[ Page 5949 ]

The House resumed at 6:38 p.m.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

Hon. M. Farnworth: In Committee A, I call the estimates for Education, Skills and Training, and in this House, I call second reading debate of Bill 29.

PARK AMENDMENT ACT, 1997
(second reading continued)

C. Clark: I'm pleased to be able to address this bill, which will at least formalize the creation of so many new parks in British Columbia. The minister made many good comments. She described the nature of the bill in her opening remarks, and I'd like to expand on that a little bit. In my party, we are led by a man who, when he was mayor of Vancouver, created and dedicated more parks and more parkland than any mayor of the city of Vancouver since its founding -- more than any single mayor, if we include Pacific Spirit Park in our calculations. And that is certainly an achievement. Those parks that he caused to be created are a legacy for the people of Vancouver even till today.

When people go down and visit the sea wall, they must remember and they must realize that they can do that because of Gordon Campbell. Gordon Campbell created the sea wall so that people can walk from the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre through Stanley Park all the way around False Creek until they get to Spanish Banks. And that is quite an achievement. He created the urban landscape task force, which has enhanced parks all over Vancouver, and it is still working today. If people go visit the Fraser Land Park, they should remember that it is there because of Gordon Campbell. If they go visit David Lam Park, they must remember that it is there because of Gordon Campbell, as is Andy Livingstone Park for. . . .

The Speaker: Excuse me, member. Just in case you're working on a triple, I must tell you that you're not allowed to use the proper names of members in the House. I hope I didn't destroy your speech rhythm.

C. Clark: I appreciate that, hon. Chair. The Leader of the Official Opposition, the leader of the Liberal Party, also created the Burrard Inlet waterfront park. He dedicated that land, which will be next to the Trade and Convention Centre.

His asking and demanding and working so hard for so many years to ensure that Pacific Spirit Park was dedicated is probably one of his greatest achievements as mayor. That single park dedication is bigger than Stanley Park, and that park would not be there for the use of Vancouverites and British Columbians today without the leadership of the member for Vancouver-Point Grey.

The leader of the Liberal Party, the Leader of the Official Opposition, worked for years to improve Hastings Park from what it has become, which is a parking lot, back into a park. Hastings Park is an area in East Vancouver which had been dedicated as a park since 1907 -- that's 90 years. But I don't think many people from Vancouver would recognize what it's supposed to be today. Instead of a park, it's a parking lot. I think that is an example of where, no matter what we call it, it doesn't tell us how we might be able to use it. Hastings Park is called a park, but it's certainly not what I would think of as a nature legacy. It's certainly not what I would think of as an area that's been protected. I think it's an area that is now in quite a state after many years of intense use, to say the least. It's been paved; the waterways through it have been culverted. For many years, the province has stood in the way and fought the city of Vancouver as they've tried to turn that into a real park that will protect the natural values of that area for the people of East Vancouver. So there's an example of where, just because we call it a park, it doesn't necessarily mean that we're protecting anything, and it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be put to the purposes for which people would expect a park to be put.

I wanted to touch on that, because although this bill, which my party obviously will certainly support, given the legacy of our leader in creating parks for the people of Vancouver -- an unparalleled legacy as mayor of Vancouver of creating parks. . . . Although we will certainly support it, I want to touch on the fact that just because they are called parks doesn't necessarily mean that they will even be able to be used. It doesn't even mean that certain uses will always be prohibited. Although we can call it a park in legislation, unless there is also a concurrent commitment from the government to invest some money in that park, what's the difference? What's the difference today from tomorrow? What's the difference yesterday from tomorrow? There isn't any particular difference.

This government has dropped its parks budget by 1.8 percent, even though they've expanded the number of parks by 70 in this bill. There isn't a single new park ranger going to be dedicated in British Columbia in this year's budget, even though we have 70 new parks. Who is going to go in and enforce the regulations in those parks? I know that the government makes the point frequently: "Well, once we call it a park, there are certain things that you can't do there." But if we don't have the ability to enforce those regulations, are they meaningful? If we say that people can't drive motorized vehicles through the park, but we have no one to go and enforce those regulations, are they meaningful? I would suggest that they're not. If there isn't money to build a single picnic table or a single water fountain in any of those parks, is that meaningful?

[6:45]

We have 70 new parks, but they only exist on paper, which makes me question the government's commitment to creating those parks. When the government says that they're going to create 84 new parks but there's no money to go along with it, what are they trying to do? Are they just trying to get 

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some publicity through a press release? Is it just that somebody wants to make an announcement and get some good press? Nothing's going to be different tomorrow from what it was yesterday.

What I suspect will happen is that the government will pass this bill. They'll get another good press release and, hopefully, somebody will believe it and they'll get some good press out of it. Then 20 years from now, when one of those parks is actually developed, the government will put out another press release saying that they've got another new park. And it goes on and on and on. If we're just talking about paper parks and announcements, then I don't know that there's a whole lot to cheer about here. It's certainly something we can support. But I don't know if it's something that the government wants to trumpet and hold out there before the public like it's some great achievement.

Frankly, unless there is money to go along with the commitment they've made, the commitment isn't very meaningful. The numbers don't lie. We've been through the Environment estimates, and we know that the numbers aren't there to support the government's claim to be committed to creating a whole bunch of new parks or even really to going ahead and being a leader in protecting the environment. We know that. We've been through the Environment estimates.

The government says that uses will be prohibited in these parks, but they're not going to add a single park ranger or conservation officer. When we have asked the minister about who's going to take care of these new parks, she says that it's going to be our park rangers and conservation officers. Well, the government has actually cut back on the number of conservation officer positions in its employment this year.

There will be fewer conservation officers in the future than there have been in the past, and there won't be any more park rangers to take care of these parks. Who is going to go in and ensure that these prohibited uses -- uses that the government trumpets and says they're why this legislation is so important -- don't go on in these parks? The fact is that there won't be anybody doing that, because conservation officers, for example, are already worked to the bone.

I want to give an example of what goes on out there in the field from the people the ministry says are going to be able to take care of these new parks and are going to ensure that the prohibited uses implied by this new legislation don't go on in the parks. In the Prince George office of the government's Environment and Lands area, where the conservation officers work, they already have a backlog of 400 field trips. They say that they've got 578 other tasks related to lands management that are sitting there on their lists of things to do, and they just can't get to them.

They already have a list that I would suggest will take them months to get through, they are so far behind. How are they going to be able to ensure that these parks are treated as parks? How are they going to be able to go out there and enforce the regulations that the government says are so important and are a part of this legislation? The fact is that they're not.

We have Ministry of Environment staff saying that in fact the lack of funding that's out there in the field is very scary. And I'm quoting: "It's so ludicrous that we're looking at options like parking everybody's trucks some time this summer, and then that's it for the year, let alone doing any other work." Well, this is the other work.

Even if they had time to do this work, according to this employee of the Ministry of Environment -- which the minister hasn't refuted -- they won't even have gas in their trucks to get to the parks. You know, there aren't necessarily any buses up there that will take you into any of these parks. If they can't even afford gas for their trucks because the ministry is underfunding them so badly, I'd suggest they're not going to be going to those parks.

Then, in the same article, the assistant deputy minister goes on to say it's okay. I'm quoting here: "To be honest, I'd have to say there will be a small reduction in field checks and that the [conservation officers] will have to be a little more strategic in terms of where they go and how they can get the best bang for their buck." So there's going to be a little less money. He goes on to say that's okay, because funding from Forest Renewal B.C. and the habitat conservation fund for specific projects should help offset reductions in the regions-based budget.

That is outrageous. The money for the Forest Renewal B.C. fund was taken in as what the government said was a sacred trust for the people of forest-dependent communities in British Columbia. That money came from the land, and it should go back to the land. It should go back to the workers the government says it cares so much about retraining. It should go back to reforesting the land so that we can have a healthy land base and so we can ensure we're able to have a sustainable economy and a sustainable forest industry in British Columbia. It should go back to restoring watersheds so we can have a sustainable long-term fishing industry.

That's where that money is supposed to go. It's not supposed to go into the base budget of the Ministry of Environment so they can just keep up with what they're doing now -- or maybe cut back on what they're doing now so they can go out and service these new parks. That's what's happening out there, and when the government says it's going to take it from the habitat conservation trust fund, that is even more shocking.

The habitat conservation trust fund is intended to ensure the conservation of wildlife and fish in British Columbia. The money for that fund comes from hunters and anglers in British Columbia. They are prepared to pay -- and they've said they are even in some cases prepared to pay more -- to ensure conservation of the wildlife and the fishery they so much enjoy in British Columbia.

But the government is going to take that money away from conservation, away from all those purposes the government promised it would put it to, and it is going to put the money in to supplement its base budget. The government has to put it in to supplement its base budget because its base budget is shrinking. I'll tell you, the farther you get away from the minister's office in Victoria, the more it shrinks. If you're in Peace-Omineca, you're looking at a 26 percent cut in your budget, and that's where they're going to need the money to service these new parks.

Of course, if you're in the minister's office in Victoria, you're looking at a zero cut to your budget. It's a zero cut if you're in Victoria. Maybe the minister did decide, though, that the support staff in the Victoria office could afford an 11 or 12 percent cut, but the farther you get away from Victoria, the farther you get away from the minister's office, the deeper the cuts are in this ministry.

That's going to make it well nigh impossible for this legislation to be meaningful. It is going to make it impossible to go out and enforce these new rules that the government has brought into place. What that says to me is that this legislation was intended just so the government could get a good hit, so it 

[ Page 5951 ]

could put out another press release with the minister's name on it and hope for a good newspaper article. I noticed, though, that when this legislation was first introduced, the government didn't get much great press.

You know, I think the public has probably caught on by now. The public has probably figured out that this government is a lot more interested in press releases than it is in governing, a lot more interested in politics and in saying they'll do something than actually doing it. You can't believe a word that this government or this minister says. She says she's dedicated to creating new parks, but there's no commitment there. She introduces a bill, but there's no money to support it. There's no commitment even to plan these parks.

The planning budget for this year in the Ministry of Environment is just about the same as it was last year, and surely that's the first thing you have to do if you want to start a new park. You have to plan something. You have to figure out if you're going to put a trail or a road in or if you're going to put a bathroom or a picnic table in. You have to figure that out, but the government hasn't done any of that. There is zero commitment behind this bill, and you can't believe a word they say. You simply can't. They'll say one thing, they'll say it's important, they'll say that it's at the top of their priority list -- but they won't do it. They won't follow it up with anything.

It's like the government saying the budgets were balanced. They said that they had two balanced budgets in a row, and of course it didn't happen. The budgets were wildly out of whack. The public found out, and the government didn't even say they were sorry. Will the minister say she is sorry when these parks are created and nobody can use them? Is she going to come out and say she's sorry? I don't think so.

Nobody else in this government has had the good grace to apologize for all the other things they've said that haven't happened, and there has been a long list of them, including something I touched on earlier -- the raid on the forest renewal fund. Did anybody say they were sorry for that? When they went out and told people the forest renewal fund was sacred and that the money belonged to the people in small forest-dependent communities, and then they took it to supplement the base budget of the Ministry of Environment and to use for existing government operations, did the government say they were sorry? No. Did they say: "We're sorry"? They didn't say: "You know that whole budget thing. Well, it wasn't really true. Now we're in a position where we have to really cover it up. So we're going to take the money out of that money we promised to forest-dependent communities, and we're going to use it to try to supplement our base budgets." Did they say they were sorry for any of that? No, they didn't.

I'll bet the Minister of Environment isn't going to say she's sorry after she's told British Columbians that there's a whole bunch of new parks and British Columbians find out that they can't use them. The minister said the other day that in some cases the development of these parks is going to take 15 to 20 years. Who knows? There might not even be a New Democratic Party by then. Who knows? By then they will have continued to sink so deep and so low in the polls that they'll cease to exist as a party. I mean, when you look at the downward trend for the NDP in the polls, I'd be surprised if anybody shows up at the convention 15 or 20 years from now -- unless, of course, the government gets through all its labour legislation. Then they'll know that at least their big financial contributors are going to show up at the convention. But we know who's running the NDP over there. We know those are the guys who are going to show up at their convention. So maybe they will show up at the convention, and maybe the NDP will continue to exist 15 to 20 years from now, but I'll bet British Columbians will never trust them with government again. I'll bet they won't be in government, because British Columbians will remember what this government has perpetrated over the last year -- and I presume they'll continue to do it over the next three years.

They will remember what this government said and the fact that this government didn't do it. And not only did they not do what they said, they didn't even mean what they said in the first place. They didn't even mean it. That's what British Columbians will remember. British Columbians remember it now, and 75 percent of British Columbians say they don't believe that this government got elected legitimately. Those people believe it now, and I would bet that they will continue to believe it ten or 15 years from now when the minister says those parks might finally be created.

She can put it down in legislation all she wants, and she can put out as many press releases as she wants, but British Columbians know we can't believe a word that any one of the people on that side of the House says. This legislation will be taken as seriously as just about everything else this government has done, and that will be not seriously at all, because unless there is a financial commitment to build these parks and to manage these parks and to enforce the rules on these parks, it doesn't mean very much.

So if the minister wants to create parks on paper, that's fine, I suppose; we can support that. But I'll tell you, hon. Speaker, I prefer the approach that was taken by the leader of the Liberal Party when he was mayor of Vancouver, which is to actually do what you say you're going to do. When he became mayor, he said that he was going to leave a legacy for the people of Vancouver, and he did that. He built the sea wall from one side of Vancouver all the way to the other. He believed that it was important that Vancouverites and British Columbians could go from the Trade and Convention Centre all the way around through Stanley Park and all the way around False Creek up to Spanish Banks. He believed it was important that British Columbians would have access to their natural environment and would have access to the beautiful bounty that Vancouver has to offer.

When he fought so hard for the dedication of Pacific Spirit Park -- and he won that battle -- that was an amazing undertaking. He did a marvellous thing, and he fought for that. He fought to turn Hastings Park from a parking lot into something that was ecological, something that could be enjoyed by the people of Vancouver and the people of British Columbia -- somewhere that people could go and enjoy nature.

What did he experience? He saw the province step in every time, slow down the process and make it difficult to achieve those ends. I'll tell you, there is an example. Hastings Park is a perfect example of where the government can say it's a park, but it doesn't mean it's not a parking lot.

We are proud, on this side of the House, to be part of a party that is led by a man whose legacy for park creation as the major of Vancouver is unparalleled. And we are proud to be part of a party where we have a leader who has a proven record of saying one thing and then doing it at the end of the day -- of coming into office with a goal and a vision and actually having it come out at the end of the day the way he said it would. He is committed to public policy and is committed to governing and not just politics. That's what we are proud of on this side of the House. And that's the legacy of our leader on parks.

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Meanwhile, on the other side of the House, we have these individuals who say one thing and do another -- who come into office with one idea, change it afterward and forget to tell everybody that their ideas have changed in the meantime. We've got a government that says they want to create parks but won't put any money into it. We've got a government that says they want to be the leaders in environmental protection, but they slash the budget. We've got a government that even says they're going to try to clean up the air, and they're already 15 percent behind their targets.

It's pathetic. It's pathetic the way this government treats British Columbians. It's embarrassing -- the lack of respect that they show for the people that elect them; the lack of decency that they have in their approach to their election promises when they refuse to keep them. On this side of the House, we are proud to be members of a party that is led by a man who's committed to these basic fundamental principles of good governance, park creation and ensuring that British Columbians have a legacy to turn to hundreds of years from now. That legacy is there because he created it.

So while we support this bill, I would certainly urge the government to give some meaning to it if they are indeed serious. Don't sit there and tell us, "Well, the park might be created 15 or 20 years from now" -- which is on the record from the other day. Don't sit there and say that. If you're interested in park creation, actually create a park. Just go do it. If you say you're going to do it, actually make it happen. Many people in British Columbia don't find that hard to do. It may be that it is beyond the grasp of this government; I don't know.

At the very least, though, this bill will put in place a legislative framework on which the B.C. Liberal Party and the Leader of the Opposition can build three years from now when the government changes and we can look at a long legacy of Liberals on that side of the House. Thank you. [Applause.]

The Speaker: I was about to recognize Oak Bay-Gordon Head, but I understand the minister has a point of order.

Hon. M. Farnworth: I enjoyed the speech; I even enjoyed the applause. But I would make it a point of order that these priceless antique desks can't quite take some of the applause.

The Speaker: Thank you, minister. I am sure the enthusiasm demonstrated by members opposite is indeed based on something absolutely as tangible and solid as the desks.

I. Chong: Firstly, I would like to say that I am pleased to rise this evening and offer some comments during second reading of Bill 29, the Park Amendment Act, 1997. Although I do represent an urban riding, that does not limit one's ability to contribute to the preservation of green space and to be able to speak on these issues of parkland.

It's becoming increasingly obvious that urban areas are in as much if not more need than rural areas for more parks and more green space. You have to ask: how is it that the government can possibly assist? Or what it is that government should be doing -- what its priorities and its strategies should be -- for those urban area ridings? There are very many of them that we represent. We need to look at new, innovative and creative ways to acquire new parks.

I want to make it very clear that I'm not asking, nor do I expect, this government to go out and spend, spend, spend, as they continually think we say we would like. We've always suggested that this government should be spending wisely with the dollars they do have and that they should be finding ways to maximize the use of their dollars, so that the taxpayers feel they're being accountable. That's what we're here for on this side of the House: to hold this government to account for the way they spend their money.

In cases where we want them to expand or enhance parkland, again, we don't say we are expecting extra spending. But, in fact, we are expecting the government to look at new ways of doing business. That was a catchphrase that was used some years ago. What came up was private-public partnerships. But in the area of parklands sometimes there are no private-public partnerships, which means this government has to look more at other ways to develop new strategy. I do believe that there are other means to create parkland and green space, and I will touch on that shortly. I will offer those comments to the minister.

But I do wish to speak on a portion of this bill. I want to refer specifically to schedule D, and one of the parks mentioned there. I note that the description of Gowlland-Tod Park is being amended. It aims to include additional adjacent lands and expand the area. I have no problem with that. I commend the minister for recognizing that this would surely enhance the park. Also, the substitution would further enhance the park -- its usefulness and its viability. I'm sure all the people surrounding those areas are very pleased with that move.

So I do want to state for the record that I certainly appreciate that change that's been contained in this Park Amendment Act. This park is in what we call the Highlands district, which is one of the municipalities in the capital region area. I am also a member representing a number of the municipalities in the capital region. So I want to speak a little about the Highlands district.

Before the Highlands district was incorporated, it was well known for its vast and open space and its undeveloped territory. When rapid growth began to escalate in the capital region, it was clear that it would be the Highlands that would be targeted for development and that the surrounding residents would stand to lose much of what Victorians had taken for granted -- the rolling hills and a lot of just open green space.

So the residents of that area got together. They ensured that the community knew what it had to do. That was to ensure that they would have parkland that would be set aside and that it would be preserved for future generations. It would be so that the developments that were to come would not overtake them.

Again, I commend those residents. I commend the community for having the foresight to look ahead, because those efforts did pay off. That district, the Highlands district, now boasts some of the most pristine parks in this area. I'm sure that will benefit the future generations that will be locating or relocating to that area in the years to come.

That leads me to the issue that I referred to earlier, an issue which I would like the minister to think about and to discuss with her cabinet colleagues. It has to do with communities and with municipalities, especially those communities and municipalities that are in urban areas which are in need of parks and green space, as I mentioned earlier. I think it is important at the provincial level that we do consult with local governments and work with them to develop a strategy, some strategy that would enable them to develop more parkland and more green space, because we know that those urban areas have become fully developed at this point.

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People wonder what can be done when urban areas no longer have green space. But if we were to look around, there are pockets of small green space within neighbourhoods. I think it's important to recognize that sometimes that is enough for neighbourhoods, for communities, to start. It's a starting point for them to look at.

What we've encountered in the past is the fact that there's been no way to acquire that again. At the municipal and local government levels, money has been tight. Taxpayer dollars are better spent on other issues that are more important, which are perhaps policing and public safety issues. But in the past there have been opportunities to acquire parkland in communities in urban areas. I feel that this government has fallen behind in not promoting that to help municipalities overcome that problem.

What I'm talking about is to develop a policy or strategy that will enable residents, people or corporations -- whoever they may be -- who have excess or surplus lands to turn them over to municipalities and get a tax break or tax credit that would benefit those people who are wishing to donate them. As it presently exists, we are allowed to donate parkland to the province, but we are not allowed to directly allow those donations to go to municipalities. That's a problem, because what it does is create another level of regulation. It creates another level of bureaucracy.

I saw this happen in the Highlands area, actually. That's why I referred to it earlier. When the mayor had some green space he wanted to be preserved for all time, he suggested that he wanted his municipality to acquire it. He wanted to turn it over to the municipality. But he couldn't do so, because of the difficulty of the taxation issues he would be faced with. In fact, he would have to pay to give that piece of land to the municipalities.

[7:15]

When I was a councillor in the municipality of Saanich, in my first year I introduced a resolution that was supported at the AVIM -- the Association of Vancouver Island Municipalities -- and then went on to the UBCM table as well as to the FCM. Unfortunately, because I've left the municipal local government scene, I can't honestly say I know how it's been dealt with.

My resolution at the time was to create the incentive for persons to donate land to municipalities for park or green space. I even have the resolution here. It was to ensure that municipalities would not be spending large sums of money to purchase parkland and to ensure that owners who have excess land would be motivated to make those kinds of donations. It would be a very small cost in terms of forgone taxes to the province but a huge savings in terms of money not being expended to acquire it. So it's clear that the benefits far outweigh the small amount of cost that may be attributable.

I know that in 1995 -- in the February 1995 federal budget, in fact -- there was, I would say, a partial amendment to the budget that dealt with this. At that time, the Revenue minister, our member for Victoria, who is now our Minister of Fisheries -- he's changed his position a number of times -- was at the helm of this particular piece of legislation. I very much supported his role in this, but he didn't go far enough.

What he did was look at the donation of ecologically sensitive or historically sensitive lands for preservation, and they would get this kind of a tax credit and tax break. All it is, really, is a donation. It doesn't change the law, because you can donate lands to Crowns currently and get the donation. There's no change at all.

It's just the hurdle that we place at the local government level. It's the local governments that need the courage or need to be encouraged. They need the incentive to take that one step further and allow the provincial and federal governments to work hand in hand to help the local governments and the local communities.

