[ Page 5675 ]

The House resumed at 6:35 p.m.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

Hon. J. MacPhail: In Committee A, I call Committee of Supply. For the information of members, we'll be debating the estimates of the Ministry of Environment. In this House, I call second reading of Bill 42.

MISCELLANEOUS STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT (No. 2), 1997
(second reading)

Hon. U. Dosanjh: This Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act contains amendments to a number of statutes.

An amendment to the British Columbia Buildings Corporation Act will allow the corporation to continue to serve its existing customer base and expand it where possible. Currently, BCBC's mandate prohibits the corporation from serving organizations other than government ministries and Crown corporations. Amendments adding the definitions of "public body" and "publicly funded" body will allow BCBC to provide services to a variety of government entities such as school districts, colleges, regional districts and municipalities, and any public body funded directly or indirectly from the consolidated revenue fund.

Amendments to the Court Rules Act and the Offence Act are another step in implementing government's commitment to strategic reforms of the justice system. Our reliance on paper and the requirement that parties to a court proceeding physically appear before the court can delay and impede service delivery in the justice system.

Amendments to the Court Rules Act and the Offence Act address these concerns by enabling the use of technology to improve service and efficiency in the justice system. Amendments to these acts will establish a legal foundation for the use of electronic records and remote appearances in court proceedings. Savings in time and money will result, as appearances in Offence Act proceedings will be accepted through videoconferencing or other methods of telecommunications. Valuable court resources will be used more effectively, and litigation costs will decrease.

Use of electronic records will enable a more efficient use of resources by freeing up time traditionally consumed by paperwork, reducing storage requirements, permitting instantaneous information and improving communication.

Minor amendments to the Health Authorities Act are a result of the regionalization initiative in health care, whereby health programs, primarily in health units, are being shifted from the province to local health authorities. In order to accomplish this, community health services societies were created to assume these programs in areas where no regional health boards exist. As these societies are not specifically exempted from the obligation to pay tax, these amendments will allow the current tax scheme to continue. This means that grants in lieu will continue to be paid, and other existing tax exemptions will continue to apply to property of community health services societies. The first amendment allows the existing exemption from property taxes to continue; the second amendment adds community health services societies to regional health boards and community health councils as bodies which may, by regulation, be exempted from tax.

Amendments to the Hospital District Act support changes to the hospital district structure, from one based on regional districts to one based on regional health board areas. As the Hospital District Act does not contemplate two coexisting regional hospital districts, these amendments are required to validate the change and to assist new regional health boards in their operation.

On behalf of the Victoria regional transit commission the government is increasing the motor fuel tax by 1 percent per litre in the Victoria regional transit service area. This will bring the total fuel tax to 2.5 cents per litre for transit. In bringing this amendment forward, the government is cooperating with the Victoria regional transit commission to provide the resources necessary to fund an improved service in this region. The moneys raised will be used to support existing transit service levels, to fund improvements in service quality and to meet objectives for congestion management, accessibility, ridership growth and improved environmental standards.

Finally, hon. Speaker, this bill amends the Supreme Court Act, in the interest of using court resources more effectively. The effective use of resources will be achieved by combining the counties of Westminster and Vancouver into one judicial district. Currently the act does not allow the judiciary to schedule criminal trials between the New Westminster and Vancouver law courts. This limits the efficient use of judicial resources and courtrooms in both locations. The amendments address this issue by amalgamating the two counties, thereby allowing the court to direct civil or criminal matters to be heard anywhere in the newly created Vancouver-Westminster judicial district.

Hon. Speaker, that concludes my remarks.

G. Plant: I am pleased to rise in second reading debate on Bill 42, to be the first of a select group of speakers on the diverse issues dealt with in this bill.

I want to speak, for a moment or two, about the parts of this bill that make changes in what I'll generally call the judicial process. In many ways lawyers who participate in the litigation process all too often have an adherence to a particular vision of the way things ought to be done based solely on the fact that it is the way things have been done. I am as mindful as is the Attorney General of the pressure on the limited resources that now appear to be and are available to keep the judicial system going and the need to ensure that rules, processes and procedures are examined to see if there are ways in which things can be done more expeditiously, more efficiently, less expensively, without sacrificing any of the basic hallmarks of fairness and due process that are at the heart of what makes our legal system the wonderful thing that it is.

This bill strikes out in three directions, in respect of making some changes to the way that our court system operates. I'll be dealing with them in more detail when we get to the committee stage debate, but I want to at least make reference to the three of them now and say one or two things about them.

First of all, the change to the Court Rules Act is part of an ongoing attempt by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, other judicial officials and other members of the profession to try and find ways to take advantage of changing technology, to allow some aspects of court process to happen less expensively and more efficiently.

I once had the experience, in a particularly long and complicated trial, of commencing a chambers application before a judge in Vancouver on one day, continuing it approximately a week later in Kamloops for a second day and then continuing it on a third day and finally concluding it -- again, with much delay -- in Kelowna. We were accommodating the rota and the convenience of the judge, who was moving about from different assize assignments around British Columbia. It always seemed to me then -- and this was ten years ago -- that it was pretty foolish to have to pack a car full of lawyers, or the larger part of the cabin of a small airplane full of lawyers to follow a judge around British Columbia, to make what was essentially an oral argument on the basis of affidavits about whether or not an examination for discovery should be allowed to proceed in a particular way. I'm delighted to see that we're now creating a situation or a context within which rules can be made that will allow, hopefully, some of these situations to be avoided.

[ Page 5676 ]

[6:45]

As always, I have a cautionary note for the Attorney General, who will have very little to do, I suspect, with what the court rules committee does once these amendments are enacted. But the cautionary note is to ensure that we don't lose sight of the fact that sometimes a personal appearance is a vitally important aspect of persuading a judge in a particular case to make an order. I think that it's better in these sorts of cases if we enable these things to take place as a first step, rather than requiring them to take place. We empower or we enable lawyers and judges in particular proceedings to begin to deal with some kinds of applications and things like that by telephone. Some of that is already happening, and always has been, but it tends to be happening in non-contentious matters or pretrial conferences. I would prefer to see rules where these things were made possible, and the judiciary and the rules committee and the profession could scrutinize how these things happen over time to see if the rules are working or not, rather than bringing an iron hand down with mandatory rules limiting the right of appearance and application in person.

This is also, I suppose, a bit of an anecdote from personal experience. I was very fortunate to participate as counsel at trial in one of the longest trials in the history of the province: the Delgamuukw land claim lawsuit. Depending on how you add the days, there were something like 374 days of trial plus numerous days of commission evidence hearings that added to the evidentiary bulk. All of that resulted in a long trial judgment, which then went on to the Court of Appeal, where I think there was a 30-odd day hearing, which some might regard as a reasonable distillation of the essence of a long trial. But the next stage of the process, as I understand it, was the hearing in the Supreme Court of Canada, where we took all. . . . I wasn't part of this, but all the enormous evidentiary complexity of the case and all of the legal complexity of the case was ultimately distilled somehow into something like two days of oral argument.

This all happens because there is pressure on the part of the judiciary to say that there is less need to hear from counsel in person than there used to be, that they can be persuaded by arguments in writing as well as in person. Increasingly, I suspect, and occasionally I fear that at least in some forms of litigation, we are going to move down a path which is remarkably similar to the American system, where virtually all motions are argued on the basis of written briefs, and there's very little oral advocacy. So yes, it's good to be making rules that will allow counsel to appear in particular matters by telephone or by teleconference or by video conference as a way of addressing the problems of expense and inconvenience. But I hope that we can move down that path without moving too far down the other path where we sacrifice the value of personal appearance, the value of oral advocacy, as essential parts of our litigation process.

The second part of this bill that I want to speak about is the provisions under the Offence Act, which, like the Court Rules Act provisions, talk about the use of electronic data records as a means of recording the paper flow that happens in Provincial Court offences -- and provincial statute offences, I guess. I think this may be part of an ongoing ministry project to develop a computerized system for tracking the various matters that come into the provincial ports of British Columbia. At least on my inspection of it, it strikes me as an excellent project and a very good step down the road to standardizing procedures and saving the enormous paper flow that is often the by-product of criminal as well as civil litigation. I'm sure it will also mean in due course that hundreds, if not thousands, of lawyers in British Columbia, who are not as computer literate as they ought to be, will have to become so. I'm personally convinced that that's a good thing.

I think we will need to spend some time looking at these provisions in committee-stage debate to make sure they go far enough down the road to ensuring that electronic data records and all that stuff can be used to their full advantage without exposing us to the risk of compromising access to data by people who shouldn't have access to it and ensuring that, where we are talking about doing things like serving people documents electronically, we are comfortable that in fact the terms and requirements are there which ensure they will have been received, and that all of these things that I think are the ordinary part of making rules will work well in practice.

Finally, I want to talk about the amendments to the Supreme Court Act. The amendments, as explained by the Attorney General, essentially merge two counties, the counties of Vancouver and Westminster, into one judicial district. I understand what the Attorney General says when he speaks of the need for efficiency in scheduling -- efficiency in the allocation of precious court resources. Those are good things; we should work towards those things.

But we are in fact also going to expose ourselves to the risk of a potential problem. I want to just outline it. I think that our judicial system -- and especially the criminal justice system has at its roots -- the notion that an individual charged with a criminal offence has the right to be tried by his or her peers. That's one of those traditional sort of statements. What does it mean? I think that it has traditionally meant, in part, that one is entitled to be tried by a jury of one's geographic peers -- that is, to be tried in the community where the offence has taken place. Now, there are obviously cases where this is not a good thing, and we have a well-established body of rules that allow trials to be moved from the community where the offence took place if the accused person is unable to obtain a fair trial because, for example, of the level of media attention that's been given to the case.

With that exception aside, I think we have this long tradition, in Anglo-Canadian jurisprudence, of the right to trial by a jury of one's peers. Frankly, I think it's one of those traditions which has more going for it than simply its longevity. The more we talk in this chamber, and in government generally, about restorative justice, diversion programs and community-based sentencing alternatives, the more we recognize that there is a value to ensuring that a person charged with an offence is brought to account for that offence in the community where the offence has taken place. Another example of this, I suppose, would be the increased use of sentencing circles in first nations communities.

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Here we have a bill that merges these two counties in the interests of judicial expedience. It seems to me that there will now be an increased likelihood that, for example, someone who has committed an offence in Chilliwack or Hope will find that the trial of that offence is not being conducted in Westminster in front of a jury composed of people from the Fraser Valley but may in fact take place in downtown Vancouver in front of a jury that is substantially made up of people from downtown Vancouver. I don't want to overstate that distinction. It's clearly a much shorter distance from Hope to Vancouver than from Hope to any number of other places. It's one of those things that I think we need to be reminded of as being an aspect of the good side of our judicial system that is being asked to give way here in the interests of efficiency and expediency. We always need to be mindful of the balance, but I think we need to be particularly mindful of that balance here.

I don't know that it would be in the slightest appropriate for me to presume to pass judgment on the process by which the administration of trials in the Supreme Court of British Columbia is undertaken. But the fact is that this bill will repose a certain additional amount of power in those administrators and in the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to organize where trials happen. Those powers are significant; I think that they're significant enough to warrant comment here. The issue of a trial in one's own community is significant enough to warrant comment here. It's not a reason to oppose these amendments; rather, it's a reason just to be mindful of the issues that they give rise to.

So those are three parts of this miscellaneous bill that deal with the way the justice system works, and those are my general comments on those three general issues. There may be others on this side of the House who have more to say, either about those issues or about other issues dealt with in this bill. So with that, I will conclude my own remarks and yield to others who may have something to say.

G. Abbott: Tonight I want to confine my remarks to section 9 of Bill 42. Section 9 relates to the appointment of an administrator with respect to regional hospital districts, and I have a few comments and suggestions with respect to that particular section.

A few weeks ago we had a very good discussion about the role of regional hospital districts in the new regionalized heath care governance system that we have in British Columbia -- post-regionalization. The discussion made clear to me what the role of the regional hospital district is. My understanding from that discussion is that the role of the regional hospital district in British Columbia remains much as it was prior to regionalization.

Regional hospital districts have been around for a long time. I had the pleasure of serving as a director on the Columbia-Shuswap regional hospital district for about 17 years, and I know that regional hospital districts existed long before that. Perhaps they're as old as regional districts, going back some 30 years now. Perhaps not, but I suspect that they are probably of that kind of vintage.

Typically regional hospital districts have been operated as an adjunct to regional districts in this province. My understanding is that notwithstanding the regionalization process that we have seen in British Columbia over the past six months, the role of the regional hospital district in the process remains much the same as ever.

[7:00]

Even though the role of the regional hospital district is a pretty simple one conceptually, it's nevertheless a very important one. It's certainly important from a planning perspective. The regional hospital district obviously holds in its hands considerable discretion about whether a new piece of equipment -- a new X-ray machine or some other piece of medical equipment -- is put in place in a hospital. Obviously it's very important to the community that hospitals possess that kind of equipment. From a planning perspective they also obviously have an important function with respect to facilities. Again, there are always calls for new intermediate care facilities, extended-care facilities and so on. And again, those can play a very important part in the quality of life that people, particularly seniors, enjoy within their communities. So the role of the regional hospital district is very important from that perspective.

They also have a very important role with respect to the financial perspective. The regional hospital district is responsible for retiring the debt associated with major capital expenditures on extended-care facilities or whatever it may be. Frequently the regional hospital district tax levy for this particular function is a very substantial one. So the role of the regional hospital district from that perspective is very important.

To achieve agreement about the introduction of a new facility into a community or a region requires at least two parties to agree. Pre-regionalization -- which I understand a little bit better -- it's very clear that the regional hospital district board and the province had to agree that the construction of a new facility was appropriate. The province would agree to ante up their 60 percent; the regional hospital district would agree, through the board, to ante up their 40 percent.

Post-regionalization, the picture's not quite as clear, although I hopefully have some understanding of this from the discussion we had in the Health estimates. My understanding of the post-regionalization world of financing capital facilities is that (a) the regional hospital district has to agree and (b) some combination of the regional health board and the province would have to agree. Maybe it's both, but certainly it takes those two sides of the coin to agree to see a new facility put in place.

I think it's important to note here that at times the regional hospital district may well have a different view than the regional health board or the province about whether a new health care facility, or indeed any major capital expenditure, is merited. There may well be different views about that. We have seen, both over time and recently, some quite prominent examples of where the regional hospital district thought one thing and the province, through the Ministry of Health, thought another.

[ Page 5678 ]

That was certainly the case in the greater Vancouver regional hospital district recently. The province hoped to go in one direction, and the greater Vancouver regional hospital district felt that expenditures would be more appropriate in another area. In the case of the Columbia-Shuswap regional district, there were a few instances in my time where the province wanted to move more quickly on a project -- or alternatively, the regional hospital district wanted to move more quickly on a project than the province was prepared to move.

So obviously, where you require two parties to agree to a new facility or to a new piece of equipment, there is always some room for disagreement, and that's fine. Indeed, that's the essence of politics -- deciding who gets what when, where and why. That's what politics is all about, and indeed these differences of opinion are very much a reflection of democracy -- and, to that extent, a good thing. Disagreement between a regional hospital district and the province of British Columbia may, for example, result in the need to review. A project may lead to reconsideration by one or both of the parties of the merits of the new equipment or facility. Certainly, in any event where there's a difference of opinion, it is going to lead to some sober second thought about the direction which the parties are proceeding in. This, in turn, may cause some delay or postponement. It may mean, as a result, an improvement in the concept of the project, or it may mean some improvement in the way that it's implemented.

Local governments make literally thousands of decisions every year along these lines. This is not just something that regional hospital districts and regional health boards in British Columbia wrestle with. Municipalities and regional districts have to make decisions every year about what the priority is in terms of what is needed in the way of facilities or new equipment and so on. Local governments not only need to assess the need for a new piece of equipment or a new facility but they also need to assess the ability of the taxpayer to afford that at that point in time. The whole exercise, hopefully, is one in which the local government and/or the province of British Columbia make an informed decision about the scale and timing of any given project or proposal.

This is my understanding -- and I certainly look forward to the government correcting my understanding if it's faulty -- of what regional hospital districts do. They contribute the local or regional share to capital projects. Why, then, do we need section 9 of Bill 42, the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act (No. 2)? That's a very good question and one that, frankly, I haven't figured out yet. What does it do? Just briefly I'll quote from section 9. It's titled: "Appointment of an administrator."

"49.1(1) If the minister has reasonable grounds to believe that the public interest so requires, the minister may appoint an administrator to operate a district for a period specified by the minister, and the minister must serve a notice of appointment of an administrator on the chair of the board for the district.

"(2) On the appointment of an administrator under this section, the directors and alternate directors of the district cease to hold office unless otherwise ordered by the Lieutenant Governor in Council.

"(3) The administrator may exercise all powers of the district."

Again, I'll go back to the point I was making earlier -- that if the sole or primary function of a regional hospital district is providing 40 percent of capital costs for equipment or projects, will disagreement on the timing scale or whatever of such a project constitute the rationale for firing a regional hospital district board? Well, I hope not. It's difficult to see -- based on what I know about the function of regional hospital districts and based on what I see in this bill -- any other rationale for firing a regional hospital district.

Hopefully, I'm missing something. Hopefully, there is some reason that I don't understand that can be made clear by the government during committee stage about why they are proposing to put this statutory authority in place. But from my point of view, given the experience that we have had, particularly in the last several months with the dismissal of hospital boards and societies and so on by the Minister of Health, I certainly view section 9 with a good deal of concern.

Unlike regional health boards, regional hospital districts are composed of elected municipal and regional district officials. These officials are not responsible to the Minister of Health; they are responsible to the electors locally that elected them to their positions. I think there's a fundamental difference between the regional hospital district composition and the regional health board composition. The regional health board composition clearly is based on appointment by the Minister of Health, and while it may be lamentable and regrettable and so on, one can understand in a clear line why the statutory authority for firing a regional health board exists. But it's not so clear to me why the government would want to put in place statutory authority to dismiss or fire a regional hospital district.

If the government has a different cause in mind, if there is something in this bill or elsewhere which would provide other reason or cause for a regional hospital district to be dismissed, I think the government should bring it forward and should say directly in the bill what cause they have in mind.

The Speaker: Excuse me, member. I am reluctant to interrupt you, but may I ask you to take your seat for just a moment. I want to remind you and other members of the House what our practice is when we deal with miscellaneous statutes. As we all know, technically, a miscellaneous statutes bill does not have a principle, and the practice therefore is normally that we simply canvass in a broad-brush kind of way each of the sections and address our concerns about them. The detailed examination and analysis of miscellaneous statutes bills is by convention restricted to committee stage, and I would therefore caution this member and others to please be guided by that principle.

Let me explain, if I might, just in anticipation of the concern members might express, that the reason we do that is simply so members can be allowed considerably more latitude in committee stage than they might have in other kinds of bills. In other words, the detailed discussion and debate occurs in committee in a miscellaneous statutes bill, not in second reading. So I'd ask the member to please bear that caution in mind, if he would.

G. Abbott: I will bear that caution in mind. It's particularly easy for me to do so because I'm almost finished my remarks. But I do hope, Mr. Speaker, that one is able at this stage of the discussion of this bill to look at points of principle which concern. . . . Hopefully, I've made it clear that the point of principle which concerns me is the question of the statutory authority to fire a regional hospital district board that has been elected by electors other than the province of British Columbia.

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Let me just conclude my remarks, in any event, Mr. Speaker. Obviously I was almost close enough to complete them before your cautionary remarks. If I'd just been a little quicker. . . . But I've just a couple of notes to conclude here. Certainly the government can, I think, expect some questions with regard to this section in committee, and hopefully, we'll get some explanation from the government about the direction they're going here. Again, to conclude, I have certainly heard about school and hospital boards being fired in the past, but I have never -- at least in my recollection -- heard of a municipal council or a regional district board that was fired by the province. Given the structure and the role of regional hospital districts, I'm not at all persuaded of the government's need for statutory authority to fire them. So I will have to be convinced of that, and I'll look forward to hearing from the government side with respect to that in the days ahead.

[7:15]

I had the privilege of chairing the capital regional district board and also chairing the hospital district board for about seven years, so I have a little bit of experience on how that particular board works and what can make it work and what can't. One of the first areas that I'd like to mention is the relationship and the partnership between the provincial government and the capital regional district sitting as a hospital district board. That relationship has been severely altered in the last number of years with the advent of regional health boards -- the capital health board in this area.

The principle that a partnership developed between the province and the regional hospital district board under the Hospital District Act was very positive. For many years in this area that relationship and partnership worked very well -- not to say that there weren't disagreements amongst the partners.

The change -- and I believe it is a significant one -- is that the minister now has to deal with the capital health board and the hospital district in order to complete an idea. A good example of that would be the rebuilding of the Royal Jubilee Hospital. That has the capital health board's approval, provincial approval and, through the regional district, it will have the hospital district's approval. That is essential, because the funds raised by the district will pay 40 percent of the cost of the rebuilding of that health facility. The history of payment by the local taxpayers was that 20 percent was paid for by the hospital district and 80 percent was paid for by the provincial government.

That was changed a number of years ago without consultation with the regionally elected representatives, and I think that was a slap in the face to local government by the provincial government. When you're dealing with a partner, you would like to think that you would be consulted. The 40-60 percent revenue sharing is now in place.

The next change is that the province has now developed the capital health board and appointed those people, and those people aren't in any way responsible to the local taxpayer. Now you have the hospital district board, which is essentially your locally elected representatives. In this area it would be the mayors and aldermen from 14 municipalities who sit on the board. They're going to be asked to basically rubber-stamp an agreement that is made by the province and the capital health board. Their planning ability and partnership is no longer evident, in my view of the situation. So the principle that local government had a say in the debt servicing and the costing of health and hospital facilities is gone.

