanjh: Just to provide some figures to the hon. member, the recommended charges for 1996-97 are, in fact, slightly higher than what's projected for 1997-98, based on our experience. In fact, it seems that that's where they'll end up. They'll be about 75,716 in '96-97 and 75,590 in '97-98.

G. Plant: What is that 75,000 number? Is it criminal charges? Does it include traffic tickets? What does it include?

Hon. U. Dosanjh: These are Criminal Code offences only, and these are recommended charges. Of course, some of them may or may not proceed, but those are the figures.

G. Plant: The more I learn about statistics in the context of criminal justice, the more I learn that they are an extremely elastic instrument. I've read studies which demonstrate that in the context of things like young offender charges and prosecutions -- and in other contexts -- the numbers are often not related to the real incidence of criminal activity on the ground so much as they are related to things like what the particular area of interest of a police force over the course of time happens to be and how criminal law enforcement authorities are responding to public pressure for increased enforcement in other areas.

Sometimes police get told that every adolescent shoplifter who is apprehended in British Columbia should be charged, and other times they get told that they should exercise the kind of discretion that means many of them are never charged but are just given an awfully stern talking-to.

So I'm glad to know that there are statistics, and I'm always careful about them, but I take it that the general thrust of what the Attorney General is saying is that, overall, the expectation is that there won't be an increase in Criminal Code offences -- at least, recommendations for charge -- over the next year.

Hon. U. Dosanjh: That's correct.

G. Plant: I wanted, then, to talk for a while about diversion and disclosure court, and things like prosecutorial decision-making. It's very hard to find out what developments, policies and programs are actually underway. In the press releases the Ministry of Attorney General issues, there's a lot of talk about plans for diversion -- about the continuing commitment of the ministry to diversion, about ongoing commitment to ongoing programs for things like diversion -- and this year, for the first time, at least an increased emphasis on the use of things like disclosure court as a vehicle for dealing with certain classes of offenders.

[11:45]

I guess what I want to know, first of all, is: is there a real plan in place? And I don't mean warm, fuzzy generalities contained in strategic reform initiatives. I don't mean cold, less fuzzy generalities. I don't mean generalities. I want to know whether, for example, there is a concrete plan in place right now to expand programs like the Sparwood and Maple Ridge diversion programs over the next year, or whether what we're really talking about here is a desire on the part of the ministry to enhance diversion -- and a lack of specificity about what we're going to see as a result of that desire.

Hon. U. Dosanjh: There is currently a working group of Crown and police. They are, of course, consulting with the chiefs of police as well as the bar. I believe that by October of this year, we will have all of the policies crafted and in place, and we will begin to then implement those issues.

G. Plant: Well, that's helpful. Thank you.

The disclosure court is an interesting place. I think what you hear about disclosure court and whether it's a good thing or a bad thing depends on, I guess, as with many other things in life, who you talk to.

The disclosure court is a place where deals are struck that take some offenders out of the criminal justice system in a hurry by pleading them down -- and sometimes pleading them way down; and taking people who could be charged, convicted and sentenced in the one-to-two- or four-year range, and pleading them down to the 30-, 60-, 90-day stage -- largely, it seems to me, because there aren't enough Crown counsel to prosecute them, there aren't enough courtrooms to try them, and there aren't enough places in jails to house them if they were convicted for any longer periods of time.

I don't think I fully understand the rationale for disclosure court. What I do understand of it causes me some concern -- that, really, it's just sort of a backwards way of dealing with the idea of diversion. It's a fiscally driven initiative to get small-time petty thieves and crooks out of the justice system, because we haven't sort of figured out what to do with them. In the long run it is actually more harmful to the interests of public safety and the perception of public safety than it is a good thing.

When I talk to police officers now -- just to put this in context -- I'm continually hearing stories about people whom they arrest on a Monday and re-arrest on a Friday, doing the same thing. They're doing smash-and-grabs on Monday in shopping malls in Richmond, they're arrested, and by Friday, if not before, they're back on the streets in Richmond doing smash-and-grabs. Or, alternatively, they're people who are doing B-and-Es who plead themselves out, because it's the best deal in town, at disclosure court -- plead themselves down, even though they're multiple repeat offenders, to 30-day sentences. What happens is that 60 days later, lo and 

[ Page 2646 ]

behold, by some magical mystery, they reappear in the police stations of British Columbia, having reoffended.