It was unfortunate that the donation of parkland to municipalities was restricted somewhat to these kinds of lands -- the ecologically sensitive lands or the historic or heritage kinds of lands, for preservation. I think we have to move beyond that. I think it's important that when we see a vacant piece of land in a neighbourhood that may not have historical or heritage significance -- which may not be ecologically sensitive but in fact would do so much to enhance the neighbourhood and add a community spirit, one of livability -- we would provide an incentive for the owner of that land, who clearly sees it as surplus, to provide it to the municipality. Motivate that owner to provide it.

The only way is for this government to take a leadership role. The minister should discuss this with her colleagues. I'm sure they will find that this is not an issue that would not be supported by her colleagues. It is an issue that municipalities will always be grappling with as more and more areas become urban and there is less and less rural area.

That is sometimes where the need is greatest, as I stated earlier. The urban areas have no opportunity to acquire more parkland. The urban areas already have ecologically sensitive land. So we have to look beyond that, and we have to develop a strategy of working together with local governments. We have to develop a long-range goal to acquire and develop more parklands, not only in those outlying areas but within our cities as well.

I would just like to close with those comments and hope that the minister will work with us on this side of the House, if she would like. I certainly am prepared to provide her all my backup information that I had back in 1995 when I was developing this policy and assist her in any way possible that would make this kind of legislation become a reality.

I know it has the support of a number of environmental groups, as well. I know the North American Wetlands Conservation Council, for example, was very supportive of this. But again, at that time they were looking more at ecologically sensitive lands. As I say, we have gone beyond that step now; we need to look further. If this government is willing and able to, I think it should certainly develop a parkland strategy that includes local cities and areas, to make it more livable.

Hon. Speaker, I thank you for the time that I've been allowed to offer my comments on second reading. I hope that the minister recognizes the importance of this issue. I certainly will be supporting this bill.

J. Sawicki: I actually had no intention of speaking to this bill in this House. I think my views are all well known here. But I have to say that the comments of the member for Port Moody-Burnaby Mountain cannot go unchallenged. I don't know where that member is coming from when she is comparing the actions of a government -- one of the few jurisdictions in the world that has adopted the United Nations recom-

[ Page 5954 ]

mendation to double our protected land area to 12 percent -- to her leader, who has protected Hastings Park in downtown Vancouver.

I am not belittling the protection of Hastings Park in downtown Vancouver. I think that's a great accomplishment, and I give credit to her leader for doing that. But what we are talking about in this bill is another 86,000 hectares of protected areas and parkland in this province.

I come from an urban area, as well, as that member does. Sometimes there's a criticism from the rest of the House -- from rural and northern areas -- that we in the urban areas have kind of an urban bias toward parkland. But I ask that hon. member to look at the record of what this government has done in terms of protecting parklands in and around urban areas.

We have quadrupled the protected areas in greater Vancouver: Boundary Bay, Indian Arm, Pinecone-Burke -- in the member's own riding, Burnaby Mountain, for gosh sakes. And I can tell you that the three other Burnaby MLAs on this side of the House worked very, very hard to get that park protected.

Some of the areas that are protected under this bill. . . . I wonder if the hon. member understands the significance of those areas. The Mehatl, the Upper Lillooet, are really significant natural landscapes in this province. Yes, recreation is one role of the parks in this province, but there's a whole bunch of other reasons to protect parkland.

I really regret that this member, who has spoken on environmental issues many times, and whose comments I often -- in fact, perhaps mostly -- agree with. . . . When I hear her words on this bill, I just don't know where she's coming from.

One of the other points that she has made is that this government won't put any money into parks, and therefore this bill that's before us and the actions that this government has taken to protect areas are worth nothing because we don't put any money into them.

This is coming from the same side of the House that would have cut the provincial budget even further than we have had to do. Yes, there is a challenge as to how we're going to manage these protected areas. But I for one believe that we as British Columbians on both sides of the House have to recognize the significance of the challenge that we have undertaken here -- to protect 12 percent of the provincial land base.

An Hon. Member: We're voting in favour.

J. Sawicki: I hear a member over there saying that they are voting in favour, and I am appreciative of that. I think every British Columbian would support that. What I am speaking about here in this House are the specific comments of one of the members from the other side of the House, and this is a debate. When comments are made, then responses can also be made.

This legislation that is before us is a piece of legislation that we can all truly be proud of. We are halfway through to our goal of 12 percent protected areas in this province by the year 2000. I would hope that the hon. member for Port Moody-Burnaby Mountain had, perhaps, a rare lapse in -- I wouldn't say judgment -- the appropriateness of her comments, because I know her to be someone who appreciates and supports environmental issues.

With that, having responded to the comments of the member from the opposite side of the House, I will take my place and say again how proud I am to be a member of this government that has made protected areas and parkland a priority for this generation and future generations to come.

The Speaker: I recognize the member for Chilliwack and note that I believe he spoke earlier, and by our practice would normally lose his place. However, I would simply ask that leave be granted, because there was some confusion. So I ask the members: will leave be granted so the member might speak?

Leave granted.

B. Penner: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, hon. members, for giving me leave to speak on second reading of Bill 29.

For those of you who may have just entered the chamber or just turned on your television set, we're here tonight debating in second reading -- that's in principle -- Bill 29, the Park Amendment Act, 1997. There have been other amendments made to the Park Act over the years, but this is a very significant one, at least in terms of the number of pages. There are 88 pages contained in Bill 29, and a lot of detail.

I won't go through all of my thoughts and deal with all of those 88 pages, but I will share my thoughts, particularly as they relate to section 9 of the act, which establishes something called Schedule E. Schedule E of Bill 29 puts forward a whole list of different areas of the province which will now be classified as class A provincial parks. Class A provincial parks are those parks in our provincial parks system that receive the highest level of protection under the Park Act and related enactments.

There are other categories of provincial parks -- for instance, class C parks, which permit various forms of industrial use, if I can use that expression. In some instances there is a certain amount of logging that's permitted, subject to regulation, as well as mining and other exploration activity. In fact, I believe there are class C parks where it's possible to obtain a park use permit to allow you to go out and hunt wildlife. I know many people probably living in the lower mainland would be surprised to hear that in provincial parks -- at least, in some provincial parks in British Columbia -- it is lawful to go out and hunt, trap and kill wildlife. But that is the nature of the Park Act and the different classifications of parks in British Columbia.

Under section 9 of this bill and schedule E, which is attached, there are a number of areas listed. I'm going to refer to the sixteenth area listed in schedule E that deals with Chilliwack Lake Park. Chilliwack Lake Park is not, strictly speaking, in my riding. I do represent the area of Chilliwack, but Chilliwack Lake Park is at the head of the Chilliwack River valley. Through some quirk of provincial electoral laws, I suppose, strictly speaking, that area is in the riding of Abbotsford. My colleague the member for Abbotsford, sitting close to me here tonight, is the member responsible for the Chilliwack Lake area, as well as the Chilliwack River area. I might say by way of an aside that I think he's done a remarkable job educating himself as to the issues in the Chilliwack River area.

[7:30]

[ Page 5955 ]

on our evening newscast and hear about the flooding and severe damage done to individuals' households and to the highway that runs in the Chilliwack River valley, preventing people access out of that area into the community of Chilliwack proper, where they can conduct their shopping and other business affairs.

My knowledge of Chilliwack Lake goes beyond simply living in fairly close proximity to that area. In 1986 I started employment with the Ministry of Parks, as it then was, in the capacity of a park ranger. Earlier tonight we heard the B.C. Liberal Environment critic, the member for Port Moody-Burnaby Mountain, speaking about the lack of additional park ranger staff in this year's budget. I think the problem with that has already been adequately pointed out -- that we are giving the existing staff an increasing burden in terms of the amount of area they are responsible for patrolling and protecting, but we aren't giving them any extra resources to do it. Stated differently, the existing staff is being stretched even thinner each and every year as we keep adding to the park land base in the province.

In 1986 it was with a considerable amount of anticipation, joy and even some pride that I took on my duties as a park ranger for the first time and was assigned the responsibility of patrolling areas of the Chilliwack River valley and Chilliwack Lake Park, at the very head of the valley. For those who may not have had the privilege and benefit of travelling to Chilliwack Lake and spending some time there, it's about 50 to 60 kilometres -- depending which part of Chilliwack you're coming from -- from downtown Chilliwack to Chilliwack Lake Park; 42 kilometres of that trip occur through the actual Chilliwack River valley. If anyone here has not had the benefit of making a trip to that area, I highly recommend it, especially during the summer months, or even in early fall as the leaves turn colour and it becomes, in my view, probably one of the most spectacular scenic drives in our province.

Chilliwack Lake Park has existed in years gone by. It's not a new creation. There has been a base to the park, as the Speaker knows, for many years. I don't know exactly when Chilliwack Lake Park was first established, but Bill 29 appears to dramatically expand the boundaries of what was the existing park. The existing park is really not much larger than a campground. Contained in the park is a campground consisting of 88 regular campsites plus 12 overflow sites. I can tell you that during the summer months, if the weather is decent, not only are all 88 sites full, but the 12 overflow sites are typically full, as well, by as early as 5 or 6 o'clock in the evening. The problem that has existed in years gone by is that people wonder why just the campground itself is protected in the park. What about the area surrounding it, which is majestic mountains, waterfalls, roaring creeks and, in some instances, some very lush forest area?

Before I get speaking a bit more about the virtues of Chilliwack Lake Park, I wish to give some credit to an individual who I think deserves some credit for helping instigate the expansion of the previous boundaries of that park. Back in 1982 an individual who was working at that time on a seasonal basis with B.C. Parks -- who was very knowledgeable and was studying at university and I believe also at the British Columbia Institute of Technology -- wrote a report entitled "Alternatives for Recreational Development in the Post Creek Basin." That was dated December 1982. To my knowledge, that was the first time that a formal proposal had come up through the system recommending expansion of the park boundaries in the area around Chilliwack Lake.

People might be asking: "Why do the boundaries need to be expanded there?" Outside of the small pocket area -- if I could call it that -- of the actual campground, the boat launch facility and the picnic ground that has been in the park for some time is an amazing array of landscapes. From Macdonald Peak on the south side of the lake, rising up, I believe, in excess of 7,000 feet, to Radium Lake and the log cabin established at Radium Lake in the basin just below Macdonald Peak to Radium Creek and the provincial Forest Service campground at Post Creek, and again across to the north side of the highway up to Lindeman Lake -- a very popular day trip for hikers in the lower mainland -- all of these areas were previously outside of the provincial park boundary.

I don't want to denigrate the value that the existing park had, but I think by virtually any measure, these other areas that I've just mentioned were more spectacular in their inherent natural beauty than the existing campsite and boat launch area. I know that from time to time as I was patrolling the campground as a park ranger people would ask me: "What about these other areas? Are there any plans to extend the control or the protection of the B.C. Parks service to these other areas? Or will they be logged in the future?" I pause here to note that, in fact, virtually the entire Chilliwack River valley, right up to Chilliwack Lake and the existing park with the campground, where people spend many pleasurable days and evenings, was logged at one time earlier this century. All of that was old-growth forest, but all of it was logged.

In fact, earlier this century, a railway line was established and went almost all of the way to Chilliwack Lake. This railway was built for no other purpose than to help extract the timber and forest products from the Chilliwack Lake area. One would think today that we wouldn't be talking about it as being a prime candidate for a provincial park and for increased recreational use, yet the reality is that the forest has grown back. Today, driving up the Chilliwack River valley and certainly in Chilliwack Lake Park, an individual would hardly know that at one time the area was logged and essentially clearcut, to use the terminology.

It's not to say that the logging practices of the past in the Chilliwack River valley are anything to be proud of, because I believe that many of the problems that are present today for the residents living lower down in the Chilliwack River valley stem from previous logging practices, particularly on the steep slopes immediately adjacent to the river valley bottom. Every fall, as everybody in British Columbia knows, we have significant rainfall, particularly in November. This leads to flooding concerns, and often flooding reality, in the Chilliwack River valley. Be that as it may, I hope that with more attention in the future from the Minister of Environment to deal with problems in the Chilliwack River valley, the citizens living there will get some relief from this provincial government for their ongoing problems.

I mentioned briefly some of the increased area that will be included in the expanded Chilliwack Lake Provincial Park. There are many tasks to be accomplished if the boundaries, as purported in this bill, are going to be expanded. I mentioned very briefly that one of the areas now to be included in the park boundary is Lindeman Lake. Lindeman Lake is an absolute jewel. It's nestled amongst some very ragged, jagged peaks, and it absolutely shines. It's beautiful clear blue water. It's situated at an elevation of about 2,700 feet; it represents, however, only about a half-hour walk. This makes it a very popular destination, not just for hikers but for casual walkers as well. People of all ages can be found on that trail.

Two weeks ago, when enjoying a weekend, I had an opportunity to go back and revisit Lindeman Lake. It's both beautiful and sad. It's beautiful as I just described it, because 

[ Page 5956 ]

it's a natural jewel; but it's sad, because of the lack of regulation and protection in years gone by. What's happened at the main area of the lake, where the trail comes out and you reach the lake area at the lakehead, is that a succession of hikers and campers and overnighters have gradually deforested the area immediately surrounding the lake. In my own lifetime of travelling up there in the last 20 years or so, I have witnessed an incredible erosion of foliage near the lake. Going further and further up the hillside, it has become denuded, as people, I suppose, seek out some wood to make campfires, as well as some branches, perhaps, for shelter or to use to help dry their clothes or other belongings. This is the problem that was first identified 15 years ago in the report entitled "Alternatives for Recreational Development in the Post Creek Basin." This report, as I indicated, was first submitted recommending that the park boundaries be expanded so that the very fragile area of Lindeman Lake could enjoy some increased protection, not just for the sake of that area but for the benefit of all future visitors and hikers to Lindeman Lake.

The problem is that this bill only goes halfway. This bill does expand the boundaries and does include Lindeman Lake in a class A park, giving it full protection under the Park Act. But I think, as the B.C. Liberal Environment critic adequately pointed out earlier, that protection is on paper only. Because even if we were to pass this bill tonight, give it final reading, and it were to be proclaimed, nothing would change there tomorrow. There would still be people going up and cutting off little sticks, cutting off branches, gradually whittling away at the forest near Lindeman Lake, because there would be no one there to stop them from doing so. And there will be nobody there to stop them from doing so, because although we have expanded the park base, we haven't expanded our ability to manage and control and protect that park base. Maybe one of the reasons is because the former park ranger is now here in the Legislature and is not busy looking after that area. Perhaps I'll reconsider my career path and re-examine my career opportunities within the Ministry of Parks.

However, I mean to be serious about that. It is an area that is fragile. There is a tremendous amount of day use, and the erosion of the foliage in that area is clear for everyone to see. It's painful. There are no refuse bins. Supposedly, it's a back-country area, but it's a 20- to 30-minute walk, depending on your physical condition, to get there. I have seen people on that trail packing up literally a cooler -- two people at either end carrying a very large cooler filled with all sorts of food, beer cans, and plastic bags containing potato chips. And they leave the refuse there -- not all of them, but some people, unfortunately. There is no garbage pickup; there's no garbage can. Yet now this area is supposedly under the protection of the Park Act, but to my knowledge the ministry has no plans to go up there. Because they don't have the resources to go up there and deal with that problem: the problem of refuse being left behind, the problem of people wilfully cutting down what remains of the forest in the area immediately adjacent to the lake.

[7:45]

One, particularly, that posed problems was Post Creek and Paleface -- well, primarily the Paleface Creek campground. On more than one evening, automatic weapons-fire could be heard as early as 10 o'clock at night. I have to tell you that that sometimes created vacancies back at the provincial park campground, as people quickly decided to head for safer ground.

The point that I'm making is that there's a vast area, and in years gone by, the province certainly hasn't done a very good job of patrolling or controlling the activity that goes on in those more remote campgrounds at the far end of Chilliwack Lake. There have been examples of such facilities provided by the Forest Service being destroyed on virtually a yearly basis around the time of the Victoria Day holiday every May, as high school students, getting anxious for their graduation parties, would get a head start. They'd come up, get carried away and end up torching either the picnic tables or the outhouses or the garbage facilities at the Forest Service campgrounds located at the far end of Chilliwack Lake.

My concern is that without the commitment from the Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks to send park ranger staff there, that activity is going to continue in the future. That is a shame, and it's also hazardous. It's dangerous, because word gets out among certain elements that you can go to those areas and do whatever you please and, frankly, nobody's going to come along to stop you. Even the RCMP in the area expressed to me quite candidly their reservation and their concern for their own safety in terms of going up there to patrol it. They would prefer to stay away.

So I call on the minister to seriously think about what her ministry's direction and policy is towards protecting these areas that we claim we're going to protect. It's one thing to pass a bill and pass a law. . . . And we could do that here tonight if we chose to, to say that we're giving them protection. But when the rubber hits the road, it takes people to protect people -- not just a piece of paper.

Earlier tonight I spoke by telephone to a manager in the provincial park system. He told me quite candidly some of the challenges that he's facing out in the field today. He knows that although there has been a 1.8 percent reduction in the Ministry of Parks budget, he says that out in his area, further away from the lower mainland and from Victoria, it's more like a 4 percent reduction. Again, earlier tonight the B.C. Liberal Environment critic pointed out that in the northeast corner of the province, that reduction is closer to, I believe, 24 or 25 percent -- a huge reduction.

This is what this individual told me tonight. This is a direct quote: "We can't manage what we've been given." Then he said: "You know, I feel good that there are increased areas being added to the existing park base. However, this cake comes with a bit of poison." Again, it's another direct quote, and I don't think I can say it any better than that. We can't manage what we've been given, and this cake comes with a bit of poison.

What does that mean? It means that the staff in B.C. Parks have been faced with a series of cutbacks, year after year. Every year they're told to do more and do better with less. Up to a point, reorganization can perhaps achieve some of those goals, and I know that there's been quite a significant amount of middle-level management and different kinds of organiza-

[ Page 5957 ]

tional boundaries removed from the Parks structure in B.C. in an effort to direct what resources remain into front-line services.

I think they've reached the breaking point, and the continual increase in park land without a concomitant increase in resources and staff makes it very difficult to adequately protect our parkland and the people in those parklands. As an example, the current budgets apparently don't provide for any new picnic tables in these new parks. I'm going to be very curious, in a few weeks' time -- hopefully, as the Legislature rises, sometime by early November -- when I go out and revisit Chilliwack Lake, and I'll hike some of those areas to see if there's any difference.

I'll go to Lindeman Lake and see if any of the garbage has been cleaned up, if there are any facilities to hold the garbage and if there are any picnic tables so people don't feel they have to cut down branches and prop them up to have a place to sit. I'm going to look to see if there are any new fountains in Chilliwack Lake Park so people can have liquid refreshment if they need it. I'm going to look to see if there are any new barbecue pits, because I think most people associate those basic services with what a provincial park is.

I think many people will hear -- yes, this is a good thing -- that there's increased park space, and they will have a mental picture in mind of what to expect if and when they travel to those new parks. I think the vast majority of them are going to be disappointed, because the reality won't fit with their own preconceived notion of what a park should be. There will not be an increased number of campgrounds, bathroom facilities, picnic tables, barbecue pits, picnic areas or boat launches, simply because this ministry doesn't have a plan as to what they want to do with this new park space.

In the introductory remarks, I heard the Minister of Environment, Lands and Parks talk about the new park they're creating at the Stawamus Chief near Squamish. That's an area I've been to, as well, on a number of occasions. I can't claim to have scaled the face of the chief, as some of my friends have who are avid rock climbers, but I have hiked around the back of that mountain, and I can tell you that it's a very beautiful mountain.

Since the statement this government made with much fanfare prior to the last election -- that they were protecting this as a park -- nothing has materially changed. I can go there today, and it's exactly the way it was two or three years ago. Nothing has changed, except on paper. Nothing has changed, except that the government has issued a press release and tried to garner some headlines.

I salute passing laws to protect our wilderness areas, but that commitment rings a little hollow if we don't follow through and actually make sure we have staff going to those areas to check on them, to protect the public, to do some law enforcement under the Park Act, the Wildlife Act, the Litter Act, the Liquor Control and Licensing Act, or the Firearm Act, and to really assert provincial sovereignty over those areas pursuant to the Park Act. That is what the public expects when they hear about these announcements -- at least, I firmly believe that -- but I don't think that as a provincial government, we're really delivering on the public's expectations.

Before I finish tonight, I need to mention one thing on a personal note, but it does have to do with Chilliwack Lake and the expansion of the park boundaries. Given that it's so beautiful, I am pleased to see an increased amount of area being included in the park boundaries around Chilliwack Lake. It's something I first dreamed of when I started working there as a park ranger in 1986 and on my very first shift saw both mountain goats and black bears, all within about half an hour. I thought: "Why couldn't we do something to add some protection and enjoyment to this area?" Many people have shared the same dream of seeing the area given a higher status and not being threatened with additional logging, as has happened in years gone by.

In 1992, a good close personal friend of mine and also a former park ranger was paragliding from Macdonald Peak, an area that will now be included in the provincial park. Macdonald Peak is a beautiful mountain. It's covered with a glacier on the north side, and yet it's accessible on foot from the south as you rise up above Radium Lake, which is beautiful in its own right. As you get to the top of Macdonald Peak, it seems you can see forever.

Immediately to the south, almost as though you could reach out and touch them, are Mount Baker and Mount Shuksan, not more than one or two miles away from you, rising up around 10,000 feet in elevation. Looking to the north, you can see the Cascade range. You can see into Manning Park. You can look west and see down the Chilliwack River valley, almost approaching the Fraser Valley.

From that spot in March 1992, Clayton Friesen launched his paraglider for the last time. He drowned in Chilliwack Lake when he failed to reach the beach at Chilliwack Lake Provincial Park campground. That was a tragic event, obviously, for his family and for all his friends, including myself, and I think that in some ways, we will consider the expansion of the park boundaries as a way to remember Clayton and the love he had for that area.

With that, I'll give way to my colleague. I believe the member for Abbotsford would like to speak on this, the second reading of Bill 29.

J. van Dongen: I'm pleased to participate in this second reading debate on Bill 29, Park Amendment Act, 1997, and I also want to thank the member for Chilliwack for that bit of history of Chilliwack Lake Park and that area. I always appreciate his assistance in representing the concerns of the people in the area. The Chilliwack River valley does have the benefits of some very beautiful scenery. It's a very narrow valley, and it's also subject to a lot of hazards in terms of the possibility of floods and slides of the steep banks of the valley. There are a lot of issues in that area.

I just want to mention briefly some concerns on behalf of the users of land that compete with parks. These will be very, very brief, and then I also want to make reference to some other concerns. I want to make a specific reference to the kinds of concerns expressed by the official opposition critic about the maintenance of parks.