What I fear with section 9 -- the appointment of an administrator -- is that if the locally elected representatives representing the people of this area have a different perspective than the government and they have a different perspective than the capital health board, then they will be removed and an administrator put in, only because of their disagreement. They won't have the ability to have a partnership as they did in the past with the provincial government. I see that that principle of partnership has been key to the development and, I think, fairly positive relationship between local government and provincial government over the past 20 years.

The principle of health planning is not new to this area. As much as 20 years ago, the capital regional district had what was called the hospital and health planning commission, and I believe that legislation is still on the books. That had representatives from all the health and hospital organizations and boards sitting on one board, and that board gave advice to the hospital district -- and their planning staff, working with provincial staff would come to an agreement on what were the priorities for health care. So you had local government and local boards all working in conjunction to come up with a list of priorities. Now I think what you're going to see is that principle of local government involved with the decision-making and prioritization of health and hospital planning disappear. You now have a board appointed by the province, and the province making those decisions.

I think the difference here -- and it's my fear with section 9 -- is that the local body is still going to be asked to pay 40 percent of the costs of all hospitals and health planning facilities. That 40 percent is in the hundreds of millions of dollars for planning over the next decade in this area. They don't have an active partnership anymore. That principle is out the window with the changes that have been made. But they also have the fear that if they disagree they will be replaced. In committee stage I'll have some further questions as to whether you would be replacing the individuals, replacing their office or just this function. But I think it is important for the relationship and the history of a positive partnership with local government that we recognize that this particular section destroys that relationship significantly.

I think that in the years to come you'll see a widening gap between the abilities of local government to be a partner, and the decision-making of the province will become very centralized. So I think it's threats like this section 9 that show a lack of confidence in local government by the province. I'm saddened by that, because I think there had been a history of cooperation for many decades in this province between local government and senior government. That is gone with the principle of being able to appoint an administrator over the heads of the locally elected and duly representative people in this area.

There are a number of issues, but I think the central issue for section 9 is, once again, the provincial government showing a lack of confidence in having a meaningful partnership and relationship with local government in the decision-making process. I find that sad, and during the committee stage I look forward to looking at this item in much greater detail. I think a principle of partnership has been lost by this threat of appointment of an administrator if local government disagrees with the route that the provincial government and the regional health board take. I think that the losers in this are the local taxpayers, who won't have representatives that know that they can go to bat for the taxes for them.

[ Page 5680 ]

I look forward to continued debate in the committee stage of this bill.

M. de Jong: Mr. Speaker, entering upon this debate on this miscellaneous statutes bill, I am mindful of your caution to members when debating what I think I heard you describe as "unprincipled legislation" -- or was it "legislation without principles" or something like that? So I am mindful of those cautionary words, Mr. Speaker.

I just want to make a couple of brief comments with respect to the legislation. I was listening when the Attorney General spoke earlier about a portion of the bill that I know we will discuss or a theme in this legislation dealing with expediting justice-related matters. He talked about decreasing the cost of litigation. In a former life, those words might have meant something different to me, but I'd like to think they wouldn't. I want to say on the record that when we talk in this chamber about decreasing the cost of litigation, I've come to think that perhaps we have acquired a different sense of what that means. For us and for government, we tend to become fixated on the question of the cost to the state of delivering justice services. The Attorney General may have had a broader notion in mind. But it's a general observation on my part that as we discuss budgets and the cost of maintaining court services in the various communities around the province, that is uppermost in our minds as legislators and as government and perhaps as cabinet ministers. Whereas if you ask the person on the street about the cost of litigation, what they're interested in is: "How much does it cost for me to litigate my case?"

To the extent that this is a valid distinction -- and I think it might be -- that is the question I would like us to have in our minds as we go through this legislation: the cost to the British Columbian, to the litigant, and whether or not the changes. . . . I agree with some of the comments from the member for Richmond-Steveston -- that we shouldn't be afraid of change, particularly in something like our justice system where tradition obviously counts for a great deal. We shouldn't be afraid of change. But I think we should approach it from the perspective of whether or not we are still meeting the legitimate needs and expectations of our population as far as preserving the tenets of justice within our court system, and also whether or not that judicial system is more accessible and more cost-friendly than it was under a previous regime.

I think that is something we need to keep sight of as we move through this debate into committee stage. I think the Attorney General shares the feeling that there is a tremendous potential to effect cost savings through the use of technology to ensure that the courts and those other agencies associated with the courts -- and I know we've talked in the past about alternate dispute resolution -- that we now associate with the delivery of justice in British Columbia are more readily accessible at a better price for litigants. I think that is something we need to track.

That leads me to the second point I want to make with respect to that theme which emerges out of this miscellaneous statutes bill. I would like to think that the Attorney General -- and we will canvass this, I'm sure, at the committee stage -- now has in mind -- and more than that, I suppose, on paper within his ministry -- a list of those indicators that will be tracked by the ministry as a way of measuring whether or not as a result of these amendments the cost of litigation has actually decreased.

[7:30]

Beyond that, let me say that I think the other indicators or variables we should be looking at relate to the consumer of legal services in this province. I haven't, I must confess, thought this through exhaustively. But one year from now or two years from now, will it be possible for a litigant pursuing a standard matrimonial action -- to the extent that these things are ever standard -- to say that the cost of prosecuting or litigating that matter has actually gone down, taking into account legal fees, disbursements, the cost of attendance in court, time spent in court, attendance of expert witnesses? Will it be possible for that litigant to say: "Yes, as a result of these legislative enactments, the cost of achieving justice decreased." As we move through this legislation, I think that is something we need to examine and have in our minds. As we proceed through the committee stage, I think some of our questions will be geared toward alerting the Attorney General to our interest in that consumer-related component to this legislation.

Again in terms of the broad themes that are dealt with in some of the sections, the legislation deals with the de facto merger of two judicial districts. I suppose it can be said that longstanding members of the legal community who know that there are two judicial districts -- and I'm not sure that anyone in the public is aware of that -- may say that this represents something of a historic passage. The county of Westminster, for example, and the Westminster judicial district, as it's now referred to, have longstanding roots in the history of British Columbia. I don't have any hesitation in lending my support to legislation that, in effect, merges those judicial districts, if the Attorney General can offer the genuine assurance -- there are always unforeseen exigencies that may come along -- that we can have some level of satisfaction that the litigant from Hope or Chilliwack or Abbotsford, for that matter, is going to receive a service comparable to, if not better than, that which they presently receive, as a result of the implementation and utilization of improved technology.

Returning again to what I was saying about the cost to the consumer, the costs of the state may decrease. But if the average cost of prosecuting a civil matter in the Supreme Court of British Columbia actually goes up for a resident from Abbotsford or Chilliwack, because they're paying more for lawyers who are spending more time on the road, then I don't think we've accomplished anything, and I think the legislation must be deemed a failure. So I think that is a legitimate component of this legislation for us to be watching and to query the Attorney General on.

[ Page 5681 ]

With respect to this legislation and the implementation and utilization of technology as a means of expediting judicial proceedings, might I also say that I think it bears emphasizing that the public has a real appetite for accessing justice, for accessing the courts, and knowing what goes on behind those big doors either in their own courthouse in their own community -- to the extent that community courthouses still exist -- or in the larger centres of justice in New Westminster, Vancouver, Victoria, Prince George or other larger centres in the province. I think we will be doing them a disservice if we don't endeavour to expand through the use of this technology the public's ability to learn, witness, watch and hear about what is going on in the courthouses around the province.

I'm not sure this is the best example. In fact, I'm sure it's not the best example, but it is a timely one. We had a circumstance in Abbotsford in the last week where there was a whole host of publicity around some charges that were laid. You can say that the issue was a titillating one and that there were other reasons, but quite frankly, I think you can say this without fear of contradiction: there is an interest on the part of the public to know what is going on within the criminal justice system and within the civil courts.

To a great extent, I think it can be said that hostility exists within the public domain toward our justice system. We see it, be it in letters to the editor or in articles reporting what witnesses or litigants have had to say about the disposition of various cases. We see that dissatisfaction, and it is a fact. We can promote a greater understanding of the courts and of what goes on in the courts through the use of this technology, by giving people access in a timely way to the information, be it charges laid or the disposition of charges.

I heard it said during the course of the debate that took place in Abbotsford through the week just past that anyone can find out what's going on in court simply by attending. Well, with the greatest respect to those who provide that argument, it's a bit unrealistic. I think there is a role for us to play in providing to people the access they need, deserve and apparently want insofar as ascertaining what is going on within the courthouses and justice centres of the province.

This bill deals -- properly, I think. . . . Although we will have some questions about the detail, from a purely thematic approach, its desire to utilize technology as a means of expediting and reducing the cost of judicial proceedings is a laudable goal and one worthy of support. I will caution the Attorney General -- and I have, along with others today -- that we will want some assurance as to how that is going to play out in specific circumstances.

As I've said earlier today, I suppose we want some assurance, and we place the Attorney General and his government on notice that one of the factors we will be most concerned with is not simply whether the state is left in a better position as a result of the passage of this bill but whether, when the Attorney General says he intends to decrease the cost of litigation, that plays out for the consumer of legal services in British Columbia as well. We will watch for those things during the course of this debate, and I will be happy to participate at the committee stage.

R. Coleman: I'm pleased to speak this evening in second reading of Bill 42. I'd like to start out with complimenting the minister on a couple of things that are contained within the bill. I'd particularly like to spend a few minutes on the provisions in sections 1 and 2 that allow for some changes to the mandate of the British Columbia Buildings Corporation Act.

The reason I want to speak about this for a few minutes is that this is a corporation that over the past 16 years has built a substantial reputation within industry. That reputation actually now extends to 20 years after the completion of its most recent five-year plan. This corporation was established in 1976 to deal with the accommodation needs of government, and after dealing with those needs, it has today over 3,400 buildings and 23 million square feet of accommodation.

The interesting thing about BCBC as it has gone through its transition over the years is that it has established a tremendous amount of expertise in the industry relative to management, building, construction, design and, obviously, caretaking of public buildings. The expansion of the mandate is something we should be looking at and be quite proud of.

I brought this up with the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing last year when we were in estimates debates, and I brought it up this year with the Minister of Employment and Investment with regard to this particular Crown corporation -- that BCBC is an organization that is well positioned to take over some of the cost-saving that could be relative to government, as a result of their expanded mandate.

By changing the mandate to allow BCBC to work with other public bodies, the government has allowed BCBC to do work with municipalities, regional districts, improvement districts, and with the Islands Trust and organizations like that. The interesting thing about the expanded mandate is that it should allow BCBC to do something that has been advocated for some time within government with regard to how we deliver construction and management of our facilities.

There are a couple of examples of audits that I've looked at over the years with regard to school construction, for example. One of the criticisms was that we would provide school districts with large sums of money to construct schools within a community, then we would hand them this particular project and tell them to manage their own construction. As a result of that, we found that we did not get value for the dollar in our construction.

Oftentimes our school districts ended up with cost overruns simply because they didn't understand the business. It was suggested in a couple of the audits that I looked at that the school districts should be hiring construction management expertise with regard to their construction, so they could expand their role and improve their delivery of service through the tax dollar.

That service is available today through B.C. Buildings Corporation, and it's an expanded mandate that we like to see utilized. The successive ministers I've discussed this with in estimates over the last two years have agreed that this is a prudent move. Expanding the role today is an extension of that prudent move to make it make sense.

Obviously this organization also has the expertise to deal with hospital construction and care facilities within communities. If you take an extension downward -- seeing as they have such expertise in construction and environmental controls, design and architectural work, as well as in construction management -- you could also extend it to community centres and pools within communities.

[ Page 5682 ]

You would be able to save municipalities a lot of the headaches that they're particularly experiencing today in relationship with government. BCBC also has the ability to provide financial advice with regard to tendering, costing or what have you with regard to any particular type of facility. They can provide design advice and space management advice. They can actually tell you what your real space needs are and provide you with that service and research so you don't have to go outside to achieve that goal. It's a service that could be provided by BCBC to a municipality probably more cost-effectively than by other sectors. At the same time, that would create a dollar value back to the corporation and subsequently to the taxpayers of British Columbia.

BCBC is recognized as one of the top agencies in North America with regard to environmental controls and facilities. They've received awards for this, and these particular awards and that type of environmental control are tremendous assets in any public building that's designed anywhere in the province. Expanding the mandate to allow that type of service to be easily transferred down and charged back to municipalities in other areas that want that service is very important. There's no sense in reinventing the wheel with regard to this type of facility.

[7:45]

BCBC is also recognized for its business discipline strategies and for its market knowledge and surveys. It knows what is needed in a particular area and what type of facilities you have. It is also very, very highly recognized in space management -- management of how to make the work space of an individual who works in a facility as good as possible for productivity with the least amount of square feet.

BCBC now offers these types of services to government, and expanding that role only makes sense. In addition to that, they are also very good at communications strategies with regard to communicating how to deal with the public process. Oftentimes when a municipality moves into a design or comes up with a project they want within the community, you'll see that one of the downsides or downfalls of that particular municipality has been their own communication back to the community, so that the community understands what is to be accomplished by the municipality or by the public body -- whether it be a provincial government body, a federal government body or whatever.

BCBC has that expertise. They provide it to government now. The way they present themselves in public, the way they strategize their plans, has made them very successful on behalf of the taxpayers of British Columbia and should be able to make them successful on behalf of all taxpayers with regards to whatever types of facilities they want.

The other thing that they're very strong in is operational effectiveness. This organization is capable of coming in and assisting a public body in a public process not only with the access of land and design and public hearings and construction and completion, but also with the management and the long-term budgeting effectiveness of that particular facility. You'll often find that within certain jurisdictions in the province, whichever government body you're dealing with, their expertise in that type of management is lacking, because it's something that they're not used to; whereas these people have this huge 20-plus years of experience in this type of operation. They can pass it on to whichever public body is looking for it. So to expand this role is very effective.

In addition to that, BCBC is today the largest manager of real estate assets in British Columbia, and they also have $1 billion of projects under design and construction. That tells us that this group of people has the capability to provide this service.

I commend the minister on these two particular sections. I look forward to the mandate of BCBC going beyond this so that we can now get cost-effectiveness, design and criteria into all public bodies for all taxpayers of British Columbia.

B. Penner: I too appreciate the opportunity to take part in this debate on what has been described tonight as an unprincipled piece of legislation -- just kidding, of course. It is the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act (No. 2), 1997, and as such, the Speaker rightly pointed out that it doesn't have a principle per se. Nevertheless, there are three specific issues presented in this bill that I would like to address tonight, not in an exhaustive fashion but just in cursory terms.

First of all, starting with section 9 of the proposed bill, other speakers here tonight have also commented on the power that this would give to the minister to replace regional hospital districts with an appointed administrator. It probably goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway: that would remove elected politicians, elected community representatives, from the decision-making process of those regional hospital districts. To the extent that such a decision would centralize power and remove decision-making from communities and locate that in Victoria is an unfortunate thing. I rise here tonight to highlight my concern about that.

I'm looking at section 9, section 49.1(2) of the bill. It states quite clearly: "On the appointment of an administrator under this section, the directors and alternate directors of the district cease to hold office unless otherwise ordered by the Lieutenant Governor in Council." I did a little bit of research quickly before coming to participate in the debate tonight, and I find that the identical wording appears in a statute which was introduced in 1993, entitled the Health Authorities Act. That particular bill was given royal assent on July 29, 1993. Section 14(2) also states, and I believe the wording is virtually identical: "On the appointment of a public administrator, the members of the board or council" -- and in this case the bill is referring to hospital boards -- "cease to hold office unless otherwise ordered by the Lieutenant Governor in Council."

What is the significance of that? The significance is that we have seen in recent months a spate, a whole list, of community hospital boards being fired by this government and being replaced by an unelected administrator at the whim of the government. You don't just have to take my word for it; I can list a number of them. This has happened around the province; I count about eight of them. It included my community of Chilliwack, where the entire hospital board was summarily fired by this government, relying on the authority that they had under the Health Authorities Act. A similar provision is purported to be granted in Bill 42, which we're debating tonight, and that's why I draw the connection.

If we're going to give the government the power that this bill purports to give, we need to do so with our eyes open and realize that this government has a track record of using that power to take decision-making away from local and elected representatives and give it to whomever the government feels should have that power. In most cases, it's a single person replacing the collective wisdom of many people. I think we have to proceed down this road -- if we do proceed down this road -- with great caution.

[ Page 5683 ]

In the case of Chilliwack, the government's excuse for firing the hospital board was a severance package in the amount of $172,000 given to somebody who had worked in the health field for some 30 years. Comparing that to other severance packages -- as the government tried to do to justify their decision under that section -- clearly illustrated the bankruptcy of their position. Other administrators throughout the province had received severance packages ranging up to $600,000 -- that was Ron Mulchey, the CEO of St. Paul's Hospital -- yet we didn't hear of this government taking any specific action to deal with that hospital board. But in the case of Chilliwack, the government used the identical provision that they're trying to get by us here today to justify firing local elected representatives in favour of a public administrator.

The second point I would like to make today in second reading deals with "deeming" data records, as contained in section 13 of Bill 42. I counted five references to the word "deem" appearing in Bill 42, the bill that we're debating here tonight. I recognize that these particular amendments under section 13 only apply to the Offence Act, which is a provincial statute. The significance of that is that the offenses prosecuted under the Offence Act are not the most serious offenses that we face in society today; those are contained in a federal statute known as the Criminal Code.

However, there are still significant offenses that are prosecuted under the Offence Act, particularly to deal with wildlife issues and poaching, which has become an increasing concern in our environmentally-conscious era. I think members of the public would agree that we have to view those types of prosecutions as also being very important.

The reason why I have concerns about these deeming provisions is simply because it removes some of the traditional and time-honoured requirements for proving evidence. We can only assume that those requirements were there for a reason. I believe it goes back to the fundamental rule of law, and that is the presumption against hearsay evidence. Hearsay evidence is simply evidence that is not directly before the court. You're relying on a third party to transmit that information to the court without the benefit of the original speaker or the original document or the original piece of evidence -- if it's physical evidence -- being placed before the court for the finder of fact to consider.

I understand that the bill is hoping to find some shortcuts and is hoping to save some money. But we have to be cognizant of the fact that it could also pose significant risk, potentially, to a factual gathering of evidence and proper consideration of that evidence by a court of law. I know it's been increasingly the trend for the last decade -- as under the prosecutions to deal with motor vehicle insurance violations -- to include deeming provisions, where you deem the service of a document. All that does, in my view, is create a legal myth or a situation where we're make-believing something exists that doesn't actually, factually exist.

I am referring to the Oxford dictionary and their definition of the word "deem." In the first definition of deem, they compare it to the word "belief." I hope that tonight, in this bill, we're not entering into the world of make-believe by entertaining all these deeming provisions contained in the act. As I noted, I see five of them here.

There's also a provision in section 14 of Bill 42 to deal with the service of documents. Section 14 contains the phrase, "if the court is satisfied" -- and I emphasize the word "satisfied." In my view, it's giving discretion to water down the time-honoured principles of the rules of evidence, and I think we have to do that with caution, if we decide to do that at all. Those rules have developed over many, many years, not just in our province but across our country and indeed throughout countries in the Commonwealth. Again, I stress that those rules developed, no doubt, for a reason.

Finally, I turn my concerns to section 18 of Bill 42. This has already been made reference to by the member for Matsqui and by my colleague the member for Richmond-Steveston. Section 18 of Bill 42 would, in a nutshell, effectively make it possible for cases to be transferred from the Supreme Court at Chilliwack to be heard in downtown Vancouver. Not only would this potentially add to the legal costs incurred by clients -- that is, members of the public who need access to legal services -- but it would mean that a person relying on the services of a jury would find that the jury would be selected not necessarily from their peers -- that is, people in their community -- but from people in greater Vancouver.

I think one of the most salutary aspects of the Canadian justice system, particularly in criminal matters, is that there is a division of powers. The federal government, as we all know, has the authority to make criminal law right across this country. The benefit to that is that what is criminally illegal to do here in British Columbia is also exactly criminally illegal in Newfoundland, on the other coast of our great country. However, the balance that is brought into play is that it's up to the individual provinces to administer -- and in most cases prosecute -- offences under the Criminal Code. Furthermore, within the provinces most citizens, for the most serious types of offences, have the right to select trial by jury, and those juries have traditionally been made up of members of their own community. I would make the argument that that provision ensures a balancing of powers, versus the centralized federal authority to make criminal law, the provincial authority to prosecute and administer that law and the power given to members of the community to effectively sit as judges -- in their capacity as jurors -- of people in their own community and pass judgment on their peers. So to the extent that section 18 takes away that balancing of powers, I want to express my concern here tonight, on the record.

On a final note, it's not a secret that earlier this year the provincial government indicated its desire to close down the courthouse in Chilliwack, and I hope that section 18 isn't in some way a further indication of the government's ongoing desire to remove Supreme Court facilities from the upper Fraser Valley and centralize all of that service to the public in downtown Vancouver. As you travel around the province, one thing you hear repeatedly is that the people in the lower mainland -- that is, in downtown Vancouver -- have access to far more services than people in the remote regions of this province, even though the majority of the wealth in British Columbia, particularly in the resource sector, comes from areas outside of the lower mainland.

With that said, I will just indicate that I will be pursuing answers to these questions, which I have raised in a cursory way tonight. I will be pursuing these in committee stage, and I look forward to that.

[ Page 5684 ]

[8:00]

In this case, it's a regional hospital district. As the hon. member for Shuswap pointed out, they operate as an adjunct to regional districts in the province, and they exist to provide either major or minor capital funding for hospitals in that district. And 40 percent of the 60-40 split between the province and the regional hospital districts is raised locally through taxes.