I guess I could go on about this, and I hope we will continue this dialogue, but what is the Attorney General's perspective on disclosure courts? Why they're a good or a bad thing would be the place that I would start.

Hon. U. Dosanjh: Well, they're good courts because they work. About 70 percent of the cases that are processed through disclosure courts are resolved without trial. Disclosure court is not to plead down or to ignore the severity of the cases. Disclosure courts are there for both the defence and the Crown to try and do the fullest possible disclosure so that both sides know what the case is that each side has to meet. And at the end of the day, the accused, then, would take a plea to the charge that he or she knows would be successfully prosecuted. That's why 70 percent of cases which are processed are resolved without trials. We have disclosure courts currently operating in the provincial criminal court, Vancouver youth court, North Vancouver, Port Coquitlam, Surrey, Prince George, Kamloops, Abbotsford, Kelowna, Powell River, Port Alberni, Nanaimo, Victoria, Chilliwack, Campbell River and Courtenay.

There are very strict guidelines to Crown counsel for dealing with these issues. They are encouraged to initiate resolution discussions, but only in accordance with those accepted practices. If my hon. colleague is interested, I can have the criminal justice system make those available to him at some point.

I'm in full support of disclosure courts. Disclosure courts have nothing to do with being lenient on criminals; they have everything to do with resolving these issues more quickly and speedily.

G. Plant: I will take up the Attorney General's invitation to be provided with a copy of the guidelines. But I have to say that what I just heard sounded like a nice theoretical description of a process that would look good in a textbook somewhere but has precious little resemblance to what is actually happening on the ground. What is actually happening on the ground -- and maybe it's just a matter of what point of view you take -- from the point of view of people who talk to me is that disclosure court is the best deal in town. It's a great place to plead yourself out of moderately serious criminal offences -- usually property offences, but not always -- into some kind of 30-day or 60-day heaven.

And the Crown counsel who are administering these disclosure courts, who are obviously acting with the best of intentions, are in fact acting with quite a wide degree of discretion and authority over what decisions to make. While guidelines may exist, the practice on the ground is that the idea is to get as many people out of the system as quickly as possible because really we haven't figured out what to do with them anymore. We don't have room in the courtrooms, we don't have counsel to prosecute them, and we don't have jails to put them in.

I listen to what the Attorney General says in defence of the scheme, but I have to say that I think there are many people in British Columbia who would read that defence and say: "Well, that may have been what it was set up to do, but that sure as heck isn't what it's doing right now." I invite the Attorney General to respond to that, because I can tell you that I am continually told about the kinds of arrangements that are being made -- the deals that are being struck -- in disclosure court, from people who are concerned about what kind of a message it sends, and what kind of a signal it sends to the community about whether or not we in fact do take certain kinds of criminal behaviour seriously. The message that disclosure courts all too often send is that either we don't take certain kinds of criminal behaviour seriously or, at best, we simply no longer can afford to.

Hon. U. Dosanjh: I don't know whether the hon. member is advocating that we take to trial every case that comes, whether or not there's a possibility, upon full disclosure, of the accused pleading guilty. It is the law, as decided by our Court of Appeal, that if you do take a plea early on in the process, it is then considered to be a mitigating factor in terms of the sentence that the court might impose upon you. That is a judicial decision.

Let me just comfort the hon. member that in serious violent offences and other serious offences -- including murder, of course -- Crown counsel will not agree to a resolution of plea discussion -- at all -- prior to discussing the proposed disposition with the victim or the victim's family. That's a practice the Crown follows throughout the province. Crown counsel will also ensure that the regional Crown counsel consider and approve those resolution discussions about serious offences.

I think I would invite the hon. member to bring any particular cases that he might have, that may have been pointed out to him, to my attention or to the attention of the Assistant Deputy Attorney General for criminal justice, so that we can deal with them. The intention here is not to be lenient on criminals -- on serious criminals, in particular. The intention is that there is the fullest possible disclosure. Nothing is done by ambush. One side knows what the other side is proposing, in terms of evidence and what not, so that once you see the evidence, you're able to then make up your mind. If you're going to be convicted in any event, you might as well now plead guilty without wasting your resources and the court's resources.