I was just going to mention Slesse Park, which is another park in the Chilliwack River valley. In her opening statements, the minister talked about three parks that had been announced as a result of the lower mainland protected-areas strategy. That process, as I recall, was completed somewhere around October 1996. There was a lot of effort made late in the term of the previous government to bring that process to resolution and to finalize the recommendations of the appointed committee that had been established at the time to do the review.

On behalf of the citizens in the Fraser Valley generally. . .and particularly people in the logging industry -- the forest industry generally -- and people with an interest in 

[ Page 5958 ]

parks were very disappointed that there were no public hearings held at the time in our area as part of the lower mainland protected-areas strategy. That was a great disappointment. I understand that it's the process that took place in a lot of other parts of British Columbia, but in our area that didn't happen. So if your particular interest was not represented on the appointed committee, then you had no opportunity in any public sort of way to present your concerns. I just want to register that concern on behalf of the citizens in my constituency and my area.

[8:00]

It's always difficult. These land use decisions are always difficult, because of competing interests. To the degree that uses can overlap in a cooperative sort of way, I think as a province we will get better utilization out of our land base if we can establish approaches that allow multiple uses to take place in a harmonious manner. So I look forward to discussing that in committee stage.

I also want to commend the minister for the expansion of Chilliwack Lake Park, because, as I said, the whole valley is a very beautiful area. It is appropriate for a lot of that land base to be established as a park, partly because I'm convinced that a lot of that area, because of the steep slopes, shouldn't be logged. It has been logged, as the previous speaker mentioned. But I think logging that area with the steep slopes does create difficulties. It does increase the possibilities of slides on the clay banks, and I want to mention one of those.

I might just mention that the Chilliwack River valley has a population of about 1,200 people, approximately 600 homes. But there's also a number of activities in that valley that are of interest to the province. There are three provincial correctional centres. There's a federal fish hatchery, and there has been a training area for the Department of National Defence.

As I said, there is a very high probability of difficulties with nature in that valley. The Slesse Park situation is one example. I just want to mention that briefly, because I think it speaks to the need to have the resource and the ability to deal with these kinds of situations.

On January 18 of this year, I happened to be in the Slesse Park area. It was raining very heavily. There's a set of clay banks there. There has been a lot of erosion. There was a lot of runoff coming off the slope. Certainly it looked to me at the time to be a hazardous situation, to the degree that I wasn't comfortable even having my vehicle parked on the dike adjoining the river at that point. I said to the area director at the time that I didn't think we should hang around there.

A week later there was a fairly major slide on that clay bank, to the extent that for a very short period of time it actually blocked the river. The water was able to break through after rising about four feet. But it gives you some indication of the extent of the risk and the problems that we face in some of these areas.

In this case, this is a park administered by the province. I've written to the minister; we've corresponded. I just want to mention two things. One is that from the river's perspective and from the perspective of protection of the fish resource. . . . Some of the brochures and the ministry's own documents talk about the need to control the level of soil particles, silt and clay fines in streams. I refer particularly to the "Stream Enhancement Guide," which is a joint publication of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Ministry of Environment. There's a very specific section in this guide that speaks to the need to deal with erosion situations. I'll just quote one section here from this guide:

"The banks of some streams, particularly those with a high proportion of silt and clay fines, must be stabilized to prevent the erosion and deposition of this material on spawning beds or in pools used for rearing. In some cases, severe bank erosion has led to formation of a new stream channel, leaving once-productive channels dry and barren. As the banks erode, trees and other vegetation fall into the stream, and this in turn speeds up the erosion cycle. The resulting sedimentation and debris jams can render an entire section of stream unsuitable for salmon production."

In addition to that, there's been a report commissioned by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans on that slide. This is a geotechnical assessment of the Slesse Park landslide. This report was completed only very recently by Thurber Consultants Ltd. I have had discussions with people at the regional district. I've had discussions with ministry staff about it, and I know that the ministry staff are developing some recommendations for the minister.

Just to highlight quickly that report, the slide that occurred in January had a volume of 50,000 cubic metres of material that slid into the river. This geotechnical report talks about a very serious concern about the possibility of a much larger landslide. This would extend right up to the top of the bluffs and would involve what the report describes as a natural, progressive earth failure. This slide has an estimated volume of 1.84 million cubic metres and a weight of 3.5 million tonnes. It's 1.84 million cubic metres, compared to 50,000 cubic metres in January, which actually blocked off the river briefly.

The concern of a potential slide like this is that it would block the river completely and cause the water behind that blockage to rise to very high levels, to a point where it eventually breaks through and could cause a major flood downstream, affecting not only the parkland but also residences, roads and other infrastructure.

As I said, this report is being reviewed by the minister's staff. It is a responsibility of the Crown. That property is part of Slesse Park, and I would certainly urge the minister to work with us. I am certainly giving her my commitment to work with her to try and develop some economical and reasonable solutions that will remove the public risk in that area, not only for residents but also for fishermen. In that park area along the dike apparently about 100 fishermen were there shortly before that slide happened. So there's a real public safety concern. There's a lot of people from throughout the lower mainland and even farther away that use the Chilliwack River valley for recreational purposes.

So with that, I want to wrap up my comments and thank the minister for the expansion of the Chilliwack Lake Park. I 

[ Page 5959 ]

look forward to working with her on some of these other issues in our provincial parks to try and get better utilization out of those parks and deal with issues of public risk and fish habitat.

[G. Brewin in the chair.]

J. Dalton: I have two issues I wish to address, one of which is not in the Park Act, although I hope one day it will be, and the other is. The first -- and the minister will know this because I made the point during her estimates the other evening -- is that the people on the North Shore and in West Vancouver in particular are certainly hoping to see an amended Park Act one day so that the boundaries of Cypress Provincial Park will be legislated and not as they are now, as an order-in-council. I think the minister is certainly well aware of that. I just want to put that on the record.

When this bill was tabled a few weeks ago, I, maybe like others, started to cruise through it in travelogue fashion to see if there were any parks in here that I might be familiar with or have had the pleasure to enjoy, or that I might visit sometime this summer if we ever get out of here. I know the member from Chilliwack will be able to go home this weekend and visit his park, but I don't necessarily have that same opportunity.

An Hon. Member: God's country.

J. Dalton: That's quite right. Yes, I guess Chilliwack is part of God's country; I will concede that.

As I went through schedule E -- there are 84 parks described in there -- I spotted item 67, Sargeant Bay Park, because I am familiar with that park. I see that the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast is here -- he's going to speak after me, I believe -- and he is equally familiar with Sargeant Bay Park. Just to briefly describe the location, Sargeant Bay Park is located just a few miles north of Sechelt, and it is on the waterfront. One of the boundaries and one of the descriptives in item 67, which is on page 68, for all of the thousands of viewers that are tuned in, is Redrooffs Road. Well, I am very familiar with Redrooffs Road because I've owned property on it for many years, and I go there on the odd weekend when I get release from this place. And I thought: well, Redrooffs Road; that's interesting. I wonder if they spelled it correctly? Because, for the edification of all members, Redrooffs Road is spelled with two f's. That's the correct spelling. In fact, I have a document here I'll talk about in a moment that substantiates that. And I saw that they got the two f's in it, so they got that part correct; but, unfortunately, they dropped one of the o's from Redrooffs, so they spelled "roof" with one "o."

So I immediately pencilled a note to the minister responsible and said: "Well, unfortunately, I've spotted an error in your Park Amendment Act." And one of her officials phoned and acknowledged that, yes, they will be amending the act accordingly. They haven't done that yet; it's not yet on the order paper, but it will be.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time now talking about Redrooffs. I can do that at committee stage when we deal with the amendment. But one of the documents I have on my desk is the Redrooffs Rag, volume 1, 1913. So Redrooffs correctly spelled has a long history to it which I'm very proud of, and I know the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast is certainly proud of it; and perhaps he'll have a chance to make some remarks, as well, about Redrooffs.

I'm just pointing out that, unfortunately, the government made a slight boo-boo, one that caused me some amusement, because we very frequently have the misspelling of Redrooffs whereby there is only one "f," but usually two o's. This time, this government got it reversed; they got the two f's right and dropped the "o." So we look forward in committee stage to addressing in a little more detail some of the history of Redrooffs, correctly spelled.

[8:15]

I was looking at some of the definitions in the bill here, and I see that class A parks "are dedicated to the preservation of their natural environments for the inspiration, use and enjoyment of the public." Well, it sounds good, but when you create a paper park, it's pretty hard for the public to go out there and use that and enjoy it, because in a lot of cases they can't get to it. There's no access. So what did we do? Some of these areas that were set up were very unique. I mean, they were areas that deserved to be set aside for future use by the people.

One of those that I really do think was an excellent area is a park in the south part of the Chilcotin, and it is known as T\ks'il?os Park. It's taken me a long time to even learn how to pronounce it, but unfortunately, they have now changed the spelling in the name of this park. When we get to committee stage, I'm going to have to get the minister to give me the correct pronunciation on the way this is spelled today. I hope she will be willing to do that. It was a little difficult to wrap your tongue around it, the way it was; but now we have a new pronunciation, I'm sure.

In here, there's another point I would like to touch on, and it's to do with licensing in some of these parks in regards to range tenures. I hope that there's not a duplication here of permitting, because if there is, it's just another burden in the paper trail. That is something I'll have to canvass and find out when we get to committee stage.

Getting back to the creation of a lot of these, it became a bit of a battle between the environmental groups and industry. When people think of a park, they think of the definition as it is right here in the bill. But unfortunately, what happened. . . . Not all of them. . . . Some of these areas set aside were excellent areas, but on the other hand, some of them became. . . . In my mind, it was a misnomer. They shouldn't have called them parks or protected areas; they should have called them tree sanctuaries. That would have been much more appropriate.

When they were established. . . . In some cases it's many miles just to get to the boundary of this new park, and then there's no development in there. There's no place for the public to view anything or to even know when they've crossed the boundary, because there's no access. This was done intentionally, to some degree, because some of the people that were working on these were more concerned about excluding the public from these areas than they were about allowing them to enjoy them.

So as we went through the Cariboo-Chilcotin land use planning process, a lot of us realized that yes, there's going to be a problem there, because the public is not going to be able to go out and enjoy these new areas. They're just areas blocked out on a map. They're paper parks; that's what they are. So rather than put the 12 percent of our land base into paper parks, we left a quarter of a percent. That was what we called our goal 2 protected areas.

[ Page 5960 ]

The reason that was done was because we realized that there are areas with unique features that are high-use areas that are readily accessible to the public. This is what a lot of people are looking for. They are looking for areas where they can go out and they can enjoy the outdoors on a day trip or in an hour or two. They can access these things, and then they can go home. They don't have to spend a week hiking over mountains to get to a park, and then when they do get there, they're not quite sure whether they've reached it or not, because there's nothing to tell them when they did reach the boundary.

We said: "Well, we will leave a quarter of a percent and set it up, and we'll create smaller areas where the public can actually access them and enjoy them." Well, first a list was submitted. Actually, it worked the other way: a list came down from government to the people that were developing the land use plan. We looked it over and said, "Well, this is not quite acceptable," in some cases, and we sent it back. Then another one came down, and it was even worse than the first one. What happened? They put all of these smaller areas on the map -- mapped them out. But did they make them accessible? No, they were all inaccessible again. So it seems like it doesn't matter what you do. It's very difficult, especially in the interior, to create a park that is actually defined as a park and where the public can go out and get some enjoyment out of it.

That is the long and the short of this. My own personal opinion is that it didn't work the way a lot of people had hoped it would work. Now that the minister has run out of money to look after our parks, I think it will be a long time in the future before. . . . Maybe our grandchildren will be able to go out there one day and access these parks and enjoy them. You know, I'm kind of looking forward to retirement one of these years, and I guess it's just right out of the question.

I think basically that was all I had to cover on this issue. [Applause.] Oh, I see I've got a little support over there. Well, maybe I could carry on a little longer, if you'd like. I can try.

C. Clark: Tell us about purple loosestrife.

J. Wilson: Oh, that's not one of my areas.

C. Clark: And orange hawkweed.

J. Wilson: I'd sooner talk about orange hawkweed, and I'm sure it's going to be a problem in a lot of our parks. It's just going to take over, and it will destroy all the biodiversity and everything that we got out there and all the plants. Unfortunately, the minister is not prepared to put anything in place that will attack these pests that we have growing all over the country.

Bill 29 no doubt has a lot going for it. I see in here that we've actually laid out some boundaries on 80-some parks, so people can identify them. Now they're on paper; before they weren't on paper, and that was a big stumbling block. But now they are, so we know where they are on the map. When you get there, it might be another story to actually know where you are, unless you're packing one of those little. . . . What do they call them? You know, mapping. . . .

C. Clark: Compass? GPS?

J. Wilson: GPS. Yeah, that's probably what you'll need.

J. Dalton: Or maybe you could use loran up in the Chilcotin.

J. Wilson: If you're on the water, yeah. I guess you could if you're flying. That's true; you could use that.

I don't have the figures for the central interior, but I'm sure it's going to be somewhere between the 5 and 6 percent range that we're down in the budget. One of the problems there is that we've already gone through our land use planning; we've created our 12 percent. Some areas of the province haven't reached that yet, so they may not be quite as stretched on their manpower and their budget as we are in that region. But once you create that many more protected areas or parks in a region, your budget has to increase proportionately in order to do the job that is expected.

On that note, hon. Speaker, I would turn the floor over.

K. Krueger: As I commence some brief remarks on Bill 29, the Park Amendment Act, 1997, I want to acknowledge my colleague and next-door neighbour from the Kamloops constituency, the Minister of Environment, who is sponsoring this bill. And while I like her as a person, I feel sorry for her sometimes, in that she's in harness with a government that doesn't do things in a very businesslike way.

So I worry about things like the introduction of this act, because I wonder if it's been carefully drafted; I wonder if the things it sets out to do have been well thought through and well done. When I ask myself how the NDP has done business in the past and how it has conducted itself, I have to answer truthfully: the NDP does business very, very badly, and a lot of problems flow.

So I wonder: when the ministry sets out to designate a new park and map out the boundaries and so on, how does it do its preparatory work? How does it decide what the changes are going to be? Who does it consult? Are local people advised, in ways that are clear to them, what the contemplated changes are? Are they invited to provide their input? Who did this government talk to about the new boundaries?

I know it didn't talk to me. It would have been nice. It shouldn't be any news to anyone in the Parks ministry who the MLA is for Kamloops-North Thompson. A number of these parks certainly involve my constituency -- some are entirely within my constituency -- but nobody asked me what I thought. Nobody indicated to me where the new boundaries would lie or exactly why the changes were being made that were being contemplated. So I wonder: what input did they receive, and how did they decide?

Of course, I tried to find out for myself. These things were brought on in rapid succession. You read through them, and some of the things you see surprise you. For example, you get to page 8 of this act, which is part of schedule A, and the second-last little statement there is No. 4: "Spahats Creek Park is deleted."

Well, my goodness. On the face of it, that's an alarming statement because Spahats Creek Park is an absolute delight to everyone who's been there and everybody who knows it. I'm sure it isn't being deleted; I'm sure it will be there forever. I trust this government wouldn't interfere with its existence. It's a place where a beautiful waterfall comes down. There's a public viewing point. There's a tremendous ice cone that forms there in the winter. People travel for thousands of miles to see Spahats Creek Park, so I look at that and think: "Well, that must mean they just moved Spahats Creek Park to another schedule."

[8:30]

[ Page 5961 ]

things in terms of "5.63 kilometres" and "northwesterly in a straight line" and "a bearing of 340 degrees," and so on. You'd pretty much have to be a surveyor to be really clear about what exactly the act is talking about.

I'm not a surveyor. I've been cloistered here in the Legislature for quite some time now and haven't had the privilege of walking the boundaries of these proposed parks, although I'd love to do that. Many times I think it would be a lot more productive use of my time.

Reading on through the act, I look for Spahats Creek Park. By page 20 I haven't found it, but lo and behold, there is item 16 -- and this is schedule D, I believe, of this rather ponderous document; let me just check it. . . . Yes, schedule D, item 16. Now, I've been thinking that I would find Spahats Creek Park drawn into the boundaries of Wells Gray Park, but there it says, No. 16: "Wells Gray Park is deleted." Oh, my goodness. There would be a revolution if that was true.

I was sure at the time that it wouldn't be true, so I searched on. Of course, now I was searching for both Spahats Creek Park and Wells Gray Park with a growing sense of consternation that perhaps this government -- which has been known to drain lakes and kill fish inadvertently and make money disappear from charities in Nanaimo and create problems of its own making every which way it turns, almost seeming to have the opposite of a Midas touch -- could indeed inadvertently eliminate Wells Gray Park and Spahats Creek Park. But surely not, I thought.

Sure enough, my faith in the new minister was not in vain, because I found that indeed Wells Gray Park was there in the new schedule E, as newly written. The same sort of very complex. . . . I don't want to call it mumbo-jumbo, because I'm sure it's not; it's probably extremely professional and makes a lot of sense to people who can read this sort of thing. I don't imagine that there are five of my constituents who really could follow this, and I'm afraid I'm not one of them.

Sure enough, on page 82, at item 81, we find Wells Gray Park, and it's a beautiful park, a wonderful place. Fittingly so, the details go on for five pages. I'm certainly not going to read them into the record. Obviously they're already in. I see the Speaker shaking her head that that would indeed be a foolish undertaking, and I won't do it.

Just to give the people who might be following this debate a flavour of what we try to work with here, I'll read a tiny bit. It says: "Firstly: The most northerly 6.1 metres of the most easterly 359.7 metres of the North 1/2 of District Lot 2887, Kamloops Division of Yale District. . . ." So we start out talking about 6.1 metres, and at the end of the five pages, page 86, we sum up that the whole contains approximately 524,990 hectares, which is a whale of a lot of real estate.

I'm tremendously proud of Wells Gray Park. Just to give people a flavour of the minute detail that we deal with against the massive size of the real estate that we're working with, a person worries whether indeed he can find Spahats Creek Park somewhere within Wells Gray Park, where hopefully it is, because I can't find it anywhere else. I did find the name of the beloved creek here, but as I say, I haven't had the opportunity to get out and walk and actually examine this detail for myself. Nor would I be allowed to if I got there, because I've been to the creek many times. You're prohibited from travelling where these surveyors obviously travel. I'll just have to take their word for it, because when we do get to the detail of the beloved creek, I see things like this: "2.5 kilometres due south, more or less, of the summit of. . . ."

Deputy Speaker: Hon. member, second reading is about principles, not about finite details. Whatever the act may say and how it's organized, this is about the basic principles of the bill. That's what is to be dealt with at second reading. I'm sure the member would wish to confine himself to principles in second reading.

K. Krueger: I am doing that, although I've obviously failed to make it clear to you. I'm looking for a park that did exist and has been deleted according to the act, and I'm looking at the definition of a park that did exist but has apparently been changed. I'm honestly concerned that a mistake may have been made and Spahats Creek Park may have been inadvertently eliminated, because I wouldn't put that past this government.

I'm not being facetious. Stranger things have happened in British Columbia. Budget surpluses, for example, have disappeared magically within days of the legislative session starting. . . .

Deputy Speaker: On Bill 29, hon. member. The principle of Bill 29 -- that's the issue at hand.

K. Krueger: Absolutely, hon. Chair. I will canvass this in more detail with the minister as we move into committee stage, but I just think it's fair warning. She doesn't have any advisers with her tonight, and I trust she will when we're in committee stage, because I want to know if there's been any substantial change involving Spahats Creek Park other than possibly including it.

I can't tell; I literally can't tell. I challenge just about anyone in this province who isn't a surveyor or an engineer to tell from this description whether or not, when we talk about the "northwesterly prolongation of the natural boundary on the right bank thereof, of the unnamed creek which is a southeasterly flowing tributary to the main stream of the unnamed northerly fork. . . ."

Deputy Speaker: Hon. member, on the principle of the bill, not the details -- that's for committee stage.

K. Krueger: Thank you, hon. Chair. I'm going to take your guidance that I appear to have mapped out my concerns sufficiently in attempting to speak in general terms to the principle of this bill. That beloved park in my constituency may have vanished inadvertently, although I trust that isn't true. The minister will be able to assure me that hasn't happened and also to tell me what the actual changes to Spahats Creek Park are, if its boundaries have been changed or whether they've merely been included in Wells Gray Park.

I won't go into more detail about that, nor the many other parks that touch on my neighbour's constituency and are included in mine, except to say that I would like some explanation in advance of legislation being tabled if possible -- or certainly during committee stage of considering this legislation -- as to what these changes are and how they came about.

I am concerned. As some of my colleagues have mentioned, these parks are established on paper. But a budget isn't provided to staff them, to take care of them, to provide access to them, to guard them, to monitor them, to make sure that people don't transgress the law in them. We hear of staff not having budget for their wages or gasoline for their vehicles -- or indeed vehicles.

You wonder: is the act a genuine act? Is the government really creating new parks, or is this just more NDP flim-flam, 

[ Page 5962 ]

more pomp, more press, more ceremony with no actual results? I'm really interested to hear exactly what the government is doing, because this is tremendously fine detail. You'd almost have to have a helicopter and a plumb bob to actually define where some of these measurements lead to, and I'm looking forward to the minister's explanation.

So as not to try your patience, hon. Speaker -- which by the rise of your eyebrows I thought might be happening at this moment -- I'm just going to sit down and look forward to committee stage.

G. Wilson: I wasn't concerned about this bill until I heard my colleague from Kamloops-North Thompson. I'm going to have to look for this park because, my goodness, in principle if you can delete a park of that quality, that would be a bad principle indeed.

I want to very briefly touch on a few points. I don't intend to speak a long time, because I generally support this legislation. I think that the creation of parks is a legacy for future British Columbians, and I think all of us can be proud to leave to future generations a legacy that does protect a variety of different ecosystems.

I'm not going to restate some of the concerns that were made by other members of the opposition with respect to the difficulty of setting land aside and then not having adequate resources to make sure that those parks that are established are properly patrolled and maintained, and that services are there. I share that concern.

In principle, I suppose, when we set out to put in place a policy of land use -- and that's what we're doing here -- and we determine that there will be various classes and types of parks and that those classes and types of parks will allow us to have a variety of activities related to them, then as a matter of policy, of public land use planning, we have to consider that simply setting aside the land, designating the area on the map, going out and perhaps marking it by way of surveying the physical site -- that by itself does not protect anything. I think that point has been made a couple of times, at least, tonight. I'm not going to unnecessarily restate what is the obvious.