This section is very, very disturbing. We've seen the province replace other elected bodies across the province -- fire them and put in public administrators. We've seen the kind of effect that's had on communities across the province, with health care reform moving the way it did in the last year. The way it was supposed to move was to bring decision-making closer to home, and firing hospital society boards in the last year or so -- I think that 20-odd boards were fired -- really sent a disturbing message to communities that their elected representatives on those boards were not valued. I know that the member for Saanich North and the Islands talked about confidence in these boards, and it really did take away the government's confidence in these boards and certainly the communities' confidence in the way government was operating by firing these societies.

It brings to mind an example, actually. The province had said they were going to provide funding for a new radiology department at Vancouver Hospital, and I remember that the greater Vancouver regional district was quite upset with that decision, because 40 percent of the funding for that $28 million department was going to come through their regional district capital funding partnership. They were very upset, because there was no consultation. They had other priorities. In fact, I heard some of the members who had served on some of these regional districts talking about long-term planning and priorities at the local community level.

If the government, by enacting this section in this miscellaneous bill, goes ahead doing what it says, you've taken away the communities' planning, their priority setting and their ability to make those decisions closer to home. It is quite upsetting. I won't say any more than that, because I know that we can canvass this at greater length in committee stage. It will be a section that I'll be opposing, because in the last year, as I said, we have seen the devastating effect on communities when the government removes an elected body and puts in someone who does their bidding. As I said, it will be something that we will canvass in committee stage and certainly something I will be opposing.

Hon. U. Dosanjh: Obviously many members have made very thoughtful comments, and we will pursue some of those questions in committee stage. I move that Bill 42 now be read a second time.

Motion approved.

Bill 42, Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act (No. 2), 1997, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. U. Dosanjh: I call second reading of Bill 16.

POLICE AMENDMENT ACT, 1997
(second reading)

Hon. U. Dosanjh: The Police Amendment Act is part of this government's commitment to improve the justice system of British Columbia to be more responsive to citizens' needs. The amendments were developed in response to the report of the commission if Inquiry into policing in British Columbia conducted by the Hon. Mr. Justice Wallace D. Oppal, which examined British Columbians' concerns about policing, police accountability and governance in extensive detail.

Subsequent to that inquiry there has been additional consultation with representatives, individuals and groups. The legislation puts in place systems of police accountability in response to complaints about police conduct and services. In developing this legislation, the systems in place in other jurisdictions and the specific needs of British Columbians were analyzed extensively to ensure that our reforms would be effective and provide satisfaction to our citizens and be fair to the police.

The product of that process is a completely new and independent office of the police complaints commissioner, the governing principles of which are set out in the amendments introduced. The commissioner will be a person unanimously recommended by a special committee of the Legislative Assembly for appointment by the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council. He or she will be an officer of the Legislature, with broad authority to be exercised in an independent and impartial way.

The police complaints commissioner will have responsibility to oversee each and every complaint lodged against municipal police officers or departments. The commissioner will have powers to direct that a complaint be reclassified or reinvestigated -- investigated by an outside police department -- or that an investigation be monitored by an independent civilian observer appointed by the commissioner. The commissioner may also order that a public hearing take place before a provincial court judge, if it is in the public interest, and may request that the Attorney General order a broader public inquiry under the Inquiry Act.

The complaint process begins with a complaint being lodged with a police officer or the police complaints commissioner. The legislation includes fixed time lines for investigation and reporting to ensure that complaints are addressed and resolved promptly. Throughout the complaint process, the complainant must be assisted and kept informed of the status of investigations, options available to the complainant, and disciplinary or corrective measures imposed. A complaint may also be lodged concerning the service or policies of a police department as they relate to conduct of the department. Responsibility for response to these complaints falls to the police board. The board must provide advice of any action taken to the complainant, the police complaints commissioner and the director of police services.

A key element in the complaint procedure is a new code of professional conduct, which will be a regulation pursuant to the act and applicable to each officer. The code reflects the core values that should guide policing in a modern democratic society. A breach of the code is considered to be a disciplinary default. It ensures that police officers deliver fair, impartial and effective services to their community and are accountable to the public. Where breaches occur, an approach which seeks to correct and educate will take precedence over one which seeks to blame or punish, unless remedial action is unworkable or would bring the discipline process into disrepute.

[ Page 5685 ]

Creation of the new police complaints commissioner significantly diminishes the roles and responsibilities of the British Columbia Police Commission. The remaining functions of that commission are largely duplicated in the police services division of the Ministry of Attorney General. It would not be efficient or effective to continue the commission, and it is being dissolved. The remaining statutory functions of the commission are transferred by the legislative amendments to the director of police services. These functions are for oversight, audits, standards and policy development, and coordination of the various policing and law enforcement initiatives throughout British Columbia.

The current Police Act only recognizes two policing schemes: independent municipal police departments for municipalities over 5,000 population, and the provincial police force, which in British Columbia is the RCMP. The need for public accountability by holders of police appointments goes beyond the regular members of municipal police departments and the RCMP. For a number of years there has been a need for other police appointments in British Columbia to supplement the enforcement activities of the established police departments and the provincial police force.

[G. Brewin in the chair.]

The only means by which those police appointments could be made was by using special provincial constable provisions of the act, which were enacted as a means of supplementing the provincial police force. Those provisions are appropriate for the purpose for which they were enacted. However, use of special provincial constable appointments to empower numerous employees of entities outside the provincial force is no longer appropriate or manageable. The current list of these special provincial constable appointments numbers over 500, and only a few are directly employed and supervised by the provincial force. The others are employed and supervised by Crown corporations, branches of government ministries and aboriginal policing units. Special provincial constable appointments are held by persons exercising various levels of police authority, ranging from SPCA officers and SkyTrain security officers to aboriginal police units.

To ensure a consistent application of public accountability and policing principles, two new levels of supplemental policing and law enforcement organization and appointments are introduced in these amendments: designated policing units and designated law enforcement units. Most of the current special provincial constable appointments would be converted to one of these new appointment categories, depending on the level of authority required. These new categories are supplemental to, not replacements for, the existing statutory provincial and municipal policing structures. The structural requirements of each of these new units will be patterned after those required for a municipal police department, including accountability to an appointed police board, discipline and oversight provisions.

The amendments also include provisions to enable regulation of the use of force by police officers. As well, there are consolidated references to the setting of standards for training, qualifications for appointments and other elements that support accountability for police officers in their public service roles. These provisions respond to concerns expressed by many citizens before, during and after the commission of inquiry into policing in British Columbia.

The dissolution of the British Columbia Police Commission and the creation of the new statutory offices of police complaints commissioner and director of police services, as well as the new designated policing units and designated law enforcement units, result in numerous minor consequential amendments. During the course of these amendments a number of existing sections were restructured with modern language for better clarity and understanding without substantive change. Obviously we will get into the debate of each of those during committee stage.

I also want to add one more thought to this discussion, and that is that I had a meeting with the new Solicitor General this morning, and I impressed upon him the need to have one complaint process for all police officers in British Columbia. I have asked him to look at that issue. I'm going to be writing a letter to him. As we said initially when we announced these changes publicly, we want to make sure that at the end of the day, all police officers in British Columbia are governed by the same complaint process -- that it's harmonized -- because people on the street don't see any difference between a police officer from a municipal police force and an RCMP officer. To be honest, until I became a lawyer, I didn't know there were two kinds of police officers in British Columbia.

I think it's important that we press the federal government to make some changes to the federal legislation, to make sure that our complaint process under this new legislation may also apply to the RCMP officers in British Columbia. It may be difficult to achieve, but it is not impossible. I want to be making a push in that direction. That concludes my remarks.

[8:15]

There are many challenges facing police forces in British Columbia. The list of those challenges grows rather than diminishes as we become an increasingly diverse society: a larger population, ever-increasing and more difficult problems of law enforcement, the types of crime that we're talking about coming from offshore, issues of hate crime, prostitution. These are all important questions. These are issues that the Attorney General and I have canvassed in the estimates debate of his ministry this year. I'm sure that we will return to them on an ongoing basis. They're all part of the context within which all people who are peace officers in British Columbia have to do their job. It is a difficult job, and as I say, I don't think it's getting any easier.

When we look at a bill which represents a pretty significant amendment to the way the police in British Columbia -- or some of them, at any rate -- will be governed, we should do so from a perspective that recognizes that British Columbians are, in the main, awfully well served by the men and women who police our streets. What we are trying to do, when we look at a bill like this, is to make a good thing better. That is the challenge before us: to look at this bill to see whether it achieves those objectives.

Perhaps the first point to make about the bill is the last point that the Attorney General made, which is to recognize that because of the structure of policing in British Columbia, this bill has limited operation. There are 12 municipal police forces. The complaints process which this bill creates is a large and significant one that is, in fact, almost overwhelming in its complexity, or at least in its detail. Nonetheless, it is a complaints process that will only act and operate with respect to the 12 municipal police forces; it does not affect the balance of the police forces in British Columbia.

[ Page 5686 ]

As I listened to the Attorney General comment on the efforts that he apparently has underway to attempt to address that situation, I was thinking of the fact that we were here only last week debating another bill where that issue of the interrelationship between municipal police forces and the police services provided in British Columbia by the RCMP was also raised. On that occasion last week, we were debating the bill that will allow new guidelines to be implemented regulating high-speed car chases and the like. As I understand the view of government and the Attorney General, when we pass that bill -- assuming that happens -- we will have, at least in that area, created a process that will allow one consistent set of rules to exist to govern all high-speed car chases.

That is a step forward, not because one size fits all, but because what the Attorney General says is true: British Columbians generally are probably not as aware as they should be of the fact that we are policed by a wide and diverse variety of police forces. It is unfortunate that when it comes to the question of trying to hold police to account for their failure to live up to the standards that we have for them, whether that be by way of an incident where someone breaches the code of professional conduct, a situation where someone fails to attend and do his or her job or issues of the sort that will become policy and service complaints. . . . All of these kinds of issues are issues where members of the public would be better served by at least a consistent entry point into the process of calling police decisions into account.

I am glad to hear that the Attorney General has begun a dialogue with the new Solicitor General. I am sorry that the dialogue has not been more productive to date. I wish the Attorney General well in pursuing that. I can promise him that I will be reminding him of this issue from time to time and look forward to progress reports from him on it. We have those limits on what this bill accomplishes, but with all of those limits, the bill is nonetheless a pretty significant piece of legislation.

Any organization of a bill this large into just three components is probably a bit arbitrary, but there are really three issues or three subject matters that I want to talk about for a little while. The first is the issue of organization. That is the issue around the organization of what I'll call ancillary police forces: those that will become the designated policing units. The second is the issue of governance, and this has to do with part 8 of the bill and basically doing away with the Police Commission and the addition of some significant powers and responsibilities onto the list of powers and responsibilities which the director of police services has within the Ministry of Attorney General. That is an issue of governance that I want to talk about. Then thirdly, there is the complaints process, which is the biggest reason why the bill is so long and is an issue that needs to be talked about a little bit.

There are, as the Attorney General said, some other important things in this bill. Some are consequential amendments. Some are amendments that are intended to update language. I note one particular one that I want to pause on for a moment, because it has been brought to my attention by some of the police officers in the police departments that I've spoken to, trying to get some sense from them about what this bill means for them.

I note that in section 42 of the bill, the draftsperson seeks to revise, and in some respects enlarge, the regulation-making power which the cabinet has in terms of certain aspects of policing. One that catches my eye is subparagraph (t), which is regulations "respecting the use of force by a class of officers in the performance of their duties."

Here one sees issues around training: retraining in the use of physical force, training in emergency response situations, training in force as a means of restraining individuals, training or retraining in the use of firearms and ammunitions and a host of other things like that, and training in the use of police dogs. There may be some expansion here in the regulation-making power, but at any rate, these are clearly important powers that the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council has been given here. I don't think we ought to pass them by without noting that they're there and saying that we'll probably have something to say about them when we get to committee stage debate.

Let me talk, then, about the three major subject matters of this bill. First, the organization point. I have very little to say about that. The provisions of the bill do seem to me to achieve a more regular structure with respect to the policing units that I call ancillary police units -- everybody from SkyTrain police to bylaw enforcement officers -- and provide a context within which there can be structured growth and advancement in the area of aboriginal policing. When government moves down the path of providing aboriginal communities with the opportunity to police themselves, it's important that there be some structure for that. The provisions in this bill that create police boards and ensure that there is some consistency in the way these police forces are structured, are generally good. I don't think I'm going to say anything more about that part of this bill.

I am going to say a bit more about what I call the governance issues. I wish I knew more about the history of policing in British Columbia than I do. I'm told that if you looked at the models of policing and police services in British Columbia as they have developed over the last 150 years, you would find two quite distinct models of police services.

On the one hand, there is the model of municipal policing, which I think may have as its origins the tradition of village, community and city policing in England. There we have a model where the police force is a police force of a community -- accountable to the community, with a police board in the community that is largely made up of members of the community, and where the police board provides overall direction to and supervision of the delivery of police services within the community. There is a police chief who is a largely autonomous figure hired by the police board. That person has significant say and authority and autonomy over the kinds of decisions that need to be made around service, organization, practices and standard operating procedures -- things that determine how policing is delivered in the communities of British Columbia. That is really what this model is all about. This model is a model of community-based policing decisions. I think it is the model that lies at the heart of the 12 municipal police forces in British Columbia.

Then we have a second model, a model that I understand is sometimes referred to as the paramilitary model, which has as its origins the Irish constabulary. In British Columbia the RCMP is the police force that fits this second model. It's structured quite differently. It's a police force which is much more directly politically accountable to senior government. In fact, the RCMP as a national police force reports to the Solicitor General of Canada. This is, in a way, the antithesis of community-based policing. The development of this model of policing is, of course, an important part of the history of western Canada and how we came to be settled in the way we did and came to have a culture based on law and order. But it is quite a different model, and it is a model that I think, while it has its own strength, undoubtedly needs to be seen as a model which is, generally speaking, less responsive to the needs of community policing.

[ Page 5687 ]

So we have these two models. Now, what this bill does, it seems to me, is to erode this distinction in some respects, and I think it may be important. What it really does is erode some of the traditional autonomy of municipal police forces. I think it does that in ways which are perhaps more structural or conceptual at this point, and we'll see over time whether they become real. The way it does it is by putting an end to the police commission, which is a body outside government, and increasing the authority given to the director of police services, who is essentially a civil servant in the Ministry of the Attorney General.

[8:30]

I think there may be some good reasons why the police commission was no longer serving the function that it was originally intended to serve. There may not be all that many good reasons. There may also be some reasons why the police commission ought to have been retained so that it could continue to provide some of these functions in a way that is autonomous of government and outside government. But instead, what we will have is the expanded powers of the director of police services within the Ministry of Attorney General.

When you look at the list of powers and rights and so on that the director of police services will have, it's a pretty long list. It starts at section 35 of the bill, and it goes up until section 45 of the bill. It starts, I think, in quite a potentially important place. The starting point in section 35, section 39(1) is the statement that: "On behalf of the minister and subject to the direction of the minister, the director is responsible for superintending policing and law enforcement functions in British Columbia."

So we have an overall oversight role, a superintending role, and we have in the succeeding sections a series of elaborations of these functions. They include the functions of: inspecting and reporting on the quality and standard of policing -- inspecting policing operations and procedures, evaluating programs for training, evaluating standards of policing -- consulting with and providing information and advice to the minister on matters related to policing, and making recommendations to the minister about appointments to a board.

So here we have a provision, if I could pause here, where although we know that the municipal police boards will continue, we see that this unelected official, who is essentially a civil servant, will be making recommendations to the minister about appointments to police boards.

They go on. There's the power to make recommendations on the use of force, to assist in the coordination of policing and law enforcement and to report on the activities of police forces. Then there are specific provisions that require that the director make rules of practice and procedure with respect to all of his or her many functions. That gives him the power to conduct studies on his own initiative, to undertake reports, to undertake inquiries and to undertake special investigations into a whole host of subjects.

So we have somebody who is in a fairly important position in relation to the overall delivery of police services in British Columbia. I guess the question I've been asked and the concern that's been raised is: is this bill creating somebody who will become, essentially, a super police chief? I think that would be an unfortunate step. I think it is obviously important that there be administrative coordination -- that there be an official within the Ministry of Attorney General who has responsibilities with respect to police services -- but I think there is a concern about the loss of local autonomy for the delivery of police services if the director of police services exercises with too much enthusiasm all of the powers that will be given to that person under the bill. But these are, admittedly, structural issues. It's hard to say ahead of time whether these things will work or not. I think that sometimes the best one can do is to identify concerns.

I want to turn, then, to the third major area of the bill, which is the complaints issue. I think that the Attorney General's summary of it was accurate in the sense that what we're going to have is another independent officer of the Legislative Assembly. We're going to have a police complaints commissioner with general oversight over the police complaints process. I think that what we're going to have, and what has happened here, is an important policy decision, which is that in the first instance and, hopefully, in the majority of cases, police forces will continue to investigate their own members for their own failings. I'm sure that this is an issue that we will canvass in debate. Why was this particular model chosen and will it be a better model than, say, the model of an independent special investigative unit? I'm inclined to think at this point that the approach in principle taken here is a good one, at least in terms of issues like cost and efficiency, and probably also in terms of considerations like giving the police a vested interest, if you will, in ensuring that they maintain high standards. That can sometimes be lost if you create an outside body which does all of the work. You may have a situation where people no longer feel responsible to do a good job for themselves and instead pass that responsibility outside -- with, perhaps in the long term, unfortunate consequences.

I have spent a fair bit of time talking to police chiefs, police officers, the representatives of police officers, the representatives of police chiefs and other people who are stakeholders in this process: the process of ensuring that members of the public have a fair and expeditious process available to them of ensuring that their complaints of police wrongdoing or failure to act are handled properly. It appears to me, from the research I've done, that there was a fair bit of work done to try and achieve a consensus on the major principles represented in what will become part 9 of the Police Act. All parties in this consensus-building process had to give something and compromise towards the goal of achieving and building a new complaint process that would be an improvement over its predecessor.

As I understand it, there was and is a consensus with respect to the major principles that are embodied in this new complaints process: consensus that it was appropriate that the police continued to investigate themselves; consensus that it was appropriate to construct the position of a new and independent officer of the Legislature who would have general oversight over the handling of police complaints; consensus that there was a need to ensure that people, especially the respondent police officers, had access to a full and proper public hearing of complaints in order to ensure that their own concerns were dealt with fairly. I think, as I understand it, that there was consensus around all of these major points that are represented in this bill.

[ Page 5688 ]

The result, as I've said, is that complaints will continue to be investigated by the police. The alternative of a so-called "rat squad" has been rejected for the reasons I said earlier.

With respect to discipline decisions, the old boards of inquiry are gone, and in their place the first-instance decision-maker on discipline issues will be the chief constable. The respondent officers will have an automatic right to a full public hearing of discipline decisions to a provincial court judge. I think these are reasonably good forward steps in pursuit of the goal of trying to redesign a process that will address some of the complaints that existed with respect to the old process and that were the subject matter of so much of Mr. Justice Oppal's recommendations.

Having said that there was and is a relatively general consensus on the major features of the new complaint process, I'm not sure that the same level of consensus exists with respect to the details of how the process will work. Frankly, the task of embarking upon a consideration of those details is a bit daunting. I think we're talking about 30 or so pages of this bill. It is an extraordinarily comprehensive code for the processing of complaints. Just the issue of how complaints are to be categorized is sufficiently complex, if not too complex, for ordinary mortals.

We're going to have public trust defaults and internal discipline defaults and complaints and service or policy complaints, and each of these types of complaints will have its own processes: its own complaint initiation process, its own investigation process, its own decision-making process. To add fuel to the fire of complexity, it appears that any one particular complaint can fall into one or more, if not all, of the three categories. The result is that we would find that a particular allegation may actually wend its way through the system in three different ways with different rules of procedure, different time lines, different response requirements and different decision-makers along the way. We're going to have to spend some time figuring out why all of this process has been erected and whether its complexity is necessary. Those are probably issues for committee stage of debate.

When I go back and consider the fact that all of the people, the stakeholders involved in the consultation process which led to this bill, are really, in the general, large-picture sense, onside with this project, I don't think much good would be served by our now saying: "No, this long process of Justice Oppal's review, his recommendations, the attempt to draft the new act, the consultation process, the consensus building, all of that is for naught, and we should throw it out and start again." I'm not personally convinced that that is necessary or desirable, but I do think that we are going to have to spend a bit of time looking at some of the details of this.

Before ending my remarks at the second reading stage of debate on this bill, I want to address two particular issues that have arisen and that are not, as I see it, addressed by the amendments which the Attorney General has placed on the order paper. The first is the question of the salary or remuneration for the police complaints commissioner.

Deputy Speaker: Hon. member, I hesitate to interrupt, but I thought I should point out that the green light is on.

G. Plant: Oh, I can be the designated speaker. But I may finish; we never know. Now that I know I have time yawning before me, think of all of the important issues that could be raised. There are many of them. This is a fascinating structure of rules. I almost wish I were engaged in private practice and in the business of being able to advise people on how this will all work. But back to the point I was making a moment ago.

[8:45]

The second issue is the issue of transition. I have heard quite a few expressions of concern about that. The old process had among its deficiencies the fact that complaints could take an extraordinarily long time to resolve. As I understand it, that was partly a function of the fact that the old boards of inquiry were staffed by volunteers and that oftentimes it was difficult -- it is difficult -- to get people together. I'm told that there are complaints working their way through the system that are four, five and six years old. Clearly that is not an acceptable system. Clearly there needs to be a change to the system to ensure that complaints are handled more expeditiously.

But what do we do with the complaints that are in the system now? Here I think it's important to recognize that while I've talked about the structure of rules and its complexity and how we're going to have this new process, there are in that new structure some significant issues of process -- processes that change, issues around compellability, issues around whether and when officers must be required to give their version of events. The process will change quite significantly as it moves from what might be described as a classic sort of quasi-criminal process into a process that in many respects will look much more like a labour relations model. That process has significance for the outcome of complaints.