G. Plant: Let me hasten to say that that aspect of disclosure, much of which is also mandated by court decisions -- at least, obligations on the Crown -- is, I think, a very good thing. To the extent that we can facilitate disclosure of evidence by both the Crown and the defence in a criminal case at an early stage, so that both sides know the case they have to meet and so that both sides can assess the likelihood or otherwise of conviction, that's all a good thing. The use and creation of disclosure courts for that purpose strikes me as being a good thing.

The problem is that that original purpose has been allowed to be twisted or distorted, or at least expanded, to a point where there is now a risk of abuse. In fact, I venture to think that there is abuse. It is not so much a matter of individual cases -- although I'm happy to take that request into consideration as specific ones come to my attention. And if I think that it's appropriate to try and get them resolved, I'll do that.

The people I'm talking to include victims, police officers and lawyers -- and I'll come to victims in a different context in a moment. It's the police and the lawyers in this system who are conveying to me their general observations, not as a result of specific cases where perhaps the wrong decision was made, but rather as a result of their observation of a pattern, a process, that seems to facilitate plea bargaining and deals which are made not in the best interests of the system as it should be set up but rather in the best interests of the system as it has been set up -- which is to say, a system that is short on the necessary resources to bring people to justice.

[12:00]

[ Page 2647 ]

I'm not advocating that every person charged with a criminal offence be tried. That would seem to me to be a pretty silly waste of resources. But I could tell you what I'm told. I'm told that the people who take pleas in disclosure court are quite often people for whom the result is already a foregone conclusion -- that is, there is a no-hoper case for the defendant. The defendant sees that it's a no-hoper case and then, at that moment, says: "All right, I'm in serious jeopardy here. I may actually get convicted of an offence and get put away for two years less a day. Now I will take advantage of that aspect of disclosure court and see if I can get a deal for 30 or 60 days."

Now, this is anecdotal evidence; it may be as weak as anecdotal evidence often is. But that's the kind of thing that I'm hearing about, and, frankly, it's a matter of concern. And I'm sure it's a matter of concern for the Attorney General.

Hon. U. Dosanjh: Obviously there are lawyers, police officers and others who might have different views of things than other lawyers, other police officers and other individuals. But there is a set of guidelines for Crown counsel as they appear in disclosure court. They are to advise the court of all of the aggravating circumstances -- of all of the circumstances -- of the offence, so the court gets a complete picture. No deals are ever made by anyone to hide anything.

There are lawyers who might believe that the range of sentence that's being imposed in a particular disclosure court isn't the appropriate range, but those are matters that we all have differences on. The ranges that are imposed in any lower courts are governed by the ranges of sentences established by the higher courts.

No case has ever come to my attention where I have been advised that a Crown counsel, in disclosure court, resolved this issue by way of a guilty plea from the accused and then agreed to completely ignore the range of sentences under those circumstances and agreed to ask the court for a lower sentence for that particular case. If one ever came to my attention, I would be happy to look at that and ask the Assistant Deputy Attorney General to look at that.

I don't believe that it helps us to bring into question a whole system that operates across British Columbia. Sometimes we are all susceptible to public pressure, but it's important that we deal with these issues in a way that's principled and constructive, and if there are any specific issues -- other than the general remarks that my hon. colleague has made -- I'd be happy to hear about them and try to deal with them, and try to change the guidelines if need be.

G. Plant: Well, it's good to hear that that's the intention, and I'll certainly be mindful of the offer.

I wanted to add an additional perspective, and that is the victim's perspective. I think, in large measure, what I'm wanting to do here is put on the floor for debate something that I'm sure the Attorney General understands.

One of the areas in which criminal activity appears to be increasing, unfortunately, is the area of property theft. Here, it seems to me, we're at a point that is, I suppose, a particularly acute point from the perspective of how to administer a criminal justice system that works for those who are administering it and also for victims. People who have their property stolen are outraged. I wouldn't want to engage in a debate about the relevant levels of outrage between people who have had property crimes committed against them versus people who have crimes against the person. That wouldn't be a very helpful exercise. But it does seem to me that those in government -- we who are attempting to listen to people on the streets -- are not doing the public a favour when we discount the importance of property crime to members of the public.