The other thing that needs to be said, though, which wasn't really said -- at least, I haven't heard it in the debate tonight, and I want to raise it -- is the idea, the concept with respect to land use planning. It's a controversial concept -- that somehow the only negative impact on the landscape is resource extraction, that somehow if we set land aside and say there will be no timber harvest or no mining or we're not going to allow any kind of commercial or industrial activity into that area, and we're simply going to have the area set aside for recreation, then we have done a favour to the area in which recreation can occur. Humankind can be an unkindly lot, frankly.

When you allow parks to be accessed and when you have unrestricted access in particular, where you do not have adequate resources by way of staff or patrols to go in there and make sure that those parks are properly maintained, you can, by having that access, create as great if not a greater hardship on the landscape, especially where that landscape involves designated watersheds.

So we have to recognize very carefully, when we look at the parks that are assigned tonight by way of the land use policy of this government, how many of them actually fall within or encompass within them a watershed and the extent to which that watershed now is going to be accessed by way of recreational interests and concerns. Ours is a growing population. The demand to get out into the areas where they can access the environment is going to be greater.

We have to be extremely mindful when we create these parks that we must in some way have a policy with respect to access and the degree to which those parks can be accessed by a variety of means -- whether that's accessed by foot, whether we construct some kind of a trail that would allow motorized bikes to get in there or whether we have it by way of a road that would allow vehicles to get in there, and if so, what the quality, size and standard of the road would be which would obviously eliminate, if it's a very rough road, anything other than four-wheel drive or, if in fact we put in a much more sophisticated road, would allow camperized vehicles to go in, which of course creates another whole set of problems. We have to be mindful in creating land use policy that we have a vision of where it is we think we would like this land to fall in the larger concept of overall land use planning.

We also have to be mindful that in the establishment of class A parks as we see in the act here today, if we're then going to take the position -- and this government has taken the position -- that we are going to eliminate commercial activity or certainly resource extraction from those parks, then that puts a greater demand and greater burden upon contiguous areas, where resource extraction is going to have to be taking place in greater intensity in order to be able to maximize the volumes of materials that have to come out to support our local economies and local jobs.

So I say to the minister -- and I hope the minister takes my words in the constructive way they're offered -- that it is not enough to simply establish a land use policy that sets aside parks and protected areas, because the land use policy has to have the other side, the other balance. We have to also set aside land that will be designated and defined as working forest. We must also make sure that our land use accommodates those areas in which there are established reserves of minerals and allows us an opportunity to access those areas, to maintain the employment base that we all enjoy.

While this government has been extremely good at looking after, protecting and designating parks, this government has not been very good at setting out to designate a working forest or to protect coal and mineral reserves and to allow those people who are involved in the industry to be able to access and get out that mineral. That's a point that I think needs to be made.

By way of principle in terms of land use planning, the broader, larger vision has to encompass both sides of land use issues and must recognize that our ability to access and therefore be able to utilize the parks that are established is a critical component. That's one that is going to have two impacts on government. One is a cost impact, because you're going to have to somehow maintain access and the services that people will expect when they get in there. Secondly, it is a liability question, because if we're allowing people into these parks, then all of us -- the province in particular and the government specifically -- become liable for actions and activities that take place in that area.

The second major section of what I want to say tonight has to do more with the parks that are actually within my own jurisdiction, my own constituency. It has to do with the fact that most of the parks that are designated in this act within my own constituency are marine parks. The expansion, for example, of Desolation Sound Marine Park is something that all of us, I think, welcome. It is an incredibly beautiful part of 

[ Page 5963 ]

coastal British Columbia -- absolutely splendid vistas and very beautiful protected anchorages, which people are able to enjoy certainly through the summer months and into the fall and, if the weather permits, sometimes throughout the winter as well.

The difficulty here when we create marine parks such as Desolation Sound, however, is that the problems that have been already well articulated by other members of the opposition tonight with respect to providing services are compounded tenfold, because you have no way of restricting access. If you have a park in a valley that's secluded and protected or on the side or top of a mountain where there's a beautiful falls, or if there's a lake that's off the main beaten track, you can protect access by essentially eliminating, as I've said, anything that would allow vehicular access into that area.

But when you have a marine park, anybody who has a boat can go -- and they do. Not only Canadians can go, but Americans can go from the south -- and they do. Where you may have a park where you can establish park boundaries and start to restrict flow on the land, that's extremely difficult if not impossible to do in marine park sites. That raises a number of issues.

Canadians don't have holding tanks on their vessels; Americans do. I'm not sure, quite frankly, which is the worse. Americans come up with holding tanks. They fill those holding tanks and have nowhere in these park areas, where they're camping for a week or two weeks, to pump them out. So what they do is release their material in volume; Canadian boats don't. Therefore I'm not sure whether we can say the volume released is an issue or whether the issue in the marine parks that we're dealing with here, if it's done each time that people use the head in a boat. . . . Which is the worse?

The point is, though, that in protected estuaries and bays where there is anchorage, there is often very limited tidal flushing. They also happen to be areas where there is a significant amount of habitat concerned -- eelgrass, for example, where herring spawn -- which are necessary in the cycle of not only the herring but also the salmon. If these become anchorages and anchorage sites, and they are contaminated as a result of the access of those marine users, that's a problem.

It's a twofold problem. Number one, there's virtually no way to regulate it, because there's no way you have anybody that can go in and enforce it. It's not like a campground, where somebody can come along with a ticket and say, "Okay, pay up for your tent or your camper for the night, and by the way, you can plug into our little saniflush here," because there's no facility there.

The second reason it's a problem is that there are jumbled jurisdictions here, confused jurisdictions, between the federal government, which has habitat jurisdiction with respect to eelgrass, as an example, and spawning and salmon; and the provincial government, which has jurisdiction over the surface of the water in some areas where the land is zoned. So this becomes a critical problem in our land use planning.

In the conceptualizing of Desolation Sound Marine Park, we have a huge problem that is linked to the volume of users and to the facilities that those users have. Somebody mentioned earlier on tonight the question of garbage. Well, if you're a boater and you pull into whatever the last port of call was and you load up your boat and off you go into Desolation Sound for a week or ten days, there is nowhere for you to be able to dispose of that within this park.

It's important that the government hear this. It's important that the minister hear this, because Desolation Sound, one of the most pristine, most beautiful areas, will be destroyed if the government doesn't decide to take some level of action with respect to the provision of pump-out stations for those people with holding tanks and put in place some level of garbage collection or some way that people can in fact have garbage picked up.

What's ironic is that an enterprising gentleman in my own riding, in Lund, approached the ministry and said: "I would like to go around with my boat. I will collect garbage from people who are in that area -- if the ministry will only allow me the opportunity to do that -- and I will dispose of it for a small fee." He wrote to the various boating agencies, and they said: "What a great idea. We'd love to have you do that." But he can't do it in Desolation Sound because of its park designation, which prohibits commercial activity, and picking up garbage for a fee is commerce.

This is the kind of thinking that has got to change. It seems to me that where we put parks in place, where we get designations with respect to these kinds of parks, we also have to be moderate in our thinking with respect to the numbers, quantities, of people who are using them and the impact that that use is going to have on the long-term ecological and environmental sustainability of the park itself.

I could go on and talk a little bit more about some of the other parks. I'm particularly pleased to see the Homathko Estuary Park established. For those people that haven't been in there by boat, it is a magnificent area. But once again, it's an area that is highly congested, often as a result of marine traffic. Many of the boats come up from California, from Oregon and from Washington, and from British Columbia as well.

I would also say that what I have said about the areas around Desolation Sound also apply to the other marine park areas. They're extremely difficult to regulate. There are virtually no services available. If we allow unrestricted marine use in there without the provision of those services and without some effort to make sure that we at least allow the local communities opportunity to regulate those areas, we're going to be in trouble.

The last point before I sit down. I would hope the Minister of Environment would take note that within the marine parks the decommissioning of both federal fisheries as well as federal dock facilities in areas that are accessible only by boat puts an enormous hardship on the commercial fleets -- the salmon fleets and the commercial users of the local communities -- because pleasure boats will come up in the summertime and literally consume all of the dock and tie-up areas in the port facilities that are around.

I would hope the Minister of Environment will take a lead role in making sure that the Coast Guard and the federal government in particular are highly cognizant of the issue of the decommissioning of these docks when we start to establish our marine parks.

With that said, let me say that I'm most supportive of what we're dealing with here, given the caveat of the issues that I've raised. I do hope that in principle the minister will recognize that land use planning is more than simply protected areas; it must also include commercial areas and a designated working forest. I hope that the minister will also recognize that land use planning also must have a vision to be able to provide the necessary services to protect the ecosystem not only from the commercial user but also from the recreational users that will take pleasure in them.

Hon. C. McGregor: I'd like to end on a positive note, I think, because some of the comments I've heard tonight have 

[ Page 5964 ]

been a bit distressing. I would really like this to be an evening where we celebrate some of the achievements we've made together as British Columbians.

As a new minister, I've had a lot of responsibilities. Some of them I've enjoyed a great deal, and others I've enjoyed far less. I've had a recent experience with those. But nonetheless, one of the best things about being a minister in this government is the opportunity that I've had to visit some other parts of the province and talk with individuals who have had an opportunity to help create some of these parks around the province. I'd like to dedicate my comments to them, because I think that's a fitting way to close second reading debate.

I know one of the members opposite talked about sharing the dream. I think that that's a very fitting way to talk about the parks legacy that's been created, and not just by this government. In my opening statements I made a lot of comments about the leadership our government has shown internationally in the creation of parks. But that's not a goal that I set for this government, nor that any other member on this side of the House can take credit for. It was a goal set by ordinary British Columbians who really respect and highly value the very unique biodiversity and other values that are reflected in protected areas.

They care about, as one member opposite talked about, small urban green spaces. Those are important to our parks legacy. They talked about conservation and recreation as important values to put into our park system, and I would certainly agree.

I think it's unfortunate that the critic would characterize the work that we've done as not a great achievement, because I think that undervalues the work that many individuals and groups and local governments, as well as the provincial government, have put into this bill in order to be able to preserve for all British Columbians green space and parks for the years to come.

I can speak personally from some of the experiences I've heard people talk about, about how we set up parks in British Columbia. In particular, I'd like to talk a little bit about the LRMP process. It's not about government deciding where the boundaries are for a park; it's about bringing people together from very diverse interests in the community and saying: "What areas do you believe are important to set aside as a legacy and for preservation within this broadly based geographical area?"

What brought it close to home for me was my trip to Smithers, where I sat with a group of individuals who might be characterized as traditionally having very competing interests and opposing views -- people from the mining sector, people from the forestry sector, people who were guide-outfitters and others who might be called greens or ecologists, sitting together and saying: "At this table, we found the way to make an agreement on how we should best use the land in our area." They were so passionate about the work they had done, and they cared so deeply about the compromises and the understandings they had developed together as a result of that ongoing community-based process. That's a process that has created these parks.

I remember, at the Bulkley Valley LRMP announcement, two small children -- two boys, one seven and one ten -- and how they celebrated with their parents the importance of creating some parks in their area, parks that they had hiked. Again, it brought a reminder to me of the importance of creating parks from a legacy point of view, that this is an opportunity for us to save for future generations a very unique and diverse ecosystem that is British Columbia.

That is not to say that we don't have challenges. I certainly want to acknowledge what members have said about the need to put adequate resources into managing our parks. We have faced challenges in trying to do that, but we are looking for new ways of doing business. We are trying to find more partnerships in communities, and in the next few weeks I'll have the opportunity to make an announcement about a strategy we've developed in order to do that. I would certainly invite the members opposite to participate in that process, because it is important that we work together to continue to support the legacy that has begun in British Columbia.

I now move second reading of the bill.

[9:00]

Bill 29, Park 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. Pullinger: I call second reading of Bill 25.

FISH PROTECTION ACT
(second reading)

Hon. C. McGregor: It's my lucky day. Actually, it does feel like a lucky day, because not only do I get the opportunity to speak about the important legacy we've created through parks, but I get to speak about a very new and important action that our government is bringing forward called the Fish Protection Act.

The first and fundamental priority of this bill is the conservation and protection of fish and fish habitat, ensuring healthy fish-bearing streams and plentiful stocks. We have committed to using every opportunity we have at our disposal to protect and preserve fish now for the benefit of all British Columbians. This act is a major step in our strategy to ensure a more confident future for coastal communities and the tens of thousands of British Columbians who depend on fish as a livelihood and as a way of life.

However, hon. Speaker, it's not just about words; it's also about actions. I think it's important that we take the opportunity to look at some of the actions our government has taken to create a made-in-B.C. fisheries strategy.

First and importantly, I believe, is the increased pressure we've placed on Ottawa and Washington to resolve the Pacific Salmon Treaty impasse. Provincial expenditures on fish habitat restoration activities have increased from $23 million to almost $103 million over the last three years. That's more than a fourfold increase. We've introduced legislation to create a new fisheries renewal agency to invest resources back into fish protection and into community involvement in projects. And we've improved our relationship with the federal government through a new Canada-B.C. agreement on the management of Pacific salmon fishery issues.

In short, hon. Speaker, through our actions outlined in the B.C. fisheries strategy, our government is providing the leadership required to develop a long-term sustainable fishery and a vision that the fishery is a sunrise, not a sunset, industry.

The Fish Protection Act opens the door for the province, local communities, first nations and a broad range of stakeholder groups to act on the first priority of the Fish Protection Act: ensuring healthy fish-bearing streams and plentiful fish stocks. The act represents an important step 

[ Page 5965 ]

forward in our efforts to conserve B.C.'s precious fish stocks and ensures better stewardship activities on streams across British Columbia.

I would like to acknowledge the support of the Premier, my fellow cabinet colleagues and caucus members, and particularly the Minister of Municipal Affairs and the Attorney General for tabling supporting legislation in the shape of Bill 26 and Bill 27. Clearly fisheries renewal and environmental protection activities are a priority across our government.

The Fish Protection Act addresses three broad and related goals. The first goal is to ensure sufficient water for fish. The second goal is to protect and restore fish habitat. The third is to provide a renewed focus on riparian protection and enhancement efforts. I will now address how the bill will meet these goals.

The first goal is to ensure water for fish. Without changes to the way that water licences are administered across our province, many streams are likely to become diverted to the point where there simply won't be enough water for fish. Too often we've managed water in such a way that the needs of fish have come last. It was to avert that kind of disastrous result that we cancelled the Kemano completion project and brought in the Water Protection Act to ban bulk exports and large-scale diversions. But more comprehensive measures are clearly needed.

This new legislation establishes a broad framework and provides the following new tools to protect water flows for fish in all B.C. streams. First, there is a designation of sensitive streams. Where sustainability of fish is at risk, water licence applicants will have to demonstrate that there will be sufficient water to sustain fish and that habitat will not be degraded, and where necessary, provide for appropriate mitigation or compensation measures before a water licence will be issued. This reverse onus is a significant change and moves us in a progressive direction which clearly puts fish first.

Secondly, as I have said, in parts of the province water is already in scarce supply for fish, sometimes as a result of past water allocation decisions. The new act addresses this challenge by proposing an innovative water planning process that will bring water users together to help find ways to reclaim water for fish and to manage water issues in a more cooperative way.

Thirdly, this bill encourages exciting new provisions that will encourage broader community involvement in fish protection activities. For example, water licences may be granted to local conservation groups for the specific purpose of protecting water flows for fish and to promote stream stewardship activities.

In summary, for the first time in B.C. water managers will have the legislative authority to consider the stream flow needs of fish. This is a significant step forward. While geared primarily to address situations where fish are in obvious and real danger, this bill will clearly provide better protection for all fish in the province.

Our second goal is to protect and restore fish habitat. Many parts of the province do not have adequate habitat protection or restoration measures, particularly in urban settings. In the Georgia basin alone there are more than 140 salmon streams currently at risk. Countless others have been severely damaged or permanently lost. Concerned British Columbians don't accept this situation, and many have shown their willingness to participate in voluntary habitat and stream stewardship projects, such as those funded under the urban salmon habitat program. But again, there's a need for further leadership from government to address this problem.

The new legislation will therefore protect and restore fish habitat in the following ways. First, the bill bans the construction of new bank-to-bank dams on provincially significant rivers, including the Fraser, the Adams, the Skeena, the Stikine and the Tatshenshini. Given their unique ecological, social and heritage values, we simply cannot accept dams on these rivers, for the benefit of fish and for future generations.

Second, new provisions call for the development of recovery plans for sensitive streams to ensure the long-term sustainability of fish and fish habitat. These plans will bring people together to work out ways to improve habitat and water flows for fish that are in danger. We see the proposed fisheries renewal agency playing an important role in the development of these plans.

Third, the bill allows the province to use existing endangered species provisions to designate species of fish as endangered or threatened.

We also recognize that to be effective, habitat protection provisions require firm and appropriate enforcement. The legislation therefore authorized judges to use new and creative sentencing solutions. Rather than paying fines into the province's general revenue account, offenders can be ordered to undertake habitat remediation, mitigation and compensation activities -- actions that will benefit fish. The act also establishes higher penalties for offences related to the damage of fish and fish habitat.

Good-quality riparian protection is essential for ensuring healthy fish populations. In fact, the protection of riparian areas, the third goal of this legislation, is now viewed as one of the most important elements in an integrated fisheries protection program. The Fish Protection Act will complement steps already taken by this government to protect riparian or stream-side areas. The new act focuses on protection areas on urban streams, where fish habitat is disappearing at an alarming rate.

Together with other legal, policy and program initiatives, the legislation will protect and enhance riparian areas by establishing provincial policy directives that must be followed by local governments. This will be the first time that such a directive will be used in B.C. As I mentioned earlier, the legislation introduced by my colleague the Minister of Municipal Affairs supports this new measure by giving local governments additional powers to protect natural environment, including fish and fish habitat.

Our government also recognizes the crucial role that local governments play in environmental planning. An important provision of the Fish Protection Act therefore requires the province to consult with the Union of B.C. Municipalities in developing directives for riparian protection and enhancement. This represents a major new opportunity for coordinated action between the two levels of government on behalf of conservation.

In summary, this is the most comprehensive fish protection legislation in Canada. Once again British Columbia is leading the way and setting the pace for better stewardship and protection of natural values. We are taking a major step forward towards fulfilling our commitments to coastal communities and the British Columbians whose jobs depend on this resource. We are giving further credibility to our demand that the principles of conservation and equity be respected in international fisheries negotiations. We are taking long-overdue action to restore and protect a symbol of British Columbia that is a major part of the cultural heritage of first nations and non-aboriginal people alike. And we are creating 

[ Page 5966 ]

new tools to protect the biological diversity that we have pledged to sustain as a part of our global responsibility. All British Columbians and this government are proud of this bill, and I'm very pleased to move second reading.

C. Clark: I'm pleased to rise and respond to the minister's comments on second reading of Bill 25. There are certainly some parts of this bill that I can applaud, and my party will be supporting the bill. We will be offering some amendments and what we think are some very constructive suggestions for change in committee stage, which I hope the minister will consider and accept. They will be intended to build on the bill and make it a better piece of legislation that will truly do a better job of protecting fish habitat in British Columbia.

In particular, I'd have to offer my congratulations for the portions of the bill which provide, for example, for more community involvement in the protection of streams, particularly those that allow community groups to take out water licences. That's a long-overdue change in our legislation and, I think, something that will potentially do a lot of good and allow community members to take some ownership of the waterways that go through their community.

The minister's comment about banning bank-to-bank dams -- that's certainly an intention that we can support. I'd have to question how meaningful it is, but even as a symbolic comment by the government, I suppose it's something worth applauding just for that reason.

The creative-sentencing provisions that are allowed for riparian protection are certainly a positive change, and the requirement that there be consultation with the UBCM is obviously something that we on this side of the House strongly support as well, although I would like to remind the government -- and I'm sure we'll get this opportunity in committee stage -- that consultation has a definition in the dictionary, and the government should look it up. Consultation with the UBCM in the past has certainly been lacking. That's a concern we'll raise in committee stage, and I imagine we'll debate it fairly extensively.

Although we support the bill and although there are many good things in it, it would be a mistake to characterize it as a major new initiative. It does not represent a dramatic change in government policy. It is perhaps a statement of values, but in terms of its actual impact on protecting fish in British Columbia, I would suggest it isn't correct to characterize it as something that represents dramatic change. It simply does not.

[9:15]

I would suggest that over the years, as fish issues and environmental issues have become more important and taken some prominence in the public's mind, the responsibility of the Ministry of Environment to ensure that water licences include a respect for those fishery values has become more important. I would offer the minister the comment again, as we speak to the principle of this bill, that the idea that this bill will dramatically change the way water licences are used, issued and managed in this province simply isn't correct.

There is still a great deal of discretion for water licensing that is left in the hands of the water comptroller, and I'm not sure many people could offer an argument to the fact that the water comptroller has not met the obligations of the office particularly well over the last many years. I'd offer, of course, the example of the Cheakamus River, where the provincial government issued a water licence for that river to the major licensee on the river. That was in 1956, I think.

One of the conditions of the water licence was that the water comptroller, within a year of the licence being issued, would have to establish standards for minimum flow to ensure that fish habitat was protected. Over those many years, the licensee broke its water licence almost every year that it held it, until recently. There is an example in one year recently where the water licence was broken by 51 percent.

Fifty-one percent in excess of its water licence was diverted, and not only was that water diverted in excess of its water licence, but the licensee paid for the water it took. The ministry took the payment and offered some recognition that they knew the licensee was breaking its licence. I'd suggest that there's an example of where the water licensing office has not been living up to its responsibilities.

It's the job of the water comptroller in the Ministry of Environment to ensure that when water licences are issued, the conditions of the licences are met. That's the job. It's also the job of the water licensing office to ensure that when they're met in one year, they may need to be reviewed in future years to ensure that they're continuing to meet their obligations under the licence. It is also a responsibility of the water licensing office to cancel water licences where the licensee is not living up to his or her responsibilities.

Clearly, we've seen in the past that the water licensing office in the Ministry of Environment has not been meeting those obligations as fully as it should be, and it has been a cause of great concern for many citizens' groups and individuals out there who depend on those fish stocks not just for their commercial livelihood, perhaps, but also so they can enjoy the bounty of this province. Whether it's sport fishermen, commercial fishermen or citizens who don't fish but like to know there are still fish running through our waterways, that's an important consideration.