My concern is that it really is not going to be possible and, more importantly, would not be fair to take all of the complaints that are currently in the system and immediately put them into the new system. So the second issue that I want to leave with the Attorney General for his consideration is for him to look at the business of what is usually referred to as grandfathering -- that is, to enact transition rules that will ensure that complaints that are in the system now can be processed to their conclusion under the old rules, so that those rules which created the structure of expectations around process at the beginning of the complaint will continue to apply to the end of the complaint.

[ Page 5689 ]

I know that there may be practical reasons why that's difficult. If there are, I will look forward to hearing them from the Attorney General either now or later. But I can inform the Attorney General that this is a concern that has come to me from police chiefs and police departments, which in other respects have much to say that is good about this bill. It is a concern which strikes me as having some merit.

As I say, this is a large bill. It's going to take some time to understand all of it. I look forward to spending that time when we get to committee stage debate.

R. Coleman: I'm pleased to rise to speak to this bill, as well, this evening. I always have the distinct pleasure of following the member for Richmond-Steveston, who usually canvasses practically everything that I had on my mind with regards to his very comprehensive comments.

First of all, I'd like to address the fact that the Attorney General has had some discussion with the Solicitor General with regards to this particular legislation and this bill, simply because in British Columbia we experience something rather unique in police work across Canada. Not many people are very much aware that the majority, the largest percentage, of the RCMP that are posted in this country are posted in British Columbia. I think it's something like 25 percent of the entire force.

We're the only jurisdiction where the RCMP are literally acting as a large city police force in many of our jurisdictions. In fact, out of the 12 municipal police forces we have in the province, a number of them are substantially smaller than the police forces in some of the detachments that the RCMP actually police in this province today. So as a result of that, the RCMP have a function that is very similar in this province to the municipal forces. That's where the key to any discussions with the Solicitor General should be aimed towards.

Simply put, if you could take an example of a province like Alberta, the major cities in Alberta are all effectively policed by city police forces. The RCMP performs a rural and federal function within that particular province. In Ontario, the only function they perform is a federal function, the same as in Quebec, where they have their own provincial police forces as well as their own city police forces.

The one thing that the RCMP has done -- and this is in cooperation with other police forces in this particular province -- is that they've adapted to city policing. They are a police force that does perform those functions. Their community policing offices, block parent programs, school programs and school constables mirror the programs that we experience in Delta, New Westminster and Vancouver, where we have these other police forces.

In order for this to work in the long run for everybody concerned -- this type of a system that we're trying to put into place today -- there has to be some buy-in by the large police forces doing the majority of our policing in the province. It's very key that we can be successful in that, although I do wish you luck. You are coming up against a paramilitary organization, governed by a federal statute, who have a very strong belief: "The law is here, and this is where it stops. Please don't come into our jurisdiction and try and tell us how to operate our particular organization." That's born of tradition.

My colleague spoke of the tradition and the history of policing in British Columbia. That's born of tradition too, the military side of that particular organization. We also have to remember that at one time we did have a provincial police force in this province. That provincial police force was disbanded; it was taken over by the RCMP at one point in time. So we've gone through that particular cycle once, and to look at a reversal may be something that may have to happen in the future.

Also, with regards to our city policing, there may come a day when the federal agencies just are not able to provide the personnel. As our population grows, they may not be able to provide the personnel to police the larger jurisdictions in this province and maintain their responsibilities elsewhere in the country. The time may come where we actually end up having to make recommendations to some of our municipalities that they really can't meet. . . . The federal government won't be able to meet their needs in the long term.

The important part of this particular legislation, though, is the fact that something took place here that hasn't always taken place in all the legislation we've debated in this House -- that is, there has been consultation with the stakeholders involved. It's important that the people who are affected by a piece of legislation and a structure that's going to be put in place have the opportunity to have some input -- how they think it should work -- into the guidelines, because they're the people that have to deal with it -- in addition to trying to get to some arrangement where it's best for the public interest.

I'd like to deal with, first of all, a number of things with regards to the legislation. The first one is with regards to the designated policing units and the designated law enforcement units. It's long been a concern of many police agencies, of other agencies of government and of the public with regards to what we call the special constable provision or the provision of different policing powers being given to individuals in the community. The minister referred to everything from the SPCA to aboriginal policing in his opening remarks.

What I like about this particular situation is the powers that are being given to basically be able to put some standards of training and of practice onto the particular portion of policing that is outside the normal realm of police work. The reason for that is because that will probably raise the standards of our qualifications, of our performance and, hopefully, of our investigation capabilities in these particular areas.

That's important, because those services -- and the qualifications and standards of training that those people have in order to provide those services -- have to be at a point where the public can find that the performance they're getting is acceptable, that the complaint process is acceptable, that the follow-through is acceptable and that, if we are getting into some form of an enforcement measure, the enforcement measures are at such a point that we, during enforcement, are able to actually gain success simply because our people are trained in proper investigative techniques.

With regard to the director of police services, I found it rather interesting. . . . I want to go over the many functions this particular director is going to have, because I find that what we're going to ask of this particular individual rather incredible. We're going to ask them to inspect and report on the quality and standard of policing and law enforcement, including inspecting police operations and procedures, evaluating training programs and evaluating standards of policing. Just on the training side, the Justice Institute has a major job in moving and being able to be flexible and to grow within that, and the director has this huge function facing him. They also have to consult and advise the minister, chief constables, chief officers, boards and committees on matters related to policing and law enforcement. They have to recommend appointments to police boards; recommend minimum standards for selection of officers; make recommendations about the use of force by officers, which is often covered by provisions of the Criminal Code; assist in the coordination of policing and law enforcement; inspect records, operations and systems of administration of any policing operations; conduct studies on matters concerning policing, law enforcement and crime prevention; and conduct inquiries and special investigations. It's a rather incredible job, frankly, and I don't know where we're going to find an individual qualified to perform this function.

[ Page 5690 ]

The one thing I didn't note in a briefing session with regard to this bill and that I found somewhat disturbing was that one of the members of the minister's staff made the comment: "The one thing we know is that the person that's going to be the director of police services will not be an ex-policeman." We have therefore already prejudiced ourselves with regard to ex-policemen. And the joking comment went around the table: "I guess that eliminates judges and lawyers as well, and people that have worked within the court system and within the criminal justice system." I think it's important to realize that we have to be open-minded about the individual that we're going to select for this particular position. They are going to have to be a pretty well-rounded individual, and I think it is very important that we take that into account.

I think the complaints process is important, because I think we've taken two portions of complaint systems. . . . I will paraphrase them as simply as possible, as I understand them: we have a complaint that is basically a managerial or an administrative complaint about a member of an organization -- a policeman -- and we have a complaint that is more serious in nature relative to a harsher discipline that is required. One would be a management function; the other would be more of a disciplinary function within the system. That is new. That is something that. . . .

In the past, complaints against the force were complaints against the force, whether it be the municipal force or a police force, and all of them were basically handled in the same vein. I think that what this does is set out a formula whereby we can manage our policemen and our police personnel better from the standpoint of expanding their ability to do their job by using the disciplinary and investigative process, both to their advantage and to the public's. I think that's very key in this particular situation.

The other thing that is important here as we go through this legislation is the timetables that we're starting to set for performance with regard to complaints that are going to be coming into this system. One of the frustrations you'll find out there with regard to complaints against the police or a police function is the length of time it takes, first of all, to have the investigation completed; and secondly, the lack of communication back to the general public with regard to what action was taken, how the investigation was handled, what the results of the investigation were and how the complainant is being dealt with.

[9:00]

As we know as politicians, it's very difficult to maintain that level of confidence and trust within any constituency. And that's what police have -- they have a constituency within their community too, and they try very hard to maintain that constituency and that relationship with the community. They as much as us want to see that there's fairness in the system -- but also reaction within the system so that the public will have the belief that if there's something wrong, they'll fix it and that it's not something they'll leave lying around.

The interesting thing about the processes was. . . . When I dealt with the code of ethics, I went to the disciplinary or corrective measures. This is where I found the refreshing side of this particular movement within this legislation, as far as where it can go. Of course, under section 18 of the code, you do have the options of dismissal, reduction of rank, transfer or reassignment, suspension without pay, direction to work under close supervision, written reprimands, verbal reprimands and advice.

But there's also the option that they can consider disciplinary or corrective measures with regards to counselling, assistance in anger management, assistance with regards to maybe alcohol or drug abuse, or that sort of thing -- work-related disciplines. It also allows them to enter into some corrective measures in order to fix the problem and maintain their position or their job. Any person that has ever worked in a high-stress job will realize there are times when the stress actually affects your personal life and the way you personally behave. There is opportunity within this particular code to address those issues so that not everybody is judged to be bad and not everybody is judged to be disciplined to the max. I think that's very important.

I would like to say to the minister that obviously I have a number of questions that I would like to canvass when we get into committee stage. As my colleague said, it is a very thick bill, but to canvass them all this evening would take collectively way too long. I think the important thing is that we're dealing with something that is going to take policing to a different organizational level, a different governance level and a different complaints level. Important at the organization level is that some structure is put into place so everybody is playing on the same page. If we can get the other police organizations in the province to do the same, that's important. If we can increase the training for our special constables and special policing units, that's a bonus. If we can increase the governance with regards to how we govern and if we can be more reactive and quicker with our governance and our reaction to complaints and the handling of them in a more fair and balanced manner, that's a plus. Obviously, if the complaints can be handled and the communication plan that comes out from the complaints to the community is stronger, that's also a plus.

I think that as we go through this bill, we will find that the consultation that the minister has had with the various departments has been beneficial to the drafting of this particular bill. We will find, obviously, some minor flaws within the bill as we go through it, which we can address in committee stage, and I look forward to those debates.

[ Page 5691 ]

M. Coell: I wish to offer the following comments on Bill 16, Police Amendment Act, 1997. Briefly, I had the privilege of chairing a police board -- which I know you did, Madam Speaker -- and also the ability to provide fairly extensive input to Justice Oppal when he prepared his report to government. I can say that I agree with very much of this Police Amendment Act. In many instances it does not go far enough. There were many parts of the Oppal commission report that I would have liked to have seen in this act, and I'm disappointed that many of his recommendations have not gone forward at this point. Hopefully, they will in the future.

I would, in speaking in favour of this act, like to point out two or three areas that I think the Attorney General should pay some attention to over the next year as this act is implemented. It appears to me that citizens in British Columbia are going to become aware of sort of a two-tiered policing complaint system. You may live in one part of the province and have a complaint about a police department in another area, and the complaints procedures will be totally different from the area you live in. I see that as a problem and as something that people will find difficult.

From my experience as a chair of a police board, I can tell you that my understanding and belief of our police forces in British Columbia is that they are superior. They are staffed with very qualified and excellent officers. What I found extremely important -- and that I see were not touched in this amendment act -- were the police board functions and that the chair of the police board is an appointment of the mayor, from municipal government. That was one that I'm pleased to see was not altered in the Police Amendment Act.

The other area that I see some problem with in the transition is the director of police services, who is an unelected person appointed by cabinet or the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council. I hope that this person would not be seen as a political appointment, a party hack with a large salary. It's important that this position be given some prominence, and I hope the province advertises and actually searches for a person to fill the director of police services position. It will become an increasingly powerful position in dealing with the police chiefs and police board chairs and, indeed, the departments. I would like to see that it isn't, once again, the provincial government centralizing control over local government. I agree with the complaints process in this act, and I offer the observation that once you start going down this route with the director of police services having power, you may find that indeed municipal forces become less and less powerful and that the provincial Attorney General becomes more so. I offer that as. . . . You may go down that route; you may not. To me we've started on a direction, and you must be cognizant of that.

Again, in speaking in favour of this act, there are many things in Judge Oppal's report that I wanted to see. I hope that the Attorney General will look favourably at bringing them in. I would have liked to have seen more support for victims in the province, more front-line police officers employed directly by municipal governments, a more flexible work schedule for the officers that we have, that new officers who come on can meet the needs of municipalities and the use of reserves. Those are the sorts of things that I was hoping for, but again, in the Oppal report there were many things covered, not all of them in the Police Amendment Act.

I offer positive comments and a couple of areas for the Attorney General to be cognizant of in the transition process to this bill. I thank you for the opportunity to speak.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

G. Wilson: I intend to keep my remarks fairly short and focused on only one or two issues. By way of introduction in my remarks, I would say that it's disappointing to me, having read Justice Oppal's recommendations, that what we see here is a significant watering down of what those recommendations were. It is interesting to go through and see what was adopted and what was not. Clearly what we are seeing in this amendment is an improvement, and I don't try to diminish that. One of the clear areas in which there have been improvements made, to certainly give credit where it's due, is on the matter of timing and the issue of how these complaints will be dealt with. Those are all very positive.

On principle, let me just say that the bill is lacking with respect to the enforcement mechanisms that need to be in place in order for complaints to be dealt with, not simply at the discretion of the Ministry of Attorney General director or the Attorney General, but by matter of necessity, by requirement. The difficulty I have here is that in fact there are really no enforcement requirements provisions. In the language throughout the entire bill, it's a question of discretionary action being taken for the most part, and there is nothing that binds it.

The area that I would focus on the most -- and that in committee I'd like to hear about from the minister -- is a complaint that I had with the original act. It's one that is reintroduced and maintained in this act -- that is, the act expressly says that section 5 of the Offence Act does not apply.

The difficulty I have with that is that if you are going to eliminate any provision within the Police Act to be bound by the letter and language of section 5 of the Offence Act, which is the general offence. . . . I'll read it into the record: "A person who contravenes an enactment by doing an act that it forbids, or omitting to do an act that it requires to be done, commits an offence against the enactment." Failing to have that in place, it seems to me, provides a wide level of discretion in terms of the dealing with and handling of many of these complaints. That was an issue that I took with this bill before, and I notice in reading through section 75 in the revised bill, which is covered under section 44 of this bill, that once again it is reinstated with section 5 being repealed. Essentially, new section 44 reads that "the Offence Act does not apply to this Act or to the regulations." That's a big problem that I'd like to have discussed in committee.

In searching through and trying to research this, I noticed that there is a quote that is attributed to the Attorney General on this matter. I'm really reluctant to take as gospel quotes that you get out of the media, but it's my understanding that the Attorney General has already been approached on this question and that it's his feeling or his belief that there are plenty of provisions with respect to the existing act that will take care of that. I'll be anxious to know specifically what provisions the Attorney General refers to that would allow us to take comfort in the fact that section 5 of the Offence Act does not apply.

I would close my remarks, because I really think that the volume and the complexity of this bill are going to require us to do a great deal of scrutiny in committee. In principle, it's certainly good that we're starting to look at this seriously, but one would have to ask why we need such an enormously complex bill to deal with these matters.

[ Page 5692 ]

[9:15]

With that, hon. Speaker, the very best thing we can do is deal with this in committee, because there are such enormous complexities here that anything beyond that really just becomes rhetoric -- and we certainly wouldn't want to get engaged in that in this chamber.

J. Dalton: I have a few comments to put on the record. Again, these will be more for committee -- to alert the Attorney -- than what we could deal with here. Firstly, we should all, of course, continue to give acknowledgement to Justice Oppal. After all, we've been carrying his report around for three years. It's certainly pleasing to him, I know, to now see many of his recommendations coming forward.

I've had occasion to talk to two lawyers in particular about the discipline proceedings that are contained in this act -- in fact, 30 pages of this act are the disciplinary matters -- and both lawyers, who are very conversant with these issues, are of the opinion that they are, as one lawyer described it "the discipline proceedings from hell." So I'm just alerting the Attorney that in these 30 pages of many sections in part 9 of the bill, we may be creating a bit of a monster.

I haven't had a chance yet, but I'm going to look up this case tomorrow. If the Attorney is not aware of the case of Joplin v. City of Vancouver, that case was cited to me by one of these lawyers. It's a judgment of Justice McEachern, as he then was, who is now the Chief Justice of British Columbia. Apparently, that case was the issue of right to counsel when a police officer was being disciplined, and the issue of natural justice was one of the things that Justice McEachern dealt with in his judgment. So I think we all have to be aware of issues of that nature.

Other than that, it is nice to see that many of the recommendations of Justice Oppal are now coming forward in this bill and some other bills that we've either already dealt with in this House or will be dealing with as we proceed.

Those are my remarks for second reading, and at the committee stage we will address some of these issues in more detail.

Hon. U. Dosanjh: Much has been said and I believe much will be said during the committee stage, and I'd rather deal with it at that time. Therefore I move second reading of this bill.

Motion approved.

Bill 16, Police Amendment Act, 1997, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I call second reading of Bill 15.

PHARMACISTS, PHARMACY OPERATIONS AND
DRUG SCHEDULING AMENDMENT ACT, 1997
(second reading)

Hon. J. MacPhail: I am pleased to present to the House the Pharmacists, Pharmacy Operations and Drug Scheduling Amendment Act, 1997.

This bill is a step forward in the government's efforts to improve patient care with the responsible use of technology. PharmaNet is a computerized information system linking all of the nearly 700 community pharmacies in British Columbia. The system contains prescription drug profiles of patients. Whenever a prescription is filled at a community pharmacy in B.C., the information is recorded on PharmaNet. This information is then available whenever a new prescription is being filled, so that pharmacists can see the drug history of the person before them and advise them of potentially dangerous drug interactions, overuse of medication, or to provide any other useful professional advice to allow better patient care. Government requires all community pharmacies to be connected to PharmaNet to ensure that complete information is collected in the prescription drug profiles of patients and to enable the improved administration of Pharmacare benefits.

PharmaNet protects the health of British Columbians by identifying potentially harmful medication interactions. It's convenient for patients who take prescription drugs, because the system automatically calculates when people have reached their Pharmacare deductible, and it ensures that they receive their Pharmacare benefit without having to save the receipts and apply. And it's good for government and taxpayers, because the system helps reduce health care costs resulting from inappropriate medication use and adverse effects, and it helps detect and prevent prescription drug fraud and abuse.

There have been over 30,000 reported cases of intervention by pharmacists where a prescription that was potentially harmful to the patient was not dispensed. Of these 30,000, nearly 5,000 prescriptions were not dispensed due to suspected fraud or abuse.

From the beginning of its development, the PharmaNet system was intended to be expanded from use in pharmacies, as exists today, to other health professionals, including medical practitioners and emergency room personnel. These legislative amendments will allow for that expansion and will provide for the continued protection of privacy of the information on the PharmaNet system, ensuring that it is used only for the purposes for which it was intended.

Given the success of both the information and privacy aspects of the system to date, our government believes that it is now time to proceed with the planned expansion of the system to other health care providers.

The benefits from such an expansion of PharmaNet are clear. Expansion to hospital emergency rooms will provide immediate and relevant information to emergency room staff when dealing with persons who may not be able to present their medical history. Expansion to physicians will allow physicians to have full, current prescription drug information before them and will allow them to diagnose and treat patients more effectively in their office. The extension of PharmaNet to health care providers and hospital emergency rooms will be voluntary, although it is my hope that ultimately all of the approximately 100 emergency rooms in the province will decide to connect with the health care benefits of this information system.

[ Page 5693 ]

In order to ensure that enhancements to patient care are maximized and that confidentiality of patient information is protected, government intends to work with health professionals to create a number of pilot projects, initially in hospital emergency rooms and later in physicians' offices. As I have emphasized, our government is concerned that this important tool for improving patient care continues to be subject to strict conditions protecting patient privacy. It is our intention, through the establishment of these pilot projects, to ensure that appropriate controls and procedures are developed. The office of the B.C. freedom-of-information and protection-of-privacy commissioner will be represented in the pilot project's working group, along with government officials and health professionals.

This bill restates the duty of confidentiality for any person who obtains information: that they must not disclose this information to any other person except as allowed by law. This will help to ensure that government can control access to the information and impose conditions to protect confidentiality. By this amendment the government is ensuring that unless there is expressed power to do otherwise, information must be kept confidential.

An amendment to the section establishing the purposes of the PharmaNet system has been included to provide specifically that the PharmaNet system is to be used for the purpose of providing therapeutic treatment and care of patients by persons to whom access is given. This section is being added to clearly tie access to information of the PharmaNet system to the purpose of providing patient care. As with the amendments to the confidentiality provision, any person with access is subject to the duty of confidentiality.

For the purpose of providing access to health care providers to assist them in delivering good patient care, government will be given the power to impose restrictions on that access. This is appropriate, because the power to impose such a wide range of controls is beyond the scope of the PharmaNet committee that exists now. Access to the information on the PharmaNet system will be determined under a new section in the act that provides for access to be given to pharmacists, which is currently the case, and to physicians and other persons as determined by the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council.

In the case of access by physicians and other persons such as emergency room staff, Bill 15 provides for complete control by the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council over how many physicians, what classes of physicians and even, if necessary, which specific individuals should be given access. An important part of the bill is that any access which is granted to a physician or any other person is subject to the controls the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council sees as being necessary to effectively protect the confidentiality of personal information and the integrity of the PharmaNet system.

I would also emphasize that in addition to the restrictions which the government may place on persons with access, professional colleges, such as the College of Physicians and Surgeons, will be asked to develop appropriate bylaws governing their members regarding the use of the PharmaNet system. I am confident that with the professional rules governing health care providers and the protections imposed by government, the benefits of the PharmaNet system can be delivered safely to patients in British Columbia.

S. Hawkins: I will keep my comments brief and save them for committee stage. It's my understanding that the applications of the PharmaNet system were going to be extended more broadly. The principle of the bill, on the face of it -- sharing information for patient benefit and safety -- is a good consideration. However, from what I recall of the implementation of PharmaNet, it was fraught with problems, not the least of which was the extra cost to those it was imposed upon.

Now it's going to be extended to other systems. I understand that the emergency rooms in hospitals are going to be the first of a number of pilot projects. First of all, I'm concerned about who's going to pay to implement these projects. I certainly hope that regional health boards and hospitals will get the resources that they need to properly put the system into place.