Here again, I think, is a place where I sense that there is a weakness or a risk in terms of the use of disclosure court and vehicles like that. I think, from the point of view of people who administer the criminal justice system, that car thieves, petty thieves like that, get put into a category that quite obviously relegates them to something less important than the kind of crime the Attorney General has in mind when he talks about serious, violent crimes. They are clearly a different order of criminal activity, but unfortunately, one that is increasing rather than decreasing and one that creates all kinds of public outrage when there is a sense that it's not being dealt with properly.

I'm curious to know what the specific guidelines are in relation to how Crown counsel operate the disclosure courts and exercise their discretion there. I'm sure this is inevitable, but they must discriminate between property crimes and crimes against the person. Does the Attorney General think that that is an appropriate distinction? I suppose, again, I want to kind of communicate a message that this is. . . . I can't recall all the details of a number of the cases that have been brought to my attention over the last year. But there are some occasions where people have found that their cars have been stolen, that the perpetrator has been apprehended and charged, and then he disappears from the system completely. Obviously that generates a certain amount of anger.

It seems to me right now that the system is overburdened, and the place where that overburden is more dangerous, I think, is in this area of property crime. I don't hear people say on an ongoing basis that the system isn't working in cases of violent crime, but I do hear people say that the system isn't working on an ongoing basis in cases of property crime. I'd be interested in knowing what the Attorney General's view is on those questions.

Hon. U. Dosanjh: There is no question that one cannot take much comfort in the fact that the total of Criminal Code offences decreased in the last year. There has been a general decline in serious crime in British Columbia for the last four years, and there has been in Vancouver, as well, a general decline in all offences, despite the fact that there has been an increase in property offences, particularly auto. If I remember correctly -- I don't have everything at my disposal here -- that partly comes from the way the police have changed their reporting of those crimes. Whereas before they would report them as vandalism and the like and they would go into general categories, they are now categorizing them as theft of auto. So they've been able to properly look at that.

There is an increase in break-and-enters; there is no question about that. There's been an increase in general property crime. But you know, we've been tough on criminals in British Columbia for many years, and I would be remiss if I simply succumbed to the easy temptation of saying: "We have to be tougher on those who commit property crimes." Property crimes are as serious as any other crimes, and people feel violated if somebody has entered their house or broken into their cars. Don't misunderstand me.

However, I think what we need is to begin to do what we're going to start doing in October with diversion. We should be doing a lot more crime prevention. We've put $150,000 -- matched by $150,000 by the city of Vancouver -- 

[ Page 2648 ]

into neighbourhood crime prevention offices. We are doing early intervention pilot projects in several schools in Vancouver, Surrey and Nanaimo. Those are the kinds of issues that we have to. . . . There are no easy or quick solutions. I want to give you my undertaking that I am committed to actually doing that, as well as being tough on serious, violent criminals.

These are crimes where people feel violated. They are serious crimes. But I think the long-term solution to these crimes is early prevention: providing skills to people and alleviating poverty, as well as people taking care of their own safety requirements in a way that is not conducive to break-ins and thefts of autos.

For instance, if I tell you that I personally. . . . We have an alarm at home, and I've never turned it on. Maybe I should.

An Hon. Member: Luckily this is not being televised.

Hon. U. Dosanjh: Well, that's all right.

I personally am guilty, as I think many British Columbians across the province are, of not taking basic precautions about safety. That is not to say that we should be paranoid, because B.C. is a very, very safe place, relatively speaking. But we all have to pitch in to make sure that we create less work for police and that we assist the police by taking safety precautions ourselves. We do crime prevention; we provide people with skills and opportunities; and we try and deal with these issues in a comprehensive fashion.

G. Plant: It seems to me that one of the most important things that the Attorney General said a moment ago was the recognition that this is hard work, and I second everything he said about the importance of personal responsibility. But I guess my starting point of apprehension -- and maybe it's just doing my job as opposition critic, wanting to make sure that the government is doing its job -- is to question and to ensure that the government is in fact recognizing that this is hard work and is prepared to do the hard work.

I see maybe three or four things. First of all, I see and listen to the assertion that the government is committed to the worthwhile endeavour of increasing crime prevention at the source and increasing the use of diversion and diversion concepts to get people out of jail who don't need to be in jail. But I don't see a lot of money being spent on these initiatives, and I don't see a lot of solid programs. I certainly haven't heard that there are any specific, concrete new initiatives underway for the next year.