I would note, too, that this legislation does not contain -- and it should -- any demand that the major water licences in this province are all reviewed in a certain period of time and that if they're reviewed and found wanting, the ministry will act. I would suggest that is a major failing of this legislation. It needs to have some look-back provisions so that the government can go and look at the water licences that are now out there, particularly the large ones held by major licensees, and ensure that those licensees are meeting their obligations. According to one report that was done by one of the licensees themselves, there are over 11 threatened fish stocks in the waterways where they have dams, and this legislation doesn't provide any relief to ensure that those stocks continue to be protected.

I know the ministry says they are undertaking a licence-by-licence review that may take five years. I'd suggest that the problem is more urgent than that and that the government 

[ Page 5967 ]

first needs to shorten the time line for reviewing those licences on the rivers where there are threatened stocks, because five years from now those stocks might go from threatened to extinct.

I'd also suggest that if this licence-by-licence review is something that the ministry is serious about, then they shouldn't be scared to put it in the legislation. They shouldn't be scared to say it, to codify it, to put it out in written form so that everybody knows how the review will work, so that it has fixed time lines and, most importantly, so that the review is guaranteed to allow for the participation of the public. So far, the only review that's been undertaken and is in any way partway to being completed doesn't include any access for the public. It's a backroom secret process that includes the licensees, the provincial government and the federal government.

I would suggest that's the old way of doing things. In the modern world we need to include consultative processes in government's reviews, and we need to have an open-door policy to ensure that the public, who surely have the most interest in ensuring that fish stocks are protected in British Columbia, have access.

I think this legislation is partly lacking because the consultation in the creation of the legislation was lacking. I know the government did start a consultation process, but many of the people I've spoken to who were initially consulted, quickly found that the door closed, so the legislation that came out from the government at the end of the process didn't bear much resemblance to the legislation they were promised going in. I would respectfully suggest that this legislation would certainly have benefited from more consultation and more input and from allowing the public to have a greater say in what this might look like, rather than slamming the door halfway through the process. In the final analysis, I think that has cost this legislation and certainly diminished it.

I would like to comment, too, because the minister referred to some programs that her government has undertaken. For example, the urban salmon habitat program this year is off track for its funding because of government cutbacks. I don't think that really demonstrates or speaks to the sincerity of the government in wanting to protect fish stocks. Its urban streams were listed as among the most endangered rivers, among the ten most threatened waterways in British Columbia recently. The government is off track in its spending for the urban salmon habitat program, and I don't think that speaks very well for the government's commitment to protecting fish in British Columbia.

I don't think that many of the provisions in this bill are the kind of provisions that the government has presented them to be. It's a bill that's worth supporting, but it's not a bill that represents dramatic change. It's not a bill that represents a bold new way into the future that's never been considered before. I don't even know if it represents the best of the fish protection legislation that's out there. Somehow I doubt that. It would be an exaggeration to characterize it as something new and different and entirely bold and change-oriented. More than that, maybe it represents a symbolic thing for the government. Maybe that's what they were trying to achieve with it.

But I'd suggest to the government that they shouldn't characterize it as something more than it is. It's something that is worth supporting, but it's also something that's probably worth being honest about. That might be a first for some of the folks on the other side of the House, but maybe this is where we can start.

G. Wilson: My comments on this bill will be brief. As a Member of the Legislative Assembly who represents a substantial portion of the coast and who has many, many constituents whose livelihood is dependent on the successful survival of the commercial salmon fishery, I want to be on the record to say that I wholeheartedly endorse and support this legislation. I congratulate the government for bringing it in and offer my support and assistance to this minister as this minister endeavours to make sure that the legislation is applied fairly and properly, so that it can accomplish what it is designed to accomplish.

I would only add one thing in looking at the legislation. There is one piece still left missing that we are waiting for with respect to the protection of fishery stocks, and that is groundwater legislation. It's time that we had groundwater legislation in British Columbia. It is not only the protection of surface waters we're concerned with, but it is ground contaminants and leachate contaminants that can also filter into our water systems and cause damage.

With those remarks, let me commend the minister and government for bringing this forward and once again offer my support and commitment to work with the minister to make sure that we can properly and adequately implement the regulations that are contained within so that we can indeed protect our fish stocks.

J. van Dongen: I just want to comment briefly from my perspective mainly as Agriculture critic, but also on behalf of other people with an interest in this legislation.

The first comment I'd like to make is that as in many situations, I don't believe there was appropriate consultation on this bill. As I understand it, for many of the interest groups, there was one very brief and superficial hearing where the bill was generally talked about. I have a concern about that. I think there were a lot of people who had something to offer in terms of the development of some of the details of the bill. So I just want to table that concern.

One other concern that a lot of people have, and certainly I have it myself, is the proliferation of legislation in this area. It's easy to pass legislation that sounds good, and I think there are some innovative new things in this bill. But there are other pieces of provincial legislation: the Water Act, the Fisheries Act, now this legislation. We have federal legislation that's overlapping. I know the minister is aware of this; she mentioned the memorandum of understanding with the federal government. It's an ongoing concern to me: this constant overlap and apparent inability or unwillingness to try to condense all of this legislation down into one comprehensive act that is better coordinated with other levels of government. So that's another concern that I want to register.

Thirdly, particularly on behalf of Agriculture, which in many situations is going to be a small player in terms of numbers of people involved, where we have processes that involve public consultation. . . . I'm thinking about something like section 8, stream flow protection licences, which can be issued on the direction of cabinet. These stream flow protection licences may only be issued to an organization that the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council considers has a community-based interest in the stream. My concern there is: what is community-based interest? Who would this organization be that would have this kind of stake and influence over a stream? I'm concerned, in a public process such as this, that the numbers of farmers involved may not be large. There may be other people there who have no direct interest from an income perspective -- their own personal business income 

[ Page 5968 ]

perspective -- who have possibly more influence in terms of numbers in those situations, that may overshadow the influence of agriculture. So I want to register that as a concern.

[9:30]

Similarly, there are other sections throughout this bill. I know some of the bill is mainly dealing with urban land situations, urban streams, but throughout this bill agriculture will be impacted. I hope to get into more discussion in committee stage on some of those impacts and some of the involvements of agriculture.

I noted with interest under section 17 the definition of debris, meaning "(a) clay, silt, sand, rock or similar material, or (b) any material, natural or otherwise. . ." introduced to a stream. It was interesting to read that from the perspective of the Chilliwack River valley issues that I mentioned earlier in the discussion of a previous bill.

Also, later on in the bill there are sections dealing with the designation of critical wildlife areas for endangered or threatened species. In one section it says: ". . .the minister may, by regulation, designate land in a wildlife management area as a critical wildlife area." Again, I have an interest in that section as to what the possible impacts are. I don't know what they are at this point on agricultural lands or agricultural lease lands. If private interests are affected by that kind of designation, would there be consideration of compensation in that area?

So I simply want to raise some of these issues as a concern. I know that the government has made fish a priority, and I think that's a politically popular thing to do. It's always more difficult to actually enforce legislation.

Certainly one of the people that commented on this bill is an individual who specializes in environmental regulation. I thought he had an interesting comment. He said:

"The bill hides the lack of political will to enforce existing legislation that affects fish. Much of what can be accomplished with it already exists in other legislation. Municipalities already have the ability to set local guidelines determining stream setback criteria. A mechanism to protect fish habitat already exists in the Water Act. A means to protect minimum water flows for fish exists in both the Water Act and the Fisheries Act."

I want to close with some comments about the minister's introductory comments. The minister talked about the amount of money that government is spending on fish habitat conservation programs and that kind of thing. In the Ministry of Environment -- I have some figures here -- the expenditure is $10.6 million for '96-97. It was $9.4 million in '95-96, but in '94-95, three years ago, it was almost $11 million. There has been no increase in that area, and it would probably be interesting to look at the figures for '97-98.

A lot of that $103 million -- $87 million of it -- is FRBC money. While the government may want to claim that that is government money, it's money that has been taken out of the private sector, out of the forest industry and is now being managed by FRBC. The thing that bothers me about it is that the expenditure carries a surcharge of a 35 percent administration fee to handle those dollars, to get the money back into projects. That always bothers me, and I just want to put that on the record, as well. I look forward to discussion of this bill in committee stage.

Deputy Speaker: The minister closes debate.

Hon. C. McGregor: It's my pleasure to close the debate, and I'll keep my remarks relatively short.

Fundamental to the principles and goals of the bill is sustainability, which is a principle we've embraced as a government in a wide variety of initiatives we've taken. Obviously sustainability is something we need to work to achieve in the management of our fishery.

Fish, as the members opposite and I have noted in our remarks, are an absolutely critical resource to British Columbians, and they are really a symbol of the values we place on our natural environment. There is a need to do more, clearly there is, and there's clearly a need for all of us to engage in the opportunities of stewardship. As individuals, we can have a role to play in the behaviour we engage in that may affect fish habitat and water.

I appreciate the comments of some members opposite who talked about the overlapping nature of the issues related to water quality -- things like watershed management, our commitments around good forestry practices, the management of agricultural waste and discharges into streams from industrial sources. These are all linked issues.

I also note with interest the member opposite who talked about the need to mesh our policies across government in how we manage for fish. That's one of the principles we used in designing this new act -- to use the tools that were available to us through other legislative means but also to fill in the gaps between those policies, so that overall we would have a framework that broadly addressed all the issues necessary to effectively manage for fish. I certainly look forward to the opportunity to debate the matter more fully in committee stage, but I'll leave my remarks at that.

Deputy Speaker: The motion before us is second reading of Bill 25.

Motion approved.

Bill 25, Fish Protection Act, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. L. Boone: I call second reading of Bill 40.

MOTOR VEHICLE AMENDMENT ACT
(No. 2), 1997

Hon. L. Boone: Hon. Speaker, phase 1 of the motor vehicle branch-ICBC merger has been completed successfully. The bill that's before you today authorizes the transfer of the remaining functions at MVB to ICBC under phase 2 of the merger. Our principal goal is to improve road safety by 

[ Page 5969 ]

consolidating the province's road safety programs. At the same time, we remain committed to government's overall objectives of greater systems efficiency, improved customer service and lower costs. This merger will help us to achieve those objectives.

A central consideration during development of phase 2 legislation has been our insistence upon business practices that continue to be fair, open and accountable. Together MVB and ICBC have worked hard to develop legislation that supports the amalgamation of important components of B.C.'s road safety programs. Government sustains a strong partnership role with ICBC in the licensing decisions that affect people's lives.

Completion of the merger of MVB and ICBC will mean the transfer of vehicle standards, inspections and associated enforcement, to be reunited with other vehicle licensing functions. Strong government responsibility will be retained in MVB for driver medical and dangerous driver prohibitions, with ICBC providing basic program administration. No one agency is judge and jury in licensing decisions. ICBC will strive to be fair in carrying out all licensing services.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

I would like to add to my second point about driver medical prohibitions by drawing attention to the important role that physicians play in road safety. Physicians help to ensure that their patients are able to drive safely and, more importantly, alert the superintendent when a patient's medical condition poses a threat to road safety. To do that, physicians must feel confident that they will not suffer negative consequences for meeting the responsibility for road safety.

We are introducing measures to protect physicians when they are acting in the public interest. These measures will ensure a physician can alert the superintendent about a patient with a medical condition that poses a risk to road safety, and do so without fear of unnecessary litigation.

Government, through the office of the superintendent, will provide a check by way of appeals and hearings when important matters require third-party consideration. Several measures will help coordinate the corporation's dual roles as insurer and driver and vehicle licensing regulator. For example, the Ministry of Attorney General will work with ICBC to ensure a smooth transfer of enforcement powers and define the conditions under which ICBC is to carry out those powers.

This bill also establishes a legislated right to appeal ICBC's licensing decisions. An appeal to the superintendent will be available when the corporation refuses to issue a cancelled driver's licence, prohibits a person from driving due to an insurance debt, refuses to issue a licence for a driver training school or instructor, a vehicle inspection facility or an inspector, refuses to issue a National Safety Code certificate to a commercial transport facility or refuses to accept proof of adequate insurance. Where an ICBC licensing decision may affect a business concern regulated under the Motor Vehicle Act, the right to a show-cause hearing is also preserved under the authority of the superintendent.

Finally, I would like to remind the House that this government's principal goal remains the safety and well-being of everyone who travels British Columbia's roads and highways. By placing MVB and ICBC road safety programs under a single administrative umbrella, we will facilitate continued delivery of important traffic safety initiatives.

B. Barisoff: I know that this is simply a merger from phase 1 to phase 2, and we did a lot of arguing in phase 1 of what real effect is taking place. There's no possible way, even though it is just simply moving from phase 1 to phase 2, that I can recommend to my caucus on this side of the floor to approve this bill, simply because of the direction it took us in last year on Bill 9, when the start of the merger first occurred.

We look at things like privacy. When we look at what has taken place, privacy is definitely a concern for all citizens of British Columbia. What we're doing with the merger is opening up the privacy of people's lives and medical records -- all kinds of things like that that are going to affect people. If we think that these aren't going to affect people, if we think when they get put into computers they're not going to get transferred back and forth, I think we're sadly mistaken. Those are the kinds of things that force this side of the House to look at this bill very carefully. Even though we know it's the second half of the merger, we can't possibly support it.

We move on to another one of the issues we raised last year, and that is power. We have created the ultimate power in ICBC. What's going to take place now is that ICBC can dictate when people can have a licence and when they can't have a licence, if they happen to be in some kind of litigation with ICBC -- they're the judge and jury. The minister just indicated that they wouldn't be the judge and jury and that they have the opportunity to appeal to the superintendent. But honestly, when you start to look at these kind of things, you begin to wonder how much this appeal. . .and how far it would go. I think we have created ICBC with the power to be the judge and jury. They have ultimate power.

[9:45]

This is just a disguise. It's a disguise to go in a direction of hiding the money from the general public and hiding the fact that we won't have the opportunity here in the Legislature to be able to debate what takes place. What's going to take place now is that all of these things are going to come under the guise of the Crown corporation. We won't be able to stand up in the House and ask an hon. minister what's taking place in different areas, so I really wonder whether the accountability is there. When you look at what's taking place here. . . . I know we debated this long and hard in Bill 9, but I can't help but repeat that what's taken place is that the accountability for what's taken place with this merger is wrong. It's simply the wrong direction. Even though we look at this and know that this is the second phase of what's taken place, the merger is wrong.

There is no accountability. We can't stand up in this House and ask the minister the questions that we'd like to ask her on what's going to take place with the Crown corporation. It's the ultimate. . . . I just don't know how to put it. The accountability factor is something that we've all got to look at. We've all got to start to be more accountable to the taxpayers of British Columbia, and with this merger we're losing that accountability.

The other section that really concerned us in Bill 9 is conflict of interest. It's being the regulator, the policeman, the 

[ Page 5970 ]

insurer, all in one. These are the kind of things that I think destroy the integrity of ICBC, the company itself, to create this merger. If we were looking at this more from maybe a holistic point of view, we would have said to ourselves: "No, they should be separated. There should be some part of government that should be answerable for what takes place." And in this case, there is nobody that's answerable.

There's a lot of other things. I think we could go on and on. It would just be repeating things that happened when we debated Bill 9; it would go on for hours. We had a lot of members from this side of the House that wanted to repeat the same scenario, because we think it's wrong. The merger itself is wrong. With that, I guess I could go on into the different sections, but we'll be in committee stage going through it section by section. I know that most of it is simply a matter of the transfer of power from one to the other, so we'll discuss most of it then.

D. Symons: Just a few comments that I'd like to add to those of my friend from Okanagan-Boundary, because I share his concerns on this bill. We've seen the first part go through. But I had concerns then, and I will repeat them in a sense now, because this is the second part of what may indeed be a bad bill.

What we have, really, is that ICBC now has become a super-bureaucracy. I have concerns about that, because when I go to the insurance firm, whether it be for life insurance, fire insurance for my home, or car insurance, what I'm going to that firm for is the purchase of insurance. Insurance is indemnifying you against some potential financial or physical health loss in the future.

What we now see ICBC moving into are things beyond the provision of insurance to people for driving their automobiles or having a licence to drive their automobiles. We see them moving into such things as upgrading of highways. Granted, it's done for the reason of reducing the cause of accidents at that point, so it will reduce the claims on ICBC. But I'm not too sure whether it's ICBC's role to be doing highway repairs -- putting in traffic lights and such, as they currently are doing -- out of the premiums that people are paying for insurance. It seems a little bit concerning to me that this is the case.

What we see ICBC moving into is the regulation, shall we say, of those who are allowed to drive in this province. Somehow I see that as a conflict. It was mentioned by the previous member that we have the one firm that's dealing with insurance now also having the ability to regulate, deny or approve the licensing for people to have the right to drive. They should have the right to deny, if they so wish. . .the right to insure somebody for driving based on some past history of that person's driving. But I don't know that you give them the right not to have the licence. . .you might not give them the right to have the car licence -- that is, the insurance indicating you have it to drive. . . .

But there seems to be a problem here in the fact that the regulation they're given is too wide a field now. One should be insurance; the other should be separate. The provision of those regulations is required for enforcing the law. Other respects seem to be now moving into the realm of ICBC. That, I believe, is wrong, as mentioned before -- a conflict of interest.

Another concern I have is, as we mentioned earlier, that the superintendent now seems to be relegated to the position of an appeal board. That certainly has not been the traditional role of the superintendent, because we find, as we look through this act, the superintendent mentioned in two or three places. Either the role of the superintendent is now superseded or passed on to ICBC, or the role of the superintendent is passed on to the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council, which means that things that were done previously by the superintendent of motor vehicles are either done by people in ICBC or by the cabinet in caucus -- without coming before the House, by the way. That I have a concern about. It's tightening, as I say, the political control of what's taking place in ICBC and through the motor vehicle branch.

The last comment I have is the problem with suspensions. There's a lot of sections here that deal with prohibition of drivers from driving due to alcohol incidents and other things. I have some concerns about the way these are being applied. I certainly agree with any tightening of controls and of the rules related to drinking and driving and other driving infractions. But I somehow feel that what is in here is still lacking. With those brief comments, I will take my seat again.

G. Wilson: A moment ago, I stood up, congratulated this government for bringing in a bill and said I'd worked with the minister. In the interests of constructive opposition, let me say that this Minister of Transportation, I think, has done a commendable job -- certainly in making sure that the Sunshine Coast highways are finally looked after. I appreciate that.

But there is just no way that anybody who believes in sound public policy can support this bill, because on a matter of principle you do not put a regulatory and policing authority in the hands of a commercial Crown corporation. You just don't do it. It's bad public policy.

I know that the government opposite is trying very hard to make ends meet, and I know that they're trying to consolidate costs and all those sorts of things. But let me tell you, road safety programs are one thing -- and they're a good thing. There are some good initiatives out there. In fact, I think there are some youth initiatives that are doing a good job this summer on road safety. But when you get to the question of licensing -- when you get to the question of putting in place some form of policing action -- you don't put it in the hands of a Crown corporation, especially when that Crown corporation virtually has a monopoly on the delivery of the insurance that you're required to have for your car.

You know what? I said that when this government started this merger. I said it was bad public policy then; it's bad public policy now. I don't think it's worthy of standing here for 20 minutes and repeating everything I said before, because quite frankly, if it was bad then and it's bad now, it isn't going to get any better at the end of my comments in 20 minutes, if I chose to do so.

Let me say once again for the record: I think this is bad public policy. It's one of those things we have to put on the list of things to fix when finally we get to that side of the House and have an opportunity to do so.

Hon. G. Clark: I was provoked by the last speaker into rising to defend this piece of legislation. It never ceases to amaze me. . .these principled objections from that member, who stands in the chamber and says: "Well, we can't find efficiencies because of some principled objection. We can't work to make the system more efficient."

I don't know if members opposite know, but it's a really very simple thing. We give penalty points and even suspend licences over here, in one branch of government, and the people go and renew their insurance over here. And you know what? They don't know. People who have suspended 

[ Page 5971 ]

licences get insurance; people who have points on their licences don't get penalized insurancewise. Clearly, for public safety, if somebody has their licence suspended, they should not be granted insurance. What could be more simple than that? Merge the two operations, save millions of dollars of tax money in doing so, and have a more efficient system that ensures that those bad drivers who have penalty points pay annually, that those bad drivers who get suspended don't get insurance, that we can crack down on bad driving and that we can have an efficient process and we can save money at the same time.

This is good public policy and good legislation, and all members of the House should support it.

Hon. L. Boone: I think my leader has just wound up the debate very precisely. Having said that, I move second reading of Bill 40.

Motion approved on division.

Bill 40, Motor Vehicle 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.

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

Hon. J. Pullinger moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 9:59 p.m.

PROCEEDINGS IN THE DOUGLAS FIR ROOM

The committee met at 6:44 p.m.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF
EDUCATION, SKILLS AND TRAINING
(continued)

A. Sanders: It's a pleasure to start the estimates of the Ministry of Education at this hour, specifically focusing on K-to-12. I intend to do this in a very serious and forthright manner that will include brevity as one of the very significant components of looking at the areas of education. I know that the minister will respond with core information, actual information and brevity, so we can proceed through this area with lightning speed compared to many of the other estimates that we have seen.

[6:45]

While I'm still digesting what I had for dinner, albeit not enough, and while I'm collecting and getting my synaptic areas trying to fire all at once, I'd like to start with a little story to tell you how we're not going to do the estimates. For those of you who perhaps aren't used to a little levity or humour, please bear with me. This is a little story about how the official opposition, in my capacity, and the minister and his staff will not be doing things in Education. The story is called "All at Sea."

Once there was a boat race between the opposition crew and a ministry team. Both practised long and hard to reach their peak performance on the big day, and on the big day the opposition team won by a mile. The ministry team became very discouraged and morale sagged. Senior managers decided that the reason for the crushing defeat must be found and set up a working party to investigate the problem and recommend action. They concluded that the opposition had eight people rowing and one steering while the ministry team had eight steering and one rowing. The ministry immediately hired a consultant to look at the ministry's team and the ministry's team structure.

Millions of dollars and several months later the consultants reported that too many people were steering and not enough were rowing. To avoid losing again, the ministry team structure was changed to three assistant steering managers, three steering managers, one executive steering manager and a director of steering services. A performance and appraisal system was also set up to give the person rowing more incentive to work harder.

The opposition was challenged to another race and won by two miles. The Minister of Education responded by laying off the rower for poor performance, selling the oars and cancelling orders for a new boat. The money saved was used to finance bonus pay awards for the steering group.

I love this story, primarily because it often shows, in the public eye, what it is that we do here. Although we all know that we work hard and that the hours are onerous and sometimes unbelievable, there is a lot of work done by ministry staff, many of whom I know on a personal basis and have worked with over the last year and a half. I know how much work is done there, and I have great respect for them -- for their knowledge, for their dedication and for the work they do.