Secondly, I'm especially concerned, as the minister rightly explains, about confidentiality and accessibility to patient information. We certainly recognize the need to balance the interests of patient safety, but we also need to consider the confidential nature of the information that's going to be shared. Certainly those of us who have had little or more experience in working with computers know how easily information can go astray.

I think about the hectic environment of the emergency room and the million and one things that go on there. I know that we talk about giving people safety access codes, but in my mind I still see the scenario of working on a patient, perhaps needing to access the computer and seeing a little piece of surgical tape stuck to the computer screen with someone's access code on it to get into the computer. I have seen that in other places where I've worked.

I guess we're going to have to be cognizant of the fact that those things do happen, and certainly make sure that that patient information is protected and not subject to wide distribution or access by people who aren't authorized.

I'm very pleased, I guess, to hear that there is going to be consultation with a wide number of health care professionals. I think that's very good. It is reassuring to know that the freedom-of-information commissioner's office will be involved in the pilot projects.

Just to recap, I understand the need to extend the application of the PharmaNet system. If it indeed is going to benefit patients and protect patients from drug interactions, from treatment interactions, I think that's good. At the same time, in committee stage we will be raising and canvassing the issues of confidentiality and access to patient information.

[9:30]

It seems that under this particular system, one of the areas in which we really have to start to be concerned is under section 38.1(2)(b), where there is provision for designation of other people by class as established by regulation, who are permitted to have access. This is for the purposes of providing therapeutic treatment. It's becoming increasingly difficult, although we do have increasingly sophisticated ways of trying to encode information that is being shared through the Internet over computer systems. It is becoming increasingly apparent to those people who are involved in the system that full security is next to impossible.

[ Page 5694 ]

The concern I have is that if this information gets out into the public, if in fact this information becomes commercially usable -- which is a potential. . . . The difficulty we have is tracking and tracing the source of that information getting into the hands of those people who would seek to gain commercially by having access to it. It is going to be next to impossible to trace.

So I would, by way of recommendation with respect to this bill. . . . I certainly don't take issue with the desire to try to expand the PharmaNet system, but it seems that there has to be an encoding system, a means of tracing that information, particularly when that information is going to be expanded to other designated people that the regulations of this act will provide. I could understand these being pharmacists or medical practitioners, who obviously have a vested interest as well as a professional interest in maintaining the security and confidentiality of material.

There is a real concern and danger at the time that large -- essentially now continental -- information flows get moved around. We are in danger, in serious danger, of losing control over that information unless we have in the encoding process some means of tracing it so that we have some way of establishing responsibility, therefore liability, for those people who in fact will breach what is provided for in section 36 under confidentiality.

In the committee stage, I would hope that the minister might want to address this. I know that the freedom-of-information office has been involved in this. I know that there is a great deal of work being done right across the country now with respect to finding provisions for encoding this information with traceable data. I would hope that we don't move ahead with this until such time as we have some very clear avenue to be able to trace and to find an individual responsible and be able to prosecute that individual with the information that is built into those codes.

With that, I would take my seat, but I do hope that is going to be considered, and considered seriously. There are two interesting lawsuits right now in the United States as a result of this very issue, where that information has been used commercially to disadvantage and, really, at a tremendous breach of private confidence.

The Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, I recognize the Minister of Health, whose comments will close second reading debate.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I have noted the comments of members from the opposition, and they are certainly comments worthy of discussion in committee stage. I am prepared to discuss them on a section-by-section approach. With that, I now move second reading.

Motion approved.

Bill 15, Pharmacists, Pharmacy Operations and Drug Scheduling Amendment Act, 1997, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I call second reading of Bill 20.

The Speaker: Under your name, minister?

Hon. J. MacPhail: Yes.

PUBLIC SECTOR EMPLOYERS
AMENDMENT ACT, 1997
(second reading)

Hon. J. MacPhail: I am pleased to present to the House the Public Sector Employers Amendment Act, 1997. This act enables the government to enforce standards with respect to severance packages for exempt public sector employees. The Public Sector Employers Amendment Act of this year contains some important definitions and makes three major changes to the current statute. First, it allows governments to adopt employment termination standards that will be included in all employment contracts covered by this bill. Second, it enables the government to recover moneys paid in excess of any new severance standard. Finally, it provides the Public Sector Employers Council with the ability to obtain copies of employment contracts and related information in order to develop and revise severance standards as well as monitor compliance.

While abuse of the current Public Sector Employers Council guidelines may not be widespread, employers in a number of sectors have ignored the guidelines. While excessive severance packages may not proportionally represent a significant cost item compared to overall government expenditures, they nevertheless undermine the government's goal of prudent fiscal management and the efficient delivery of public services to British Columbians. Continued examples of inappropriate severance packages require government to respond. As a result, we are bringing forward these amendments. With this legislation, British Columbia will become the first jurisdiction in Canada to authorize enforceable severance standards across the broad public sector.

Our government's intent is to strike a balance between the needs to attract top-calibre individuals to the public sector and the need to protect the taxpayer from practices that are clearly inappropriate and in excess of the amounts provided for by PSEC and under common law.

Under Bill 20, employment termination standards will apply to all employment contracts commenced, renewed or changed from May 1, 1997, the date of first reading. This will ensure against the temptation of some to avoid the legislation by obtaining a rich severance clause in their contract prior to the provisions of this bill taking effect. Retroactivity is normally an extraordinary response, but its limited use is required to fill the gap between introduction and the anticipated adoption of the regulation, given the nature of the issues that Bill 20 addresses.

In this bill we have defined employment termination standards to include the change or renewal of a contract. We will be able to address rolling-term or evergreen contracts that would otherwise never be renegotiated. We have also provided a definition of contract of employment to make it clear that the absence of a written contract is not a loophole for avoiding this initiative.

As mentioned in my opening remarks, the first major component of this bill is to authorize regulations based on severance standards established by the Public Sector Employers Council. The current system, consisting of general public sector guidelines followed by public sector and employer-specific plans, ensures that the rules governing severance are fair, reasonable and affordable for the taxpayer.

[ Page 5695 ]

To date, considerable progress has been made on implementing appropriate severance practices. Despite the achievements, however, examples of severances in excess of the current PSEC standards continue.

Two recent reports highlight the need for this legislation. Last fall I became aware of the severance package given by St. Paul's Hospital to their CEO upon retirement. Such a payment does not comply with either common-law principles or PSEC standards. In response, I commissioned an examining board to review that severance payment and to report on the severance benefits of senior health care executives in the hospital sector and on their level of compliance with current guidelines.

The examining board found that at least ten contracts, signed after Public Sector Employers Council guidelines were put in place, were non-compliant, and some were significantly non-compliant. Concern was also expressed over the presence of triggering clauses, which activate severance upon a change in duties, and rolling-term clauses that remove the ability of the employer to renegotiate the contract into compliance.

Then, on May 6, 1997, the auditor general issued a report on executive severance practices in government ministries and Crown corporations. The auditor general concluded that most severance settlements were reasonable in amount. Ministries in particular were commended for their "improved level of reasonableness and consistency." Regrettably, however, one in four Crown corporations' severance pay-outs reviewed by the auditor general was excessive. The report concluded that the measures adopted by PSEC and the Crown Corporations Employers Association need to go further to prevent excessive settlements in the future.

Bill 20 means that appropriate severance standards will be written into all new and renewed contracts and that any provisions inconsistent with new standards will be of no force and effect. Public Sector Employers Council staff are currently completing a review of common-law principles and existing standards to ensure that they meet the concerns raised by the examining board and the auditor general.

Key elements in any regulation will be an absolute maximum notice-in-lieu or severance period of two years, a provision that specifies an appropriate severance or ensures that the actual amount of severance is not greater than the payment that would be provided by common law, and a provision to address the issue of double-dipping.

The second major change that this legislation undertakes is to allow the government to recover any money paid in excess of the regulation. It is my wish that the government would not have to take an action for recovery. The ability to recover unauthorized payments should discourage public sector agencies from contemplating unauthorized pay-outs. The government, however, will be prepared to act and will act as necessity and the occasion require. If and when we do recover money, these amendments will prevent the employee from simply turning around and suing their former employer, thereby charging the taxpayer once again.

Finally, this legislation empowers the Public Sector Employers Council to obtain copies of employment contracts and related information. This will assist in the development of new standards and ensure compliance with existing standards and the regulation.

At the time of the issuance of the report, I expressed concern over the difficulty the examining board encountered with the release of information. The board found that 24 out of 110 hospitals refused or failed to disclose their chief executive officer contracts. Bill 20 addresses this deficiency. Under this legislation, the Public Sector Employers Council will now collect, monitor and report publicly on the contracts of public sector exempt employees.

In conclusion, the failure of some public agencies to adhere to the current severance rules undermines our government's priority of directing our fiscal resources for front-line services. The government has made a commitment to act and is now following up on that commitment by bringing forward this legislation before the House.

Bill 20 takes a responsible, effective and comprehensive approach to addressing abuses of our existing severance standards. I am confident that the amendments put forward today will go a long way to enhancing reasonable and prudent human resource practices in the public sector. I am pleased to be able to submit these amendments.

F. Gingell: Mr. Speaker, I noticed some question in your voice when you asked the Minister of Health if this amendment to PSEC was being brought forward under her auspices, because if you look at the definitions in section 1 of the act, they nominate the minister responsible as being the minister who is responsible for Treasury Board. If you look at part 3 of the Public Sector Employers Act -- the sections that deal with salary and benefit negotiation -- then the minister responsible is the minister that is designated as being responsible for this particular portion of this act and only for a division of part 3.

There are no amendments in Bill 20 to part 3. All the amendments deal with part 1 and part 4, so one wonders why it is the Minister of Health that has been made responsible for bringing forward an amendment act that I would more properly describe as the "Stable Door, Post-Horse-Escape Closure Act, 1997." If one looks at the issues that make these amendments necessary, they are things that have happened primarily under the responsibility of the Minister of Health. So I guess it's the Ministry of Health which has messed up here, and it's the Minister of Health who is being required to bring forward the amendments to make these changes.

[9:45]

We have, of course, the revolving door of the Lions Gate Hospital. We have the revolving door of St. Paul's Hospital. We've already had a change in the South Fraser regional health district, and of course, we have the disgraceful episode that revolved around the Health Labour Relations Association.

How are we going to deal with this? What do these amendments do? Do these amendments cause the legislation and the regulation to meet common-law standards? Does this legislation require the regulation to meet Chief Justice Nemetz's recommendations in his 1989 report? No. Nothing is said. Words are stated by the minister who is introducing this bill, but there are no real commitments for us to understand exactly what it is we are speaking of.

[ Page 5696 ]

The auditor general's report was a damning indictment of what has happened. This government and its predecessor government under Mr. Mike Harcourt have been in office in this province since October 17, 1991 -- a date that is clearly understood and recognized. It is a date to be remembered in sorrow by the citizens of this province, and it has taken almost six years to get anything done.

This particular bill and these amendments deal with issues for persons who are not represented by a union. If there is a union involved, we understand that there clearly are people who represent the interests on both sides of the equation. One would look for and one would expect there to be some very real commitments for consultation with employees who come within the categories whose termination terms will be dealt with by Bill 20.

And what do we find? This government, which has spoken so often about consultation, has as usual not put in any teeth to require that to take place. Section 6(3) of the present act talks about the council's responsibility to foster consultation, but that's all. There isn't a great deal to speak about with respect to this act.

I think we are all looking forward to a change in the environment where we don't get horror stories week after week about money that should properly be spent on delivering health services to patients being spent needlessly in the payment of ridiculous settlement agreements as this government has terminated the employment of people who may be politically at odds with the government or for some other reason.

I think there are two questions left that this government needs to deal with. The first is for them to find out how many more sweet deals there are floating around, hidden away in the agreements. I appreciate that now, with these changes, they have the means to find that out. The last question is: when is this government going to get the courage to deal with dismissals for cause that are clearly the correct and proper response on many occasions? It seems to me that on the one occasion that this government used cause as an excuse to get rid of a senior officer, it was the senior officer of B.C. Transit. Boy, did they shoot themselves in the foot on that particular occasion. I'm surprised that the whole Health budget wasn't ruined by all the reconstructive surgery that had to be done. But when it came to the need to deal with dismissals for cause when it related to issues around the chief executive officer of the Health Labour Relations Association, they backed away. Some kind of private deal was made. The Premier's deputy minister was sent in to do a study, and that really didn't accomplish anything.

The taxpayers are the people in the end who see the services that they need being diminished because of this government's lack of ability to organize their affairs and to protect the valuable resources that our citizens look to, to deal with issues that are important to them.

In conclusion -- absolutely in conclusion -- we look forward to better days. Let's hope that this government uses the provisions of Bill 20 to change the sorry record of what it's accomplished in this area in the past.

G. Farrell-Collins: I can't pass up an opportunity to speak to this bill, but I'd probably rather do it at a time when there is more time available. Noting the hour, I move that we adjourn debate.

G. Farrell-Collins moved adjournment of the debate.

Motion approved.

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

Hon. J. MacPhail moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 9:55 p.m.

PROCEEDINGS IN THE DOUGLAS FIR ROOM

The committee met at 6:45 p.m.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF
ENVIRONMENT, LANDS AND PARKS
(continued)

R. Masi: I think we were somewhere on the questions about Burns Bog. I guess I could add another concern that the Burns Bog society and the people who live near the bog have, and that's the situation of the fish run there. Cougar Creek flows through there. It has virtually disappeared, but there is evidence of fish there. There's some argument proposed that, in fact, this would come under the Fish Protection Act. There are numerous concerns from a variety of people: the residents, the Burns Bog Conservation Society, the sort of environmentalist group. I think there's a general feeling that there should be some protection for the bog or a portion of the bog. I think we left off somewhere at the point where I was about to ask the minister whether in fact there's some value to the thought of protecting the bog or a portion of the bog.

Hon. C. McGregor: Well, certainly our government supports the conservation of a portion of the bog, as is evidenced by the fact that we entered into negotiations with the owner to try and acquire 3,000 acres. So obviously we have a commitment -- and did have a commitment. We in fact put in an offer on the property that I think was fair market value. Of course, appraised market value is all that any ministry can be expected to offer in the context of a property that we want to acquire. Unfortunately, we weren't able to acquire the property. Given our current fiscal situation, it's very difficult to make any commitment of those kinds of funds to acquire a property like Burns Bog.

Nonetheless, I wouldn't want to close the door, because as you point out, it is a very significant property. It's never appropriate, I suppose, for the minister to ask questions of the opposite side, but nonetheless. . . . I'm not sure how aware you are of efforts that the Burns Bog Conservation Society might have put into fundraising or partnerships with nature trusts and other agencies that exist in communities, to try and create a pool of resources. It would seem to me that that might be one of the ways it could be successful.

[ Page 5697 ]

R. Masi: I understand that they are going ahead with some fundraising and some form of bringing people together on this. They're working on an international basis, as well, to bring up the profile of the bog situation. They will be successful ultimately; they're doing more and more all the time. I believe there's an International Bog Day on July 27. I'm not sure if the minister is invited or not, but I'll extend the invitation, in any event.

I suppose it's one of these situations where if there's hope there, then people will proceed, but it is a huge undertaking. Right now the Delta council, of course, is in the situation of whether or not to allow development permits on various edges of the bog -- whether to establish bog boundaries. But underlying this, of course, is the constant pressure from the people that live there. I think it's going to grow in terms of international recognition. So any advice that the minister can offer will be well taken.

Hon. C. McGregor: I've tried to give you my best effort at some advice, in terms of. . . . It is very difficult in today's financial times for us to make any sort of commitment financially, especially the large-scale commitment that the purchase of the bog would entail. Nonetheless, as I said earlier, I don't believe that we should close the door. I think that, obviously, when opportunities present themselves, we'll have to work together with the community and, hopefully, with the council, with the society and with other residents to try and work something out so that we can all achieve the goal of preserving the bog.

P. Reitsma: Just a couple of questions of concern to my area. One pertains to the environment youth team and the other one to the property in Parksville called the Flats -- district lots 2 and 50. I'll start with that, also mentioning this coming Sunday, of course, because it is Sandcastle Days in Parksville, which happens next to the piece of property that we're going to talk about. There will be some 35,000 to 40,000 people on the beach -- people from all over the world building sandcastles for a purse of $15,00 to $20,000, I think. That's next to the piece of property that's commonly known as the Parksville Flats.

I was very involved, actually, in the nine years that I was mayor of Parksville. But my predecessors and many people before -- going back to the forefathers, actually -- have been interested in that. I commend the government. We've worked very well together actually, although at one time the death nail was almost driven in by my predecessor and the current Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, who was, of course, the Environment minister. Lots of promises were made that couldn't be kept. Finally, the whole community and the government, to their credit, did take some positive action. If my memory serves me correctly, I think it's something like 180 acres, and I think the province bought something like 140 to 150.

Have the goals that were set out for that particular piece of property. . . ? First of all, what were the goals? We were advised so many years ago, but those years have passed. What were the goals at that time? Have they been achieved? How has the success been measured?

Hon. C. McGregor: I'd like to start by asking the member if we could come back to his question related to E-teams at a later time, when we have the Parks staff here. I think we have agreement that we're going to do that.

On Parksville Flats, it's been declared a wildlife management area, and there were a variety of goals that were set in place that we hoped to achieve. We would need to get an update from the regional office to see how we're doing on those goals.

P. Reitsma: I know some of the goals, but I'd like to get them in Hansard, of course, and I'll be advising -- I was going to say my council -- Parksville council. In fact, I talked to one of them this afternoon. Could the minister please specify the goals that were set at that time? I very much appreciate that maybe an update has to come in terms of whether they have been achieved and to what extent you can measure that achievement. I accept that; that's fine. Of course, I can come back to that at the appropriate time. But what goals were set or hoped for?

Hon. C. McGregor: We don't have that information available here today, but we'll endeavour to provide it to the member.

P. Reitsma: That kind of limits my questioning to a certain extent. I know that the community -- the whole community, not just Parksville, but Qualicum and the surrounding areas. . . . In fact, we have had people -- believe it or not -- from Dublin, Ireland, signing petitions and what have you to preserve the Flats.

Again, as I mentioned, we are very happy that it has been done, because of the Brant Wildlife Festival in April. It's a migratory bird that is descending onto the east coast and certainly, of course, the Flats as well. The Brant Festival in itself is a tremendous economic generator. Thousands of people are coming, actually, to view the Brant Festival.

Can the minister advise, unless it's part of a report that is forthcoming, what the future plans are in terms of the trees? Is there any thinning to be done? Are any nature trails going to be established? Is there any kind of interpretative nature centre planned for the future, if you like? Would the minister know or maybe get me the information on what the taxes payable are, if there's a grant in lieu of taxes for that particular piece of property and how much they are?

Hon. C. McGregor: We'll have to get back to the member with the answers to those questions. I'm sorry, we just don't have that information here.

P. Reitsma: I have no difficulty with that because we are looking towards the future. I'll be submitting the answers to my community, as well; it's extremely important.

One of the incidents I'll never forget, I suppose, was in September 1990, when I faced 500 more or less angry people in the community hall. I didn't know that projectiles could be thrown with such velocity, holding onto. . . . The people, as a matter of fact, had dogs in the community hall; people were singing. That's all fine, I suppose. It was very much on the minds of people. That was a bit of a learning process for me, let me assure you.

Could the minister indicate when we could be looking forward to those answers? Could we have some indication of time?

[ Page 5698 ]

Hon. C. McGregor: Staff believe they would be able to provide that for you within a couple of weeks.

P. Reitsma: I take it that a couple of weeks is two, so maybe between two and three weeks, then. Could I ask the minister to ask staff to perhaps advise the minister, or perhaps the minister could give direction to staff, on what the future developments to enhance the property and the philosophical reasons for the acquisition of that property are going to be so that we can. . . ? I'm speaking of the city of Parksville, of course, and the surrounding communities, but particularly the city of Parksville, in which jurisdiction are the park and the commercial part, which is the Surfside RV park. I would appreciate if the minister could ask or direct staff to advise the minister what the future developments in terms of enhancing the property are -- as well as all that, the reasons for the acquisition of the property.

[7:00]

P. Reitsma: My last question to the minister is regarding the environment youth team. That would be coming up under Parks, and I've got some other questions.

C. Clark: Could the minister advise the committee of the status of the B.C. environmental protection act?

Hon. C. McGregor: There were staff consultations to begin the discussions around that in '92-93, but since that time we have made decisions to forward a number of the policy areas to a different mechanism.

C. Clark: Can the minister advise us when that decision was taken?

Hon. C. McGregor: Hon. Chair, I would seek your advice about whether these questions are in order, in that they refer to previous years' estimates and do not directly relate to this year's estimates.

The Chair: Member, you may wish to clarify.

C. Clark: It was my understanding that the environmental protection act was still on the table as of last year's estimates. If that has changed, I just ask the minister to clarify when that change occurred.

The Chair: The Chair would just add a caution in regard to debating legislation. If you feel it's pending legislation, then I would certainly caution the member in approaching that subject in these estimates.

Hon. C. McGregor: The staff is not aware that it was under active consideration during last year's estimates.

C. Clark: I take it that it wasn't under consideration, then. It hasn't been under consideration since this minister became minister, which isn't that far from the election.

In the NDP's election promises, it says: "The. . .environmental protection act is part of the NDP's environmental action plan. It will be the major environmental protection act of the government. It will group together the provisions that apply to all environmental legislation. . . ." So if the environmental protection act is now off the table from previous estimates -- and I won't, as obviously I can't, ask the minister to delve into previous areas that should have been canvassed last year -- I would ask: does she have any intention this year, then, of keeping that particular promise that the government made during the election?

Hon. C. McGregor: I've indicated to the member that we're pursuing other means through which to deliver on the goals of the environmental protection act.

C. Clark: Well, if the minister intends to break that promise, I wonder if she could tell us how they intend to meet the goals of the act if they are not indeed going to live up to their commitment to bring the act in.