I understand that there is a working group of Crown and police consulting with the bar, and by October there'll be some policies in place with respect to some aspects of these things. But I've been listening to the announcements for a long time. I've been listening to the statements about the commitment towards these goals for a long time, and what I want to see are less announcements about the goal and more announcements about specific programs that will in fact achieve those goals. Maple Ridge and Sparwood are interesting programs, but we're not going to get to the place that the Attorney General wants us to be without having 40 or 50 Maple Ridges and Sparwoods.

[12:15]

Frankly, my sense is that there are a lot of really important ingredients in making those two programs work which you can't create even by writing a cheque. Sparwood and Maple Ridge work because both of those communities had in place on the ground support networks, individuals and people committed to some of the goals of personal and community responsibility, which I know the Attorney General has spoken of. It takes time to build up those networks in different communities across British Columbia. It takes time to get those programs up and running. It's hard work, and I think it will cost a fair bit of money.

So on the one hand, I hear the promise, but I'm looking for the result. Frankly, I'm not looking for the quick fix, because the quick fix is beyond us. I'm not looking for the announcement of four more programs in four different municipalities across British Columbia -- like Richmond, for example, which may be a place where the minister is thinking of developing this in conjunction with the court services agreement. I mean, it would be nice to hear those announcements, but, frankly, that's the beginning of the solution, not the end of the solution. We're not, in my view, even at the beginning of the solution yet.

In the meantime, while all that is happening, we can't neglect or ignore the reality of increasing demand on the traditional criminal justice system. It's nice to talk about the desire to divert offenders, but there aren't yet in place -- with the exception of electronic monitoring and a few initiatives like that which are very good -- enough good places to put those individuals, to deal with people who are petty thieves, to try and find a way to prevent the problem of petty thievery arising in the first place.

We have a complex range of problems. If we don't continue the commitment to diversion programs in a real way. . . . I mean a real commitment, as opposed to speeches by either the minister or people like me, and I don't mean a commitment in the form of press releases. I mean a real commitment of real money, developing real programs on the ground. If we don't at the same time also recognize that we are actually a long way from fixing the problem. . . . Yes, it might be nice to want to close a prison in British Columbia, but we can't budget now for that reality. The reality is that the demand for the criminal justice system so far is outstripping the resources that are being put towards it in the short term, it seems to me.

Just to finish, that's the one part: diversion. The second part is the demand on the criminal justice system. The third part is what happens as a result of that. And that brings me back to the disclosure court thing, disclosure court being a place where you see that stress working out, other parts of the system being places where we see that stress working out. We find that we have the unhappy situation of people. . . . The phrase I heard the other day that was interesting, but unfortunate, was: "a criminal justice system that simply recycles offenders." Clearly that's unacceptable. We have to find a way to avoid recycling offenders. But what I'm not hearing. . . . I'm hearing the expression of the commitment, but I'm not hearing the details of the commitment to criminal justice initiatives that will make the situation better. I invite the Attorney General to tell us, in more concrete terms, what initiatives are underway.

The Chair: Note the time.

Hon. U. Dosanjh: Yes, noting the time, I will be very brief. First of all, as I said, there is a working group in place. 

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By October you will have concrete plans. And yes, it would be wonderful to have 40 or 50 programs across British Columbia at the earliest possible. . . . It may be possible. It may be that we have to start with fewer than that but that it would be done. That would be the concrete shape which you would have to see. Even if I gave you details, they're all on paper right now. But we're working on that. We want to have the program at least begin implementation by October.

In terms of the other traditional parts of the justice system, there has been an increase of 119 police officers in the provincial police force complement. Admittedly, 83 of those are on photo radar, and several of them are on the unsolved homicide squad and in other areas, such as the prostitution unit. That's an absolute increase, and the fact that 83 of them are doing traffic duty through photo radar, where photo radar is in place, means that you can take other resources, other police officers, away from that work which they did tradi- tionally in those areas so that they can then begin to do serious crime work -- investigation and the like -- and crime prevention.

We are, of course, committed to providing an additional 100 police officers, of which 24 positions have already been approved, and more will be on their way. One has to look at these issues. I wish we had started doing this ten years ago, diversion and the like, doing crime prevention on a massive scale. We didn't. We started late. It's going to take us some time.

And talking about time, it's time that we adjourned. Therefore I move that committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 12:22 p.m.

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