I think it is our responsibility, on both sides of the House, to make the public aware of exactly what goes on in terms of this structure and how much hard work does occur. One of the things that I look forward to during the estimates process for K-to-12 is to really show the ministry staff in terms of their shine, to show the minister in terms of his capabilities and, of course, to show the critic for the opposition in terms of hers.

So on that note, what I'd like to do to disprove the story of "All at Sea" -- and any implication on us here -- is to start with some very basic premises in terms of the K-to-12 system and look at the goals of education. My first question to the minister is quite simply: what are this minister's goals for his term as Minister of Education?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I thank the member for her comments. In beginning this portion of estimates, I want to introduce the staff that's assisting me tonight. I think many of you have met 

[ Page 5972 ]

my deputy, Don Avison, who's been here throughout these estimates. We're joined tonight by Paul Pallan, who's assistant deputy minister for funding and accountability in the public education sector; Sam Lim, who's assistant deputy minister for education programs; Joan Axford, who's school finance and data management director; and Jim Parker, director of facilities. So that's the team that will be assisting me. I assure the member opposite that none of them are in charge of the interministerial coordinating group for steering.

I thank the member opposite for her comments on the real dedication and hard work that senior members of the public service put into their jobs. I know it was one of the surprises of my initial couple of years in the Legislature to find out just how dedicated. . .and how many long hours members of the public service put into their jobs in support of government and minister's offices but, more generally, in support of the services that we offer to the public. I'm very pleased to hear her words of support for their professionalism and their dedication.

The member asked me a short question that deserves either a seminar that could consume several days or perhaps an equally short answer. I'll try to be brief. My goal for the public education system is not unlike those that have been established for the past several years -- really, I think, the past hundred years -- here in our province.

First, I think it is vitally important that we maintain a publicly funded, publicly run education system that is available on terms of equity to all children in British Columbia. Now, that may sound almost too simple, but in the face of pressures that would have those of us charged with responsibility for governing a public education system seek to disband it, privatize it and fragment it, I think it's important that we state at the outset that that is a goal which I as a minister and this government are committed to.

It is, I submit, a world-class system that we have built in this province over the last 125 years. It is truly remarkable. The results demonstrate that students coming from our public education system have the skills to succeed in post-secondary education. They compete and demonstrate their skills well in measures that go across provinces and across countries. I think we should celebrate that, because it is very, very important that we do it.

At times those who've talked about education. . . . As an educator myself -- and I know the member opposite has also been an educational practitioner in a former life, as well. . . . Those of us involved in education constantly debate what is most important that we do. Should we focus on the measures of intellectual development and create a system that focuses intensely on academic achievement? Or should we recognize that a public education system also has a broad responsibility for human and social development? What we hope our children attain through our system is not only the ability to succeed in academic subjects and succeed in post-secondary education and in a career but to participate fully in the life of their family and of their community. I believe that is an equally important part of what we do in our public education system. Or should we focus our education system more intensely on career development and preparation for career and the employment opportunities of our young people? I submit that it's not a matter of either-or, that if we neglect one we're not serving our children well.

I will tell you that as minister I think we do a good job in many, many areas of our system. My foci as Education minister are several -- and I want to just address these broadly. I don't have any particular order for these, hon. member.

First, our education system has gone through a time of intense change in the past five or six years. After the Sullivan commission we embarked on wide-ranging changes to the curriculum in the K-to-12 system, and then, through the initiatives by one of my predecessors, the Hon. Art Charbonneau, on a redefinition of how we were going to move forward with rebuilding curriculum in our post-secondary system.

It is my view that what our system needs now is a period of integration and stability of many of the changes that have taken place. Therefore I have been working with our partners in the system -- school trustees, teachers and others -- to say that we have in front of us the challenge of implementing well the curriculum that has been developed and making sure that it is broadly accessible to our children. I would say stability is one of the things we need to strive for. As I talk to teachers and parents and trustees, their concern is that we do well and implement well the many initiatives that we've had in place.

Second, we need some consistent approaches to a variety of issues that are out there facing us -- implementation of technology and the ability of all students in our school system to access some of the opportunities that advanced information technology can provide in our education system. I suspect we'll talk more about that.

I am very concerned that our education system continue the progress that it has made to break down the barriers which say that, on the one hand, we have education, on the other hand, we have the real world, and the two are going to remain separate. I think through initiatives such as career and personal planning, such as secondary school apprenticeship, such as the work experience that's now required for graduation and a variety of other initiatives, we have started the process of breaking down that division.

I'm intent on furthering that progress. I am -- or was, back in the spring of '96 -- the first Minister of Education to have dual responsibility for the K-to-12 system and the post-secondary system since the Hon. Eileen Dailly under Dave Barrett's government. I think the decision to put what were two ministries into one should send a message about how we as government wish to approach the challenge of education, and that is to break down some of those barriers.

I mentioned the secondary school apprenticeship program. I must say that I've also talked to staff already about what I see as some exciting initiatives to actually grant post-secondary credit for work that students are now doing in secondary school. Those links must continue to be made. More importantly, I think it is vital that in our secondary schools particularly -- maybe even sooner -- we let our children increasingly know what their opportunities are for careers and for employment in the future.

[7:00]

With respect to the many, many fine teachers I've known and have worked with over the years, in the past our educa-

[ Page 5973 ]

tion system has too much said: "This is education; that's the world; worry about the world after you finish your education." That's not good enough for the twenty-first century; it's not good enough for what we need to do for children in our province. We must develop those necessary linkages.

I think I've gone on a bit longer than perhaps the member opposite intended, but I did think it important to at least sketch in some of what I think are the broad directions -- because that is what I believe she asked for -- that I intend to pursue as Minister of Education.

A. Sanders: I agree very much with the minister's answer in terms of education. A few words of advice -- if I may be so bold as to give advice in my short tenure: stability is probably, from the experiential side of what I have dealt with in education over the last two years, the most important thing. One thing teachers will tell me is that they wish the government would get out of their faces, allow them to be in their classrooms and do their job. With the revolving-door process that has occurred in the educative area from the ministry down, this has been one of the things that has been thrown out with the trash. They have had an extremely difficult time developing a feeling of education.

My concern last year when we did these estimates was, again, stability. I said to the then minister: "Will the minister guarantee me that the deputy we have at this sitting is here to stay for a while and that the minister is here to stay?" About a year later we have a new deputy and we have a new minister.

It is a circumstance that I cannot stress enough as a parent. That, perhaps, is the contextual framework on which many of my questions will come from -- as a parent in the system. We do not do well in Education with a new deputy du jour once a year; we do not do well with a new minister once a year. The tenure of ministers in Education from the start of the NDP government in 1991 has been about 1.1 years maximum -- and that is not contributory to the stability of the folks who have to work with that minister, who have to get used to the framework on which they hang their thoughts and belief systems, in addition to how the business of education is done for our kids.

So I implore this minister to live up to what he has said -- which I do agree with -- and that is to make stability a very significant priority for the Ministry of Education in British Columbia, and to have that stability carried forward so that next year, when I'm still standing here, I am with the same minister, with the same deputy and, hopefully, I'll see a few familiar faces who have some lineage in terms of what is going on in the field of education.

In terms of focusing a little bit more narrowly on what I feel is the very important structure of the goal, the minister has talked about the goals of looking at children's intellectual development, marrying those to the human and social development of kids and somehow encompassing and interdigitating those career goals that we now recognize to be very much a part of the K-to-12 system. What three things -- and three is not a number for any other reason than that it's kind of how we work in the competitive sport area, from which I come -- does the minister feel, at this point, starting now and working towards this time next year, need urgent attention? Has he made priority for them in terms of the workloads of his ministry? What three things will he be working on so that the goals that he has outlined for me will be actualized in the next calendar year?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I took some time thinking about the answer, because it's a serious question that deserves a serious response, and some time for consideration of the many, many initiatives that are taking place within the thousands and tens of thousands of people that are employed to deliver quality education to our children. Rather than pick out four individual courses or anything, what I'd like to do is touch on three themes that I think are vital.

The first one is to reinforce the importance of stability, which the member opposite said is also one of her top priorities. Let me say that this is needed on a whole range of levels. Last year we amalgamated school districts. In the coming year, the work of amalgamation will, I hope, be concluded. I have no intention of doing another round of amalgamation. We need to make sure that we have some stability in that system, though I will also be urging the school districts -- both amalgamated and unamalgamated -- to continue the work they set out on in 1996 when we had the restructuring report and committed ourselves, both in the ministry and in the field, to shared services and figuring out how we could work together to get the most educational delivery for the tax dollars that we had. Stability on that level; stability on implementation of curriculum. We continue to have a clear time line for implementation of IRPs. We need to keep doing that in an organized way.

We have a school accreditation program that has been revised, revisited and has broad support in the education system. We need to continue with our work on examining and accrediting schools and doing it in a systematic way without any more bumps and jiggles along the path.

We have in place a number of initiatives to deal with making sure that students with special needs in our system -- whether they're special in "special education" needs or in the needs of those who have English as a second language, those who are dealing with aboriginal education or aboriginals. . .to make sure that we're following through and delivering on the many initiatives we started for them. So in all those areas -- and those are just a few -- we'll make sure that we're carrying through on what we started. In many of those areas, new initiatives are not what's needed.

I'll just pick one minor example. In ESL -- and I am sure we'll talk about it more this evening -- we have done some work on gathering best practices. Now the challenge is sharing it, implementing it, making sure that we're moving forward and doing right by newcomers to our province whose children have English as a second language. So I just want to reinforce the idea of carrying through on the initiatives that we've begun. I began many of them during my first time in this ministry, and I want to follow through on them.

Second, quality assurance -- and I'm using that term advisedly. The officer of the comptroller general called it accountability; I'm not an accountant. What I mean when I talk about accountability is: how do we ensure that our students are getting the quality in the education that they deserve and that we expect the education system to deliver to them? What are the right measures of ensuring not just what money we put into the system but that we get the results out of it? That is going to be an ongoing task for us: working with teachers, with trustees, with my own staff to make sure that we're following through on some of the areas that the OCG report said we should pay some attention to, but also asking the OCG to go out there and work with school districts, examine their commitment to accountability and figure out what they're measuring and not measuring now to make sure that as minister I can stand up in estimates, and those who succeed me can stand up in estimates in succeeding years, and report to the Legislature and to the people of the province on the measures of quality in our system.

[ Page 5974 ]

Third -- and this is one that I think is probably nearest and dearest to my heart -- is to give our teachers, to give our educators the tools they need to do the job for our children. Again, there is a range of things I'm going to talk about. One of them is clearly the initiatives we need to make sure that all our children and their teachers have access to the wonders of the information technology age. Rather than repeat what I said earlier today, I'll simply refer the members opposite to Hansard and a rather long speech I made about the provincial learning network and some of the opportunities that I felt it held for our students. I think that is a vital component of giving our teachers the tools.

It is clear to me -- and has been clear to me in my 20-some years in the classroom -- that true education reform, true assurance of quality starts with supporting teachers day in and day out as they deal with students in their classrooms. That's what I always wanted as a teacher; that's what I want to provide as a minister.

There is much that I could add under each of those headings, but I want to strike the three general notes to give the member opposite some idea of what my priorities are as I look at the myriad of issues that come through my office every working week.

A. Sanders: I'm pleased to hear the priorities the minister has; they are significantly in line with what my priorities are as well.

One thing that I would like to tie in, in terms of the minister's priorities, is that his goals of education will be accentuated by an evaluative system that will allow him to measure those outcomes. He mentioned the OCG report, which we will talk more about as time proceeds. I think that, especially for the public, there needs to be some very real measurement benchmarks for such things as human and social development in terms of how our students are participating, how we are measuring attitudinal and behavioral changes, what kinds of provincial learning assessments we are getting, and if we do get them, how we respond to them.

What comes to mind specifically is the science and math comparative analysis of how our children did over a period of time. We found that when we measured them -- and I believe it was in '91 -- that in fact they did worse the next time around. What I would like to have seen from that was that we responded by asking: "What is going on here? We're not doing as well as we had. . .compared to ourselves." We need to know what the benchmarks are as to why that occurred.

[P. Calendino in the chair.]

I think in terms of looking at kids, I feel that, from a career development point of view -- which, again, is one of the shared goals the minister and I have discussed here -- we need to have some kind of synergistic program that will say, on quick response: "You're not going in the right direction. What are you going to do to back this up, and what are you going to do to fix it?"

For the public record and for those individuals who use these estimates as a method of procuring information on British Columbia -- what their government is doing and what's going on in their school system -- I'd like to turn to some questions on school enrolment and staffing. Again, hopefully these will be questions that will be very straightforward and the minister and I can go through them in a fairly quick fashion. My first question is basically this: how many students are presently enrolled in the British Columbia public school system?

Hon. P. Ramsey: There are 594,000.

A. Sanders: What is the increase in enrollment from the 1995-96 calendar year to this one, 1996-97?

[7:15]

A. Sanders: A little aside on that because it's struck some kind of synaptic transmission that was going on behind my eyeballs here. I recently watched a very interesting show prior to the transfer of Hong Kong back to China. This program, a Canadian program, was discussing the 60,000 Canadian citizens of Asian descent who live in Hong Kong but who have dual passports. They were primarily living there because they had lived there for their entire lives, as had their families. The dual-passport circumstance was to see whether or not in the next year or two these families and children felt that they would be happy to continue being educated in a Canadian school in Hong Kong or whether they would prefer to transfer to being Canadian residents.

One, is the minister aware of this circumstance, and two, is there discussion in the ministry as to how we would deal with the influx of such a significant degree of Canadian citizens should there be a circumstance in Hong Kong that would preclude these young people and their families continuing to live in Hong Kong?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Actually, the same line of thought has occurred to me more than once, and that's why I was very heartened to see the really smooth handover of authority in Hong Kong that occurred on July 1. The member is right: if circumstances drastically change in Hong Kong, and we have a huge influx of dual-citizenship holders into Canada, the bulk of them would probably settle in British Columbia. At that point I suspect that my senior staff would be drafting a very comprehensive Treasury Board submission for me to deal with that influx. I would say that, fortunately, my reading is that the international situation -- admittedly, it's not my field of expertise, but as a layperson and somebody who's been active in politics for a long time -- appears to be relatively stable, and my reading is that all parties in the handover wish to take steps to ensure stability in the coming years in Hong Kong.

A. Sanders: It is certainly a derailment on my part to go off on that particular issue. However, it is such a significant issue, and the factor of an increase of 14,000 young people into the school system in the '96-97 year piggybacked that thought right into the front line. I think it is something that we should have a position on, and it is something that would be appropriate for the staff to discuss among themselves in terms of the next five-year period.

In looking at the number of children we have, the 594,000, could the minister please tell me what percentile of those children are in elementary school?

[ Page 5975 ]

Hon. P. Ramsey: Fifty-nine percent are enrolled in kindergarten through grade 7.

A. Sanders: I would assume from that statistic that the corollary would be that 41 percent are enrolled in secondary school. Is that correct?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Yes, that is accurate. That figure also includes the ABE programs offered by school districts.

A. Sanders: What percentage of our students are enrolled in the independent school system?

Hon. P. Ramsey: The enrolment in the independent schools in the province for the current year is 55,860, which is approximately 8.2 percent of the school age population.

A. Sanders: What are the number of FTEs in B.C. with respect to educators?

Hon. P. Ramsey: We've compared a variety of figures over here. There are 34,710 teachers and AOs: teachers, principals, vice-principals -- sort of direct, front-line educators. That obviously doesn't include aides, support staff or district administrators.

A. Sanders: What is the average age of the educator in the 1996-97 calendar year?

Hon. P. Ramsey: It's 43.2 years.

A. Sanders: What are we going to do with all these old teachers? Goodness gracious, 43.2. . . . Basically, that means that there's going to be a lot of wheelchair accesses into our schools. Goodness gracious.

Forty-three is obviously the prime of life; there's no question about it. But as we're all aware, the generation gap widens into quite a chasm by the time you get to high-school age. What incentives do we have in the school system to get some young people teaching school in British Columbia?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I must first confess that as I increasingly look at the age of 50 vanishing in the distance, I think 43 looks pretty young. But I take the member's point.

There is a real challenge here. We do have an aging educator force in our public school system; the member is quite right. At the same time, we have an increasing number of young and eager education graduates that are too often surviving on TOC work and spending long periods of time not practising the profession that they were trained for and wish to practise. So this is a serious problem. There are a couple of things that are in place now and a couple that we are pursuing.

Like the member opposite, I have a good number of friends who are public school teachers. I was recently at a sort of end-of-school-year party with many of them in Prince George. I was surprised to discover the number of people of my age -- 40 to 55 -- who had decided to take advantage of a program that the district had set up which allowed them to spread four years' earnings over five years of actual time and take a full year off with 80 percent pay. It's a way of taking a break and then getting back into teaching and also of providing a chance for a younger teacher to move in, reducing the number of older teachers in the teaching force. Many districts have this initiative, and it is a zero-cost initiative -- maybe even a cost saving to school districts that have it in place. It does provide a chance to get younger teachers into the system and provide experienced teachers -- I won't say older teachers -- with the chance to rejuvenate and take some time off for their personal lives.

More to the point, in the tentative collective agreement which was signed with the BCTF about a year ago, there's a provision for $10 million to be put towards an early retirement incentive in the spring of 1998. Clearly the issue that the member is referencing is exactly what this is designed to address: a chance for a significant number of teachers to access early retirement and to move in some new teachers.

The other thing I would say, though, is that in spite of this fact -- and I'm sure the member opposite hears the same thing that I do from teachers -- a lot of them would like to take advantage of a more broad-based early retirement plan. I've committed to discussing that with the BCTF and with my colleague the Minister of Finance.

[7:30]

A. Sanders: I think this is an issue of interest and, to a certain point, conjecture, in that it's very difficult to ascertain the differential between having teachers considerably older than they were 20 years ago in terms of the average age of a teacher in British Columbia. There is no question that the older teachers bring with them a wealth of experience and certainly expertise to the classroom.

My own personal experience, which I think is shared by many, is that while they bring that expertise, what they often take away is the fact that they do have a life of their own. Commensurate with that is less likelihood of coaching teams and doing extracurricular activities that commonly, in my experience -- and, I think, in the collective experience of teachers here -- are done by the teachers in their early twenties and thirties. So I will be interested to see and I will be asking on a regular basis what incentives are in place to kind of even the playing field so that we do have a circumstance where our teachers are still participating in many of the activities which, to me, are as important a part of the school year as expertise in teaching geography, etc.

In terms of looking at these teachers. . . . I mean, I don't want them to get so old we have to carbon date them in order to figure out where they are here. I would certainly be one of those individuals far above the 43-year figure, and I can see that in terms of the health repercussions of teaching, that might be a problem.

What percentage of funding in education goes to salaries and benefits if we look at the budget for the K-to-12 group?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Fifty-eight percent of the budget is spent on teachers' salaries and benefits, and the total wage 

[ Page 5976 ]

and benefit bill in the system is 89 percent of total budgets. So it's 58 percent on the teacher portion; in total, the salary and benefits are 89 percent.

A. Sanders: And among the contracts, if we look across the province -- assuming this is the mean and not the median -- what would be the highest percentile for total teachers plus wages and benefits and what would be the lowest? In other words, which district -- and if the minister can name it, that would be even more interesting -- has the highest percentile, and which has the lowest?

Hon. P. Ramsey: We're doing well, but we haven't stumped her yet; Ms. Axford does have the data here. I've found in my work with her that she almost always has the data. The high that we've been able to, at a cursory glance, identify from spreadsheets is 92 percent spent on salary and benefits in Surrey; and the low, as far as we're able to ascertain, is 78.8 percent in the Queen Charlottes.

A. Sanders: That's really an incredible spread. I'm very interested in the differential between the Queen Charlottes and Surrey. We can talk more about that at some other time. My question to the minister: does he have any kind of spreadsheet that shows the percentile of 100, in terms of the funding for salaries, wages and benefits, for each of the, I guess, 60 districts that we have, including the Francophone? If he does, could he provide me with that, please?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Yes, we do have that, and we'd be pleased to provide it to you.

A. Sanders: That would be of very significant interest to me in looking at the spread. The one thing that I will mention at this time because it is appropriate is that in the estimates last year there were a number of areas where the minister very kindly provided me with answers. We did the estimates in July of 1996, and the answers came to me in February of 1997. I will certainly ask of the minister at this time that the answers to the questions come to me within the memory span of a normal human being. Hopefully, at some point we could expedite that process and at least have it in the same calendar year. I'd like the minister's cooperation and nod on that particular issue before we go on.

Hon. P. Ramsey: We're absolutely confident we can break that record without even trying. Let me say very clearly that I don't know what the member's schedule is for the remainder of the summer into the fall, but we'll have it to you by the time school opens.

A. Sanders: As one old teacher to another old teacher, we always measure the world in terms of school starting over again. I still get dressed to go to school in the morning; it makes my husband laugh.

Interjection.

A. Sanders: No, actually, hon. Chair, I'm teaching a grade 5-6 split two hours a week as we speak -- well, not now, but when I'm in Vernon.

In terms of school completion rates, I'd like to look at where we are in British Columbia. My understanding was that we were having a declining completion rate with respect to grade 12. The statistics that I was aware of showed '91-92 to be somewhere in the realm of 73 percent for completion rate, but by '93-94 that rate had dropped to 68 percent. What I would be interested in from the minister is an update, because I have been unable to find any more current statistics. What is the percentile completion rate for grade 12 for the '94-95 and the '95-96 calendar years?

Hon. P. Ramsey: As in all things in education, we probably have a variety of ways of measuring. I have a chart here that actually has two different ways of measuring it. One is the percentage of those enrolled who complete a standard Dogwood Certificate, but we also have figures for those who have completed another form of school completion, including the alternate ed and adult ed. I'm going to use those figures, because they're based on the same denominator. You asked for '93-94?

A. Sanders: No, '94-95.

Hon. P. Ramsey: For '94-95 it was 77.6 percent, and for '95-96 it was 79.9 percent. It's actually risen fairly steadily during this decade. At the start of the decade, in '90-91, it was 74.6 percent.

This was determined by totalling how many completed five years, using grade 8 students as the base -- grade 8 students five years earlier and then the graduating class from that year. The totals here include the alternative high school completion certificates, which includes the adult graduation program, the June GED, ABE provincial certificate and letters of assessment.