The Chair: The Chair would offer the caution that either we are talking about legislation or the minister is commenting on future policy, and neither is really a subject for debate.

Hon. C. McGregor: To reiterate an earlier statement that I made to the member opposite regarding future policy initiatives, I believe we made reference to the clean air and clean water strategies and to the release of a discussion document. Those are examples of how we're carrying forward those initiatives. We as a government have adopted the sustainable environment charter, which is a framework through which we apply our goals for environmental protection.

C. Clark: The minister will be aware that the sustainable environment charter was implemented, I believe, before the election. This is an election promise that the government made. So I assume that the promise was intended to build on some new initiatives or was intended to build on old initiatives and create some new initiatives on the part of the government.

One of the things that the environmental protection act promised. . . . Actually, I can tell you what they all were, according to the NDP election. . . .

The Chair: Member. Order, please.

C. Clark: Thank you, hon. Chair.

General principles of environmental management. . . .

The Chair: Member, perhaps you could take your seat.

The Chair has made already two cautions in regard to discussing legislation. You're convinced that it is legislation, so I think you should take the Chair's caution.

C. Clark: What I'm asking specifically -- and I understand why the Chair would want me to clarify this -- is where in the ministry's initiatives for this year the following new things might be contained. I specifically ask the minister to speak to the whistle-blower protection provisions that were included in the Forest Practices Code, which were supposed to be part of the environmental protection act which the NDP promised they would bring in during the election. I wonder how those are, if the ministry intends to meet that commitment outside of the legislative framework, obviously, if that's the way the ministry intends to proceed.

Hon. C. McGregor: That's for future policy discussion.

[ Page 5699 ]

C. Clark: I take it, then, that there is no initiative underway on the part of the ministry to implement whistle-blower protection in its policy framework. Is that correct?

Hon. C. McGregor: I believe I've answered the question.

C. Clark: You'll be relieved to know that I too think that we've canvassed this fully. I just really wanted it on the record that we have another broken promise to add to the list of broken promises on the part of this government.

With that established, I would be happy to move on to ask a little bit about the contaminated sites regulations which the government has brought in and, I guess, begin with the very obvious question: how much is the ministry projecting to collect from the increased fees as a result of the contaminated sites regulations?

Hon. C. McGregor: The estimate is $1.2 million.

C. Clark: How much does the ministry estimate it will incur in additional costs to administer the new regulations?

Hon. C. McGregor: We've hired 14 additional staff, which we estimate to cost about $1.4 million. The idea with the contaminated site legislation and regulation is to achieve balance between the costs that come in to cover the program and the costs to monitor it.

C. Clark: I appreciate that information. Are the 14 additional staff new staff? Or are they staff that have been reassigned in the ministry to a new task?

Hon. C. McGregor: They're new positions and new people.

C. Clark: Can the minister advise us whether the new regulations, since they've come into effect on April 1. . . ? If the ministry has any estimate of how or whether indeed it takes additional time, how much added time is there for the permitting process from beginning to end as a result of the changes?

Hon. C. McGregor: We're in early stages of implementation. It's very difficult to predict. But we have to engage in creating certificates of compliance for all firms that would be covered by the contaminated sites regulation? There are at least 40 or 50 in the lower mainland, and if you add in the rest of the province, that could get to in excess of 100.

C. Clark: Sorry, I should have asked this a question ago. Could the minister advise us how many of the 14 new staff are located in regional offices versus headquarters?

Hon. C. McGregor: Existing staff in the Victoria office support those new staff, who have been added to the regional offices.

C. Clark: Those 14 new staff in the regional offices, would it be fair to characterize them as principally field staff who are out doing inspections and enforcement?

Hon. C. McGregor: A relatively small portion of their time is spent in inspection. By and large, the bulk of their work is technical support.

C. Clark: I appreciate that the regulations are still sort of in their infancy, if you will, because they haven't been in effect for very long. I don't know how exactly to characterize that, I guess. Does the minister have a sense of how many more hours each staff person needs to devote to this process as a result of the changes that came into effect on April 1?

I'm just really trying to get a sense of. . . . We know the number of staff people. Are they all 100 percent dedicated to the new contaminated site regulations? Or is it just a portion of their time? I was trying to get a sense of the person-hours that might be involved in the new regulations.

[7:15]

F. Gingell: I wish to ask a couple of questions that relate to the pleasure craft sewage pollution prevention regulations. We had an earlier discussion about this. It just seems to me to be an opportunity, and it's important to get this on the record.

On July 6 of this year, the minister received a letter from the Victoria harbour advisory committee. The Victoria harbour advisory committee is asking the minister to make those representations to the federal government that are necessary so that they will describe the waters of Victoria harbour and the inner waterways of the Gorge under the pleasure craft sewage pollution prevention regulations. That will, I think, bring them within the jurisdiction of that act, stop people from emptying their tanks or using facilities on their vessels that don't have holding tanks, and will bring Victoria harbour into the same general regulation that exists up and down the west coast.

I understand that the only problem with this act, really. . . . Well, not the only problem, but the reason that the federal government is careful to bring in regulation is that many Third World vessels don't have the necessary equipment on them, in the way of holding tanks, to ensure that they can meet the regulations. As they come into British Columbia's ports -- primarily, of course, the port of Vancouver and the port of Prince Rupert -- to pick up commodities that are important to Canadian citizens -- grain, timber, mineral ores. . . . We don't want to cut ourselves off from those markets, but because of the way that the act works -- as I understand it, you geographically describe the areas that are covered and then they go into the schedules attached to the act -- there is no reason for areas within British Columbia, particularly the Inner Harbour in Victoria or the Gorge waterways. . . . There is no reason for us to not get this process started.

First of all, I wonder if the minister has had the opportunity to consider the letter of July 6, whether she has any response to it, and if at the same time the minister could perhaps advise the committee whether her ministry is looking at all areas of the coastline of British Columbia to see those areas which should perhaps be considered for inclusion under this legislation.

Hon. C. McGregor: In September of 1996, the deputy minister did forward a list with 50 nominations to Transport Canada, but I understand that the Victoria harbour was not on that list. A variety of other water bodies were. In order to consider that -- the Gorge, Victoria harbour or Esquimalt harbour -- it would need to meet the province's criteria. The criteria include domestic water supply, swimming, extensive pleasure boat use and sensitivity of surrounding environment. If it is a marine water, the criteria are the rate of tidal flushing, boat density, proximity of shellfish and swimming beaches, and the sensitivity of the surrounding environment. So those are the criteria that the ministry has used to generate this list of requests to the federal government.

[ Page 5700 ]

I understand that the capital regional district, according to this note, were reviewing whether they were going to recommend to the CRD environment committee that they ask for designation of Victoria harbour, the Gorge or the Esquimalt harbour. It sounds like since then the member has had information that they have made the decision to ask for the nomination. I haven't had an opportunity to review the letter, but nonetheless, we will take it under advisement, apply the criteria to it and consider the member's request.

F. Gingell: I appreciate the minister's response, and I will make sure that the Victoria harbour advisory committee know that they have a minister who is sympathetic to their concerns.

C. Clark: I would like to ask the minister some questions about the sustainable environment fund -- if she has staff available, which I think she does at this point. Could the minister first give us a rundown of the sources of revenue and their amounts for the sustainable environment fund for this fiscal year?

Hon. C. McGregor: The revenues are: waste management fees, $14.366 million; tire levies, $10 million; battery levies, $4 million; diaper levies, $4 million; pesticide exams, $120,000; pesticide permits, $25,000; pesticide licences, $200,000 -- for a total of $32.711 million.

C. Clark: Could the minister give us an accounting. . . ? I guess with $32.711 million, the expenditure for the fund is. . . . The net revenue is up and the expenditure is down this year, and I noticed that in the past there was a transfer from voted appropriations in every year that the sustainable environment fund has been in existence. I wonder if the minister can tell us why this year there has been no transfer from consolidated revenue.

Hon. C. McGregor: The expenditures in the ministry do not require a transfer.

C. Clark: Could the minister give us a quick rundown of the expenditures from the fund?

Hon. C. McGregor: The headquarters function is $18.4 million, the regional function is $11.8 million, and the administration function is $2.1 million.

C. Clark: Can the minister tell me how much of those moneys is directed toward taking care of the items from which the fees are collected?

Hon. C. McGregor: These are fairly good estimates. They aren't firm numbers. They haven't been audited yet from last year. Tire collection and recycling program, $5,886,000; battery collection and recycling program, $101,000; and other environmental protection programs, $26,198,000.

C. Clark: I'm sorry. I don't understand how the battery amount can be $101,000, given that it was widely reported that Metalex alone received $2 million from the ministry. I wonder if the minister could just double-check that number for me.

Hon. C. McGregor: Battery program expenditures are dependent on the market price of lead, so when the price of lead is higher, then the expenditure is lower. That is why it is only $101,000 for the last fiscal year.

C. Clark: Could the ministry clarify for the committee, then, the $2 million that was widely referred to by her officials? It was quoted in newspaper articles regarding the payments made to Metalex for their battery recycling programs. What was the source of that number, if it's not in this year's expenditures?

Hon. C. McGregor: The total reflects the amount paid between June 1991 and March 1997.

C. Clark: With that, could the minister tell us how much was paid to Metalex in the last fiscal year?

Hon. C. McGregor: Again, this is an estimate and not an audited number. We have a figure of $18,122.

C. Clark: The numbers that the minister gave of $18.4 million, $11.8 million and $2.1 million for headquarters, regional and administrative -- how much of that fund was paid to contractors?

Hon. C. McGregor: It's $5,458,665.

C. Clark: Does that represent a portion of the regional budget numbers that the minister gave me? I suspect it probably does. I wonder if she could just confirm that.

[7:30]

C. Clark: Thank you for both of those numbers. Perhaps the minister's staff could confirm for the committee where those numbers fit into the larger budget, since it's broken down into headquarters, regional and administration.

Hon. C. McGregor: They come out of headquarters.

C. Clark: Can the minister tell us the regional budget? Could she confirm whether the $11.8 million which she referred to goes to pay for the environmental protection program in the region? Is that correct?

Hon. C. McGregor: Yes.

C. Clark: Is that an increase or a decrease over last year's contribution?

Hon. C. McGregor: It's a decrease from about $12.9 million last year.

[ Page 5701 ]

C. Clark: Can the minister tell us why that amount has decreased over the last fiscal year?

Hon. C. McGregor: It's as a result of reduced staff.

C. Clark: The $2.1 million that's spent on administration -- is that divided more or less evenly between headquarters and regional operations?

Hon. C. McGregor: Yes, it is for both.

C. Clark: The minister gave us the number for tire recycling -- $5.8 million -- and $101,000 for battery recycling. By far the bulk of the money -- $26 million -- went toward other environmental initiatives. I wonder if the minister could enlighten the committee as to what those other environmental initiatives were.

Hon. C. McGregor: Some examples include: developing and monitoring industry product stewardship programs; implementing the clean air strategy and air monitoring programs; managing clean water initiatives, including water quality monitoring, development of water criteria guidelines and non-point source issues; setting standards for management of biomedical waste; regulating industrial and hazardous waste; managing pollution prevention initiatives at industrial sites; regulating municipal solid and liquid waste; setting standards and criteria for waste discharge; managing the Pesticide Control Act; controlling Eurasian milfoil; carrying out inspections, monitoring and regulation of permitted waste discharges; and managing environmental emergency prevention and response programs.

C. Clark: I'm very interested in the way in which the ministry makes its payments to contractors for services rendered. I wonder if the minister could outline for us how that process works. When does a contractor, in the process between making a proposal to dispose of, for example, battery slag and actually disposing of it, get paid?

Hon. C. McGregor: A contractor would have to invoice or bill and provide some evidence of the transport or care of the product that they took, and then it would be paid.

C. Clark: How does the ministry ensure that the contractor. . . ? Where's the quality assurance in that program? How, for example, does the ministry ensure that the contractor has actually supplied the service promised and for which the ministry paid?

Hon. C. McGregor: Staff begin by verifying that services have been received in exchange for the cash that needs to be paid to them. In addition to that, for the member's interest, Coopers and Lybrand assists us in managing both the tire and the battery program.

C. Clark: What other safeguards does the ministry have in place to ensure, first of all, that a contractor who says they picked something up has actually picked it up and it's not left where it was in the first place; and second, that it has actually gone to the place that the contractor said that he or she was going to be taking it? It seems to me that there must be some more safeguards in the system than the ones that the minister has just mentioned. Do they ask the contractor to file manifests or offer some other proof that the goods were picked up and deposited as promised?

Hon. C. McGregor: We'll need to get back to the member on the details of how the staff actually engages in that kind of ongoing work, but we do audit firms from time to time, as well.

R. Neufeld: I want to get into some questions about my constituency again. I thank the official opposition critic for giving me the time to ask the questions about my constituency.

How many places would the ministry audit, on average, in a year -- those that sell batteries and tires -- remembering that there are thousands of places around the province that sell those products? Do you just do a spot audit? Are there areas that you target? How do you determine that?

Hon. C. McGregor: We receive information from the Ministry of Finance on social service tax paid on diapers, tires and batteries. That's how we're able to make sure that we're getting the correct revenue.

R. Neufeld: Then you would just spot-audit some of those companies? How many, on average, a year?

Hon. C. McGregor: The Ministry of Finance does that, so you'd have to direct your question to the Minister of Finance's office.

R. Neufeld: I guess you read my mind, because I was going to ask you how many auditors you had. It went through my mind that it would be the Ministry of Finance that would probably do it in conjunction with other audits.

I'll get onto some issues from the north country again. I was just wondering what progress we've made since the news release went out on July 30, 1996, in regards to scrubbers on tanker trucks that haul crude oil -- where we're at in implementing those regulations that were put into place and getting people into compliance.

[7:45]

R. Neufeld: We'll just carry on and come back to it. You can let me know when you have the information.

Another issue -- and this may seem like I'm jumping around a little bit here. I invited the minister up to the north country last time I talked to her, and I want to ask a couple of questions about how we control bears, specifically the ones that are around the Liard Hot Springs.

There's another issue around the Liard Hot Springs that's been brought to my attention. If the minister has never visited the area, it's very unique. There's plant life around the Liard Hot Springs that is tropical in nature. Even though people think it's far north, we do have some pretty nice areas.

There was a UBC professor, in fact, a number of years ago, who went to Liard Hot Springs to study grizzly bears. The fellow's name was Mr. George Doerksen. Unfortunately, while studying, Mr. Doerksen was killed by one of the grizzly bears that he was studying. Like I say, this was a number of years ago.

The people that live around Liard Hot Springs -- and there is quite a community of people there -- have often asked, when I've gone through there, for the Parks branch to put up a monument or a plaque in remembrance of Mr. Doerksen and the work he did surrounding bear habitat all across the province -- not just in Liard Hot Springs, as I understand. I did not know the gentleman, but I'm told by people around the hot springs that they got to know him quite well, and he was a very knowledgable person about these issues.

[ Page 5702 ]

I would like to get it on the record and see if there is something that we can do. Rather than being intermediary, I can get the ministry in touch with the person I talked to so that they can discuss directly with that person and also with the university about that issue. Maybe the minister would just like to comment briefly on that, if she would, please.

Hon. C. McGregor: Well, I'd certainly be happy to follow up with the member. I think that there's an opportunity for us to work together on that, and if you'd provide our staff with the name of the person that has intimate knowledge of the situation, we'd be quite prepared to look at that.

R. Neufeld: Thank you very much; I appreciate that. I will put you in touch with a fellow that I know as Trapper Ray. Whoever deals with Trapper Ray will find him to be a very colourful character from that part of the world, but very knowledgable. He has spent most of his life in the north in the trapping industry and now in the tourism industry. I think it's good that you're that receptive to it.

The other thing that this same fellow asked me was about the rules and regulations around bears, removing bears or destroying bears. He actually relates to me issues about conservation officers shooting at bears in the dark. Maybe the minister would just like to lay out for me how the ministry staff are supposed to deal with bears. It's not an easy issue, because we have quite a few there. I'm not trying to assume that it can be done simply, but I would like to know what the regulations are surrounding how we look after nuisance bears.

Hon. C. McGregor: As the member is no doubt aware, this is really a serious matter. It's not something that the ministry takes lightly. Conservation officers do not kill bears as a matter of course; they would prefer not to. Our standard practice is to attempt to relocate the bear first. But sometimes in the interests of public safety that can't be considered, so then the conservation officers have to kill the bear.

R. Neufeld: Can the minister give me some information -- a policy or something that conservation officers are supposed to follow when they deal with problem bears or bears that may not even be problem bears?

Hon. C. McGregor: We do have a written policy and would be happy to provide it to the member.

On the other issue of scrubbers on tanker trucks, we found the information. There was an implementation strategy designed that was supposed to be completed by May 31 of this year. We're not certain that it has been totally completed, so we'll get an update on that and also bring the member up to date.

R. Neufeld: Another question I have surrounds wood waste burners -- where we're at with wood waste burners. I'm specifically thinking about the plants in Fort Nelson. They have tried for a number of years to be able to burn their waste and sell the electricity back to B.C. Hydro. I know the minister is not responsible for B.C. Hydro, but there have been some real problems that are coming around again to face us soon. They've been put off for a number of years, I guess. I'd just like to know where we're at with wood waste burners, specifically in the Fort Nelson area.

Hon. C. McGregor: The beehive burner phase-out program has been in place for a number of years. Forty-two have already been phased out, with 34 slated for additional phase-out in 1997. There were, of course, some difficulties with some facilities being able to meet the time lines.

I don't know if the member is aware, but just recently -- June 27, in fact -- we issued a press release where we put an individual . . . G.E. Bridges and Associates Inc. of Victoria as a consultant for a wood residue opportunities strategy. What we're looking at is putting in place someone who can work with the industry to find some solutions on wood waste, so they can be economical from the point of view of the industry, and also help us to achieve some of our goals around managing the continued phase-out of beehive burners. It's a joint project. It doesn't involve just our ministry, but also the Council of Forest Industries and the Ministry of Forests, and I believe there's some FRBC funding as well.

R. Neufeld: I listened to the minister's opening remarks, talking about air quality and greenhouse gases. With that in mind, maybe the minister would like to tell me how many vehicles in her ministry are powered either electrically or with natural gas.

Hon. C. McGregor: We have no electric vehicles. Last year there were four natural gas vehicles purchased. We haven't purchased any vehicles this year.

F. Gingell: I was interested to note that a natural gas fuelling station was opened last week at a service station on Quadra, whose trade name I shall not mention. There must have been some understandings, though, that the government would make use of that facility. I'm not sure that there have been any natural gas filling stations prior to this point. One needs a market to make it worthwhile.

Then we heard many stories about the government's thoughts, about how they'd raise $170 million from the sale of assets. In estimates debate with the Minister of Finance, the question of a possible sale of the complete automobile fleet of the provincial government was raised and talked about. One's thought would then be: has the provincial government done anything -- if they plan on going on this track, or this road, of doing something for the environment and making a purpose of such a transaction -- to ensure that all of the vehicles that come back in are dual-fuel, natural gas, propane or are whatever low-emission vehicles would work best and still allow the drivers to fulfil their responsibilities?

Hon. C. McGregor: Well, I'm glad to hear that Kamloops is ahead of Victoria in this regard. We've had a couple of natural gas outlets in our area for some time. So obviously we're leaders on the environmental technology front, as opposed to Victoria. The recommendation to open such a facility in the Victoria area was actually an outgrowth of a joint government-industry committee on how we could promote more cleaner-technology vehicles. Obviously we as government do have a commitment as part of our greenhouse gases strategy. It is our policy that when new vehicles are purchased, where it is possible we will give preference to a cleaner-technology or a cleaner-fuel vehicle.

[ Page 5703 ]

[8:00]

For instance, it would be impossible for me as an individual to purchase a custom-made vehicle that was a natural gas vehicle and then drive to Vancouver, because there are not enough service stations, so I can't make the distance. So you can appreciate -- particularly in our ministry, where we have a lot of vehicles that are in use all the time in fieldwork -- that it's not really possible at this point in time to use those kind of alternate-fuel vehicles in the field. Nonetheless, we certainly look forward to the day when we are able to do that.

R. Neufeld: Carrying on with the subject, the minister says that they have four vehicles within the ministry that are powered by natural gas -- out of how many vehicles?

Hon. C. McGregor: Out of 720.

R. Neufeld: Given the astronomical number of vehicles that the ministry has and it's only got four running on natural gas -- they're in the Ministry of Environment and we're talking about greenhouse gases -- is the minister satisfied and happy with the percentage of alternate-fuel vehicles that she has in her ministry?

Hon. C. McGregor: Well, I would be remiss if I didn't agree with the member and suggest that it needs to be a lot better than that. But in defence, partly, we're not buying new vehicles, so there's one way. . . . We don't have the opportunity to add to the fleet when we're not making decisions to purchase vehicles, so that's one of the reasons why.

I did explain earlier that a lot of the vehicles we use within the ministry are for fieldwork, and, of course, many of those. . . . That alternate type of technology-fuel vehicle is not readily used for the kind of work we do in the field.

R. Neufeld: I'm not going to belabour this too long, but I would disagree with the minister on what she just said about the fieldwork and that the technology is not there. We've had natural gas vehicles in the north for many years. I know it's not 100 percent fail-safe, but I don't think anything is yet.

Hark back not too long ago to one of your predecessors, the member from Esquimalt, who wanted to mandate -- in fact, I'm not sure. . .did -- that one-tenth of the vehicles that were imported into British Columbia for sale as new vehicles to the public would have to use an alternate fuel, most of that being electricity.

F. Gingell: Zero emission.

R. Neufeld: Zero emission. I find it interesting that the minister. . . . We made the argument at the time that it's going to be pretty difficult to find a vehicle that's going to be zero emission -- electric cars, that's what it says it's going to be -- and is able to run in the north when we only have about six or seven hours of daylight in the wintertime. Heaters are required and all those kind of things.

It was in vogue at that time, I guess, for the Minister of Environment to talk about the public having to do this because of greenhouse gases. Natural gas has been around as a fuel for vehicles for quite a few years. I don't think using the -- shall I say -- excuse that you're not buying any more new vehicles really flies with me, because the ministry has been buying vehicles and you can convert them to natural gas.

So I think that there's not enough movement within the ministry to convert over to natural gas to get some clean fuel burning in our vehicles and to give some kind of example to the public. We can hardly tell the public: "You buy a $50,000 small pickup to be zero emission, but we're going to continue to use ours that run on gasoline because we can't afford it."

I don't buy that. Either we're going to go ahead and electrify the fleet that works under the British Columbia government -- or put them on natural gas or some other kind of alternate fuel that's going to save the air quality, especially in the lower mainland -- or we're going to quit trying to force the public to do it. I think there is a cutoff someplace where we have to start looking favourably at people. And they're saying: "Look, we can hardly afford the conventional vehicles."

The other issue about fieldwork. . . . Now, conservation officers and such with three-quarter-ton pickups. . . . The ones that I see running around my constituency are four-wheel drives, most of them -- and they need those kind of vehicles; I'm not disputing that fact. But they are around most of rural B.C., and when they're going around, they can. . . . I know the issue surrounding the size of the tank and how much you can carry, but a three-quarter-ton pickup, with a conservation officer going around and checking people for fishing licences and those kind of things or seeing what's going on, certainly has the capability for putting those kinds of tanks in it. So I think that is just another kind of: "We'll push it off a little bit, because we have to load these vehicles up so much." I would just like to get the minister's comment on where we're going to go. Are we going to quit pushing the public, or are we also going to start pushing government?

Hon. C. McGregor: There's no doubt that the member is correct when he points out that we could do more. I totally agree that there's more that we should and can do. As a result of previous announcements by other ministers, we do have a goal of achieving 3 percent of new vehicles sold in the province using the cleaner technology -- so natural gas vehicles. But I would be remiss if I indicated that we are even close to that target, and that's partly because it's a voluntary program. I think industry has been somewhat reluctant to bring in some of those cleaner-technology vehicles into our province, so we are working on that.

I think it's an important point that you make, and obviously there's more work we can do. We are working with industry to try and develop a better strategy to have more vehicles available. I think consumer behaviour is important. You point out that it is also important for government to set a role, and I would agree with that. But it's very difficult for a consumer to even make a choice to purchase a cleaner-fuel vehicle when they aren't even available for purchase in the province. So there is more work we can do with industry in that regard.

F. Gingell: Hon. Chair, I'd like to point out to you and the minister that there are many choices. It's not just gasoline or propane or natural gas. First of all, just to deal with natural gas, the most appropriate use is a vehicle that comes back to a home base every night. They are quite comfortable with ranges up to about 120 miles, or about 200 kilometres. It is an obvious fuel for a B.C. Telephone truck and an Eaton's delivery truck. Trucks that make many stops or go to places of business are the perfect units. Part of the issue deals with the cost of the compression equipment. You need a compressor that is big enough to fuel up the vehicle with without having a tank that's the size of a house. But if they come back to a central location, that can be dealt with.

[ Page 5704 ]

Who are the obvious choices? The first choice one would think of is B.C. Hydro, because it has a lot of service vehicles. In the normal course of events, they come back to a central location every night and can be fuelled up overnight. The longer you have to fuel the vehicle, the lower the cost for the compressors. Certainly I think this provincial government could put pressure on B.C. Telephone, which is another obvious example. So there are all kinds of proactive things that the provincial government could in fact do.

I would like to suggest to the minister, too, that dual-fuel vehicles is one of the alternatives that could allow a member from Kamloops to drive down to the ferry or the member for Yale-Lillooet to drive to the ferry. Ones that use propane and natural gas would also work extremely well. So I think there is a whole series of alternatives.

Then one looks back to what the provincial government has spoken about. As everyone knows, there is a policy paper called "Clean Vehicles and Fuels." There is a series of initiatives here. This paper was produced and published in 1995, and we're now in 1997. One doesn't have the feeling that we've moved along particularly far since this document. The questions that both the member for Peace River North and I have raised indicate that there are alternatives that are practical, other than extremely long connection cords -- which, of course, is another solution you might want to look at.

Hon. C. McGregor: I certainly take the member's points, and I understand from his remarks that he obviously knows a great deal about some of the initiatives that have been considered by other jurisdictions related to natural gas vehicles in particular. One of the things I did recently in Kamloops around the announcement of a new natural gas station was also make an announcement around the purchasing of natural gas vehicles for the police in our area. That's exactly the point they made, as well -- that it's really important to look at the kind of vehicle you bring back every day to a central location to refuel. Of course, that lends itself nicely not just to police vehicles but, as you point out, to B.C. Tel and Hydro and other industries.

[H. Lali in the chair.]

I think there's a place for us to be working hard with other jurisdictions -- Crowns and related government agencies -- to do more work in trying to acquire clean-technology vehicles. I know that one of our staff, the ADM for headquarters, just suggested that the GVRD had actually tried to purchase about 19 clean-technology vehicles but was actually able to access only six. Part of the reason is that we simply don't have those kinds of vehicles available for purchase from the manufacturers here in British Columbia. So obviously there's some work we have to do at that level, as well.

I take very seriously the commitment that I as minister need to make in regard to a government initiative around this. I would certainly take it upon myself to give my assurances to the member that I will indeed correspond with all of my colleagues in our government to remind them of the commitment we've made around greenhouse gas reduction and the use of alternate and clean-technology vehicles and that we should continue to work on ways that we can achieve that commitment, because we won't make the necessary changes in our lifestyles if we don't begin at some level to commit to this.

F. Gingell: I'm sure the minister recognizes that many of us have concerns with the issues related to a premium sales tax on what are called luxury vehicles. Members from northern British Columbia and more remote places, who feel that it is not appropriate to go into the woods and move a long way from home without heavy-duty vehicles that have winches on them, are uncomfortable or don't feel it's fair that these vehicles are subject to a higher rate of provincial sales tax. I'd like to suggest that the same issue will perhaps come up when we start getting some zero-emission vehicles, and I don't think we are far off. When Mercedes-Benz signed on with Ballard, I think it was recognized that finally we're into the real world and that perhaps zero-emission vehicles operated with a hydrogen electricity technology would soon be with us. Those vehicles, I would imagine, would be very expensive. They may well. . .but I would imagine that it wouldn't be possible to buy one that wasn't subject to the higher rates of sales tax. So I would like to put that issue to the minister and ask if she intends to make extra-special efforts to ensure that exemptions from the premium sales tax would be provided in the case of such vehicles being available on the market.

Hon. C. McGregor: Obviously, this is a Ministry of Finance matter, but nonetheless it is something that, in my opinion, we should, could and must consider when the time comes. However, we're not quite ready to have zero-emission vehicles yet, and our first priority needs to be on getting the regular auto manufacturers to make affordable, cleaner-technology vehicles available to us here in British Columbia. They are made for the California market, in particular. We just need to make sure that we can get more of those vehicles here, because I believe consumers will make a decision to purchase those when they are available -- as we saw in the example of the GVRD earlier.

F. Gingell: The issues that caused the predecessor of this government to bring in the AirCare provisions, however poorly I think they were brought in. . . . Nevertheless, we all understand the reasons for them. They were first of all brought in to deal only with the lower mainland, but I think many other areas of the province with similar geographic situations are also concerned about the quality of air within their communities and the effect of inefficient automobiles. It would seem to me, having now gotten a new car -- I'm sure that car is going to pass fairly easily -- that the issue isn't with cars that are two and three years old. The problems come with cars that are four, five and six years old. Shouldn't we be focusing on those older vehicles, rather than causing substantial upset, anger, annoyance -- whatever other words you want to use -- for citizens who are required at the moment to put their vehicles through AirCare? I think it is for anything over one year, isn't it? Is it one year or two years that is the cutoff point?

Hon. C. McGregor: I take the member's point about the AirCare program, which is very innovative and is, again, one of the ways that we have shown the rest of North America how to handle some air quality issues. It is a good program. My personal view is that it ought to be expanded outside of the lower mainland. I don't think there are any fewer non-polluting vehicles in rural and semi-urban parts of the province than there are in the urban areas. I understand that that was the most pressing area because of the high quantities of vehicles, so that's where it should have come first. But I would certainly favour an expansion.

[ Page 5705 ]

In terms of older vehicles, the only program that I can really make mention of that might address some of the member's concerns is what we call the Scrap It program, where more than 500 vehicles have been scrapped. That's a joint program with industry. It has enabled us to provide some financial incentives for people, and incentives for bus passes, to turn in their very old, high-emitting vehicles as a part of a strategy to continue to make improvements in air quality. We have a target of scrapping 1,100 high-emission vehicles in Victoria and the Fraser Valley in 1997.

[8:15]

Hon. C. McGregor: We think the number you're referring to must be a year old, because the number we have as of March 31, 1997, is 677 vehicles, which have been authorized for scrap for the last fiscal year.

F. Gingell: The minister spoke earlier about the planned program of 1,100 vehicles. I understand that is your target. The average age of the vehicles that were scrapped -- and on which is based the very impressive reductions in HCs, COs, NOxs and CO2s -- were spoken of as being almost 20 years old -- 1979. Does the minister or the ministry have any numbers on. . . ? Other than antique cars, which are registered separately, what is the percentage or number of automobiles in the province with an original in-service date in the 1970s or earlier? What is 1,100 by way of the market?

Hon. C. McGregor: We don't have the actual number of how many vehicles that would be, but we think it would be available through the motor vehicle branch.

F. Gingell: I wonder if someone in the minister's office could make a note and get that number for us. I know that you get better responses from the motor vehicle branch than we do -- quicker anyway, that's for sure.

I also meant to ask the minister whether there was any thought of exempting newer cars from AirCare. I understand that when they go for their first renewal, or their annual ICBC insurance, that's the point when you have to get the car tested. I wonder if there was any thought on pushing that back and allowing a couple more years of exemption.

Hon. C. McGregor: We don't have total responsibility for the AirCare program, as I'm sure the member is aware; we really provide policy advice to the ministry responsible. But we understand that the AirCare program will be under review for 1999, and that is certainly something that could be considered as part of that review.

F. Gingell: Well, when the member for Yale-Lillooet and the member from Kamloops -- I don't think it will apply over here. . . . When we drive our low-emission vehicles to B.C. Ferries to catch the new fast ferries that will take us at high speed from Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo, we will be climbing into one of the most polluting vessels possible -- without question. I have sent the statistics to the minister's predecessors; I have sent them to the Premier; I have sent them to the Ministry of Transportation and Highways. All I get back is sop about: "We're going to use low-sulphur fuels." But you can use low-sulphur fuels in any vessel that B.C. Ferries runs, and they should and they must. That's their responsibility to all of us: to use the lowest-sulphur vessels they can.

The real test -- the only test that is meaningful -- is the weight of fuel that is consumed to transport each unit of passage, whether it be one person or one automobile. There won't be any trucks on it, but there will be automobiles, cars. All you have to do is divide the total volume or total weight of fuel consumed and the content of that fuel by the number of people that are transported and compare it to the similar calculation for a modern S-class, C-class or V-class ferry. I am sure the member for Richmond Centre can tell me about all the various classes of ferries.

This is a battle that I've lost with your government, and I haven't been able to understand why. When you look at all the issues surrounding fast ferries, they're sexy -- I guess I shouldn't use that word -- leading-edge technology. We talk about the ability to sell these kinds of vessels all over the world. But over the distance between Horseshoe Bay and Departure Bay, it simply doesn't make sense for us to use fast ferries. If they were talking about using them from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert, that might be understandable. There is a sufficient length to that journey to substantially reduce turnaround times, to have savings from single shifts instead of having to pay B.C. Ferries overtime rates for more than normal shifts.

To me, the issue of fast ferries running from Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo is that it's only being done to solve the problem of lack of parking space in Horseshoe Bay. That's the only reason. They can't get a full load into that parking area. There are all kinds of other solutions: use the road as a parking lot; collect the fares on board the ferry; go back up the line and sell tickets so that they don't all have to stop as they run through and onto the ferry.

Having looked at this issue in some depth, having got UBC researchers to deal with the issues of pollution, we recognize that report after report dealing with lower Fraser Valley and lower mainland airshed problems have pointed out that these transportation fuels and marine fuels play a major role as a major cause of air pollution within the lower mainland. A run from Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo at the right time of day will catch those emissions and put them into that airshed just as surely as if it was a car running around West Vancouver.

For all of my concerns about economics, the real issue in the end is the environmental one. In my opinion, there is absolutely no valid reason, for environmental purposes, for us to be going into fast ferries. They're the wrong solution to a problem that needs to be solved.

They're under construction. I guess I'm not going to get them stopped, but at least there are alternate routes that they could ply without having the environmental consequences that they will surely have. I don't have the numbers here; they're down in my office. But basically speaking, you'll put three times the amount of hydrocarbons, nitrous oxides, sulphurous oxides -- it's a long time since I was in the business; all of the various things that we want to keep out of the atmosphere -- into the atmosphere when the government operates fast ferries.

[ Page 5706 ]

I must admit that I haven't done this, but I would be happy to forward to the minister copies of correspondence that I've sent to her predecessors dealing with this. I don't think it's a partisan issue; I think it's a commonsense issue.

I have been looking for a Minister of Environment that would stand up for the environment on this issue, and I welcome whatever response the minister may wish to make to my rather elongated and ponderous statement.

[W. Hartley in the chair.]

Hon. C. McGregor: Well, I certainly appreciate the member's very heartfelt feelings on this matter. He obviously has done a great deal of work and study to determine some of the effects that certain types of motor fuels and transportation have on our greenhouse gas emissions, and I take what he says very seriously.

On the other hand, much as the member might like me to be the minister responsible for this decision, I am not. This matter, as I understand it, has been very fully canvassed by the B.C. Ferries board of directors, as well as the minister responsible, and I would certainly encourage the member to continue his dialogue with those parties.

R. Neufeld: There are some interesting discussions surrounding fast ferries, air quality and what happens to the air quality when we start burning that much diesel fuel in fast ferries. When the member for Delta South talked about running them from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert, it would be okay. I guess that's because it's further north and the air quality is better. But I've often said -- and again, this is not the minister's responsibility -- that when you hear the lobbying from different folks for more highways in the lower mainland to better facilitate more cars, we're also adding an awful lot to an airshed that has an awful lot of problems. I use that same rationale when I think about the north's different airshed -- that we could use some of that money for roads in the north instead of in the south, down here where the quality of air is not good, at best.

[8:30]

I just wonder. . . . And it's not just for myself, although I have an avid interest in antique vehicles; there are a lot of people around the province who regularly send me letters on the issue of government dealing with these types of things. Maybe the minister could just explain it a bit to me.

Hon. C. McGregor: Because the program is fully voluntary, that hasn't been an issue here. The existing criteria are: $750 towards the purchase of a new vehicle, $500 toward the purchase of a used vehicle, or a year-long transit pass. It's voluntary.

R. Neufeld: The minister will recall -- I believe it was last week -- that we had some discussions surrounding policy development within the ministry, specifically as it relates to the northeast and the oil and gas industry, surrounding pipeline applications and those kinds of issues. I have the 1996 annual report. I guess there is a policy and legislation branch within your ministry. Could the minister tell me what the mandate of that is, please?

Hon. C. McGregor: It's now called the corporate policy branch, and its mandate is to oversee our legislation as well as to do strategic planning for the ministry and to look after strategic policy initiatives, a recent example of which is the beverage container strategy.

R. Neufeld: It would be fair, then, to say that your ministry has a policy department that would deal with key issues, as the minister said. I would hope that issues surrounding the northeast and the oil and gas industry would be classified as key policy. Would I be correct in assuming that?

Hon. C. McGregor: Our work with the oil and gas sector is in the field and in the regulatory environment that's outside the policy branch.

R. Neufeld: It surprises me a bit that the oil and gas industry, which contributes so much to the province, is not even included in the key policy decisions of the Ministry of Environment. Would it be correct to say that to the minister? Maybe you could just say it again for me. I'm quite surprised to hear that kind of response.

Hon. C. McGregor: I'm going to put this into my own words. It's a little different than what my staff want me to say, but this is how I would describe it. The corporate policy branch broadly frames new corporate policy directions and initiatives and fits them into a strategic framework and so on. Once those directions have been taken, then it's up to all the branches within the ministry to deliver on those. That may involve ongoing monitoring, smaller policy changes and so on.

I know we were talking earlier about scrubbers on oil tankers. That's an example of a policy that was developed within the branch, not in the corporate policy division. It was in the air resources branch, because it is part of the day-to-day workings we do that are related to that initiative. I hope that answers your question.

R. Neufeld: Taking it one step further, I assume that policy surrounding land use decisions in the northeast as they relate to the oil and gas industry are decisions that would be made within the department in, let's say, Fort St. John rather than through the planning and policy branch of your ministry. Would it be correct to say that those kinds of decisions are made specifically in Fort St. John?

Hon. C. McGregor: I think that's a pretty good description of how it would work. I mean, we obviously have the land use coordination office, which does land use coordination overall for the province, but the direction comes from the regional office. Through our ministry, the direction comes in from our regional offices.

R. Neufeld: Then when the field office in Fort St. John develops some policies surrounding the oil and gas industry, is that referred to the policy branch for some kind of acceptance of those policy measures? Are they just put into place? Are they put into a manual or something to that effect?

[ Page 5707 ]

What I'm trying to get at with the minister -- and I know she talked about being more proactive in getting some kind of regulations written down -- is that I am still not satisfied with where we're going with the Fort St. John office in relation to the oil and gas industry or with the impediments that the office is putting in the way of the industry trying to get ahead.

Would it be fair to say that the people who happen to be in the office now just develop policy as they see fit? They have changed dramatically at different times, and each person comes with a different viewpoint on how something should be done. How do we do policy that way? It seems to me to be a bit too haphazard.

[8:45]

The field is where a lot of the policy is put into action, so it's in the regional offices in the field where sometimes those policies perhaps need to be fine-tuned. That information is fed back through the headquarters loop. It is really a function of both arms of the organization, trying to support one another in developing policy that supports initiatives within the ministry.

R. Neufeld: I was a bit afraid that that's what was happening, because I can tell the minister that we seem to be on a continual policy development run when it comes to the oil and gas industry. It depends on who's on the other side of the counter as to what policy we're going to deal with.

I'm going to read to the minister a bit out of her annual report for 1996 that relates to the oil and gas industry: "Environmental guidelines for seismic and drilling operations in northeast B.C. were completed and implemented for the winter field season. These guidelines will be incorporated into the 'Oil and Gas Handbook,' which provides for all aspects of industry management." On the surface, it sounds pretty good. You would think that some of the terms used there would all of a sudden see us finally getting somewhere where industry knows what the goalposts are and what the parameters are.

Further on in the book, it talks about the Omineca-Peace region, and it says again: "Oil and gas guidelines were completed and implemented in cooperation with the Ministry of Employment and Investment and industry." It is, again, a laudable solution to some problems that we experienced in the north. But I would like the minister, after the explanation I've already received, to maybe square that with what's happening now in the Fort St. John office. Now, one would think that we're kind of up to date on our guidelines and policy within the ministry office in Fort St. John as they relate to the oil and gas industry.

I have a letter that was sent out from the supervisor of the oil and gas division in Fort St. John and given to all oil companies -- those that have an interest in it, the land companies and what not. I'm going to read into the record again. It says: "What's Happening Here Now." Taking into consideration that we just finished developing a whole bunch of policy, we held up the industry in all kinds of areas. We never saw some of the development. I don't know whether it will ever come back. There's no way to measure that. But you know that through sheer frustration, there is some that we missed, and that's not good for government as a whole or for the Ministry of Environment.

When we talk about the Ministry of Finance, I would think we're trying to facilitate as much as we can -- within the environmental parameters, of course. We want to get that industry, those people, working -- those men and women. But here we have it: "The following initiatives are scheduled to get underway as soon as time(!) permits us." And it has a big exclamation mark, as if to say that time may never permit us. You have to remember what I read about the development that was already done. The policy was put into the oil and gas handbook; it should all be there. But now it says: "The development of guidelines for pipelines and other linear corridors; development of guidelines for plants, compressors, meter sites and all off-well-site ancillary facilities; development of guidelines for well sites; development of guidelines for geophysical referrals" -- I read it right in there; they are already done, according to this book -- "development of guidelines for quarries," and so on and so forth. The rest have to do with land use plans, which are much more difficult. I'm confused and a little concerned. Reading what we've put in the "Oil and Gas Handbook," it seems to me that we're finally getting somewhere where industry knows the goalposts.

This letter is dated May 26. I know there have been some projects that have been totally cancelled. I'm not talking about million-dollar ones. I have one right here that took eight months, but it's a $10 million proposal that's down the tube -- and that's just for construction. Can you imagine what would happen over the next 20 or 30 years if that pipeline was constructed -- the revenue it would bring to the province, the amount of work it would bring to the province, the amount of people that could be employed?

Here we are with people in Fort St. John. . . . And I think if you go back to other annual reports, you will find reference to the fact that we've finally got our policy; we're on our way. And then this shows up. Now, this causes some frustration. It's causing some frustration with me, and I want to know whether the book is wrong and this is right, or this is wrong and the book is right.

Hon. C. McGregor: The guidebook that's referred to in the annual report is the engineering standards, regulations and guidelines that the Ministry of Employment and Investment and ourselves put together. They are a direct result of the application of the Forest Practices Code to the oil and gas sector. The letter that you made reference to makes reference to what we're trying to do in changing our referral and applications process, because of the result of downsizing in regional offices.