A. Sanders: Just for clarification. . . . Could the minister could give me his completion rates for '91-92 and '93-94 based on those statistics so that I can compare? I think we are, again, comparing apples to oranges here. Would he just give me those two figures?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I will. I'll read the full list: '90-91, 74.6 percent; '91-92, 75.2; '92-93, 77.4; '93-94, 76.2; '94-95, 77.6; and '95-96, 79.9 percent. Now, it may be apples and oranges. The earlier figures that the member quoted, though, didn't match up with the school completion rate for Dogwood only, either. Those have, again, increased fairly consistently over the nineties, from 65.7 percent in '90-91 to 71.5 percent in '95-96.

A. Sanders: In terms of looking at completion rates and the differentials between the beginning the decade and now, as we move towards the end, what commensurate curriculum reforms has the ministry done that would be designed to meet the needs of the changing profile of the student? Specifically what I'm looking at here is that when I graduated in 1971, the chances of there being alternatives were very, very small. You got a Dogwood or you didn't get anything.

Now we're talking about a correlated number that is constituted from Dogwood, ABE, alternate ed and any other program that gets you where you're supposed to be going in terms of your grade-12 equivalency. Are there curriculum reforms that are being designed and implemented to meet the changing needs for the changing profile of this kind of student?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Just by the nature of the certificates that we listed, I think the member has identified the major initiatives that continue to expand alternate ed opportunities leading to GED and, of course, adult basic education, which has expanded rapidly in the K-to-12 system over this decade. Those are probably the two largest.

[ Page 5977 ]

[7:45]

I reference the secondary school apprenticeship program as one of the initiatives I think is valuable. I reference the ability of students in secondary school to get credit for post-secondary credentials as another. There are others that need to be pursued. So I think that range of programs -- career preparation, secondary school apprenticeship, post-secondary credit for secondary study -- is the area we really need to look at hard.

Without dwelling too much on the history of people who have occupied this office over the last few years, I did want to reflect on some of the initiatives undertaken by one of my predecessors, Art Charbonneau. While not an educator, I think Art had a very clear vision of this problem, and he and I talked about it at length and repeatedly. I think he shared my perception -- I shared it from the classroom; he shared it as an engineer from outside -- that too often we spend all our time in the secondary system preparing our grades 9, 10, 11 and 12 students to succeed in university. But we really only require 15 percent of our population to have a university degree for the careers that are going to be there in the twenty-first century. We spend relatively little time and energy talking about the careers that require some post-secondary training -- 50 to 60 percent of the labour force -- but not at the university level. I think the results too often are not helpful to our children.

I know that as a college instructor, very often in September I would be faced with a class of 35 English students, and maybe seven or eight of them knew why they were there and why they wanted a university-level education and where that fit into what they wanted to do with their lives. While exploring educational opportunities and options is part of growing up and is a valuable part of what our institutions prepare, I would have been far happier if I had had maybe a smaller class at the university level and bigger classes in the technical writing courses, which I also taught, for people who were training to be forestry technologists and millwrights and auto mechanics.

A. Sanders: I think having seven people in a university class who knew why they were there was probably pretty good. I'm still in a position at age 45 where I don't know why I'm here, so seven is a pretty good number if you're looking at age 20-something.

When looking at these school completion rates and the changing profile of the student, which is now a mix of. . . . Especially in the ABE classes I've gone to or the places that I've been to where children are looked after, you'll often find a 16-year-old who's had a child and is now back at school to finish their grade 11, albeit in the alternative kind of program. Next to her will be a woman who is a teller in the bank who has grade 11 and needs two courses for grade 12 to finish and get her Dogwood, combined with someone else who is 44 and has decided that instead of driving a skidder, they'd like to have a Dogwood Certificate and go on to a university education.

One of the things I've thought about a great deal is the CAPP program in terms of looking at curriculum development and the mix we now see in schools, which really is very much a part of this current decade. My question to the minister is very simple. I understand that students in these learning circumstances -- part-time, full-time or in adult basic ed -- are required to take career and personal planning. My question to the minister is: what is the rationale for that? Why is that necessary?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Yeah, they are required to take it. It is part of the general requirements for the Dogwood. The good thing about it is that the curriculum requirements in the IRP are flexible enough, I think, to accommodate both a 16-year-old, who might well benefit from some of the work experience and career exploration components of the program, and the 44-year-old, who probably needs to check a box and say: "Yeah, I worked for five years, and I know precisely what I want to do with my grade 12." There is sufficient flexibility in there to accommodate that without a lot of unnecessary classroom time.

The other thing I hope would be applied to CAPP, as it's going to be to many other programs, is increasing opportunities to challenge the course. This is one of the initiatives I intend to follow through on. It's one we're trying to introduce in a way that doesn't destabilize the system again. I think it's a valuable one, particularly to allow those who are returning to school a chance to get through the formal requirements for a course by challenge, rather than by a certain amount of classroom time.

A. Sanders: I like what the minister has just said, and I would certainly encourage him in one of his goals as minister to look at this particular aspect. Some of the things I've seen. . . . A 44-year-old individual was doing their schooling in the ABE program, and in reading the curriculum that they were doing for CAPP, I have to say that it was one of the dumbest things I've ever seen. I felt that in some ways it was an insult for that individual, who has three children, to be learning about their sexuality. Well, maybe its a good thing, but I'd have to ask the family.

I'd like to move to the education budget in terms of the current year, specifically looking at the funding for the K- to-12 system. When we look at the funding for the K-to-12 system, for the benefit of those who have an interest in this, we're primarily looking at direct grants. These are direct grants from the provincial government that go to the K-to-12 schools through districts. These grants are determined by the funding formula that is found under part 8 of the School Act.

In the ministry budget summary, the nice blue books that we receive as MLAs, there are the 1996-97 restated estimates, and these are juxtaposed with the 1997-98 estimates. There are a number of clarifications of those estimates from a numerical point of view that I would appreciate from the ministry staff. The first is: what exactly is in that budget summary, and what exactly is the 15.26 percent for corporate administration? This was a figure of $26.425 million, which had gone up from $22 million the year previously. Could the minister just tell me what that actually does mean in the context of something I can understand?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I'm not sure I understand the member's question. The budget for corporate administration for this year is $22.393 million and last year it was $26.425 million, so we have had a reduction in that area of 15.26 percent. Overall in the program management area, sort of the central admin-

[ Page 5978 ]

istration in the ministry, we have reduced that budget by 13.37 percent. As I said in my introductory remarks on the estimates last evening, before we went after the school districts and asked them to make savings in administration and delivery, we asked ourselves to do it, and we have downsized significantly in every area of program management in the ministry.

A. Sanders: What actually is this 15 percent decrease in corporate administration? In other words, are these FTEs? Is it building space? What does that figure mean if, as a member of the public, I am attempting to understand what downsizing has occurred?

Hon. P. Ramsey: The great bulk of reductions in those figures are indeed FTEs. We went from a 1996-97 allocation of 1,083 FTEs to an allocation this year of 929 -- a reduction of 154, I believe -- so that's the size of the reduction we made. As you can see, that percentage is almost exactly the overall percentage decrease in management. So it was indeed FTE reductions.

The member asked for the actual functions of corporate administration:

"Corporate administration sub-subvote provides for the office of deputy minister, policy, communications, as well as central administrative functions (systems, financial, human resource and freedom of information and privacy services). In addition, the. . .vote provides financial, human resources, information resources, administrative services, freedom of information and privacy services, and general services and assistance to the Ministry of Labour."

[W. Hartley in the chair.]

Hon. P. Ramsey: There are three broad areas in the education programs: the education programs themselves, K to 12; funding and accountability; and post-secondary education. So it provides the central administration or ministry services for those areas.

A. Sanders: The third question in that area: what specifically does the 8.18 percent decrease in skills development translate into?

[8:00]

A. Sanders: The K-to-12 education programs in this same breakdown have increased $54 million overall. I wonder if the minister could give me a breakdown as to where that money has gone to. For example, has it gone to distance education? How much of it has gone to provincial resource programs, francophones? Where has that $54 million gone?

Hon. P. Ramsey: The operating contributions to public schools were $46.6 million; school support contributions, $6 million; independent school enrolment, $1.3 million; debt service contributions, $9 million.

A. Sanders: Debt service contributions have doubled in percentage to 2.28 percent of the total, a figure of $395 million that has gone to $404 million. My question to the minister is: is this an acceptable figure for debt service contributions when we look at this figure compared to other provinces?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I can't provide you with actual comparable figures and percentages across the country. What I can say is that if we did tag somebody doing that research and found it, I suspect ours would be among the highest, if not the highest, in the country. That would be, I submit, entirely appropriate, given our commitment to spend on infrastructure, including school construction.

A. Sanders: Along that line, the other figure I'd be interested in knowing, if the minister has it, is a comparative provincewide percentile for the funding of education with teacher wage and benefit packages. We've talked about 92 percent for Surrey and 78.8 percent for the Queen Charlottes. Do we have similar figures to compare British Columbia to Alberta and the east?

Hon. P. Ramsey: We're coming close to stumping her, but we haven't yet.

The figures that I have for you and for the committee don't include benefits. So they are lower percentages than the one I gave for you for B.C., but they are constant across the country. I can give you a chart here that has educator remuneration as a percent of total public school expenditures, which I think is what you're asking. For the most recent year, '95-96, in British Columbia the figure was 47 percent; Alberta, 46.7 percent; Manitoba, 51.6 percent; Ontario, 49.8 percent; Quebec, 46.9 percent; New Brunswick, 46.8 percent; Nova Scotia, 54.2 percent; and Newfoundland, 59.6 percent. So we're at the low end of the range as far the percentage of budgets that are spent on education salaries.

Given that from my conversations with the Canadian Teachers Federation, benefit packages are roughly equivalent across the country, I would expect that the total remuneration would follow the same pattern.

A. Sanders: Another term in the Education budget summary on the restated estimates that I was unsure of, which has already been mentioned in another context by the minister, is school support contributions. Could the minister please explain this term and what this term contains?

Hon. P. Ramsey: A variety of programs are funded through this. There are a variety of provincial programs that are funded directly by the ministry, rather than through a school district, including youth containment centres and other programs. That's the largest chunk of that figure, some $23.5 million. For correspondence schools and correspondence support there is around $14.5 million; Passport to Education program, $13.3 million; and there is a variety of smaller figures: OLA, $4.4 million; special needs equipment, $600,000; forgivable loans, $1 million; Francophone Education Authority, $4 million.

A. Sanders: Why has this figure increased 10.4 percent this year?

[ Page 5979 ]

Hon. P. Ramsey: The two largest things that drove this were the transfer in to this budget of the Open Learning Agency and the Open School. Frankly, we're at a little bit of a loss to understand why the base wasn't adjusted as well, but it wasn't, so that's about a $4 million bump there. The other one was the Francophone Education Authority. I think those two areas account for probably the majority of the increase there.

A. Sanders: Is there a reason why the base was not adjusted with the transfer in of Open Learning?

Hon. P. Ramsey: My financial adviser says that we tried to get Treasury Board to do it, but they said: "Oh, to heck with it -- just put it in. You can explain it in estimates, minister." So I'm explaining it in estimates.

A. Sanders: That doesn't somehow seem fair. Then we're going to have to go back to Treasury Board and give them a bit of a hard time, as that is a $4 million cut to education that has not been anticipated.

The minister had mentioned looking at the FTE differentials and how those differentials were in fact responsible for a number of the decreases in the breakdowns that we've been looking at. What it basically shows in the figures provided by the ministry is that we've gone to 929 FTEs from a total of 1,098 -- a difference of 169 employees in total. On those 169 FTEs, I am interested, first of all, in the number of them that were shifted to other departments. If they were shifted, where did they go?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Let me just deal with a couple of things. First, I'm not sure that I heard the member accurately. In the K-to-12 education program, school support contributions went up, not down. So it's not a cut; it's actually an increase. And the $4 million for the OLA. . . .

A. Sanders: But not with the base -- it didn't include the base.

Hon. P. Ramsey: It didn't include the base. Staff advise me that chances are last year that was included in program management. So what we have here, I believe, is a slightly overstated reduction in the program management area, because some of that money was transferred down to school support contributions to help with the Open School in the OLA.

The other question the member asked was: what happened to the 169 FTEs? Were any transferred out? There were 32 transferred to the OLA as part of the Open School initiative; that left 137 to be reduced. There were 46 -- I thought it was 47, but this note says 46 -- from the Skills area that I already referenced from B.C. Benefits staff. They were one-time staff hired to implement the program. That leaves us 91. Of those 91, 21 positions were vacant at the time the reductions were announced, 65 had an employee in them, and we found permanent placements for 46 of them as general shifts occurred. I think that's an appropriate way to deal with downsizing; to try to help people find other employment within your organization.

[8:15]

A. Sanders: So there is a body count of 169. My understanding is that there would be no one who has retired and no one who has been laid off in that number.

Hon. P. Ramsey: Within the ministry we had 24 people who took the early retirement incentive. So that enabled some of the downsizing and shifting that we've described.

A. Sanders: Any layoffs?

Hon. P. Ramsey: We probably still have some auxiliaries who are laid off, but for permanent staff we think we've been able to adjust and find places for them -- not necessarily in this ministry, but in the public service.

A. Sanders: We government people are just like Velcro: you never get rid of us once we're there -- amazing.

Communications in the corporate administration of the minister's office -- there's been a decrease there from 27.8 to 16.8 FTEs. Could the minister explain what positions were cut and what the function of those positions was?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Of the reduction, staff advise me that one was from the correspondence unit -- which is already, I think, pretty stressed -- and the remainder from the publications end of communications.

A. Sanders: Will there be a cut in programs that were in place last year with a change in the FTEs, or will there be new programs added?

Hon. P. Ramsey: We're not quite sure what the question is. The great majority of programs in the K-to-12 system are, of course, those delivered by the school districts under the K-to-12 education program budget, and there is an increase in funding under that budget line.

A. Sanders: I haven't made myself clear enough, and I realized that after I sat down. If we're looking in terms of communications in the corporate administration in the minister's office and we've literally cut the staff in half, I was interested in what programs they had been doing last year that would no longer be available for the office this year with the decrease in FTEs.

Hon. P. Ramsey: I just want to confirm some of my impressions of what has taken the hit by this budget reduction. The biggest hit has been in the publication area. The education system runs on paper, and those of us who live in forest-dependent towns thank it very much. This did slow down publications, monthly bulletins, advisories and the like, and I think that area has suffered. In addition, we used to do a lot of preparation of publications, at times providing the service centrally for publications that were really generated by school districts or groups of school districts. Either they're not getting done, or school districts are doing it themselves. So this is a service that has been curtailed. As I say, the biggest hit has been in the area of providing publications -- both general publications and publications within the system.

A. Sanders: Looking at the education programs in the ministry budget, programs went from 195.4 FTEs in the '96-97 estimates to 94.9 FTEs in '97-98. This again is a relatively significant decrease in the number of FTEs. Could the minister please explain to me what those people were doing in education programs and what they are not doing now that there is a significant decrease in their numbers?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I will give the member a couple of examples. The biggest discrete chunk of that reduction was 

[ Page 5980 ]

the FTEs who were transferred to the OLA -- so that's 32. In other areas, what the ministry did to meet the targets set for staff reduction was something that, frankly, I've been urging school districts to do. In many areas, we tried to combine functions that formerly had been spread out. One example is in the area of facilities. The ministry prior to this year used to have two facilities departments, one that was charged with working on facilities for the post-secondary system and one for the K-to-12 system. We now have one facilities department. There are other similar initiatives that took place across areas of program management.

A. Sanders: In that same area, the funding and accountability area went from 94.5 to 119 FTEs. My question to the minister is: is this increase in the area of accountability a direct response to the comptroller general's report?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I would say that at least in part it's not only to the OCG report which the ministry commissioned a couple of years ago, but to a general desire to enhance the area that Mr. Pallan is responsible for in accountability. As the ministry looks at working with a reduced number of staff and a reduced budget centrally, it increasingly has to pay attention to how it demands accountability from those that it funds -- i.e., school districts. Hence some of this shift.

Noting the time and the fact that we've been here for a couple of hours, I wonder if a ten-minute recess would be in order, hon. Chair.

The committee recessed from 8:26 p.m. to 8:40 p.m.

[W. Hartley in the chair.]

L. Stephens: I will start until the critic comes back. I have a few questions, anyway, that I want to ask the minister around district 35 and our budget out there.

As the minister knows, we have a decentralized school district, so our budget is divided into two: a school budget portion and a centralized services portion. Because we received $1.4 million less last year, we had to make some changes around where we allocated that money, as everyone did, and it ended up that some of the areas were in ESL allocations at the secondary level and supplementary support for French immersion and other language programs. Career and personal planning was the other one.

I wonder if the minister could talk a little bit about how some of these school boards are going to be able to provide the kind of classroom service for these kinds of programs for students. When we have increased enrolment, we have inflation costs and we have all of these factors that come into funding in the school system. Let's start with that, and then I will ask later about the contracts and the costs there that drive a lot of the costs in the system, as well.

Hon. P. Ramsey: First of all, let me just make sure I understand correctly what the member is saying. School district 35, Langley, had an increase in its grant from this ministry in '97-98 in the preliminary figures. The block funding grant this year was $105,160,000; last year it was $104,018,000 in the grant that they received from the province -- so around a 1 to 1.1 percent increase in the grant from the province.

I recognize, as I said very explicitly in my introductory remarks to the estimates, that we have indeed asked school districts to deal with a $43 decrease on a provincial average in per-student funding and have asked them specifically to deal with that by carrying through on the initiatives that were outlined in the public education restructuring report of a year ago, where school districts and the ministry jointly said: "We think it is achievable to find $27 million worth of savings out of the $800 million that school districts spend in non-direct services." So I am working with school districts towards that goal.

The actual organization of services, as the member knows from her work in Langley, is within the purview of the school district. My goal is obviously to continue to provide increases in funding wherever possible, and there has been an increase in funding again this year. But all levels of government are dealing with restricted resources and are being asked to find efficiencies. The restructuring report of a year ago outlined a number of areas and set some targets for finding those savings in our public school system in a way that didn't directly impact on classroom activities. So I very explicitly asked the school districts to look hard at that.

What I have heard from the member is similar to things I have heard elsewhere: cuts in the public school system. I am concerned about their impact on classroom services. I don't pretend that any reduction is easy. I do say that joint work showed that there was an opportunity for savings without affecting quality of education, and I'm working with school districts towards that goal.

I just want to touch briefly on something that the member said would be the next question, which was the cost of contracts. The budget this year and the allocations to school districts fully fund the cost of the provincial agreement negotiated with the BCTF.

[8:45]

As the minister knows, the contract costs in the school system go up every year; they don't go down. So when the funding from the ministry goes down, the services in the classroom are squeezed, and that's what teachers are having to deal with. What my teachers are telling me. . . . This one is from a teacher-librarian. She says that when she started teaching 23 years ago, she was a full-time librarian serving about 500 students. Currently she's half-time serving 650 students. I know that's not unusual around the province, but that's what's happening.

This one is a teacher-counsellor. He says he's responsible for over 1,200 students in three schools. He says that 1,200 students in three schools is counterproductive.

Another lady here, a teacher of special needs students, is concerned about the cuts and how they affect students that 

[ Page 5981 ]

she works with. In 1991 the ten students in her school were receiving 100 percent of the resource teacher's time with the support of a full-time teacher-assistant. Next year, 15 students in her school will receive 80 percent of the resource teacher's time, and 13 of them will receive no teacher-assistant support.

So there are lots of areas that need to be looked at. I wonder how the minister is going to deal with those kinds of problems in the schools. What's the minister looking at to try to alleviate these kinds of difficulties -- not just in Langley, but I'm sure all around the province, some more than others, but all of them fairly significant?

Hon. P. Ramsey: First, let me just say a couple of things about the Langley budget in general. I have noticed that school districts have this pattern of saying that they have a budget for so many millions of dollars for the coming year. They have received such-and-such a grant from the ministry, and therefore they have a shortfall of whatever the number is. I must say, I wish I could do budgeting that way and present it to cabinet and Treasury Board and get anything other than laughed out of the room. It's very easy to present a budget and say that essentially these are what our needs are to preserve everything exactly the way we do it now. The grant from the ministry is less than that; therefore we have a shortfall.

I think the most obvious example that made lots of provincial media news was the Vancouver school board, which said it had a $16.1 million shortfall. And for the life of me, I had a tough time understanding that. We did indeed reduce their budget by $1.8 million. Now, it's nice to play that sort of PR game with budgets, but I'm not sure it reflects the reality.

The grants from this ministry to district 35 in Langley stood in 1991 at $88.5 million. This year they're at $105 million. They had a 12.3 percent growth in enrolment during that six-year period, and they received an 18.8 percent increase in budget. I surely recognize that there are pressures of inflation, pressures of contracts and many pressures that impact on the delivery of services. But I submit that in terms of overall budgets and their attempt to deal with student growth, these budgets have done as well or better than any in Canada. No, they're not easy budgets to administer.

The other thing I'd say about the Langley budget in particular is that they have indeed reduced their budget this year by $2.4 million. The preliminary operating budget this year was down and stands at $107.8 million, according to the documents they submitted to my ministry. I think that's probably the figure you just quoted. The next line shows an increase in operating grants from the ministry, as I explained, and a decrease in miscellaneous revenue, because Langley has chosen to shut down its continuing education and therefore has neither the $3.1 million in revenue it got from that nor the expenses. So there has been a decrease there. But as we talk about school district budgets overall, sometimes it's important to try to separate out other circumstances that might be affecting the bottom lines we're referring to.

The member asked me what I intend to do about the district's decision to cut in certain places. Many of these decisions, as the member knows, are within the purview of the school district. Were I to come in as minister and say, "You must do the budgets in this particular way, and this is where the cuts would be," I think both the administration and board in school district 35 would have some hard words for me. So what I'm seeking to do and what I have asked my ministry to do is continue to work with districts to make sure that we can follow through on the restructuring report and move towards shared services, so that where possible we can work with school districts to make sure that we're implementing best practices in a whole range of areas -- ESL, adult basic education, special education -- in terms of both service delivery and efficiency and in many areas of administration where the restructuring report said there are real opportunities for making cost savings. I have also asked the ministry to work with the boards to see if there are areas where we can essentially do some things that boards are doing, obviously not imposing it but working with them on it.

Those are some of the ways we're going to be attempting to assist boards in dealing with what I've always said is a tight educational budget. The challenge is clear. I have quantified it; I been quite upfront about it: $27 million in savings. I expect them to take it from that $800 million of the budgets that aren't direct classroom services. That's around a 3 percent reduction -- a little more than 3 percent. I've reduced central operations in my ministry by over 13 percent, as we've just discussed. I think the school districts can do it. I know it's not easy. As I listen to the various reports that come in, at times I do wonder whether all the appropriate decisions are being made, but I am also respectful of the elected responsibility of school trustees to make those decisions.

L. Stephens: Could the minister perhaps share with this committee what some of those appropriate decisions should or may be for school districts?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I would be very pleased to. Virtually every school district offers special ed; I think all of them do. What I've seen in my time in the ministry is a huge range of ways of delivering that service -- some more efficient than others, some relatively close to the targeted grants that the ministry provides, others considerably in excess. Some of that is driven by contracts, some by the way programs are organized. If we looked at some real outcome measures and best practices, I think we'd find some real ways of saving money and delivering those programs efficiently.

I'll give you another example. During the restructuring report, school district after school district came to me and said: "Don't amalgamate us. We can share services with our neighbours." I'm going to find out just how many services are shared, because I think there are opportunities to start sharing services among school districts -- whether it's purchasing, whether it's computer services or whether it's curriculum and professional development. The restructuring report itself had nearly a page of targets for shared services that districts could undertake.

I will repeat to you what I have repeated elsewhere. After I resumed this portfolio in January, I had a number of meetings with stakeholders, including secretary-treasurers. I said to some representatives of that group -- and I won't name them, because it would be totally unfair. "Last year around this time I announced the amalgamation of school districts, and we said jointly that we were going to start sharing services and that we were going to find $27 million worth of efficiencies by doing that." Amalgamated districts were expected to collapse those central services from two to one, and the ones that weren't amalgamated were expected to get on with the job of sharing and finding the efficiencies, which they said they would do. I said: "So how are we doing? The target this year is $27 million." One of the representatives actually said to me: "We didn't think you meant it." I mean it. We'll work with them to achieve it, but I mean it.

L. Stephens: I'm sure the minister does. In the meantime, it's the students in the classrooms that are being penalized, if 

[ Page 5982 ]

that's the way you want to look at it. It's the students in the classrooms that aren't receiving the service. So I would suggest that perhaps the minister find a way to mean it that doesn't impact on students in the classroom.

In the case of Langley, we have been working with our neighbours in Maple Ridge and Abbotsford to share services, and we've been doing that for quite some time. We also have, as I think the minister knows, an international student program that brings us in a significant amount of money that we use to provide services for the students in our area. We also have adult basic education that has been very successful for us. It brings us in money, too.

We've tried a lot of ways to generate revenue for ourselves in order to provide those extras that go into the classroom, but sometimes it's not enough. It's getting to the point where those kinds of resources aren't enough to provide or maintain the level of student services that we've built up over the years and to provide for the increased numbers of children that we need to provide for.

I would be very interested in what the minister would suggest in practical terms to the school boards to make sure that those present services are maintained and even enhanced. We are always looking to enhance services for students, particularly those that need to have some extra resources around a lot of the social issues that are in the classrooms today, which make teachers' jobs that much more difficult than what they have been in the past. So I would like to hear the minister's comment on what he sees in the future in those regards.

Hon. P. Ramsey: I think the member recognizes, both from her work in Langley and as critic for this portfolio, that we do have a pretty clear division of responsibilities in the education system between what the minister and ministry do and what the school districts do.

I see one of my primary roles as allocating fairly the dollars that government has given the ministry to provide for the education of the K-to-12 school-age population. As the member knows, we do that through a funding formula. On a yearly basis we attempt to review parts of that formula that may be fair or unfair to one district or another, and the work for '98-99 has already begun. So that's one thing that I continue to do.

[9:00]

I intend to continue to work with school districts to make sure that funding is allocated fairly, to encourage them to share services, to disseminate best practices and to ascertain whether there are operations that can be done on a provincial level rather than on a district level, with their concurrence. So there are a variety of things that I think we can do to assist with these budgets, and we will.

L. Stephens: I hear from parents and teachers all the time. I'm sure the minister does, too, and I'm sure he knows what they're saying. The parents really don't care what the school boards have to deal with. All they want to know is that their child is getting whatever service that child needs, whether it's audiology or speech therapy or whatever it is.

When they see fewer and fewer resources in the classroom, they have to ask why, and they do ask why. It doesn't matter how many times the minister stands up and says, "Yes, we have increased funding," the parents will say: "Well, where's it going? It's not coming to the classroom for the classroom services." So where is the money going? The minister and this ministry have undertaken quite extensive curriculum changes that I assume cost a fair amount of money. It would certainly cost a fair amount of money in the districts to implement those curriculum changes with resource materials, teacher-training and all of those other things that go along with it.

Could the minister talk about some of the costs associated with the changes that his ministry has made over these last couple of years in regard to curriculum and those areas, and whether or not some of that money has been taken from the classroom in order to make these changes that the ministry has undertaken, and whether or not there can't be some kind of a rethinking on those issues around these curriculum changes?

Hon. P. Ramsey: First, the development of the new curriculum -- the new IRPs that have been developed over the last several years -- was funded centrally and done centrally, not by school districts. There are clearly costs of implementing and acquiring learning resources. For the system this year, we're providing around $11.7 million for implementation services for the new curriculum. We're providing the $28 million targeted for learning resources -- materials that need to be in place to implement curriculum. We have a field services team within the K-to-12 branch that goes out and helps with implementation of curriculum. That's funded by about $3.5 million. So those are some of the areas where we're working with the school districts to implement the curriculum and to recognize the costs of implementation of a new curriculum.

L. Stephens: One of the new requirements is the graduation requirements. I'd like the minister to talk a little bit about that, because it's been difficult for students with the flexibility of course selection. I want to know if the minister has made any decisions or if that issue has been resolved.

Hon. P. Ramsey: I've received a variety of correspondence, as I suspect the member has, on the new graduation requirements, which do require perhaps a fair bit more breadth than some of the previous ones did. Actually, this is an issue I dealt with when we were dealing with post-secondary and talking about curriculum design in post-secondary courses. It's the usual tug-and-pull between designing a curriculum which equips students broadly in a variety of areas and a curriculum that enables students to specialize deeply in an area of interest to them. That's the usual tug-and-pull of how we design the curriculum.

Yes, the curriculum requirements have attempted to spread out graduation requirements more than previously. This is an issue that was actually raised with the previous 

[ Page 5983 ]

minister, and it was also raised around the review of the CAPP program. As you know, we have now completed that review and have decided to continue with CAPP as a requirement, but with a substantial number of modifications to the program.

I have now asked the same group of students to advise me on the graduation requirements issue, because they are the ones dealing with their peers and hearing the concerns day after day in the classroom. That work is in progress now. After they finished the CAPP review, I met with them and said: "I really appreciate your work, and I've got another challenge for you, if you want to take it on. Give me your advice on what we ought to do with the graduation requirements." I anticipate no changes between now and the fall, but I also hope to be receiving the work that's ongoing and hear their advice clearly later this year.

L. Stephens: While I'm on the Langley issues and in the classroom, I've had all kinds of letters and calls from parents about speech therapists and services for audiology. Is that something that the ministry looks after, or is that through the Ministry of Health? I know the school district pays. Our school district employs speech therapists and audiologists, and ours have been cut something fierce.

There's a lot of confusion and a lot of angst out there now with the parents, with the new Ministry for Children and Families. Who's got it? Who is responsible for it? Again, parents are really confused, and all they want to know is: "My child needs to be tested. Where do I go? How long do I have to wait?" The last time I looked it was 18 months in Langley, and for getting the children treated, it was two years. So if you look at preschoolers, by the time they get to grade 1, they haven't even begun to have their treatment started. With the Ministry for Children and Families and all of the services that are being interconnected with Education and social services, there are a lot of people who are upset in the school system. I get lots of parents in the elementary grades asking where these services are, where they are going to get them and how they are going to access them for their children. What does the Minister of Education have to say to parents as far as his share of these services in the classrooms is concerned?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I'm advised that we're able to identify some $23.7 million that we spend across the province on speech therapy and other specialists. It's part of the special education target. But here again, I must say that local districts have the ability within that target to decide on what object they spend it.

I think the other part of the member's question is an excellent one. Where do Health services start and Education services begin? The memorandum that we have, between this ministry and Health, says that if it's in school, it's us. If it's outside the classroom, it's them.

L. Stephens: I will have a closer look at our budget in Langley around the special education targets and where money is going in that particular area.

I have one final question to do with the capital projects, and that concerns project managers. Has there been a decision from the ministry about allowing districts to hire project managers on these capital projects? There have been a lot of experiences where the school boards really don't know how to run a construction project. I wonder if the minister has made any decision about allowing districts to hire project managers to look after these capital constructions.

Hon. P. Ramsey: School districts can hire project managers, but they receive no additional operating funds for that. Those funds would have to be found within the planning and capital budgets for specific projects. I must say that given the number of schools we seem to be opening in Langley, I would have thought they would have plenty of expertise.

B. McKinnon: A lot of my questions are probably very similar to my colleague's, so I probably won't ask them all. In my riding of Surrey-Cloverdale, we are, as you know, in a crisis situation, with the growth factor especially. But in talking about the operating budget, I would just like to talk a bit on the formula. I think what I'm trying to do is really understand it and how it is done. The biggest problem with the operating budget, the way I see it, is that the way the ministry funds schools districts with the ministry formula is not the same way that the school district's formula spends the money. In essence, when people talk about X number of dollars per student, I don't believe that we're comparing apples to apples; rather, we're comparing apples to oranges.

Why I say this is because the ministry uses what I see as a complicated formula to come up with funding for each school district. Typically, everyone then takes the total amount of money received by the ministry and divides the total number of students to get a per-student funding average.

[9:15]

The point is that regardless of whether a district is 93 cents or 83 cents on salaries and benefits, the same formula is used to disburse these funds. The question I am asking is on the distribution of funds from the ministry. Why don't they take into account the collective agreements? In other words, when a school district such as Surrey. . . . Just before the last election, Surrey made a collective agreement, which has cost them dearly, I would say. Why doesn't the minister help fund those collective bargaining agreements?

Hon. P. Ramsey: First, I'll respond very specifically to the last part of your question. Why doesn't the ministry fund collective agreements? We do. In the tentative collective provincial agreement that was signed in 1996, the adjustment to budgets for the school districts included entirely the increases that were negotiated at a provincial level with the BCTF. Also, we do, in the formula, try to distinguish between what teachers' salaries are in various districts and fund not on some mythical average teacher across the province, but take the average within each district and fund each district based on the average salary of teachers in that district. So there are attempts within the formula to take account of instruction cost and teacher contracts, and that is recognized in the formula.

As the member says, it is a very complex formula, which has as its base a very simple proposition: so many students, so many base dollars. And then you start adding on or modifying it with things like: so how many metres of school space are 

[ Page 5984 ]

you responsible for maintaining? So how many schools are there? So what's the size of them? And on and on, as we try to take account of the great variations across this province.

Every year the ministry looks at proposals by various school boards or groups of school boards to modify that formula to more equitably distribute the funds. This year we made three or four changes to the formula, one to recognize the increased costs that districts were finding in delivery of career programs -- quite a significant increase. Also, we recognized for some of the chillier districts in the province -- up there where minus 40 is a real temperature on a thermometer -- the increased cost of heating over the last couple of years. And every year these sorts of modifications are proposed.

So if there are specifics -- and I've urged this on the Surrey school board as well as others -- bring them forward. Make the case, but recognize that you're making the case not just to me or to my staff but to a group of your peers from school districts across the province that know precisely how the formula works, know precisely why each district is getting the dollars it is getting. This is an entirely transparent process, and the secretary-treasurer in Surrey knows precisely why they're getting the dollars they're getting per student and per district, and can tell you why that is higher or lower per student than what Coquitlam or Maple Ridge or other districts are getting.

B. McKinnon: I suppose I'll never understand why both of you, the school board and the ministry, don't do your funding or your formulas the same way. To me it seems like it would make more sense. But just on what I was saying earlier -- math was never my good subject, so I'll probably never understand it -- an example was given to me of the ministry's funding based on their formula and not funding for, say, our collective agreement in the area of, say, special education. We are budgeting it on union contracts, to spend $36,553,931 for 1997-98. Yet we only receive $29,409,412, which is a shortfall of $7,144,000. It's interesting, in that that's basically what our deficit is: $7.4 million or something like that. And so it was just interesting about the two formulas -- why the school board and the ministry aren't working together on their formulas. To me, it would seem sensible, but then I don't know.

But I only have one more question on the formula funding. Most of my questions will come later in other projects. The funding for students -- Surrey school district is paid $394.04 less than the Vancouver school district. There are other school districts, such as Burnaby, North Vancouver, Richmond, greater Victoria -- and they're all in the same area and the same province: big cities, lots of kids and that sort of thing. Yet there's quite a difference in the funding formula, when they all seem to have the same needs. I understand you're saying. . . . The students in Prince George get -- what is it? $531 more per student than Surrey. It's colder up there; I understand that. But I do not understand it for down there, in the Vancouver area, Surrey, Burnaby and that. Why are we not all basically the same?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I minored in mathematics in university, and I'm still not sure I understand all the intricacies of the formula. But I would offer, seriously, that if you wish, I could ask staff to try to walk you through, almost line by line, how the formula works for Surrey and how it applies to other districts in the lower mainland.

Basically, though, I would say this. There are several principles that I would say broadly apply. The first is this: the larger the district. . . . There are certain efficiencies and economies of scale which the formula simply factors in. You only need one district office, one superintendent, one secretary-treasurer -- one of a whole bunch of things -- whether you're serving 5,000 students or 50,000. Most of the bigger districts in the province are also located in relatively dense areas of population, and therefore they're able to achieve efficiencies in the size of schools they build. It's more efficient to run one 500-seat elementary school than three of 150 -- and those don't add up to 500, do they?

An Hon. Member: It's a good thing you only minored in math.

Hon. P. Ramsey: Well, at least I recognized the problem, hon. member.

So some of those things, I'd just say, are true and just work. And that accounts for some of the reasons. I mean, the highest per-student funding didn't surprise me at all; it's that huge district that goes from Atlin down through. . . . You know, there are probably more moose than students in the district. There are huge distances with very small numbers in any one school, and it's very cold -- a huge range of factors that drives the cost probably a couple of thousand dollars over what we fund in Surrey per student. That's one of the general things.

A second is that within the lower mainland the differences seem to be driven largely by a couple of factors. One is the percentage of students in the district who are ESL students, as we fund the district $1,000 extra for each ESL student. Yes, Surrey has a significant population of ESL students, but on a percentage basis it's considerably lower than Vancouver or Burnaby. That's one of the drivers of the differential.

The other one -- I'm not quite sure why it's there, but it is -- is a lower percentage in Surrey of low-incident-high-need special education students. As you know, we fund these students at a very high level -- up to $30,000 apiece -- and a little difference from one district to another can make a big difference in per-student funding. That seems to be one of the real drivers that elevates per-student funding in Vancouver and Burnaby and depresses it in Surrey. Those are the major factors.

You might say: "Well, just get those factors out of the formula; a student is a student is a student." And I would say that that would be the wrong approach. We have devised a formula that tries to reflect the actual needs of students in a district not only in numbers but in how they are provided education services in some of the special needs that they have in special ed and ESL and aboriginal education. We fund districts based on the numbers of students and their needs.

So it is a complex formula. There are differences, and sometimes particularly to the parents, who are really focused -- as I always was as a parent -- on what's happening to their child and their school, these are way up there in the stratosphere and highly irrelevant. My goal as minister is to make sure that we're working as hard as possible on equitable allocation. Again, I would offer that if Surrey has specific changes, I would urge them to continue the work that the ministry has done over many years to work with districts to ensure equitable allocation.

B. McKinnon: How often do you check your formula? Do you do it every year?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Every year.

B. McKinnon: Is this formula paid out just one time a year? The minister has nodded, so I take that in the affirma-

[ Page 5985 ]

tive. No? Well, okay, I'll just continue my questions. I know that in Surrey we have a tremendous amount of secondary suites and that type of thing. People -- transients -- keep coming and going. We find that we could have a lot of new students in our schools who we have to put up with, say, in the middle of the year; we don't get any funding for those children until the next year, yet we still have to find the money to educate them, find room for them and everything else. Why is the ministry not more flexible on funding students and particularly new students coming to the area after the count has been taken? That really makes a hardship on our school districts.

[9:30]

The other thing that I would just say is: we have, and do attempt, to recognize districts with rapidly increasing school-age populations. As a matter of fact, in Surrey's budget they get. . . . I think the figure is $2.3 million, which is provided to them because it is an area of rapid growth that needs to plan for expansion, needs to get on with that in a major way. Staff tell me that we provide this money to any district that's growing at a rate of more than one elementary school a year. Surrey meets that in spades. Sometimes I think they do it every month. So would you please slow down? Thank you.

A. Sanders: Just a little bit of a wrap on some of the things the member for Surrey-Cloverdale was saying, which I think need to be put into context to be fair to that member. The minister commented that the ministry paid commensurate for the percentile that was involved in wages and teachers' salaries, through some of the increased funds that went to districts. But my understanding -- and the minister can correct me if this is not correct -- is that the ministry provided that funding for the teachers' increase in salaries, but it did not provide it for the ancillary staff, CUPE and all the rest of the unions that were also involved. When the teachers got their 2 percent raise in 1996, all of the other unions got similar raises. In fact, that percentile was not covered by the increased moneys that went from Treasury Board to the school districts, and the districts were left to cover it themselves. In the case of Surrey, as the hon. member has pointed out and the minister has told us tonight, Surrey's contract is the richest in British Columbia with respect to salaries, wages and benefits.

Perhaps we could just start with a bit of a wrap on that particular issue for this member in that I'd like the minister just to clarify whether my understanding of that issue is not in fact the case.

Hon. P. Ramsey: The member is accurate. We have funded increases that have resulted from provincial bargaining that we have mandated, not settlements that resulted from local bargaining.

A. Sanders: Everything we do here is kind of like undoing a sandwich to look at what's inside. The teachers' salaries were the meat of that sandwich, but all the other stuff in there that people forget about was equally space-occupying, and that was the salaries of a lot of the other unions that were tied in the bargaining process to. . . . The Premier gave the teachers a 2 percent increase, but what he didn't fund the school boards for was the 2 percent that all of the other unions also wanted. The teachers got an increase, and thereby that small piece of the pie, which is what's left over in districts to fund everything else in education, has had to come from somewhere. When we look at diminishing returns to the classrooms, as many parents, teachers and school board members will tell these members about, it's very important to remember those small clauses in the agreement that really do get waylaid or not thought about. The amount of money available -- not discounting inflation and all the rest of those things: the CPP and the WCB and everything else that the boards had to pay for -- really has meant that those school districts have had less money to try and allocate to help parents give their kids an education.

The number part of it is so important, but I think that giving people the overall picture so they understand it is equally important. I've probably belaboured that long enough, but I think for the benefit of the member for Surrey-Cloverdale, because it really can amount to a significant amount of money far beyond the $200,000 overall that comes from late entries into the K-to-12 system.

Not to digress any longer, previous to the recess I had. . . . For the benefit of the minister, I was always one of those people who was late for class, so things haven't changed much. I was also one of those bad kids, but we won't go into that.

We were talking about education programs and the differentials in the FTEs that were in the education programs and the change from 94 to 119 FTEs that were allocated to the accountability division. I had asked the minister if this was in fact a result of the comptroller general's report, and the minister concurred that a certain amount of that was the case.

My last question in that area, because I do have a keen interest in the accountability of the education system, is with this increase in the FTEs to the assistant deputy's empire -- the empire builder. . . . He's going to have to start walking around with his hand in here, like this. What specific projects are we looking at with that increase in FTEs? What has the ministry earmarked in terms of accountability that this particular increase in staffing will be doing with their time, now that there is quite a significant number more of them?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I first want to make sure we are not believing that my assistant deputy is building a bigger empire than he actually is. Of the increase in FTEs, some 20 of them were actually just transfers of responsibility and staff from other areas along with responsibility: ten in the area of responsibility for provincial exams and all that goes with that; five for work in facilities -- as I mentioned, the integrated facilities operation in the ministry now for K to 12 and post-secondary -- and five from legislation and preparation of legislation. That still leaves a significant increase, and I'm sure that after these estimates his colleagues on the executive council will get him an appropriate plaque that says "master of the empire."

[ Page 5986 ]

I want to mention several things that we are working on and that his area is responsible for. One is what I already referred to -- the work on review of the entire accreditation process to make sure we streamline it but preserve it -- and that work is now done. We're working with school districts on carrying on with accreditation. Clearly that's an important part of accountability to parents and really actually involving parents in assessing the programs that their schools are delivering for their children.

A second area is the entire review of roles and responsibilities, focusing on relations between the ministry and its legislated mandate and school districts and their legislated mandate. So we're sure we're getting that right -- not duplicating and not exacerbating the situation by having one party or another feel that their authority or responsibility is not being respected. So we're working smoothly together.

A third area is increasing work on how we do examinations and high-level reports on achievement in our school system, including some of the cross-Canada work and international work that we've seen.

Finally, I think the member is aware that in announcing the '97-98 budget, I also announced that I was not satisfied with the targeted-funding approach to ensuring accountability in the areas of special education, aboriginal education and management caps. So the division is leading the work to bring together those who are involved in special ed, involved in measuring administration costs and involved in doing aboriginal education, to come up with better measures of accounting for what we're doing for children who have special education needs, and reporting to parents, to schools and to us on what the districts are doing and measuring for them what we're delivering for their children.

The same in the area of aboriginal education. When I talk to first nation leaders, they are very concerned about the ability of the school system to serve their children. We talked earlier, hon. member, about the completion rate for the school system in general, and roughly 75 percent complete in a timely fashion currently -- roughly three out of four. For the first nations community, the figures are reversed: three out of four do not complete. I have said to first nations leaders: "I can't tell you that the public school system is serving your people well. In fact, I think it's failing them."

If I were an aboriginal person in this province, I would be extremely distressed by that, and the leaders are. I am seeking ways of working with them to get better accountability into the education system to deal with the needs of aboriginal learners and address that. Targeted funding has at least got school districts to acknowledge there is a problem. But it doesn't seem to be reflected in outcomes, so we have to find some better measures for it to account for that spending of funds and hold the system accountable for delivery of services and student success for aboriginal students.

Similarly, the work goes on in the area of administration and making sure you have the right measures of administration efficiency. Simply capping and clawing back was only part of the problem.

Noting the hour -- I think we're close to the end of a segment -- I would move that 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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