R. Neufeld: I'm well aware of the "Oil and Gas Handbook." I have a copy in my office and go through it quite a bit. It's a document -- about that thick -- with constant additions. So I'm aware of some of the policy developments that are talked about in it. Go a little bit further than just dealing with the Forest Practices Code. . . . But I won't stand here and try to argue each part of that handbook.

I am going to again ask the minister: if this is an internal problem, if this is internal within the ministry -- and I believe it is, completely. . . . As I think I said before, we've been building pipelines since oil and gas was first discovered in the northeast. We've been building plants and compressors for the same amount of time, we've had well sites for the same amount of time, and we've done geophysical work for the same amount of time. I guess what I'm reading here, then, is ministry staff saying, in their own way, that when we get around to it -- time permitting -- we may deal with some of these things, and in the interim some of these projects, like what I'm talking about here, are going to go by the wayside. I don't think that that's good for your ministry, I don't think it's good for industry, and I don't think it's good for what people think of British Columbia when they think about the oil and gas industry. I think that these are things. . . . If they're within the ministry because of downsizing, the last thing we should be doing is telling industry that we're going to redevelop all the guidelines that we said we developed in '94, '95, '96 and '97. Because that's what the book refers to. These go back a number of years. I think it's a terrible way to deal with the industry, to be quite frank and honest.

[ Page 5708 ]

I know there's some downsizing; so be it. If you want to downsize the northeast, the biggest office of any in the province of British Columbia, although it's one of the busiest, so be it. But at least the ministry office should be trying to process as much as it can by working with the ministry. It doesn't mean they want to skirt any of the issues; it doesn't mean they want to do something like we did back in the fifties. They want to get on with work, they want to get on with development, and they want to get on with investing in the province. Or we're going to continue to have the ones like Remington Energy. Because of the spill on the W.A.C. Bennett Dam, they had two of their pipelines washed out and now have their wells shut in because the Ministry of Environment has decided after about six or eight months that they won't let them build another pipeline across there. That relates directly back to these kinds of things.

I'm not exactly sure -- and I don't have the numbers -- of the amount of investment, but the investment would be very high. The stringent guidelines that were put in this -- someone said they didn't have any guidelines, so "We'll develop them at the counter" -- were so strict that industry couldn't do it. It wasn't feasible. So all the wells that they have on the other side of the Moberly Rover are now shut in. They're not generating any revenue for the province -- none whatsoever. They're sitting there dormant. For years they produced gas through the system for the province and the resulting revenues through royalties and employment.

More? The ones like Morrison, that I talked about earlier, that took eight months. The hundreds of thousands of dollars for industry to develop its plans for a pipeline -- because the production of oil has increased dramatically in the northeast, and we need more pipeline facilities to take it out of British Columbia to get it to market. . . . It has been turned down. Can you imagine going through this kind of thing for eight months or so -- trying to get approvals to spend $10 million and finally getting a letter with one paragraph saying: "I'm sorry; we can't do it"? I don't know how much more strenuously I can relate it to this -- to put it bluntly -- policy at the counter.

[9:00]

Those are just two of the larger issues that are looming with the oil and gas industry, and they're not going to go away until we deal with things like this -- a policy at the counter, where one person has one idea today and another person has another idea tomorrow; or another person, when their work is supposed to take place in the summertime, takes a two-month holiday with no replacement. Those kinds of things just don't work, even though it's government. After a while, those folks just move away. They go someplace else and invest their money. Unfortunately, it's not in British Columbia.

I want to see my part of the province -- the constituency of Peace River North -- get the investment it deserves and jobs for men and women. I might add that these are good jobs. These are jobs that pay good money -- really good money. Those are the ones I think we want to keep for men and women in British Columbia. Those are the ones that return the big tax dollars to the province. And we can't do it by this method of every year developing policy on how we're going to deal with these issues. You go back in the book from 1994 -- and it goes from before then, if I'd brought in the annual report from before then. . . . At some point in time someone has to say: "We've got enough policy. Now we've got to get on with trying to get someone here who is going to be able to put some money into the province and invest."

May I can get the minister's comments about how we're going to do this? How are you going to work within your ministry to get your own guidelines -- your own policy between yourselves -- worked out and not be out there in the public, holding up industry to do it?

Hon. C. McGregor: I want to begin by saying that the letter the member refers to does not mean we are redeveloping all the guidelines that already exist. That's a misrepresentation or a misreading of the letter. We're not doing that. The handbook that you make reference to already exists, and there's certainly no reason to reinvent the wheel. Obviously, as we need to amend and change our regulations and practice, we should do that, but that doesn't mean we're starting all over again from scratch, redeveloping everything.

Sometimes it's hard to deal with competing demands, too. We're constantly told that we need more consultation, more consultation, before we make policy decisions. So we're obliged -- and I think rightly -- to meet with a variety of individuals before we develop and implement new policy, because they can have far-reaching effects. It's far better to have canvassed that prior to adopting the policy than to go ahead, develop it and adopt it without consulting with those who will be affected by it. That does indeed slow down the process. But in fact it makes it a process that's better.

Does it mean that we couldn't do more faster? Yes, probably we should. I know that the member and I canvassed this matter last week, about what we're doing in his part of the province to try and facilitate the need to get as many applications -- all of the applications, in fact -- that have significant economic and job creation benefits through the office as quickly as we can.

It overstates the case to characterize the regional office as unable to manage and approve in a timely way the permits and approvals for the oil and gas sector, because in the last year we've processed more than 1,300 applications from that office alone. That doesn't point to people who are sitting around developing policy; that points to people who are working very hard to put those approvals through.

Just on the issue of Morrison Petroleums, I'm informed by the ADM for the branch that it has been approved. The application was brought in in April, and we bent over backwards to get that through by June. That was a really fast turnaround time. That's because we understand, as well as industry does, the need to get fast turnaround.

[ Page 5709 ]

But I also want to emphasize that I hope the member is not implying that we should have development at any and all costs. The reason it has to be permitted and go through our ministry is because of the high standards that all of us have, to live in an environment that's safe from toxic chemicals, from pollutants, from having our health and safety endangered by the mishandling or introduction of materials, wastes or other chemicals and natural products such as oil into their drinking water supplies, the supplies that fish use for habitat, and so on. So obviously those regulations are there for a purpose.

That doesn't mean that we shouldn't be as timely as we can in processing those applications. It doesn't mean that we can't do more. I think we canvassed later last week the work we're doing to deregulate and actually streamline regulations and create some benchmarks for the industry. So we are indeed working with the oil and gas sector. We've given our commitments that if staffing is a problem and there is a backlog of applications, we will put in additional staff as necessary. I hope the member is assured that we are working as hard as we can to continue to support an extremely important part of our economy, the oil and gas sector.

R. Neufeld: I appreciate that response, Madam Minister. In fact, I think I qualified my statements with "not at all costs." When I was speaking, I said no, we don't want to go out there and, just for the sake of doing it, bypass all kinds of issues that we should be looking at seriously. So certainly I'm not saying that at all costs we go ahead and develop. If I inferred that to the minister, I apologize, because I think I stated on the record that no, we don't do that. We do it in an environmentally sensitive fashion. We should be doing, to the best of our ability, the technology that offers us those kinds of things today, but we should also be looking at trying to expedite the work.

What I would assume, then, when I read this letter. . . . Really, this letter that came out of the office misrepresents what they were trying to say. The intention is, it says, to develop a simple set of guidelines that will be required when either making application or dropping off a referral, to ensure timely feedback in the issuance of permits. That is exactly what they're trying to do. In the interim, they're not going to hold up any work; they're going to carry on. They're going to do their internal work, so they know which way to push the paper and to send the permits within the ministry. But permits are going to be given in a timely fashion.

On the issue surrounding the Morrison pipeline, the last piece of information I have was dated May 6 from the Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks. I'll just read the last paragraph: "The application for geotechnical investigation for the Peace River crossing has been denied by the B.C. Environment ministry for the time being to allow for a field inspection of the area proposed for the crossing." Since May 6, would it be correct to say that you have actually approved the Morrison pipeline that was started last fall, in September?

Hon. C. McGregor: Yes. The approval was issued at the end of June, probably around the 20th.

R. Neufeld: I appreciate that, because the dates are a little confusing. As of June 25, I have letters and documentation saying exactly the opposite. Maybe the word just never got out to the right people before they met with me and gave me this information. I do have information saying that it still hadn't been approved on June 25, and no one had heard anything more. But the minister says it was approved on June 20. I'll go back to my informants and get the information from them to make sure that it's all approved. That's great, if in fact that is what has taken place.

I want to go on to another issue briefly, the development of a B.C. road network system through your ministry. Maybe you would like some information. It talks a lot about the Ministry of Finance, Transportation and Highways, and Forests. Could the minister explain to me why that's in the Ministry of Environment?

Hon. C. McGregor: I just want to indicate to the member that I can get him a copy of the letter that issued the approval for the Morrison pipeline.

I wonder if he knows the page number in the annual report that makes reference to the B.C. road network system.

R. Neufeld: It's page 81.

Hon. C. McGregor: It is a data management system for all the roads in British Columbia, and it was developed through our branch. It is called "Geographic Data B.C."

R. Neufeld: I'm sorry, I realize that a bit from reading it. I just want to know the reason why all the roads in British Columbia are to be mapped through the Ministry of Environment.

Hon. C. McGregor: The reason is that we have the most comprehensive mapping function in the government.

R. Neufeld: Oh, that's very good. That's a plus. You should be telling everybody about that all the time -- that you have the most comprehensive mapping of roads in British Columbia. I'm sure the Minister of Transportation and Highways would love to hear that.

Just one other issue, and then I'll turn it over to the official opposition critic. It goes back a bit to some discussions you had with one of the other members about animal waste and the storing of it. I just want to know: do the same rules apply in the north in wintertime as they do in the south? I know, for instance, that in the Fraser Valley you're dealing with rain all the time, and in the north we're not dealing with rain. We're dealing with 30 below or 40 below and some snow. In most cases, it's frozen pretty hard. Is there some differential that's made for that issue?

[9:15]

Hon. C. McGregor: Manure management guidelines are provincewide. Obviously they'd have different applications for the north than they do in the Fraser Valley, because, of course, the growing season is different. We're encouraging the spreading of manure during a time of year when there's active growing rather than on land that might be covered, in your case, with snow.

[ Page 5710 ]

On the issue of the Ground Water Association, you would need to contact them directly to find out exactly how they're constituted. But I believe that they are a voluntary organization, and it's made up mostly of well drillers.

R. Neufeld: Then there is no differential between the south and the north when it comes to animal waste storage. They have to dispose of it or cover it on a constant basis. Would there be. . . ? I've had some representation made to me not so much by the farmers but specifically by the auction houses -- one located in Dawson Creek -- on some of the difficulty they have with trying to keep some of this covered in the wintertime when it's fairly cold. What do they use to cover it? Would the ministry be willing to listen to the individual concerned about issues such as that if he were to bring them forward?

Hon. C. McGregor: Well, we'd invite the member to let the individual know that he should approach our regional staff, and they'd be quite happy to discuss it.

C. Clark: Well, in the half-hour or so that we have left to us, I would like to revisit the battery recycling issue and canvass that just a little bit further before we close down for the evening. Could the ministry provide us with a list of the primary contractors that it uses for battery recycling? I imagine that there won't be many amongst that list.

Hon. C. McGregor: K-C Recycling is registered as the only processor in the province that receives batteries for breaking, and then they send it to Cominco's smelter in Trail.

C. Clark: I'm not as familiar with this process as I'm sure the minister and her officials are. K-C Recycling receives the batteries. I imagine that on the list of small contractors there would also be the contractors that transport and deliver the batteries. Could the minister provide us with a list of those companies -- if it's a short one?

Hon. C. McGregor: The haulers are: Exide Canada on Annacis Island; Rivtow Marine in Kitimat; Berry and Smith Trucking, Penticton; Dolphin Batteries, Richmond; Capital Salvage, Vancouver; Antrim Battery in Mission; and Bandstra Transport and Industrial Battery.

C. Clark: Based on what the minister told me earlier, Metalex received over $2 million from '93 to '96, which I think was about 50 percent of the fees that were paid -- or somewhere in that neighbourhood. Doesn't that qualify them as a primary contractor in the program?

Hon. C. McGregor: Metalex is a battery broker. They're engaged in the brokering of battery movement to K-C Recycling in Trail.

C. Clark: Is Metalex the primary contractor of that nature to the government?

Hon. C. McGregor: Yes.

C. Clark: Maybe I'll go back to more general issues. The minister said that payment to the contractors -- whether that's a broker or a transporter or the company that receives the batteries when a bill is received -- is authorized for. . . . And she did mention that the ministry does engage, periodically, in auditing. It didn't appear to me that there were many other ways in which the government ensured that contractors were meeting their obligations. Are there any outside of the infrequent audits, and if not, are the audits a regular process, or are they sort of a spot check?

Hon. C. McGregor: We indicated earlier today that we couldn't answer that question, and we would get the information and bring it back for the member.

C. Clark: I hope the minister will forgive me for asking that question again. I didn't mean to do that; I simply forgot that it had been answered.

Hon. C. McGregor: We have been at this too long; it's time to quit.

C. Clark: If the minister would like to quit, I think she should talk to her House Leader, who could probably make the decision that we shouldn't sit past six every night. That would certainly be my preference and, I think, the preference of all the officials here, as well. So I would strongly make that recommendation to the minister before I move on to my question.

If the ministry only audits infrequently. . . . I'll work from that assumption, and I know the minister will get me some more information about how the ministry ensures that its contractors are meeting their obligations. Doesn't the ministry base its decisions to hire and pay a contractor at least partly on the past performance of that contractor?

Hon. C. McGregor: Yes, it is a factor.

C. Clark: I'm glad to know that it's a factor. I would be sorry to find out, though, that it is only a factor in the most extreme cases.

Of course, one of the cases that received a great deal of public attention was this issue of Metalex depositing toxic battery slag illegally at an old minesite near Cawston. It is my understanding that the ministry is aware of this company's checkered past. Can the minister confirm that there are references in the ministry's files to infractions on the part of this company dating back to 1960?

Hon. C. McGregor: Yes. The ministry first expressed concern about air pollution at the Metalex facility in 1970. In 1971, a local resident complained about exposure to airborne lead. Between 1971 and 1989, there were no compliance issues raised. In 1989, there was a pollution abatement order issued that was related to the storage of slag at its Richmond facility. In 1991, it stopped battery-breaking and was engaged only in brokering.

C. Clark: Could the minister clarify for us the nature of the pollution abatement order that was issued against Metalex in 1989?

Hon. C. McGregor: The order required effluent treatment and detailed investigation of areas impacted by contamination from the facility.

C. Clark: Did the company meet the terms of the order?

Hon. C. McGregor: Yes. They were investigated in 1991, and it was found that they had made best efforts to live up to the pollution abatement order.

[ Page 5711 ]

[9:30]

Hon. C. McGregor: Since 1991, they did have some battery slag on site, but from that time on we have worked with them to ensure that they had proper storage and/or disposal.

C. Clark: Can the minister confirm that they still haven't disposed of it and that the slag hasn't been entirely disposed of from the site? Can she tell us if the slag is now currently meeting the ministry's standards for proper storage? I know the minister indicated that the ministry has been working with them, which seems to indicate some willingness to be in the process of getting it properly stored, but I wonder if indeed it is properly stored at the present time.

Hon. C. McGregor: There is no slag currently on the site.

C. Clark: I'm very glad to hear that. I guess Metalex has moved the slag from the site in the last few months, which is good news. I appreciate knowing that about the Richmond site.

I want to talk a little more, though, about the movement from the Richmond site to the site in Cawston. That is a source of concern, as is the ministry's apparent failure to ensure that the battery slag was going to the right place. Can the minister tell the committee if her ministry authorized the disposal of that slag at the Dankoe minesite in Cawston?

Hon. C. McGregor: No, we did not.

C. Clark: Can the minister tell us if, in her view, the company misrepresented. . . ? Did the company misrepresent where it intended to send the slag when it received payment from the ministry?

Hon. C. McGregor: The payment was for the transportation of batteries. It was not for the disposal of slag.

C. Clark: Did the ministry not know where the slag would be disposed of after it was transported? I understand this issue of payment. It's a very specific question. Obviously, if one picks up a toxic product at one spot and transports it, it doesn't stay in the transportation system forever. It eventually ends up somewhere. So can the minister confirm for us where Metalex indicated it would be depositing the slag?

Hon. C. McGregor: The slag that was on site at the Metalex facility in Richmond had been there since 1991. The pollution abatement order was designed to create the proper storage for it, not to dispose of it. We had no knowledge that they were going to pick it up and move it somewhere else.

C. Clark: So I take it, then, that the ministry didn't pay any money for the transportation of the slag that wound up at the Dankoe site in Cawston. Is that correct? There was no disbursement from the ministry for any of that slag that wound up illegally deposited at Dankoe.

Hon. C. McGregor: That is correct.

C. Clark: How does the ministry determine that? I imagine there's no genetic imprint for the slag. I'm curious about how the ministry knows that it didn't pay for any of that particular slag that ended up there.

Hon. C. McGregor: This may seem a bit obvious, but the reason we know that is because the ministry does not pay for the transportation of slag -- only for batteries.

C. Clark: Okay, perhaps I should go at this question, then, from a different angle. How much money did the ministry pay to Metalex for any purpose during the time that Metalex was depositing the slag illegally at the Dankoe minesite in Cawston?

Hon. C. McGregor: During the time they dumped the slag, the '96-97 fiscal year, a total of $18,122 was paid to Metalex for transportation of batteries.

C. Clark: I know that for the purposes of accounting and to make this system work as smoothly as possible, the ministry technically only pays for the transportation of the batteries. But the system is intended -- and I know the minister is aware of this -- to pay for. . . . Although it only pays for that small part, it's intended to achieve much larger goals than just moving batteries around. It's intended to be a battery recycling program, as I understand it, which would include encouraging some method of collection at least and then some method of storage, some method of breaking it, some method of disposing of it and the transportation in between. I know that the ministry only pays for a small portion of it, and that's technically the way the system is structured so that they can account for it. Nonetheless, this company was depositing a battery by-product illegally and in a dangerous manner, I would suggest, and the ministry paid the company to do that. You know, the minister can say, "Well, we don't pay for slag to be moved around; we just pay for batteries to be moved around," but it's all part of the same process.

I don't think the minister is suggesting that when they pay for batteries to be moved around, they just pay for them to be moved around and around and around, and that they're not intended to end up anywhere. My thought on it is that probably the program is intended so that the batteries can end up being reused or recycled -- that that's where they go. So the ministry paid this company $18,000 during the time that they were illegally dumping slag at the Dankoe site in Cawston. Can the minister tell us, given the history of this company and the ministry's knowledge of the long, long checkered past with this company, why that history didn't change its decision to maintain Metalex as the primary contractor as a battery broker?

Hon. C. McGregor: We did consider cancelling their licence, I guess you would call it -- their contract -- for hauling batteries this spring, but as a result of coming into full compliance, we did not.

C. Clark: I'm assuming that the ministry has paid the company well over $2 million since it first became aware that the company wasn't always operating in compliance and in a proper manner in 1960. The minister went on to say, though, that a prior knowledge of infractions on the part of the company will sometimes be used as a basis for auditing a company. Can the minister tell me if her ministry was ever prompted as a result of this knowledge and this long checkered history, of which her officials were aware, to undertake an audit of this company?

[ Page 5712 ]

Hon. C. McGregor: Hon. Chair, rhetoric aside, it was not 1960; I pointed out to the member that it was beginning in 1970. They have not been significantly out of compliance through the bulk of the time, and I gave the member the number of years when they were not. They are not paid to dump slag, and they are now in full compliance. I believe I have answered these questions repeatedly, and I would ask that the member move on to a new question.

C. Clark: Well, I guess one of the first pieces of education that the minister will get in the estimates process is that she gets to decide the answers to the questions, but the opposition gets to decide what the questions are. So I'll thank the minister for the advice, hon. Chair, but I'll certainly decide what the questions are. The minister can decide not to answer the questions if she chooses; that's certainly her right. Although, if she would like the process to move more quickly than it has, I would remind her that the rules also allow for her officials to answer directly, which would save us a whole lot of time in the consultations in between every single question, no matter how simple.

She can allow her officials to answer directly, and I would suggest that that would probably cut this time in half. The answers would be accurate, they would be fast, and it's within the rules.

The Chair: Would you take your chair please, member.

C. Clark: So I just remind the minister that that certainly. . . .

The Chair: Member, please take your chair. I would like to caution members that the Chair actually has some say in what relevancy is to this committee, and we'll certainly continue to make rulings on that basis. Also, I want to caution members that we're dealing with the estimates and that we should, in the last dying moments of this committee, appear to be doing so.

C. Clark: Well, I hope that you, hon. Chair, didn't lose track of the fact that we are indeed on the estimates here. I am interested in finding out how the sustainable environment fund moneys are spent and how the ministry ensures that those moneys are spent properly. There's been a case in the last year where the ministry has shown, I think, that it isn't auditing itself very well -- that it's not ensuring that its money, taxpayers' money, that goes into the sustainable environment fund is being spent well. And the minister has still failed, after a half-hour of questions, to provide any reasonable basis for us to be able to say that there is a proper process in place to ensure that this money is properly spent; that there is a proper process in place to ensure that contractors are meeting the obligations they make; and that taxpayers' money is going to pay for services that are actually rendered, rather than going to pay someone to dump slag illegally somewhere near organic farms in the interior of British Columbia.

The Metalex case. . . . It might be only $2 million over many years; it might only be $12,000 over the last year. The fact is that it may be a symptom of something this ministry is not doing. That's our job as opposition: to look and find out what auditing procedures are in place to ensure that the ministry is doing its job and spending taxpayers' money effectively.

With that, hon. Chair, and noting the time, I will move the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 9:45 p.m.

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